A cold drip on my face jerked me awake, staring at the darkness for the long moment it took me to find my senses. Another drop. The pitter-patter of rain, air thick with moisture. I swore under my breath, then curled up tighter in the crevice, thinking up a plan.

After a minute or so, I felt confident in what I needed to do. A last deep breath and I slipped out my room, dashed around to the other crevice I used as a larder, checking water wasn’t pooling in there. Fortunately, I’d chosen well, some rain streaming down the rock, but draining out the bottom. I shuffled everything over a bit to make sure and piled up some rocks to add an overhang, keeping that trickle of rainwater out.

Although the rain wasn’t too heavy yet, I was getting damp, so I hoped that would do and rushed over to the trees. While I didn’t know if there would be lightning, I was pretty glad I hadn’t set up camp under the trees. Saved me that one worry.

I dug a small hole and gathered some leaves, getting another worry out the way. Not like my room came with an en-suite bathroom.

Once done with that, I stretched out under the tree’s protection, then plucked more leaves. A good pile in my arms, I ran back to my room and shuffled into the crevice. It wasn’t ideal, but I pushed more leaves into my makeshift wall, ignoring the drops that made it through. Fingers cold, numb, yet I couldn’t stop, clumsily stuffing wherever it looked like more leaves could fit.

Finally, I ran out of leaves. My breaths came out heavy, rain drumming a fast beat against the leaves and rock, wind reaching around the wall to pinch at my exposed skin.

But barely a drop came through.

Relieved, I sank into the crevice, losing shape as my tense muscles relaxed. Now that I didn’t have to worry, I closed my eyes. Pitter-patter went the rain, against the leaves, against the rock, splashing in puddles. So nice.

Before, I’d only really heard the rain if it blew against the windows, so it was mostly just a nuisance. Left puddles on the way to school, mud in the garden, made the children cold and oh did they love complaining about that.

Now, though, I listened, the rain sounding so pretty.

I never had naps before, but there was nothing to do and nothing to really think about. Little by little, I felt the dreams come, drifting in and out of sleep, sometimes deaf, other times the rain so loud I couldn’t think even if I wanted to.

I didn’t want to, though. I didn’t want to remember what I’d left behind. They were fine, I told myself. They had to be fine.

So I listened to the rain until dreams took me, drifting in and out, one moment in the library back at school, the next back in the dim crevice, rain so loud I wasn’t sure I could even sleep.

But sleep I did.

It wasn’t obvious when the rain started, clouds thick enough to hide the sun. When it lightened to a drizzle, though, it looked bright enough to be midday. When it finally stopped, I shuffled out, eager to at least eat some fruit. Looking up, it seemed like midafternoon. It was only my third day, but I had a sense of where the sun rose and set, easy to keep my bearings with the mountain’s slope.

First things first, I went off to pee. Listening to the rain while curled up had become torture by the end. After that, I washed my hands and enjoyed some fruit. I was still hesitant to eat too much, though, so prepared myself to go hungry today.

The slab had kept the buried charcoal from getting soaked, but the dirt still looked damp and my fire-making sticks had been left out. I sighed. There hadn’t been any clouds in the sky last night, so I hadn’t even thought about rain. I was lucky my larder kept the wheat dry.

Although there was no chance of a fire today, the least I could do was prepare for tomorrow onwards. Going for a walk, I meandered from tree to tree, snapping off dry branches and gathering twigs that had been spared from the rain, piling them up at the base of the largest tree by my camp.

I checked on the fruit tree again while I did. The buds had already flowered, pretty blossoms made of crescent petals that nestled together in a bumpy circle, pale violet with an amber centre. In the time I checked it out, a few insects buzzed over to presumably collect nectar. Strange things, sort of like dragonflies, but without the long tails, maybe better to describe them as butterflies with see-through wings and scaly bodies. Well, I gave them space. No interest in a close-up look.

Thoughts of the fruit tree followed me back to the camp. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. If the fruits would grow back so fast, I wondered if the tree itself grew fast too. That led me to checking where I’d been leaving the fruit cores: a shallow hole a little away, covered up. Didn’t want to attract the local flies or scavenging animals.

With a stick, I poked around the loose dirt, but all that rain had turned it to mud. If I did find any pips, I couldn’t tell. Not exactly frustrated, the feeling was more like helpless. A riddle with not enough clues. No, a riddle where I didn’t know if an answer was right or wrong.

I was stuck between tying myself up in knots over the mystery or feeling hungry. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the mental energy to keep thinking. I was used to menial labour and not solving mysteries.

Eating, I had no clue if the carrots were safe raw. Even if they weren’t poisonous, I knew there were raw vegetables that had sort of anti-nutrients, stuff in them that made it harder to absorb certain vitamins and minerals. That was why I wanted to cook the peas too.

Ah.

Reminded of them, I walked over to the larder, careful with all the mud. Soaking was the first step to getting them to sprout and sprouting changed some of the nutrients, going from storage mode to grow mode—and getting rid of anti-nutrients.

Only that, once I opened it up, the basin of peas wasn’t a basin of peas any more, instead full of small shoots. I stared for a good few seconds, thinking to myself it was supposed to take a few days or longer.

But blossoms weren’t supposed to bud and bloom in a couple days, were they?

Whatever was going on, I took out the basin and awkwardly drained it, using my hand as a sieve. The shoots were tiny, white with a purple vein. I would have liked to have given them more time to grow or to still heat them up over a fire first. All I could do, though, was rinse them with fresh spring water.

I mean, I had gathered enough firewood, but there wasn’t much kindling around, leaves blown around in the storm.

Like every time before, I had just the one sprout to start with. It had a crunch to it, an empty flavour like salad leaves, slightly bitter after-taste. If that was the peas’ natural taste, frying really had helped. After a while of nothing happening, I had some more shoots.

But not all of them, even though it wasn’t a big portion. I saved a couple and, remembering I’d found the pea bush by the base of a tree, I took the shoots to the big tree I kept the firewood under. The ground there dry, digging took some effort, but I didn’t know how deep to bury them, thinking shallow would be fine since they would have just fallen down normally. I watered the ground too. Not a lot, but enough to settle the dirt. Again, if they naturally grew under trees, they probably didn’t need much watering.

With that distraction over, I ambled back to camp. It was almost sunset by now and yet I still had so much energy. Well, I’d spent most the day sleeping, only a few hours picking up sticks.

So I tried to think of something else to do until it was dark.

Wanting to not go far, I settled on checking the local plants again. This time, though, rather than looking for vegetables, I wanted to find herbs. Add some flavour to the food or maybe stew some tea—it would depend on what I found.

Only one way to do it, I shuffled around and sniffed leaves. It wasn’t that fun. After all, most of them just smelled like leaves.

Something to pass the time.

For all my shuffling, I found a couple “herbs” by nightfall. One of them had a smell like lavender, just more earthy than flowery, and the other a very sort of bitter smell that made me curious; trying a leaf, it had a bite to it like mustard. Maybe too hopeful, I thought it might be healthy because of spicy stuff like mustard and ginger being good for you, so picked a bunch.

And knowing what the bean plant looked like, I found another one. Enough pods for a portion or two. Not a wasted evening.

Back at the camp, I put away the “mustard leaves” and cracked open the pods, leaving the beans to soak. Curious if the pods were maybe edible too, I rinsed them and took a bite of one.

An immediate problem, a stringy bit came with it, stuck on my tongue as I tried to scrape it off. Once I managed to spit that out, I could focus on the pod. It was… kind of bland, slightly bitter and sweet, not enough either way to taste bad or good. Probably would have tasted nicer cooked.

That did get me thinking about, next time, leaving the peas in the pods and roasting them. Frying a small portion of peas had been tricky enough with how they stuck and burned on the slab. I wasn’t sure if wrapping the pods in wet leaves would work well, though. Maybe I could have just put them directly by the fire or poked them onto a thin stick and held them over the fire. Using the slab still seemed like the best idea, hopefully easy enough to flip them over in the pods.

If I was going to use the slab more, I thought, having cooking oil would help keep stuff from sticking. The problem was I’d probably need a cloth to separate out the pulp if I just crushed nuts to make it and didn’t want to ruin my only clothing to try.

Sighing, I popped the rest of the pod in my mouth. It wasn’t easy existing with nothing. Even if I did try to hunt animals, it wasn’t like rendering their fat would be any easier.

Well, not the most productive day, but I’d done something.

No fire to keep me warm, I retired to my room with the rest of the pods for a snack and brought the lavender-like leaves too. Slowly eating the pods, gradually surrounded by the soothing smell, I managed not to think too much, in a bit of a trance. Deep breaths, chewing, eyes unfocused as I stared at the woven wall close to my face.

Once the food was finished, I snuggled into the crevice and breathed deeply. In, out, in, out, until sleep took me.