Breath blowing out in a frozen fog before him, he struggles to steady his heaving chest, to quiet his breath as he hides within the underbrush. The air is cold enough to cause his lungs to ache from more than the exertion, but soothing them is the least of his worries.
There are people nearby; people he doesn’t know; people he has every reason to be afraid of; people that outnumber him by a number unknown to him. The voices--more than two, he’s sure--had first floated down to him as he’d been collecting edible plants: a task that he’s abandoned, now, for his hiding spot and a chance to think.
When all of this started, it hadn’t occurred to him that living, flesh-and-blood people could and would be the biggest threat he might face. Trust, however, had been a cruel instructor, and though he still clings to a dusty optimism, he thinks better of blindly going any further.
But, to go around this campsite, however large, might mean backtracking and losing most of the day’s progress. They’ve picked a great spot--they have the high ground, there’s water at the base of the steep hill they’re sitting atop, and the forrest on two sides is too densely packed with overgrowth to allow swift, silent travel. He can only go forward, or back the way he’d come.
Forward it is, he decides as the voices quiet themselves to a lull, and the far-off glow of a campfire begins to dim with the setting sun.
He picks his footing carefully, inching along the edge of the camp at a snail’s pace to avoid snapping twigs and scattering rocks. But with as much focus as he’s giving his feet, he’s not paying enough mind to the rest of himself. A strap tears loose from his over-worn bag as it snags on a branch, and out spill several cans of food and a sheathed hunting knife. As they fall, they clatter noisily to the hard, rocky earth, alerting the watchman nearby.
Grey freezes and waits for the worst.
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