Night Zero (Pt. 3, final)
It was starting to get lighter (or starting to start to get lighter, if the distinction mattered), and Isfet once again remembered that he was fucked. He hadn’t forgotten, technically, but he’d found it ebbed and flowed (like water! Ha!) in and out of his conscious thoughts as he walked and wandered and wondered.
There was plenty of tree cover but he knew it wouldn’t be enough to fully protect him. Isfet didn’t think he had the energy in him to steel himself from the sun for long, and while his skin might not immediately burn down here under the canopy of leaves, his eyes sure as hell would. He couldn’t remember if he’d had sunglasses in his pocket when he’d left the house, but if he did they must have fallen out during the ordeal (The Ordeal). Ha, maybe that would count as an offering to the Big Water Snake Thing. Certainly worth more than 23 cents (again, if he’d even had them in his pocket to begin with).
Sunglasses or no, it didn’t matter much anyway. He needed sleep. He was, to put it mildly, exhausted. And starting to get hungry, and he knew this meant he’d need to contemplate how the fuck he was going to catch… a squirrel? A rabbit? Good lord. But for now, shelter was more important.
In one of the few strokes of luck he’d had tonight, it was only a bit of wandering and searching before he found a decent outcrop of rocks with enough cover to keep the worst of the sun away, but not so big that he had to worry about a bear or something having taken up residence in its crevices. He wanted to set his jacket down, rest his head on it like a pillow, but instead he draped it over one of the rocks as best he could, just for a bit more cover. It’d dry faster that way, too. He supposed he could take his shirt off and use that, but the idea had him feeling just a little too vulnerable. Because that was the line, apparently, shirts versus skins. Stupid.
Oh well. He could just use leaves like a proper survivalist. Leaning his head against damp cloth all day would probably just end up giving him an ear infection anyway.
Plus, more good news - being exhausted meant he would fall asleep more easily. Isfet pulled the phone and lighter and single solitary piece of candy out of his pocket and placed them carefully on a flat rock where he wouldn’t roll over onto them, and settled in. If he tucked his legs up against him just right, shifted his arm this way, wedged his right hand under his chin like so, he could almost kinda sorta get a little comfortable. He looked at the phone sitting there. If this were any other morning, he’d be flipping through it, glancing at fumblr or checking in on IMs. Maybe send a few sleepy texts to Elliott...
It was almost second nature for him to reach out and grab it now, and it took all his willpower to not try and turn it on. Trying to turn it on while it was wet would be a death sentence for the damn thing. It might already be dead, but there was at least a possibility that it was okay still, and he couldn’t fuck that chance up with impatience. Still, he just wanted to see it light up, to see words of comfort, to hear someone’s voice…
Isfet held it against his chest. At least Lorna hadn’t gotten it. That was what really mattered, in the long run, no matter what happened to him.
By the time he fell asleep, it was still in his hand, still resting near his heart. He’d chastise himself for it in the evening when he woke up, for taking the risk of tossing and turning and breaking it. But for now, it was simply his one small comfort.
