Soon after the initial meeting of Don and reuniting with Ella, we all decided to keep moving, lest I be caught by the Dudes in Black, whom shall hence be named!

Don and Ella glided effortlessly just above the ground. They were no longer attempting to put on false pretenses of still being living humans for me.

Naturally, this left me stumbling after their weightless forms in the dark. Just barely managing to keep Ella’s faint outline in front of me in the forest gloom. Don led the way, claiming to know these woods better than “his left nut,” apparently.

Though this raised a myriad of other questions, I chose to suppress them in lieu of the fact that I was being hunted down by a gun-wielding militant force (Dudes in Black!). Bent on returning me to a secret and most definitely illegal underground facility with an eerily intelligent (yet sketchy as hell) doctor in the lead with some no doubt sickening goal in mind.

Breathe, Violet.

WHAT!? I responded, startled out of my anxiety by Ella’s mind reaching into mine.

Deep breaths. We are going to get you away to safety.

I realized I’d been hyperventilating and lost in thought again. Gratefully reminded that I had a thoughtful friend now by my side. A friend who, for reasons as of yet unknown to me, had decided to be somewhat of a guardian angel. A friend who also happened to be a spirit who could telepathically communicate with only me (and talk normally with other spirits). It also should be noted here that she could also tamper with lights and electronics– electromagnetic fields in general, perhaps? Oh! And I could turn invisible now, apparently.

We also just met the ghost of an outdoorsy type of guy by the name of Don, who was killed by the same force I’m trying to escape for simply seeing the facility on accident while foraging in the forest.

For the thirty-minute jog-stumble before this, Don advised me to grab various things as we moved, not bothering to slow down and explain why for each one, though muttering fire was the end result.

“Grab this shroom lookin’ fungus here!” Don exclaimed, standing next to a birch tree and pointing at a white, half-circle a head’s height off the ground attached to the tree trunk. “Chaga!”

“What?” Ella and I asked in unison, but Don had already darted ahead, forcing us to follow at a quick pace. Don continued pointing and telling me what to collect. Soon, I had ripped a strip from my hospital gown and tied it around the bundle of my new collection: the “Chaga” mushroom, a bundle of dried grass collected from the underbrush, and small sticks of dried pine.

“Now, for the trick of the spark,” Don said as he stopped before a fern tall enough to cover the path view ahead. I heard the faint rush of water, and my heart leaped. Don smiled, sweeping the leafy fern to the side to reveal a burbling creek reflecting hints of the thin sliver of a moon.

Don’s face got serious. “Now, there’s not much cover here, and it will be easier for the Dudes in Black, as you’ve coined, to spot you. So, we’ll have to be quick.” He looked at Ella and me to see that we understood the gravity of what we said. We nodded, and he continued.

“I’ll look for the rocks we need while you drink your fill of water. It seems clean enough not to make you horribly sick, hopefully, but use a bit of your shirt filled with sand and rocks as a filter anyway. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to make a better one.”

“Shit. Okay, sounds good,” I said.

Five minutes later found myself with a quickly shrinking and increasingly torn hospital gown, standing in the shadows before the open creek. I was shivering and a bit wet from the mess of drinking the water through part of my shirt. Some sand made its way into my teeth, and I smelled like the underside of a possum’s ass. But my thirst from running all night had been satiated.

“Here!” Don yelled. I flinched, worried he would bring the attention of the searchers, but remembered only I could hear Ella, and most likely him as well. So I relaxed and dashed over to where he crouched, pointing at a rock he wanted me to pick up.

“Quartz! Right by the riverbank where I thought it’d be. Grab that, and this darker one over here.”

I grabbed both rocks he pointed at, adjusting the bundle again and throwing it under my arm a moment before Don took off back into the forest for us to follow.

Soon the three of us sat under a wayward pine Don had navigated us to. It sat in a field of other pines, with low-hanging, thick-needled branches creating umbrellas of cover down to the ground.

At Don’s invitation, Ella and I sat on the other side of him inside the pine, as if it were his home he had welcomed us into for tea.

He knelt in front of the bundle and instructed me with efficiency to rival any schoolteacher.

“First, take that Chaga— also called horseshoe fungus,” he said with a grin, clearly more relaxed now to be undercover and take more liberty in sharing his bushcraft knowledge. “And break it up in your hands. That’s right, small as you can get.”

“Now, take that darker big rock and smash the quartz with it hard as you can.”

Worried about the sound, he must have read my expression and added, “In fact, let’s fold a bundle of pine in between to muffle the sound a bit, eh?”

I did so and cracked the rock open, revealing smaller hand-size pieces, some of which had slight sparkles to them in the near darkness.

“Alright, now those shiny bits in the quartz veins are bits of iron pyrite. GREAT fire starter with a hard bit of rock. Remember, quartz is a blue-grey rock with some white bands on it. You can often find it near river banks. Or roads, though we don’t wanna’ be goin’ anywhere near them just yet.”

Ella shifted impatiently before standing up inside the pine, bending her neck to avoid touching her not-physical-head to the lowest branches.

“I’ll do a perimeter search and keep lookout,” she said before disappearing out of the pine.

“Right,” Don said, not slowing down his roll in the slightest.

“Now hold the pyrite bit and strike down on it with the other dark rock—got some steel in it no doubt with that black color—and be sure the sparks land in the pile of broken Chaga below.”

“That’s it, perfect!” he shouted happily as I began, sparks lighting up the inside of the pine.

Minutes later, I began to sweat as doubt crept in. “How much longer?” I asked.

But before Don could reply, an ember caught in the rust-red pile of Chaga and let out a small wisp of smoke.

“Haha!” Don laughed. “Now blow on it a bit, then put it in the dried grass and sphagnum moss bundle we made.

Moments after I placed it in the bundle and held it up, flames burst through.

“Yes! Now put it down and slowly add small sticks as it grows, and voila!”

I couldn’t help a massive grin from spreading as I admired my fire and felt more badass than I had in a while.

“You did it, kid!” Don said with a laugh as he patted my back in pride. “Well done.”

Warmth flooded my aching bones, and I felt the first trickle of relief I’d felt in a while. The glow of the light danced around the wayward pine as the wind rustled the branches from outside. No longer an eerie whisper, but a therapeutic sound like ocean waves.

Don and I both lay back on opposite sides of the trunk around the fire, both reveling in the delight of the first campfire we’ve had in years.