When Emily woke up, she was greeted by the unfamiliar sight of a forest canopy. Panic immediately set in. It took her a scant few seconds to realize that the weight pressing down on her was none other than her best friend, who had also fallen unconscious. The presence of Evelyn worked wonders to calm her growing panic, but she still needed to figure out why they were stranded in a forest. The last thing she remembered was the two of them crossing the street on their way back to her home, then time seemingly froze, followed by darkness. It didn’t take a genius to deduce that they had been knocked unconscious and then transported to the interior of a forest, but she couldn’t imagine what someone would want with two high schoolers. Nothing good, that’s for sure.

After taking stock of their situation, and calming herself down, or as much as one could calm down in such an unprecedented situation. Emily shook Evelyn, trying to wake the other girl. Her first attempt accomplished nothing, so she tried pinching her friend’s cheeks. This was a little more successful, as the taller girl shifted to a different position, but it still didn’t wake her up. Finally, she made the decision to just wait until her friend woke up, as foolish as waiting might be. The position she found herself in wasn’t all that uncomfortable, and she couldn’t feel any bugs crawling on her body, so she chose to wait and use the time to formulate some kind of plan, lest the helplessness of her situation gets to her.

When Lynn woke up, the first thing she noticed was a stranger pinned underneath her. Naturally, she quickly got off whoever it was. The second, and arguably more important thing, that captured her attention was the unfamiliar forest that surrounded her. The third and most important thing on her mind was the fact that she had no idea who or where she was. The girl that she had been crushing beneath her was smiling at her. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she returned the smile as best she could. Her next words and the question they formed; however, caused the girl’s smile to vanish and the girl herself froze.

  “Hi, uh, who are you?” Lynn asked the stranger.

Emily couldn’t believe her ears. It had to be a joke because there was just no way that her best friend could forget her. Especially not in a situation as dire as they found themselves in.

  “Haha, that’s very funny. But this isn’t the time for jokes, Lynn. You’ve been unconscious for at least an hour, and I haven’t seen a single person in that time. We need to find water, food, and shelter. In that order. Oh, and before this happened to us, we had just finished drinking coffee. So I really need to use the ladies’ room.”

  Confused by the other girl’s words, Lynn took a few moments to formulate a reply. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t know who you are. I don’t even know who I am.”

Emily knew that Lynn wouldn’t joke in a situation like this. So hearing her best friend say that she didn’t know who either of them was played havoc with her already strained emotions, but she knew that now wasn’t the time to let her feelings get the better of her. She bottled up everything she was feeling and chose to prioritize their survival. The time to grieve would come later, but that time was not now. Right now, she had to put on a strong front for her friend.

  Lynn noticed how badly the girl in front of her took her words, and while she still didn’t recognize the other girl; she did feel some kind of connection with her. If nothing else, they were stranded in the forest together. She didn’t know what to call herself, so she went with the name that the girl used, and introduced herself, “Hi. My name is Lynn. I seem to have lost my memory, but it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Torn between laughing or crying at the absurdity of her best friend giving such a formal introduction, she chose to go with the flow and gave her own introduction, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lynn. My name is Emily and it's my esteemed pleasure to meet you as well.”

  Even having lost her memory, Lynn too recognized the absurdity of their situation. She posed a question to Emily, “So… I’m guessing we used to know each other?”

  The shorter girl nodded, “We did, but… That doesn’t really help us right now. All you need to know is that your name is Evelyn, your friends call you Lynn, and I was your best friend before we got stuck in this mess.” Emily quickly corrected herself, “I am your best friend. We’ll get through this together, and when we make it back to civilization, we’ll get your head looked at.”

  “Okay, sounds like a plan,” Lynn replied, having little choice but to trust the only friendly face around.

Both girls were putting on a brave front for the other, but in reality, they were both terrified of what lay ahead. It didn’t help that being an introvert and a shut-in, Emily never really bothered learning about surviving in the wilderness. Even if she had, it would be hard to make do without the convenience of modern tools and other necessities. She didn’t even know how to start a fire, much less build a shelter or forage for food. Not to mention how they’d manage to take care of their business without toilet paper, or in Lynn’s case, a bidet. If her friend even remembered that she used to have one installed in her bathroom at home. It was always a source of amusement for Emily that Lynn refused to use public bathrooms, ever. She still had no idea how the girl managed such a feat. For someone who had so much self-confidence, she really did get hung up on the silliest of things.

The two girls took turns doing their business behind two separate trees, before venturing out to find water. Neither girl believed in carrying around a purse, so they had nothing to clean themselves off with. Suffice it to say, it didn’t help either of their moods any.

The forest they were trapped in seemed to go on endlessly in every direction, with no end in sight. Going off of half-remembered survival tips and randomly recommended YouTube videos, Emily knew that the first step towards surviving would be to find a clean source of water. The reasons for this were two-fold; the first and most obvious reason was that humans can’t survive for long without clean, fresh water, and the second reason is that where there is water, civilization follows. Therefore, her hastily crafted plan was to find water first, then deal with everything else after.

  Lynn walked alongside Emily for a good fifteen minutes, an awkward silence clouded the air between the two. Finally, she had enough and asked Emily a question, “You said you’re my best friend, right?”

  Emily had been focused on nothing but her search for water, so it came as a surprise when her friend broke the comfortable silence between the two. She continued walking, answering her friend as she went, “That’s right. We’ve been friends since middle school.”

  “If that’s the case, then why don’t I remember you?” Lynn asked.

  The smaller girl didn’t know how to answer that, so she changed the subject instead, “Do you remember what happened before we woke up in the forest?”

  Lynn shook her head, before realizing shortly after that Emily wouldn’t be able to see the gesture. “No, I don’t remember anything.”

  After she nearly tripped over an exposed root, Emily pointed out the hazard to Lynn, warning the other girl, “Watch your step,” before launching into an explanation of what happened before she lost consciousness. “We were on our way to my house, to study and play some games. It was just a normal day, but…” She paused, circling around a small copse of trees before continuing, “As we were crossing the street, an empty circle, with a glowing blue border surrounded us. Everything outside of the circle was without color and unmoving as if time itself had stopped. When we tried to exit the bounds of the circle, we found that it was impassable. Shortly after nearly getting squashed together, I lost consciousness and woke up in this forest, under you.”

  The other girl tried to visualize what happened, but she found the idea of time stopping to be preposterous. She told Emily as much, “Are you sure that’s what happened? I find it extremely difficult to believe that time just stopped.”

  Emily shrugged, unsure of if what she had seen actually happened or not. “I can’t say if what I saw did or didn’t happen. For all I know, we were drugged on that street and smuggled into this forest for some twisted reality show or something. Regardless of the why, we need to focus on the now. To be honest, this entire situation is so far outside of my comfort zone that I’m about to have a mental breakdown. The only thing keeping me going right now is the knowledge that we’ll die if we don’t find a source of clean water.”

  “That’s a good plan,” Lynn replied, her tone just as downtrodden as Emily’s.

The rest of their trek continued in silence. Lynn was tempted to start up another conversation a number of times, but in the end, she chose not to. What Emily didn’t realize is that her friend was going through an existential crisis. She was thinking to herself, ‘If I can’t remember who I am, then am I really the same person Emily claims is her best friend?’

Meanwhile, Emily listened for the sound of running water, while simultaneously keeping an eye out for any dangerous wildlife. They hadn’t seen any critters scurrying about, which was quite odd for a forest. It actually made her a little worried, because she knew there had to be a reason for the lack of wildlife. The only thing she could think of was that the animals were staying away from some form of danger, but if that were the case, then both Lynn and herself were in danger. Neither one of them had any form of defense on them, save their cellphones.

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Emily stopped, wanting to hit herself for forgetting about the first thing that should have come to mind in her situation. Lynn stopped a short distance behind the other girl, wondering why they were no longer moving. Emily removed her cell phone from her back pocket. But, after trying to power it on, she found that her battery was completely dead. She placed the useless device back in her front right pocket. Still, all hope wasn’t lost, because she knew that Lynn had brought her cellphone as well, so there was still a chance that they could find a signal and call for help.

  “Lynn, check your pocket for a cellphone,” Emily told the other girl, the words coming out in a rush.

Her friend hesitated for a second before she checked her person for a cell. It didn’t take long before she was holding her cellphone, and unlike Emily, Lynn always made sure her phone was fully charged before leaving the house. Not knowing the code for her phone, she handed it off to the other girl. Luckily for the both of them, they had long ago given each other their respective unlock codes, so it didn’t take long for the latter to unlock her friend’s phone.

  “No…” Emily cried. “There’s no signal.”

  Lynn tried to comfort her, “Maybe we just need to find higher ground?”

She was answered with a nod, although Emily doubted they would find any kind of signal. Her mind kept cooking up scenarios for what had happened to the two of them, and none of them were good. Still, they hadn’t yet found water and she needed to try to keep her spirits up if they were going to have any chance of surviving. Normally, Lynn would have been the one to take charge in this situation, but for some reason, she was following Emily’s lead.

  Lynn saw the wallpaper on the phone, noting that it showed a picture of a younger-looking version of Emily, and an unknown girl beside her. She asked, “Who is the other girl in the photo?”

This caused Emily to realize that not only did Lynn lose her memory of who she was, but she didn’t even know what she looked like. Luckily, that was one problem that was easy to fix. She opened the camera app on the other girl’s phone and switched it to self-portrait mode. Then she handed the phone over to its owner, making a gesture with her hand to show the other girl what she wanted.

  Lynn lifted the phone up in the air, with the screen pointed at herself, and saw an unfamiliar face reflected in the screen. It was heart-shaped, with forest-green eyes. Light-brown hair seemed to trail down her back and she could feel it tapering off just below her shoulders. She didn’t know how she compared to other girls, but she certainly wasn’t complaining. After taking a little time to look at and get familiar with her face, she gave the phone back to Emily. “So… I’m the other girl in that picture.”

  Emily nodded, glad to have some proof of their relationship. “Look… I um, I don’t expect you to just treat me like we’ve known each other for years. I would like it if you did, but I’m a realist. I know that, to you, I’m nothing more than a complete stranger.” She frowned, “I won’t lie, it really bothers me that you don’t remember me, almost as much as the two of us being stranded out in the middle of God knows where. I want to scream and hit something. I want to sleep in my own bed and wake up from this nightmare.” Her hand reached out to brush some hair out of Lynn’s face, before she said, “And if this is how I feel, then I can’t even begin to imagine how you’re taking all of this.”

  Lynn replied in an uncharacteristically soft tone, “I… I want to remember you. I want to remember myself and my life. I wish that all of this were just some weird shared dream that we both somehow tapped into, but… Even with my memory gone, I can tell that something is seriously wrong with this situation. I–” She’s interrupted by a finger gently pressed against her lips.

The smaller girl embraced her friend, and the two of them cried together for a short time. It wasn’t long enough, not even close. But they didn’t have the luxury of time on their side. If they didn’t find water by nightfall, then they would only have one more day before dehydration set in. After releasing some of their pent-up emotions, the two girls continued walking. As if by some miracle, they eventually heard the sound of running water.

It didn’t take long for the duo to reach a small creek running through the forest. The water within was the clearest that Emily had ever seen, almost as if it had come straight out of a fairy tale.

  Just as Emily was about to take a sip of the crystal clear water, she’s stopped by Lynn. “Hold on, we don’t know if it’s safe to drink. We should boil it first, just to be safe.”

  Her friend saw the wisdom in Lynn’s words, but she had no idea how to make a fire without a match or lighter, and neither girl smoked. So they had no cigarette lighter. “How? We don’t know how to light a fire.”

  Lynn smirked, glad to finally be of some use. “Actually… I know exactly how to start a fire. I don’t know how I know, or why, but it shouldn’t take too long if we work together.”

  “Having a fire to stay warm overnight will be nice, but… What do you plan to boil the water in?” Emily asked, her logic poking a hole in Lynn’s plan.

  The taller girl mumbled to herself, “We could carve a bowl out of wood, but we have no way of transferring the heat… Rocks would work, but we have nothing to safely handle them with. Tree leaves could, but they’d need to be big enough to boil water in…”

Emily patiently listened as her friend tried to figure out a method to boil water without a pot, but in the end, the other girl came up empty. Instead, they washed their hands off in the creek and hoped that the water was suitable for human consumption. After the two girls had drank their fill, Lynn sat Emily down and explained to the other girl how they would start a fire.

  "I don't know how I know, but I think I might be able to make a fire bow," Lynn said to Emily.

  "Huh? How can a bow start a fire?"

  Lynn laughed, before she replied, "Silly, it's not a bow that you'd use to shoot arrows."

  Emily blushed, "I knew that!" Privately, she thought to herself, 'I thought it used the friction from a special arrow striking the wood to generate a spark or something like that.'

  "Suuuure you did," the other girl drawled, a grin plastered across her face. After she finished teasing Emily, she launched into an explanation covering what a firebow was and how it worked. "Basically, a fire bow has 4 parts. The first part is called a fireboard and it's made of a soft wood–"

  Emily interrupted her, "Why does the wood have to be soft?"

  "Well, I'm getting to that, be patient. As I was saying, you have the fireboard, the bow, the spindle, and the handle. Whereas the fireboard needs to be soft, the spindle needs to be made of a hard wood. The reason for that is because the spindle is rapidly spun to generate dust, and we want that dust to ignite and form a coal."

  "I think I'm starting to understand where you're going with this."

  "Oh?"

  "The fireboard needs to be soft, so that the spindle is able to generate the dust and the spindle uses friction to generate heat, which eventually forms a coal."

  "Right, exactly!"

  "But I'm still confused where the bow factors into the equation..."

  "Mmm... I could explain it, but I think you'd understand it better If you saw it in action."

  Emily shrugged. "That's fair. So... What do you need me to do?"

  "I need you to go and find some dry, soft bark and a bunch of sticks. If possible, try to get a good variety of sizes. We'll need them to make a teepee fire, and yes, I'll explain what a teepee fire is. But not right now."

  "Now?"

  "Yep, and while you're busy with that; I'll be making the fire bow."

Emily nodded, before she sat up and went to find some easy-to-peel park to use as tinder. This left Lynn to get started on the fire bow. First, she repeatedly bashed two rocks together until she had a sharp enough shard to use as a makeshift blade. Then, it took her some time to find a soft and hard sample of wood, and longer still to find a stone that she was confident in using as a handle. She also fashioned a little curved piece of wood to catch the ember that she hoped to create. With all of her tools arranged, she painstakingly carved a soft piece of wood until it lay flat against the ground. Followed by carving out a notch in the wood for the spindle to sit in and then she carved out a triangle-shaped hole for the dust to fall into. It was around this time that Emily had finished her task and dropped off some bark and an armful of sticks.

  Lynn raised her head, and offered the other girl a smile, before she said, “I know you just finished gathering the fuel for the fire, but I need a sturdy, curved piece of wood for the bow.” She returned to her slightly laborious task of carving the spindle and asked, “Could you please try and find one?”

  Emily nodded, thankful that her friend was finally starting to take charge, even if the other girl still didn’t remember her past. She wondered just how much her friend did remember, considering the girl seemed to remember how to start a fire and boil water in the wilderness. It was a side that she had never seen from her best friend, but it wasn’t at all unwelcome. She replied, “I’ll do my best to find one. You just focus on whatever you’re doing.”

By the time Lynn finished with the spindle, Emily had returned with a sturdy-looking, slightly curved stick. The former removed the laces from her left trainer, and clumsily looped them around the fire bow. She waved the latter over and instructed her to hold the fireboard steady when it came time. Before attempting to make an ember, Lynn made sure that the tinder was suitable for the fire, and she arranged all of the sticks in advance. With all of the preparations complete, she had Emily hold down the fireboard and wrapped the spindle around her fire bow.

  "I see what you meant by understanding better." Emily said to her friend, having now realized that the bow was a tool to reduce the amount of labor necessary to generate enough friction to create a coal.

  "Basically, we would need to do this by hand if not for the bow. I do remember how to make a fire drill, but I'm not confident in my stamina or strength. Even if my shoelace is unsalvagable, we should still be able to get a few uses out of this bow."

  "Why'd you use your shoelace?"

  "I don't recognize any of the flora, so I wouldn't know which plants have a strong enough plant fiber to use as a string. It's easier to just use my shoelace and hope that it doesn't get too damaged."

  "You just need me to hold this board?"

  "Yes. Just keep the board as steady as possible. I'll do the rest."

Emily listened to Lynn and kept the board steady while the other girl used the fire bow to rapidly rotate the spindle. Their first attempt ended in failure and Lynn had to rest for a minute before they could try again. The second and third attempts fared little better. It wasn't until the fourth try that they managed to make a coal. The sight of the smoking dust awed Emily.

  "Okay, that's the hard part finished." Lynn said, followed by a sigh of relief.

  "What now?" asked Emily.

  "Now, I need to carefully transplant the coal onto the tinder. You can just sit back and watch."

Lynn followed up her words by using a small stick to free the wood dust from the fireboard, then she carefully picked up the small piece of wood holding the coal. Next, she transferred the coal to the prepared bed of tinder, and gently blew to supply the coal with oxygen. It didn't take long before the tinder lit up. Finally, she strategically placed the collected sticks around the tinder, and soon they had a roaring fire.

The sight brought tears to Emily’s eyes. Yes, they were stranded in a forest with nobody around. They hadn’t eaten in nearly a day, and they still had to watch out for hostile wildlife, but they also had warmth, water, and perhaps in time, food. The sight of those flames gave her hope that maybe, just maybe, things would turn out okay.