Leon lasted for about a few minutes before his legs gave in and he could run no further. After a moment to catch his breath, he dragged himself a little bit further, right arm slowly and excruciatingly making its presence known. With a last bit of effort, he propped himself onto a conveniently slanted tree. He had surprised himself in his range of travel without passing out, and welcomed the blackness when it came.

* * *

He woke up some time later, eyes bleary and throat painfully dry, to a surprising lack of death. He looked down at his right arm, and attempted to lift it. Unsurprisingly, it barely moved. He attempted to twitch his fingers and immediately regretted it, crystal shards of pain threatening to rip the small threads of consciousness from his mind.

Thankfully, he could just move his left arm, and the cool water that had coated him had yet to dry under the shade of the canopy above. He lifted his shirt to his mouth, sucking in the thin bits of moisture. He rung out the edges of his shirt for the last few drops, and then lay there, eyes shut. An indeterminate amount of time later, he felt his wound begin to tingle painfully, he looked down at it, and the thin dregs of fear that it might be some enterprising insect digging away at his flesh was enough for his weak body to be driven into action. Tenderly pulling his blood caked sleeve away from the wound, he looked down in hazy surprise. The wound itself had fully sealed, leaving only a scabbed up section of skin. It couldn’t have been any more than half a day, assuming that time still worked that way, since he had received it, and yet it was already almost fully healed. Experimentally, he picked away a small section of the scab, a bad habit passed on from a childhood relatively free of disease, and was further shocked to find pale skin below. He continued to speculatively scratch at the scabbed flesh, only to find the actual wound was much smaller than the scab coverage, a thick red carapace surrounded by a moat of pale flesh. Poking around the wound, he winced as he felt the deeper underlying problem. Yep, still broken.

Feeling a bit better than the soaking wet corpse he had been inches away from becoming, he pulled himself up, his swollen flesh thankfully holding his bone in place. He wristed the urge to flex his hand, letting it hang limply at his side.

He needed food, and if what he had seen so far was any indicator he wasn’t going to get it from animals any time soon.

Stumbling around aimlessly for a while, he spotted a small clump of brown, wide mushrooms growing on a felled log. He cringed, but internally he was running out of options. He pulled off what he could and pocketed it.

It was always good to have a last resort.

Continuing through the trees, the forest surprisingly clear on the ground for all the cheerful bird song and insects. He could at the very least appreciate the irony in that.

That’s when he caught sight of it. A yellow fruit hung low, skin gleaming and taut like a water balloon. He stared in awe, and his stomach clenched hungrily.

The wind turned, and a thick, heavenly smell wafted over his face. He gulped as his parched mouth began to fill with saliva.

Inextricably, he felt his feet begin to move beneath him, and he slowly stepped towards the fruit, barely aware of his surroundings.

That is, until a mouse hopped into the clearing.

Immediately, all hunger driven delirium shot from his mind as his body managed to force out a bout of trauma induced fear.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He dropped to the floor, wincing as he jarred his right arm, and stayed completely still.

On closer inspection, it was clear this mouse wasn’t the same as the one at the lake. It was noticeably smaller than its murderous counterpart, around about the size of his clenched fist, whereas the other had been closer to two fists and change.

Leon watched it closely as it spotted the fruit. It hunched down, readying to jump, and then blurred. The speed was still astonishing, but what happened next was even more so.

The mouse travelled through the air, and as if by precognition, a spear of wood pierced it.

Leon stared in mute shock as the tree pulled the mouse into a small hollow at its base. Movement caught his eye, and he watched as on another branch, a bud spiralled open into a beautiful flower.

Leon stood slowly, and began to walk away from the clearing. He didn’t think he’d be eating that fruit any time soon.

* * *

As the shadows of the forest stretched taut against ground and the sounds of the forest faded in anticipation of its nocturnal symphony, Leon sat in the hollow trunk of an immense tree, contemplating. He stared down at the makeshift bundle of nuts, fungi and berries that he had collected along his cautious and weary trek through the murder forest, picking out his poison.

He had avoided anything with bright colours, hoping the same rules for poison in his world - he was certain that he wasn’t anywhere near Earth, despite some striking similarities - applied here.

He had carried his stuff there on his shirt, and once inside he’d covered up the opening as best he could with the thin material.

He looked at the items he had picked out. The large, dish shaped mushrooms which he had first found, a set of berries surrounded by thorns whose cuts still itched in raised patches of swollen skin, and a set of thumb-sized brown nuts with hard cased triangular shells that took a heavy rock to break apart.

He breathed in deep, before starting with the nuts. He couldn’t remember anything about poisonous nuts in his life, besides from maybe chestnuts, but at worst those gave stomach aches.

Swallowing down his doubts, he shoved the nuts into his mouth, swallowing them whole like a tablet. If it was going to give him stomach cramps, he would at least eat enough that he would survive through it. That probably didn’t actually work in the slightest, but it was what he was gonna stick with.

He bit down on the large, juicy berries while he was at it. It popped in his mouth, sending a wince inducing capsule of sour juice and small seeds down his throat. He bit down on the next one, taking care to pick the more ripe ones as he went. These ones were less sour, and he found himself adjusting to the taste as he went. He picked up a handful and bit down, eyes closing in ecstasy as the watery juice soothed his parched throat.

He waited, twisting the last nut between his fingers in contemplation. His stomach voiced no complaints, and he was still aware of the hollow emptiness that accompanied it. He wished he’d had a better dinner before bed, but considering he’d already missed the other two meals of his day, it probably wouldn’t have made too much of a difference. His right arm ached, but he took that as a good sign. He’d be much more worried if he couldn’t feel it.

What felt like half an hour passed by without incident, and the night began to set in in full.

Absentmindedly, he picked at his scab, only to find that all but the deepest section of the scab was healed, leaving only the bruised flesh and stiff muscles that locked his forearm in place.

How had he healed this fast? It shouldn’t have been possible. Even the gashes along his face were fully healed. All he could come up with that was a common link was a twinging feeling of pain that accompanied each bit of healing. His clothes were roughly dry now, excepting the more uncomfortable crevices of skin, and he lay against the smooth dry earth below him.

The events of the day came rushing forward, as if they had been waiting for him to have a moment to stop, and he thought through all the shit that had gone down, both literally and figuratively.

He’d had more near death experiences in this one day than any other day in his entire life beforehand, and maybe his whole life combined. But he’d lived. Somehow.

He was alone. That thought struck him, but the sadness that accompanied it faded as he shook his head. Even if there were no people nearby, surely there’d be someone out there. He disliked thoughts that put him as the unique one in any situation, they rarely turned out to be true.

If there were others out there, he’d find them, but not today.

He lay there for a while, before his eyes eventually began to close over. He soon fell asleep there, left hand dropping to the floor, and the nut rolled out of his hand.

* * *

While he slept, the rain began to fall, and from somewhere up above, rain rolled down and soaked his shirt. A stray breeze blew, and the shirt corner flicked absently, flinging a small amount of water through the door. Some struck against Leon’s face, and he frowned in his sleep, turning over unconsciously to face away from the opening.

A small droplet of water hit the remaining nut, clinging to its curved surface for a moment before soaking into the earth beneath.

The nut shivered, and a small root broke from its surface to sink into the earth below.

It began to grow.