Chapter 1
The young man falls through the darkness, limbs flailing about in panic. Feeling air pushing against his body, it gets strong and stronger, slowing his fall. Eventually, he hits the ground with nary a thud, his eyes wide with fear and panic frantically looking around. “Hello is anybody there?” Seeing a light in the distance he slowly starts to walk in that direction, it being the only source of illumination. It slowly starts to banish the darkness from his surroundings, forming into a sort of doorway.
With a feeling of unease, he walks through what looks a cave mouth to him out on an alien world. Exotic sounds grow louder and louder as he walks forward revealing what would be a normal forest if not for the fact all the plants are vastly different from what he’s used to. While still green the trees have a more sinister look, with the leaves looking sharper, the trees more of a dark purple, and the carcasses of animals by the tree. With the trees clustered somewhat close together and the additional tree branches obscuring sight, Eli walks forward slowly eyes alert to any danger around him. As he moves through the forest, he looks at some of the leaves on the ground. Bending down to pick one up he yelps, dropping it back onto the ground. Gazing at his hand with the cut he gazes at the scenery around him. “Where the hell am I that the leaves are sharp enough to cut into my hand easily” he thinks to himself “What am I supposed to do? I have no idea where I am or what just happened.” Looking to his surroundings again he grabs one of the bigger branches from the ground that looks like it fell from one of the nearby trees. “Well at least now I have something to protect myself with. I have the shelter of the cave, now I just need food and water” he says to himself.
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As he traverses through the forest, he sees a clearing with some shrubs that have yellow colored fruits, looking like apples but a bit smaller and more oval rather than circular. Looking like they’re relatively harmless he grabs a few off the shrub and stuffs what he can into his bag. As he’s closing the bag, he hears some leaves moving around to his left. Looking up he sees an animal watching him. Slinging his backpack over his shoulder and grabbing his makeshift stave, he gets up and starts to back away towards the direction of his cave. Once he sees that the creatures staying still, he moves faster away from the creature while keeping eyes on it. As he gets farther away he gets behind a tree outside the clearing. Waiting patiently till he’s sure the animal isn't chasing him, he looks back into the clearing to see the animal, along with three others, one slightly smaller and two much smaller. As they all make their way towards the bush with the fruit he was just picking from, the biggest looks to be keeping a look out while the others start to eat the fruits. “Well at least I didn’t pick poisonous fruit, probably shouldn’t have eaten it before making sure anyway.” As Eli walks back to his cave while keeping an eye out for other animals, he takes a few of the fruits out and starts to eat them.
Finally making it back to the cave, he lays out the fruits on top of some the textbooks he had, he clears the ground of any stray pebbles and sets the pack as a makeshift pillow. Laying down with his body towards the opening to keep watch. Zipping up his jacket and pulling up his hood, he starts to cry. “I miss home, I miss my parents, I miss my sister.” he says quietly, afraid something might hear him “I don’t know what to do and I’m so scared of this place, what should I do?” He shakes his eyes of the tears and stops his sobbing. “Enough of that Eli, all this is scary but we’re still alive and we’ll get through this. Let's just sleep now and worry about everything else tomorrow.” His eyes slowly start to close as the light gets dim from the sun setting outside. Closing his eyes, he falls asleep.