I awoke to much longer shadows, and a much more purple sky.

Oh man am I stiff. I apparently needed the nap but dang, sleeping on the ground with my feet hanging, next to a dead body, isn't exactly ideal posture. It's gonna take days for this crick in my neck to go away, and I know I'm gonna be sore and nursing blisters for at least a week. Well, if I survive that long. What time is it?

A glance at my phone, now at 55 percent, showed that it was 6:08 PM. I sat all the way up and looked around at the grave, the dirt pile, and the gnoll's body.

Sorry man, I didn't mean to leave you unburied this long. Let's get you into the ground, for your sake and mine.

I grunted and groaned my way to a standing position, then lifted my arms to stretch as tall as I could. Once I let that breath burst out, I stood shaking pins and needles from my lower legs while running my fingers through my hair. I caught a whiff of something unpleasant, which I had to assume was the gnoll's body just beginning to decompose. I had woken up not a moment too soon, it seemed. The breeze stirred again and a different scent lit up my nostrils.

Oh my god that smells good. I guess one of the neighbors is grilling. Wait, grilling? Who the hell is grilling? As far as I know, there's no one around to BE grilling!

I dropped to prone position, in case whoever it was hadn't seen me stand and stretch. Or the damned outbuilding standing in the middle of nowhere. I lifted my head and looked as well as I could in every direction, but there was no sight of the source of the smell making my stomach clench and roar.

I'm gonna need a better look. Probably safest to survey from the shed, so I can sorta camouflage my silhouette. But if it's a human out there, it'd be really difficult for them not to recognize another human as soon as they saw one. I guess I'll have to take the risk, I'm freaking starving!

I crawled on hands and knees to the entrance of the shed, trying and likely failing to keep my back from rising above the level of the grass. When I reached the ramp, I crawled inside and stood, my stiff body still protesting. I peered out the door while hiding as much of my body inside the shed as possible, but couldn't see anything. The sun was casting its last rays on the day, so the shadow of the shed stretched across the field to the horizon, and as I continued to study the emptiness to the East, the shadows finally disappeared.

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Well, at least now I won't have the sun directly in my eyes if I go around to look in the other direction. I should probably put a peep hole on each side of this thing so I can see out without having to actually go outside. Too bad we didn't get the unit with windows in each wall. I never saw the point of having that much light in here. Kinda biting me in the ass now, isn't it? Though I guess if I can't see out, nothing can see in, either. Not that windows on a shed are typically anything but "cloudy" at best.

I crouched low and duck-walked around the North side of the shed, staring away from it until I got to the corner. From there, I peeked around to the South and West, to find the source of that brief, tantalizing cooking smell, still with no luck. That just left directly on the South side of the shed, which I crept around to even more slowly, assuming whoever it was would be able to see me if I stood out too much. Looking out from around the corner, I saw...absolutely nothing.

Well shit, that means they're far enough away that the horizon is obscuring them, at least from this height. Should I get on top of the shed and look? I have no idea what adding that amount of vantage will do, but it would be better than looking from ground level, right? Although it'll definitely paint me as a really, really obvious target. Bud God, I'm so hungry. Look, let's go inside, take a breather, have some water, and mull this over some more.

Being less cautious, since I felt like I was unlikely to be seen if I couldn't see anyone either, I continued around the South side of the shed, back around to the door, and parked myself on a bucket back inside. With the sun gone, it was pretty hard to see in there, but was that or be out in the open.

I had gone back for another jug of water during the second round of digging, but wouldn't you know it, it was still sitting next to the grave. I opened a third one and took a few gulps to put something into my stomach, and hopefully clear my head of a little of my hunger drive.

Alright. From a totally logical standpoint, climbing on top of the shed for a look around is a monumentally bad idea. If I was reading a book where the protagonist did something like that, I'd call them and the author an idiot who was trying to shove the plot forward. So, I'm not going to be that idiot. I'm going to stay right here, and hope that as it gets darker, a fire on the horizon will provide some kind of glow to use for navigation. Come to think of it, building a fire in an area as open as this is basically shouting "Hey, I'm here! Come over here!" to anything with a brain within five miles. Maybe not the brightest person. Or maybe they're just really strong and attracting danger isn't a problem for them. What constitutes "strong" here, anyway? Are there levels? If so, what level am I? How would I check? Usually this is where the main character says "Status" and a window pops up. I'm gonna feel like a freaking idiot if this doesn't work.

Squatting on a five gallon bucket, in a garden shed, in the dark, in some weird alternate universe, I said "Status" out loud.