Looking at the woman in the corner of her room, the little girl once again made sure that she was ready for what she was going to do. After a long night of thinking, she decided that she needed to deal with the problem in front of her as soon as possible, with the best time being right now. After all, once her tutor arrived, she wouldn’t have unsupervised free time anymore as she would need to study most of the day and her parents would be there during the evenings and nights. After that, once her lessons with the tutor ended, she would then probably have to go to school.

Maybe she would have a few days in between or maybe it would be immediate. Either way, it wasn’t a risk she was willing to take. After all, if the woman was still asleep when she needed to go to the city, she would either have to hold her in some way or leave her here. Although the woman weighted literally nothing, she would look awkward holding her which would lead to questions.

The woman was also really strange to interact with. Even if she could hold her and lift her, if she pressed too hard, she would go through the woman. That meant that if she lost focus and held her too hard or too lightly, she would slip from her hands. If that happened while traveling, she would probably fall to the ground and she couldn’t really stop every time to pick her up without looking suspicious.

The other option was probably worse as it would mean that the link she had discovered a long time ago would get stretched far beyond what she felt comfortable with. Because she didn’t really know the distance between her home and the city in comparison to what she estimated would be the maximum non-painful distance, she didn’t know if it would just be extremely painful or worse. If she was unlucky, she might even be brought to the city doctor because it was closer, which would only make things worse.

This was why she was determined to wake that woman up and try to solve whatever was happening. At the very least, the woman could follow her to the city and back if they couldn’t completely solve the problem. At the very least, this wouldn’t overstretch the link. Which was kind of ironic considering what she was going to do.

During the months after she discovered the link, she had quite some time to experiment with it. She had learned to make it appear faster and with more consistency. Now she could even make it visible while in her room. She also learned what she considered the maximum range. Reaching it was extremely tiring. And once there, the next step felt like a lot more than just a step. However, more than the effort to reach the next step, it was that feeling, deep inside of herself that told her that the next step would be painful that prevented her to take the next step. She wasn’t afraid of feeling pain but after almost her whole life feeling it, she had a deep aversion towards it. Which was why she never took that step.

However, that was about as far as she got. Beyond that, she hadn’t managed anything else. She couldn’t touch the link like she could touch the woman and she hadn’t found a way to use the link to interact with the woman. But now, she was going to go beyond the maximum distance. And she was going for more than a little bit of pain. But she felt like this was necessary. After all, she needed to wake the woman up and she felt like a kick to the shin or a mild headache would perhaps do the trick. She needed to do it that way since she couldn’t apply any real force to the woman without going through her.

Granted, this was assuming that the woman would feel the same pain as she would feel. She felt like this was a bit mean but in the end, if the woman didn’t feel it, then nothing to complain about and if she felt it and woke up, it was better to happen in those conditions than when she needed to go to the city and was unable to stop halfway.

Steeling her resolve, she once more checked her backpack. It had a few more things than the first time she went into the forest. First of all, this wasn’t the same backpack anymore, the old one was in a corner of her room. This one was bigger as well as a bit sturdier. Inside of it, there were a few snacks, a bit of water as well as a small knife. This was something that her parents had given her.

After a few of her expeditions, she was finally caught by her dad. When he caught her coming back from the forest, he became furious, far more than he had ever been before, even when she made scenes for a reason or another. She was sent to her room and once her mother got back home, she got reprimanded by both of her parents. She had never seen them so angry and could barely hold back her tears.

After that, as a punishment, she was forced to stay in her room most of the time or next to her dad, under the shade of a tree in their garden when he was working in their small field.

After a few weeks, they talked to her again and when she told them that she just wanted to enjoy being healthy while it lasted, they told her that they would think about it. In the end, it was decided that she would be allowed to go to the forest under the supervision of her father. He followed her to anywhere she wanted to go and answered any questions she asked. Sometimes they would go on picnics with her mom. They never went far from the house so at worse, the link appeared as a sight pull.

It was only a month or two ago that she was allowed to go in the forest alone as she was now almost as healthy as a “normal” child. Of course, there were a few rules that she had to repeat a few hundred times. But they were mostly useless. The first one was about how far she could go but since it was farther than her maximum distance, it didn’t really matter. The second one was about the stream that she had tried to reach when she first entered the forest. She was forbidden to go near it. Both of these rules were there because of the wildlife that roamed deeper in the forest as well as along the stream.

There were also some rules about the time she needed to get home, how she needed to tell her dad or her mom when she wanted to go in the forest, as well as what she needed to bring with her although the water, the food, and the knife were the main things although there was also her new exploration attire which consisted of thick leather boots made to walk long distances and easy-to-move-in clothes.

Even if some people could probably use the knife for self-defense, she had neither the strength nor the technique. Its main use was if she got her leg stuck in one of the sinuous roots some of the trees of the forest had. She could use it and a bit of effort to cut the root and free her leg. She could also use it to take samples of things that she found interesting while exploring the surrounding forest. For self-defense, she had a small whistle made of some pretty greenish-blue stone. It was attached around her neck. This was something that her mother bought from the city and it didn’t actually look like a whistle, just a small necklace. The sound it produced would be extremely unpleasant to anything that tried to approach her, enough to flee, or at least keep it at bay for a while. It was also powerful enough that her dad would hear it if she was within the radius they had given her. In truth, the effective radius of the whistle was greater than that but her parent kept it a secret so that she didn’t try and wander too far.

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Which brought the last rule, one she found to be a bit stupid although she would never tell her parents. She was forbidden to hurt herself, she could get as dirty as she wanted but if she even had a scratch, she would need to give them a solid reason. As if she was going to do that willingly. Well, she was technically going to do that right now but this was different.

Closing her backpack and going to the field where her dad was working, she told him she was going to the forest before leaving. Of course, he called her back and checked her backpack as well as her necklace. He then let her go with the usual “Be careful!”.

Turning back towards the forest, she took a few determined steps that quickly turned into a run and finally a full sprint. Of course, after reaching the forest a few seconds later, she stopped a few meters further, taking deep breaths. Finally ok, she continued deeper into the forest, this time at a more leisurely pace although still faster than a simple walk.

Throughout the last year without illness, or at least during the part of this year where she had explored the forest, she had become far more familiar with it. She was confident that she wouldn’t get lost anymore even if she got into an unknown part of the forest. She knew how to find her way back using the link but now, she also knew how to find her way back as well as estimate her position relative to her house using methods that her father taught her.

Relatively quickly, she started to feel the pull from the link. However, her goal was much farther. After an hour or so of walking through the forest, it finally started to get hard to take each step. Of course, she kept walking, after all, she had reached that point once so she knew she could do it.

After a few more minutes of walking, she took the final step to what she considered her limit. She was breathing heavily but she knew that this was only the first part. Now she was going to break the final rule that her parents had told her. She thought that she wasn’t really breaking it since she wouldn’t have any wounds… probably.

Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself and took the first step beyond the imaginary line. It took all of her determination to push through the pull but her foot finally fell on the dirt beyond the maximum distance.

…

Despite waiting a few more seconds, nothing happened. Or at least, nothing big or flashy happened. With just a few seconds of feeling over her body, she realized that she now had something like the first hints of a headache except everywhere. It was different from regular pain but it was the best way she could describe it.

This is probably far from enough…

After a few more seconds of reflection, she took another step and after a few seconds, the burgeoning headache became a sightly more burgeoning headache. Although this meant that she would need to walk quite a bit before reaching a level of pain enough to possibly wake the woman up, it also confirmed the necessity of it. Although she was quite far from her house, that distance was nothing compared to the distance to the city proper.

That meant that if she was brought to the city, there was a very real possibility that the slight headache she was currently fealing would turn into a far less manageable pain. More confident in her decision now that she knew that the pain would appear progressively, she looked in front of her and took another step.

The thing was, even after she decided to go as far as she could, the difficulty of each step hadn’t lessened at all. If anything, it was stronger than it had ever been. Still, she soldiered on and, step by step, she increased the distance.

After a few minutes, she had only covered about 20 meters and was breathing deeply. The burgeoning headache had become closer to a bruise all over her body, pulsing with each beat of her heart. Still not debilitating but stronger nonetheless. However, this wasn’t even close to enough to stop her.

She didn’t like pain and would do whatever was possible to avoid it but when it was necessary, she probably had more resistance to it than most people. More than a child her age should have at the very least.

Taking a few minutes to calm her breathing she spent the following half an hour alternating a few steps with a bit of rest and covered about one hundred more meters. The effort each step needed at that point was so high that she needed rest between each step and a dozen seconds to gather the energy.

The pain on the other hand now reached what she remembered from when she was still ill and maybe even beyond. Her hands were shaking, as much from the exhaustion and pain as from the memories of those times. The only reason she had gone that far was that she was in control of it, kind of. Unlike when she was ill, she was the one that decided how strong the pain was and when it ended.

Deciding that this was as far as she would go, she turned back ready to go back home and see if what she just endured had any effect on the mystery woman. Unfortunately, as she took her first step toward her home, her legs faltered and she found herself with a knee on the ground.

It seems like I almost overestimated what I can go through. I better hurry back inside of the maximum range, although is it still the maximum range?

Because every action at this distance was a monumental effort, she didn’t try to stand up directly. She took the time to prepare for the effort and pushed with her other leg. Just as she almost reached a standing position, that leg too faltered and she fell to the ground with just enough time to put her hands in front of her.

Panic started to set in as she realized that she didn’t have enough strength to push herself back up. Her heartbeat quickened, even more than it already was because of the exhaustion. Her vision turned blurry, and her breathing became more and more difficult.

As her consciousness waned, a flash of lucidity made her reach for her necklace. Because it was stuck beneath herself, she tugged at the string until it came free. The piece of stone was now just in front of her face. She reached for it, the motion closer to throwing her hand at it than the control movement she wanted it to be. After several more tries trying to grab it as her vision became more and more blurry, she finally managed to hold it in her hand.

Instead of being happy at finally catching it, tears formed in her eyes as she was completely spent. Among the few things that her old condition had helped her develop, was a knowledge of her own body and things like how much she had left in her or how close she was to losing consciousness. It hadn’t happened in more than a year but at that instant, she knew that she was going to fall back into that space. The problem was that she didn’t think that she would be able to hold long enough with the pain she was going through, even unconscious, for her father or her mom to find her.

Tears now flowing like a river, the little girl closed her eyes as unconsciousness came to claim her.