The Lost is Found.

Annabelle and I have been walking the seemingly endless trail for hours now and we are still in the massive grass land. That great dark forest is still spanning beyond the horizon and besides the worn trail we are on, there is nothing else but grassland as far as the eye can see. My face is flushed with heat and my tongue is sticking to the roof of my mouth from the intense heat and lack of water. Removing my helmet helped to a degree, allowing for a huge loss of heat and for my body to cool down to the point that I would not pass out from heat stroke, but not enough for me to be comfortable. The thought had dawned on me to remove the rest of my armor, but I decided against it because it would have made me feel as though I was letting my guard down and from what I have experienced with letting your guard down, it tends to get you attacked. But while I am about to pass out from lack of water and exhaustion Annabelle seems to absolutely fine.

She has been walking for 5 hours straight, but when I observe her walking patter and facial features neither of them depict any kind of tiredness at all. "Wow, this T rex is able to not only able to walk for 5 hours straight and not need a break, but can do it without even showing signs of distress or stopping for water, that is amazing considering that the only thing I have ever seen do this is a dragon and even then they’re flying so it is easier." I say to myself while panting and trying to fan myself in a vain effort to cool my body off. “Annabelle how do you do this shit?” I ask in a strained voice while trying to focus on something else besides the heat. Annabelle slightly cranes her head to the side so that she can see me and chirps slightly while rolling her head and then refocuses her attention back to the trail. Not knowing what she meant I dropped the thought before it could cause me to get sidetracked and not pay attention to my surroundings and refocus on the trail.

The “sun” has now started to set behind the forest off to my right and it is fast starting to become twilight. Not knowing how long I actually had until it was nigh time was starting to scare me slightly because who knows what predators could come out at night and in my weak state, I am pretty sure that I would not be able to use the thuum at all, being all my spiritual energy is being zapped into making sure that I don’t die from dehydration and exhaustion that the day has brought me. But it also helps that I am riding a T rex right now and I don’t even think a giant would tango with a T rex so I still can feel slightly safe for now. Trying to just pass some time and keep from dwelling on my current situation, I take an autistic moment and escape inside of my imagination. I imagine that I am riding my T rex, but there is someone else sitting behind me. Now I can’t tell who this is because it is only a shadowy outline that has no real form, but I can tell from the way the smoke is holding onto me that it is a girl. She is speaking to me in a soft tone and that alone is enough to drive me crazy because most of the time no girls ever spoke to me. But what she is saying to me is something that I would have died to hear come out of a girl’s mouth that I liked.

“I love you.” Once those words leave the shadows mouth as usual I become completely consumed in the fantasy and just enjoy the feeling of hearing those words being said to me. Then the shadow gently turned my head to the side and kissed me with a deep passion. The feeling of the unknown against mine warmed me instantly and somehow made my parched throat feel as though it had just been quenched by a cool crisp drink of water. After a second of pure bliss the shadow parts from my lips and just hugs me from my back and leans into my shoulder. She then proceeds to point out how beautiful the hours of twilight are and how you can just start to see smoke off of people’s chimneys rising into the sky. She then points to a column of smoke rising just over the horizon as if to make her point known. From this close of a distance I can even detect the slight smell of burnt wood and that brings back memories of my home life that seem to make me feel a sense of calmness.

However my fantasy is quickly ended by Annabelle coming to a sudden stop and looking at something in the distance. From my position I am scanning the horizon and can see nothing of interest and instantly I become confused. She then sniffs the air and proceeds to look off into the distance while my confusion only grows. “What is it girl, what do you see?” She does not respond and only continues to look off into the distance and sniff occasionally. Figuring that I might have a chance to find out what it is if I followed her line of sight, I bend over slightly until my eyes are close to her head and I look in the same direction that she is facing. The horizon is now a dark shade of red, indicating that day is soon to become night and the ground is pitch black making it seems as though night and day were fighting for dominance against one another. With light fading fast, I had to see quickly what it was that Annabelle was looking at or it might be lost to the encroaching darkness. After looking very intensely at the horizon for a few seconds something catches my eye.

Something is rising from the ground swiftly that looked very similar to clouds and then disappearing into the red sky off to the right a little ways from the edge of the forest. At first this confuses me and I scratch my head in wonder. “I think I need to stop having such intense fantasies.” I say to myself while trying to wipe my eyes in an effort to make this teasing illusion leave my mind. But when I find that it does not work, I immediately pinch my skin. The feeling of pain tells me instantly that this is not an illusion and that I was not making whatever I was seeing up. “What the hell is going on here, so that smoke column that I saw in my imagination might actually be real?!” Quickly I start to sniff the air with hard inhales and there is something that I can just smell slightly. Burning wood! My look of confusion now instantly turns into a smile and jump slightly in victory as I start to calculate how far the distance was inside my head. “If Annabelle books it then I say we can get there in about 20 minutes and that looks to be about all the light time we have left.”

Having settled on a for sure destination and ready to take a risk of running into danger I quickly put my helmet back on and click the lock shut on it before giving Annabelle a pat on the side. “Hey Annabelle you see that smoke, you think you can book it over there?” Annabelle then gives a roar of approval and steps off the dirt path and then instantly starts to build up speed. After a few seconds she is in a full on sprint and I can hear her panting heavily as she continues to advance towards an unknown location. A strange sensation comes from the pit of my stomach and I instantly know that my thuum was back enough for me to use a shout. So I instantly decided to speed this little venture of ours up and use a shout that would increase Annabelle’s natural speed times 5 and protect her from harm of the rough terrain and keep her muscles from cramping or feeling any pain. . “Mid Ver Shann!” (Speed boost!) Then a white blanket of light surrounds Annabelle and quickly falls to her legs and she almost immediately gains a huge speed boost as I can now see that she is running at least 55 miles an hour. Objects are racing by and instantly my spirit lifts and I can’t take my eyes off of the thin smoke trail erupting on the horizon. "Looks like I might finally get some answers soon…like where the hell I am at and why does it feel like I have seen this place before."