8

I walked in the darkness among the trees. Everything around me felt old, timeless, like it had existed before us and would long after we were all forgotten. And the silence. It clung like the damp briny air, feeling heavy and foreign. The ground beneath my feet felt soft, almost like sand. But I pushed on, deeper and deeper. Further away from everything.

Every few minutes, I would check the phone. Nothing new would be there, so I would reread the others over and over again. She was coming to me. She was getting nearer every moment.

I heard the first creek before I came upon it. The soft rumble of water over rocks echoed through the night until the forest floor dropped off ahead of me. I stopped on the bank, looking down at the stream as it moved without thought, ever forward. I understood that. I was that. And it held me for a minute, entranced.

Then the thump of the helicopter rose above the babble of water. It got louder, quickly. As it neared, I heard the sirens, too. It sounded as if they surrounded me. But that might have been a trick of the forest, the high-pitched wail bouncing through the trunks like a pinball.

I jumped down, my feet splashing in the water. And I climbed up the far side. Ever forward. Like the water.