The transition from darkness to light was not nearly as gradual--or as pleasant--as it had been the first time. Hilde's mouth felt like it was lined with cotton. She licked her lips. Her whole mouth tasted sour.
She blinked, slightly dazed, and tried to assess her surroundings. She saw greenery and dead leaves. She rolled carefully on her side, taking careful note as her head spun wildly in the process. Biting back a groan, she looked up. Far above her, the trees curved upward to form a canopy over her head. Scraps of clouds paused momentarily in the open spaces between the leaves, the sky behind them a faint yet brilliant blue.
She looked to the side. She could barely make out the corner of one of the shuttle's wings. She winced. So it hadn't been a dream. She turned a little bit more, and caught sight of Quatre's reassuring, familiar figure.
Hilde released a little sigh of relief. So she wasn't alone. That was good. She frowned, trying to concentrate on how she came to by lying on her side in the middle of a forest with Quatre, when the former Gundam pilot turned around and noticed she was awake.
An interesting parade of facial expressions crossed his face as she watched him. First was relief. Hilde noted that he didn't make any effort to hide that. Then his brows suddenly furrowed, and Hilde found herself regarding a very angry Quatre. She had never seen him so angry before. Heck, she had never seen him angry before, period. Then anger gave way to slight relief again, then to something akin to panic, then desolation, then back to anger. Hilde wondered why he was so upset.
Then it all came back to her. The shuttle crash. The argument at the crash site. Her stomping off to find a stream to clean up, and passing out in the process. He must have tracked me down and brought me back here, she thought with growing chagrin. She flushed slightly, ashamed of herself. After what she had said to him? She managed a weak smile. Whatever he was about to say, she deserved it.
"What were you thinking?! I told you to take it easy. You could've died, you know that, don't you?"
Hilde managed a slight chuckle. "I've beat death before, Quatre. It's not so hard. Duo does it all the time."
Quatre sighed with exasperation. "And what if you hadn't beat death this time? What would--" He stopped himself suddenly, as if catching himself in the middle of saying the wrong thing. Hilde eyed him curiously, but didn't press the matter.
Quatre ran a hand through his hair, glancing up at the forest canopy at the same time. "At any rate, we should maybe find shelter. It's going to be dark soon."
"Shouldn't we stay with the shuttle? In case someone comes looking for us."
Quatre nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," he started, "but I saw a cave not too far away from where you collapsed." He chuckled ruefully. "There's a small stream near the cave, as well. You almost made it, you know. But in any event, both are close enough so that if someone does come looking for us, we would be able to hear them." He turned to glance at the twisted wreck of the shuttle. "In any event, I don't know if I really want to stay here tonight, do you?"
Hilde shook her head slightly. "Not really." A thought then occurred to her. "What about the co-pilot?"
Quatre looked down at the ground, and shook his head. "He never woke up," he said quietly, then glanced back up at the shuttle thoughtfully. "I wish I knew what happened for sure," he said, his voice reflecting frustration. "How could the shuttle have gotten damaged so severely? How could this have happened?"
Hilde shrugged slightly, ignoring the way her head sloshed between her shoulders in the process. "Sometimes weird things happen, Quatre, no matter what the experts try to predict. Fate is weird like that."
"I suppose you're right." Quatre sat down next to her, drawing one knee up to his chest and kicking his other leg out in front of him. He crossed his arms over his knee and rested his chin on his hands. He stared out at nothing, his eyes expressionless.
Hilde felt the uncomfortable itch of knowing that something had to be said, but not quite knowing what to say. She took a deep breath, and mustered a wan smile.
"Hey," she said. "Hey...cheer up. It won't do either of us any good if you start moping around like a lost puppy. Someone will find us. We're still alive, and that's saying something.
Quatre turned his head to look at her, and smiled gratefully. "Thanks, Hilde," he said sincerely. Hilde found herself blushing under the intensity of his gaze.
And just what do you think you are doing? her conscience chided her severely. We're stuck out in the middle of the woods. This is no time to be thinking about romance! Hilde shook it off, trying to take her mind off of the matter, when her stomach growled loudly. She gasped slightly, and hugged her midsection in embarrassment.
Quatre laughed out loud. "Well, finding food will take our mind off the situation at hand. I'll go check the shuttle, and see if there's anything we can use on there." He stood up and headed off in the direction of the shuttle.
Hilde wiggled up into a sitting position, and took in her surroundings while she waited for Quatre to return. She hoped he would be able to find something edible on the shuttle. The idea of foraging for twigs and berries for the next few days did not sound very appealing to her. Neither did the idea of trying to catch wild game. She knew she didn't have a gun, and would honestly be surprised if Quatre did. Would they end up setting tree-snares for rabbits and squirrels? She wrinkled her nose distastefully at the thought.
Quatre returned after a few more minutes, carting several flat, rectangular boxes and a few rounds of canned heat, smiling triumphantly. "I found something!" he said. "It's typical space fare; freeze-dried stuff that probably wasn't that good to begin with, but it's food. It also means we don't have to go about catching our own wild game."
At this Hilde chuckled slightly. "Thank God," she murmured under her breath. Quatre looked at her quizzically, but said nothing. Then, he looked down at his hands.
"Uh-oh," he said, his voice sounding sheepish. "I forgot that you--I mean, I should have planned to help you walk to the cave. I don't think you should be allowed to walk around much quite yet, not until your body has a chance to heal."
Hilde bristled at the implication, but her head swam again in warning as she tried to stand up. She sat back down with a huff, admitting defeat. Quatre pondered the dilemma.
"Let me see if I can find some sort of bag or something to carry these in," he tossed over his shoulder as he headed back toward the shuttle. "Then I can do two things at once!"
When he returned, he had a duffel bag tossed over one shoulder, its sides bristling with the corners of the packages of food he'd stuffed inside it. He was also carrying two slightly battered-looking pieces of luggage, one of which looked very familiar.
Quatre was huffing triumphantly. "The cargo bay door wasn't damaged too badly," he said between breaths, "and surprisingly enough, the cargo bay itself didn't get flattened in the crash...so I was able to get inside and get our luggage. This one's yours, isn't it?"
The thought of clean clothing, even soap, was such a wonderful thought that Hilde could only nod gratefully. Not only that..."
"I have aspirin in my suitcase!" she crowed triumphantly. "Maybe if I take a few, my head will stop spinning so badly."
Quatre looked uneasy. "I don't know, Hilde," he said doubtfully as he began shuffling things around, trying to free up one of his shoulders for her to lean against while they walked. "One or two according to instructions might be all right, but you shouldn't take so many that you can't feel any pain. Pain is the body's way of letting you know to take it easy, so it can heal."
Hilde just gave him a look. "Then you take this headache, and see how much self-control you have around the painkillers."
Quatre laughed, a bit of the tenseness easing out of his facial features. "Well, let's get to the cave first. I'd imagine that a change of clothes and a chance to wash up would do wonders for the headache, too."
Quatre was right, Hilde thought sourly as she poked at her plate. This stuff probably was barely along the margins of food before they decided to freeze-dry it. She bit back her distaste and forced herself to eat. As she chewed on a mouthful of something that vaguely resembled chicken, but could just have easily been beef, she glanced across the fire to where Quatre sat. From the look on his face, he was having just as much trouble eating as she was.
Quatre felt her gaze and looked up, chuckling at her expression. "Never thought I'd be happy to see airline food," he quipped. "Now I know why."
Hilde giggled, and attempted to sample something that resembled corn in everything but the color. "I'm just glad we didn't have to go hunting for anything," she commented. Then she sobered, and looked up at Quatre.
"Quatre...what do we do when we run out of this stuff? It's not going to last forever. After all, they already served lunch before the crash, and there weren't that many people on board. What happens when they run out?"
Quatre was silent for a moment. "Well," he said, pausing to collect his thoughts, "we do have enough for at least a day or two. If we can stand to eat them for that long." He smiled bravely. "And when we run out...well, I suppose we can always hunt for food. I took a few survivalist courses when I was younger, and Rasid has taught me how to survive off of the land, if I had to." He smiled ruefully. "The only problem is, his lessons involved what to do if I were lost in the desert. He never said anything about a forest."
Hilde took a deep breath, fighting back panic. "But...you could hunt...if you had to...couldn't you?"
Quatre nodded. "I think I could," he said quietly. "If it meant the difference between eating and starving."
Hilde stared off into the forest moodily. The gloom was beginning to creep in along the bases of the tree trunks, though the bits of sky peeking through the boughs above her was still the brilliant blue of late afternoon.
Quatre spoke again, his voice filled with forced optimism. "But let's not worry about that until we have to, all right? I don't plan on our being stuck here for very long."
Hilde turned to look at him, her expression skeptical. "How do you plan on that? We don't even know where we are."
Quatre's face was set in grim determination. "I'll think of something."
When Hilde opened her eyes, everything was pitch black. She panicked for a moment, and floundered about for a moment. Where the heck was she?!
The light clicking sound as her wrist impacted with the wall reminded her that she was still wearing her watch, and that her watch had an illumination feature. She brought her wrist in front of her face and pressed the button on her watch. Her face was immediately flooded with soft, blue light.
The illumination feature was not designed to be bright, but in the darkness surrounding her, it was like a lighthouse beacon--or, at least, bright enough to remind her where she was. At about the same time, she started to be able to just make out the gaping maw of the cave entrance, several feet in front of her.
Oh. Yeah. The crash. That's right. I must have fallen asleep after dinner.
She glanced at her watch again. The time read 1:36 a.m. But where? Were they even in the right time zone for it to be 1:36? She hadn't gotten a chance to adjust her watch to match the time zone they were supposed to have been landing into. She couldn't really be sure what time it was.
But she did know one thing: It was night, and it was dark.
And she had to pee.
Grumbling at the thought of trying to figure out just how to do that without the convenience of modern plumbing, Hilde stumbled toward the entrance of the cave.
After muddling through relieving herself in the woods, an experience that Hilde was not so sure she was eager to repeat any time soon, she was stumbling back toward the cave, as best she could in the dark, when a flickering motion caught her eye. Startled, she stared up at the sky.
The flickering motion had been the clouds. The undulated and pulsed as though alive, occasionally interspersed with colors: pink, yellow, green. No sooner had one set of clouds disappeared, another would appear to take its place. Hilde had never seen anything like it before.
Hilde stood, transfixed, staring up at the sky. "What's wrong with the clouds?" she mused at first. Then she frowned.
"Quatre!"
The young man came running. Hilde wondered if he had been asleep at all. "What's wrong?"
In response, Hilde pointed up at the sky. "What the heck is going on up there?"
Quatre followed her gaze. "Oh!" he said. "I know what that is. It's the aurora borealis."
"The what?"
Quatre turned to look at her. "The Northern Lights. I've heard of them, but I've never actually gotten a chance to see them before now." He returned his gaze to the heavens. "It's actually space dust, being blown past the planet by solar winds. They burn up when they hit the upper levels of the atmosphere, and we see them as those dancing lights." He laughed slightly. "Kinda takes some of the romance out of things when it's explained like that, doesn't it?"
Hilde couldn't tear her eyes away from the eerie, flickering incandescence. "They're beautiful," she breathed.
Quatre moved until he was standing directly behind Hilde. She could feel the ambient heat of his body seeping through her clothes and warming her skin. She shivered, and tried to pretend that it was because of the chill air, and not because of his proximity to her.
Quatre nodded slightly, the movement stirring the hairs at the base of her neck. "They are, aren't they?" he said softly, his breath tickling her ear. Hilde bit her lip. It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep herself from whipping around and engaging Quatre in a very passionate kiss. What am I thinking?! she thought furiously to herself. We're stuck in the middle of the stupid woods. This is no time to be thinking about that!
Suddenly, Quatre pulled away, and began to pace excitedly. "Hilde! Do you know what this means?"
Hilde blinked, confused by the sudden loss of warmth. "Uh...what does this mean, Quatre?"
"It means I know where we are!"
Hilde's heart leaped at the thought. "You do?!" she said excitedly. "Where are we?"
Quatre's smile was so big that Hilde had no trouble seeing it in the gloom. "Well, the aurora borealis only appear on the northern hemisphere," he started. "So we must be somewhere on the northern hemisphere!"
Hilde's heart stopped leaping. "What?" she said, dumbly. Then she got angry. "Oh, that helps so much," she said sarcastically. "You've managed to narrow down our location by half a planet!"
Quatre looked stung, but continued. "Well...actually, I can narrow it down even more," he said. "The aurora only really appears in an area radius around the North Pole. The farther south you get, the dimmer the aurora becomes, and the less frequently it occurs." He had stopped pacing, but started again, slower than before. "I'd have to see if this happens for more than one night in a row...but..." He glanced up at the sky again. "Judging by the color and intensity of these lights, I'd have to say we're somewhere in Canada. Or possibly Greenland or Russia." His voice grew louder as he turned to face her. "Does that help somewhat?"
"It does," said Hilde hesitantly, "but that's still a lot of ground to cover..."
"Well, we'll be able to get a better idea of where we are in the morning, just by looking at the types of trees growing nearby," he said confidently.
Hilde glanced up again at the sky. "Yes," she said quietly.
Quatre was staring at the night sky again, as well. "Oh," he said matter-of-factly, "there's the North Star." He looked down, and his voice reflected a wry smile. "Ancient sea-goers used to use the North Star to navigate. But I don't trust myself with anything like that. I'd have a better time using my watch and the sun as a compass."
Hilde's hopes were raised again. "Do you mean...do you mean we might actually be able to find a way out of here?!"
Quatre walked over to her again, and placed his hands on her shoulders. "Yes," he said quietly, "I think we could do just that." He stepped away, and took her hand, beginning to guide her back to the cave. "But I think this is something we should discuss in the morning, don't you? Let's go back and try to get some more sleep.
Hilde nodded silently, allowing herself to be led back to the cave. She laid down again on the stone, but for some reason, the cave didn't seem so foreboding any more. This time, there was a glimmer of hope for them. We just might get out of this alive yet, she mused inwardly as she slipped into slumber once more.