A storm is coming. What sort of storm, I know exactly. The air is charged, and I can sense that power in it as I fill my young lungs, powerful as I scream just to scream, the sound ripping into the miles and miles of my playground.
The road is abandoned, threatening to be overgrown, and my feet can't keep up with my body or my heart as I leap across it, diving into the trees, hitting that barely discernible path and into the mysterious darkness of my forest.
Silence, one that could be suffocating if I let it, surrounds me, eating up any and every sound as greenery fills every direction. Norvs, that great kind of hulking beast, are a constant threat, but I drive on.
No rules, Sarah. Just go.
I can hear the faint trickling as my foot hits a piece of wood. A tiny foot bridge is in my path, a small stream of water flowing beside it, clear and peaceful.
I take finger fulls of mud and paint it onto my cheeks. This is war, I remind myself. Our war.
That flag is mine.
You could say that I take scouting very seriously.
I see the distinct pink through the trees and shrink to the ground. They have done well, I think, hiding it in a place accessible only by the very road I just crossed.
So I double back, crouching, barely breathing for fear of being heard.
The midday heat is beginning to eat at me, my sun-streaked curls are sticking to my forehead as I let branches pull at my clothes, my hair, my skin.
Just as I'd hoped. I move slowly...and I can sense the eyes on me long before I see my teammate - already launching into a speech...distracting the guard long enough for me to reach over and snatch the bright bit of cloth away and run, not celebrating - not yet - for the fight is not done.
I run hard, my feet pounding against the well-worn, hard-packed path. I can hear the one I snatched it from crashing through the brush behind me, yelling out for others to stop me.
Darting off onto a less popular path, I slow - knowing that, once more, stealth will be my ally.
I see her before she sees me, our leader - as I reach the edge of the treeline. In hushed gasps, I tell her of my success, offer the feeble scrap to her, grin my joy.
And we move. Just once more capture...and we win. One by one, we go onto our bellies in the dried up creek bed...and engage.
This is one of my favorites. I wrote it based on - obviously - a game of Capture the Flag that I played while at summer camp. I could have gone so much further, but I felt the end was very fitting.
It has been a while! I'm working on the whole...making-time-for-writing thing. Slowly but surely, I'm getting back to it, but with Christmas...well, we shall see if the next post will, indeed, be in 2013.
I didn't like the exercise for Session Three, and I was running ahead of my posts here, so it made me irritable at the book.
Regardless...if I don't see you and we are still being awesome on December 22nd, don't forget that the Doctor saved us. ;)
-Sarah
