I’m lost, thinks Zephaniah, hopelessly lost…

The mid-afternoon heat is seeping through his ridiculously elaborate outfit. Even in the woods, he is required to put fashion above reason. These clothes will be the end of me, the lost prince murmurs in his head. Separated from his party, with neither food nor water in this blistering heat, he would not last long without a miracle.

As if heeding his yearnings, the prince notices an area where the trees and shrubs start to thin, and the sound of running water can faintly be heard over his footsteps. Zephaniah starts running, wanting nothing more in that moment than to reach a cool, safe resting place before he melts.

He doesn’t realize his mistake until the hope is thrust out from under him; he runs out of the tree line… and off a cliff, plunging into the river snaking at the bottom.

The chill of the water wakes Zephaniah from shock and he instantly starts clawing his way out of the surging flow. Crawling his way out of the water, Zephaniah can only lie on the riverbank. He perceives a pain in his right ankle as he finally tries to stand up that increases tenfold when he puts weight on it.

He struggles to keep going, as the temporarily now relieved issue of the heat is comparatively miniscule.

Can’t survive on own. MUST reach people. It repeats over and over again in his head, like a battle cry; with each time around, he takes another strained step forward. In this way he travels a normally short distance, back into the forest, as the sun starts to fall.

Just as his body starts protesting at his lack of feeding it, Zephaniah hears a humming to his left. Enlightened by the prospect of safety brought by civilization, he redirects his course and quickens his pace as much as he can stand.

***

Left with an extra hour until she has to start dinner, Sarah has decided to pick berries to garnish a surprise dessert for Arai's supper tonight. Her wicker basket is already more than two-thirds full. Suddenly she hears a large rustling and swirls around to see what it is; mid-turn everything goes wrong. A loose stone flies out from under her foot: a scream, a flash of a man before everything goes black.