01:00
March 9th, 2017

Triss opened her eyes to darkness. Pure and total darkness. But no, it wasn't total darkness. Little spots of light dotted the sky. Stars. She looked to her left, the campfire just barely smoldering, radiating the tiniest amount of heat in the cold of the night. She was laying flat on her back, just as she had been when she blacked out.

Wait. She had blacked out.

The realisation of what happened hit her like a brick wall, along with the pain and weakness that her injury had caused her. She lay there groaning and clawing her fingers into the dirt, her shoulder throbbing. She suddenly felt cold, her body began to tremble uncontrollably. "What's going on?" her mind raced, trying to reconstruct the events of the night before. Or was it a few nights go? How long had she been there? Questions with no answer, at least no answers that she had. She sat up slowly into a semi prone position, leaning on her good arm. She pulled herself towards the remnants of the fire, trying to warm herself. It was only when she put her hand down in the sticky, partly dried pool of blood from her injury that she realised why she felt so cold. She looked to where the pain was, but there was no evidence on the outside of her jacket that she had been bitten, besides a few small frays in the fabric.

And then a noise. Nothing too loud or scary, but loud enough that Triss froze on the spot, chills running down her spine. She forgot about the pain, the cold and the panic all in this instant. It was as if her senses were heightened somehow. She grasped her bat in one hand, moving herself across to the tree with her legs and support from her good arm, leaning against it.

And then without warning, the creature revealed itself. Clawed paws dug into the ground, beady black eyes staring at her. The creature had a jagged silhouette as if it had spikes on it's back.

The raccoon slowly approached her and Triss let out a sigh of relief, looking to the small animal "I....I d-don't have any food l-left.." she trembled, talking to the raccoon as if it could understand her. It stood up on its back paws, sniffing the air before it decided that the prospect of food wouldn't prove true and began to walk away from her, leaving her alone once again. The crickets chirped in the night and Triss swore she heard a wolf howl, but it was nothing to worry about as it sounded far away. She reached for her pack, remembering the few supplies she had collected in the sad excuse of a first aid kit. The moon emerged from the clouds, providing just enough light for her to find the ziploc bag filled with cloth and tattered bandages.

The sun had begun to rise as she managed to finally to tie the knot in the makeshift sling, supporting her wounded arm enough that the pain calmed down to a dull roar, rather than a blazing fire. She looked in her bag once again gulping down the last juice box before standing up, albeit it slowly, and walking on right past her father's mangled body. She was exhausted, in pain and running on minimal food. Her mind didn't even process the fact she had killed her father -or what he was- only hours before she awoke. And so she walked, searching for....well, she didn't know what she was searching for, only that she had to keep going or surely she'd be dead.