Rubatosis

[Fenris]

She walked.

She walked.

>> She walked.

Adrenaline gave way to a steady and comfortable caffeine buzz, and Nia kept moving, stopping only for a few minutes in a comfortable and relatively dry copse to write down her notes on the announcement before they started to slip her mind. A bit less detailed than her prior days' notes, perhaps. It didn't matter. They were sufficient enough to jog her memory. Perhaps at this stage they served more as a statement of intent. Like writing your goal down on a sticky note and putting it on your laptop. The very act of writing things down was proven to stimulate the mind. Her mind rather needed it.

She didn't stop again until the smell of the ocean hit her nose. Familiar. It had taken her four days to make her way to where she had been, and less than one to wind up back here. She'd been so tired, so easily winded, before now, needing to stop every hour or so, moving slowly, and now? And now, and now. And now she was free.

It was funny. It was. Wasn't it?

Her heart pounded out rhythms that echoed between her ears. It was like having company. It was close enough.

She couldn't stop here, of course, it was wide open. No shelter at all. She liked the smell, she decided. She remembered picking up seaweed on the first morning, worried about running low on food, it was still packed into the recesses of her bag. She hadn't bothered throwing it away despite now having more food than she had when she'd started. It was easy to feed yourself when everyone around you kept dying. Logistical conveniences. Starving would have felt like a particularly pointless way to die.

Dying here at all was pointless, though.

A waste.

She felt nothing.

It felt so good, to feel nothing.


>> She laughed, and kept walking.