A day in the woods (1,501 views)

Kara ignored the boy who’d spoken, and instead drank some more of her drink. Kara wasn’t particularly fond of the male gender, not after all the stories her mother told her. It was sexist, but Kara didn’t particularly care. She took a few steps towards the woods when Chardonnay arrived, not wanting to be around the showy girl dressed like a model. The girl who said she’d be doing no work.

Kara was beginning to hope she ‘unfortunately’ tripped on a root.

Or Kara’s own foot.

“Uhm.” Arthur said, narrowing his blue eyes in annoyance. Who the heck did this girl think she was, anyway? “You can fucking shut up. You’re wearing high heels and we’re going in the woods. Are you an idiot?”

He turned to Ace and shrugged. At least that guy was quiet. he then turned around and walked towards the woods, simply expecting the others to follow.

"We're all here. let's go."

“You’re not an idiot. I find that hard to believe.” Arthur snapped back, entering the woods.

Immediately the shadows overtook him, and the breeze was a little less welcome here. It was still warm, but the shade provided an extra layer of cold. They shouldn’t be here for too long anyway, so it wasn’t like it mattered. “Everyone else is dressed practically, at least, but here you are prancing around in your stilettos. And if you think I’m letting you copy my paper, you’ve got another thing coming. If you’re not going to pull your own weight, wine, you might as well just leave.”

Arthur had declared Chardonnay’s name much too long to say. He’d refer to her as wine from now on.

Kara snorted, and followed behind Chardonnay. “Well, at least if she trips over a rock, she’ll do it in style.”

Her comment was a sarcastic mumble, not really meant for Arthur or Chardonnay to hear.

She herself was in a pair of sneakers. Not exactly hiking material, but it was better than heels. As Kara stepped into the woods, she shivered a tiny bit. The shadows of leaves danced on her face, and she brought her coffee to her lips to take a sip of the warm liquid.

“Are you kidding me? Being smart has nothing to do with looks.” Arthur kept walking, his feet pounding against the dirt trail and kicking up dust behind him. The deeper they went, the thicker the trees grew. “If we’re talking about looks here, you look like a dumb slu—“

At Ace’s comment, Arthur stopped, and turned around to face the others. He’d put a bit of distance between them, mostly because he didn’t want to deal with anyone. He rolled his eyes when he caught sight of Chardonnay. She still screamed brat.

“We’re looking for Pinyon Flowers.” Arthur said. He’d grown up with Susan, he knew all about her favorite activities and flowers. Susan had come out here and located said flower, ensuring a patch of them did indeed exist in the forest. “They’re a yellow color with rounded leaves. They’re deeper in, and should be just off the trail.”

Kara took another sip of her coffee. “You already find it or something?”

“No. But it says right here. Look at your paper.”

Kara did so. Sure enough, the paper said the flowers should be at least a good 50 feet into the forest, and they weren’t directly on the trail.

Arthur rolled his eyes again and turned back around. “The area off the trail is slathered in mud, by the way.”

Arthur smirked at Chardonnay’s obvious distaste for the mud, and kept walking.

“Yeah. Not hard. Then we just need to snap a picture each and answer some questions, and go to our rooms.”

Kara started looking out into the wood, looking for any patches of yellow. She couldn’t find any, not yet. She kept walking with the others, humming under her breath. Walking was boring, humming was good entertainment.

Arthur kept the lead, eyeing the paper. He wouldn’t bother looking until he was sure they hit fifty feet. He wondered why Susan even wanted them to go out here in the first place, it seemed like a waste of time.

Arthur kept marching along, going at a pretty fast pace. Arthur had little to no concern for the others, if they were keeping up or even if they got lost. Arthur’d pretty much tuned them all out, until he heard Chardonnay break the blissful silence with a request for a break.

Arthur stopped and turned towards the others, looking them over. Chardonnay looked comical, and of course, the worst out of the bunch. It was because of her footwear, of course. No one could walk through a dirt trail in heels at the pace Arthur’d been going with little to no complaint.

And judging by what he’d seen of her so far, Chardonnay just loved to complain.

“The sooner we find the stupid flowers, the sooner you can go back to your room and take a much needed beauty nap.” Arthur snapped. However, another voice spoke up.

“Yeah, I vote we take a break too.” Kara, although she was in proper physical attire, was tired as well. She was not used to walking long distances, up hills and through the woods. “I mean, we’ll only need a minute to catch our breath. Are you a cheetah or something?”

Arthur rolled his eyes very obviously, groaned loudly, and sat himself on a rock. It was dirty but he didn’t really care. He wouldn’t be sitting for long. There was only this one large rock near them, big enough to accommodate all four, if they didn’t mind dirtying their bums.

“Fine. Five minutes.” Arthur relented. Clearly Chardonnay wasn’t the only one who wanted to stop. He could feel a tingling in his feet, but it didn’t bother him much.

Kara took a seat as far away from Arthur as possible. She looked up at the sky, lips pursed.

Arthur rolled his eyes.

“We’d have managed.” He said. Why did Susan have to do a group project? Why? Arthur would have done this alone if he didn’t need evidence all three of the others had been in attendance.

Kara shrugged.

“Well, we would have been looking for longer.” She compromised. “So thanks, Chardonnay. I can taste the freedom now! And I also can’t feel my legs.”

Arthur shoved his hands in his pockets, ignoring Kara’s comment and Chardonnay’s gloating. Only a few more minutes of this, and they’d be good.

When they finally reached the yellow flowers, deep in the wilderness, the flowers revealed their identity. There, sitting in the muddy ground, was a large patch of dandelions. Arthur’s face immediately fell. They were not looking for dandelions. They could not pass off dandelions as the needed flower, they looked far too different.

Both flowers were yellow, but that was it when it came to similarities.

“These are fucking dandelions!” Arthur cursed, throwing his paper on the ground in frustration. “We walked this far away from the stupid trail for a patch of stupid, ugly dandelions?!”

Kara’s eyebrows rose to her hairline. Wow. This guy sure had a mouth and a temper to match.

“It’s an honest mistake. We can just walk back to the trail, right?”

At Ace’s comment, Kara bit her lip, realizing that no, she did not know where they’d come from. She guessed somewhere behind herself, but upon turning around, she couldn’t see the rock. Apparently, it was not large enough to stand out against the overgrowth of the woods.

She looked to her left—perhaps she’d turned unintentionally—but was met with the same information. Nothing.

“Well, now that I think about it,” Kara said, shrugging her shoulders, “I have no idea.”

“Great. Fucking great. I don’t suppose any of you sprinkled bread crumbs?” Arthur sounded frustrated, which he was. Not only did they not find Susan’s dumb flowers, but now they were lost.

And honestly, this was not a group of people Arthur wanted to be lost in a forest with. Kara looked around, for imprints, footprints, anything to point them in the right direction, but she found nothing.

She hoped they wouldn’t be lost for long.

“In case you haven’t noticed, princess,” Arthur snapped, scowering the dirty ground for any kind of footprint, or any kind of hole. “We are lost.”

At Ace’s comment, Arthur turned to the boy, noticing him for the first time.

“You’ve been lost in the woods before? How did you get out?”

Kara pulled out her cell phone and tried to text her best friend, Audrey, but there was no signal. She cursed under her breath, realizing what that meant.

They couldn’t call for help.

“I have no signal.” Kara said, her tone calm but her eyes frantic, the orbs falling on Chardonnay. “You have any signal out here?”

Arthur stared blankly at Ace for a moment, then he shook his head, letting out a slightly exasperated sigh. Too bad this kid wasn’t a super survival expert. Oh well, he honestly shouldn’t have entertained that possibility.

Arthur shoved his hand in the pocket of his jeans, pulling out an old style flip phone. Since he didn’t really have any friends he didn’t use it much, unless Susan needed to get into contact with him.

Low and behold! No signal! Of course.

“That was sarcasm.” Arthur deadpanned. “Ever heard of Hansel and Gretel?”

Kara looked up at the sky, worry reflecting on her features. Her phone’s time worked, even without a signal, and they only had a few hours of sunlight left. She thought of Ace’s comment about recognizing something, and had an idea.

“Hey… maybe we can walk in a circle around here? I left my coffee on that rock. So if we can find it, we can find the trail?”

“Well that’s a little long, I guess.” Kara shrugged, but let it go, starting to walk. “Let’s get going then… I really wish I brought my coffee with me.”

Arthur folded his arms over his chest, walking behind Kara. His blue eyes examined the trees, annoyance written on his face. What kind of a stupid assignment was this? It was so easy to get lost out here… Susan really didn’t think things through sometimes.

He squeezed his eyebrows together his thought, closing his eyes. He could hear rocks and branches crack underneath his feet.

He wondered how long Chardonnay would go without tripping in those obnoxiously out of place shoes.

“Well c’mon, princess. Let’s go a move on.” He snapped. “You’d probably have better luck walking around barefoot than in those.”

Arthur hadn’t missed Chardonnay’s stumble either, shaking his head as a dark smirk formed on his face.

“Yeah. You can walk in those shoes. You keep telling yourself that. Maybe if you keep saying it, it’ll come true.”

The sun was going down, and Arthur hooked his thumbs into the belt of his jeans, hearing Ace’s suggestion. It was only logical to be intimidated by this situation. The shadows suddenly looked sinister, and the bushes seemed to rustle more often.

Kara nodded her agreement and picked up the face, only to wince as she stepped on a rock, nearly tripping forward. The rock she’d tripped on rolled into the bushes and deep in the woods, there was some kind of cawing. It was a bird, perched high in the trees, but the sound was ominous and foreboding.

Kara swallowed a lump in her throat and brushed her shirt.

“Whew, talk about a bumpy road. Ha… haha. And a creepy bird. That… was a bird, right?”