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"I swear I'm going to make them pay," Taylor said suddenly.
“Me too," Laurie agreed.
"We're always in for a fight," Alicia said with a fierce smile. Coal nodded and Hunter smiled broadly.
“No matter what? Even if the rest of the rebellion stops? They might decide it's not worth the risk to try and release the prisoners," I said, finally admitting the thing that had been bothering me for days.
“No matter what, all of us won't stop until we get your parents out," Coal said, looking at everyone else as they all nodded in firm agreement.
"Okay. So when do we begin?" I asked, feeling a smile not unlike Alicia's spread across my face.
Coal led me by the hand back into the forest. The cool morning mist still hung in the small spaces between tree roots. The trees themselves were alive with the sounds of birds singing to the new dawn. Shafts of sunlight pierced the canopy above us, highlighting patches of flowers in every thinkable colour which were opening their petals and drinking in the light.
We reached a thick swathe of vines which Coal swept aside, causing a cascade of pollen to swirl around us in a golden cloud.
Behind the vines was a beautiful pond, the water so still it could have been a pane of glass with big, white lilies floating blissfully in its centre. It was like something from a fairy tale. A little brown rabbit appeared and quickly drank his fill from the glistening water, ripples spreading out before him as he did so.
A tree with faint, silvery bark had fallen down next to the pond and gotten stuck against one of its neighbours, leaving a cave of roots half torn from the ground. They reached out like boney fingers, wrapped with gloves of ivy. The trunk of the tree created a sort of bridge above the water and Coal helped me to climb up onto it.
Half way across, directly above the rippling pond, the tree's trunk widened creating enough space for us to sit.
Coal pulled me down and he lay against the rough bark. I sat next to him and hung my feet over the edge.
"I found this place when I was looking for Blane. I like to think that maybe he got to spend that night here, at least that one night, hidden away," Coal said quietly.
"Sometimes, all I want is to hide from the world. Not to have to worry about all the things that need to be set right," I replied.
It had been three weeks since we'd gotten back from the bunker and nothing had changed. I was finding it harder and harder to just stay put.
"That's why I brought you here, I think it's easier to forget out here. To let go of a few of your worries, just for a little while." He smiled.
"Thank you."
A bird cried out his joy to the morning and was rewarded by another returning his song in the distance.
“Do you think we can do it?" I asked and he didn't need to ask what I was talking about.
"I think it would be wrong not to try." At least he didn't lie to me.
“I feel like it's impossible, but I agree we have to try. Or rather I have to." I looked sideways at him.
“I have to too," he said stubbornly.
“You don't. I don't even know if I should be asking you to," I sighed.
“You didn't ask, we offered."
“And if people are hurt? Or killed?" I tugged on a strand of my dark hair nervously.
“It would be because we were doing what we knew had to be done, what we felt was the right thing to do. Not because we felt we had to do it for anyone el
se's sake." He folded his arms and stared at me.
"But I feel like you are doing it for my sake."
"I would do it for you." He nodded.
“Does that make it right?"
