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I grew tired and didn’t realize it until my calves complained. I had walked too far. I thought the tree cover was why it had grown darker, but the sun was setting.
It was a long way back—a really long way. I could do it. I’d be exhausted, not just tired, but I could do it. The distance wasn’t the problem. The darkness was the problem. Even the drone had trouble keeping up with me amongst the trees. Did he have headlights on that thing?
I looked up at him when I got back to the fence line. He hovered way above me, holding steady in the open spots through the forest trees. Couldn’t have been easy to keep up with me. He must have had a good range as well. I walked again, but the drone had other ideas, dropping until he was within my reach.
“Yeah?” I asked. “Do you need something?”
He turned, started going back, then came back to me.
“I see. You want me to follow you?” I pointed back to the fence.
He dive-bombed me then darted off in the opposite direction.
I stood my ground, confused, and he returned, hovering directly above me.
“I don’t know what you want!”
The drone dropped low, then took off, flying low among the trees, low enough that I could have smacked him out of the air if I tried hard enough.
“Where are we going?” I yelled at him. “The fence is the other way.”
He just kept going. One of two things was happening: he knew a shortcut, or I was being lured to my death. I put my faith in the fact that the man who owned the place didn’t really want me to die, so I followed the drone deeper into the ever-growing darkness of the woods.
“If you’re wrong about this and I die out here, I’m gonna kill you,” I muttered, picking my way through the trees beneath him.
We walked... and walked. I didn’t know if he was taking me on a shorter route home than following the fence line would have been, but this new path was no comfort at all. It was darker and more hazardous. Once the sun disappeared, the drone hummed, and blue lights emanated from it. I kept my eyes trained on it while I walked carefully through the forest. The air grew colder as mountain air did in the spring. I wasn’t dressed for it. I wasn’t dressed properly for any of this.
“I should have stayed by the fence,” I muttered, slowing down my pace as my legs grew wearier.
The drone hovered in one spot overhead until I caught up with it.
“How much further?” I groaned up at it. “I don’t know if I have much more left in me. Can’t we take a break?”
Like it would answer me. When I got close to it again, it continued its forward movement. I walked beneath it, alternating between cursing it under my breath and being grateful that its operator was the only being who apparently cared where I was or what happened to me.
Finally, it stopped near a big boulder and hovered for a few seconds before taking a quarter turn.
I hurried to the boulder. “What? Are we there? Where–”
I looked at the area illuminated by its lights. A dirt road or path of some sort. “Is that a road? Can I just follow it? Where does it go?”
The damn thing took off, rising above me and flying off above the canopy.
“Which way!” I screamed at it. Once it took the light away with it, I was held hostage by the pitch black around me. I couldn’t see enough to know right from left. There had to be something nearby. He wouldn’t guide me to a road and leave me there to wander around in the dark.
I wanted to scream, to throw things, to cry, but I didn’t have the energy for any of that. Instead, I stood still, hoping my eyes would adjust and at some point, I’d be able to see the road more clearly. I had a fifty/fifty chance of picking the right direction, but...dammit. Why would he leave like that after all the hours he’d spent following me around? Either something happened, and he was needed elsewhere, or his job had been fulfilled. He no longer had a reason to follow me about because...
I heard the distant sound of a car’s engine just before lights appeared around a bend in the road. Someone was coming to get me. I wasn’t going to sleep in the woods tonight.
I stayed where I was until the headlights of a jeep nearly blinded me. I couldn’t see who got out of the car.
But I recognized his voice.
“What the fuck are you doing, Princess?” Sebastian whispered harshly as he pulled me into his arms. “You could get hurt out here wandering around in the dark.”
“I’m not hurt,” I groused as his arms closed around me and I snuggled into the warmth of Sebastian’s chest. “I walked too far. He followed me for a while but when it began to get dark–”
“He led you to the road. I know. Those jackasses waited until you’d been gone for hours before they said anything to me.”
