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Celine kicked, too, swimming as hard as she could. We were on the side of the water, and the natural flow pulled us into the smaller stream that split off from the river.
It was easier to get out of, and we swam to the riverbank. It was still pissing down rain as if the sky had opened its sluices, but at least we weren’t in the river, dragged along anymore.
“Come on, we have to look for shelter,” I said.
“Where?” Celine asked.
I looked around. I had no idea. How the fuck were we going to get out of this?
I spotted rocks not too far off.
“There,” I said.
“What’s there? What about the lightning?”
It was a gamble to run toward rock when it was likely that it was where lightning would strike.
“Rocks might mean a cave,” I said.
Celine nodded, and we headed through the storm toward the rocks. They were more like boulders, as if giants had stacked them for fun and forgotten about them. At first, there were no openings. We moved along the large rocks and I looked for openings, anything that would help us.
Finally, I found an opening. It was big enough for us to get through.
“What if there are animals in there?” Celine asked.
“We have to take a chance,” I said and popped my head into the cave.
It wasn’t a very large space, but it was big enough and there was no sign of any creatures living in it. No animal bones, and more importantly, no animals. Not that I could see, although half the space was drenched in darkness.
“I think it’s safe,” I said.
I pulled Celine in after me, and we finally had a chance to catch our breath. She breathed hard, shivering.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She looked a little worse for wear—her face and arms were scratched up from the rough tumble we’d had down the mountainside, and her clothes were ripped. Blood ran down her upper arm.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re bleeding.”
She studied her arm. “I can’t feel it.” She winced. “Well, now that I know about it, I can.”
“Let me see,” I said and carefully took her arm. It looked like just a graze, nothing too deep or too serious. “You’re going to be okay.”
“It stings like a bitch,” she said.
“That’s a good thing.”
“Yeah?”
“The deep wounds you don’t feel so much. A paper cut hurts like hell. A sliced-up stomach doesn’t hurt at first.”
“Hmm,” Celine said. “I don’t want to know how you know that.”
I chuckled. “Survival classes and stuff.”
Now that I knew she was okay, I did an inventory of my own body. I was bruised and battered with the same kind of cuts and scrapes as Celine had, but I was okay too. We were going to be purple and blue come morning, but we were okay.
