Karla knew from the first it was a stupid idea. Her little sister Ilisabith has convinced her to go get her some water from the river and Karla agreed. She got her compass and went there alone, at night, without the leader, without a flashlight. The moment she was ten meters away a squirrel snatched the compass from her hand and ran away. She was alone, afraid, cold. She was shivering as she looked at the sky. She knew that if she waited a bit more the sun will rise.

She knew that by her heart, but her mind dissagreed completely.

Karla opened her eyes slowly as the sun rays were hitting her face. She didn't know where was she and felt dizzy. A boy about her age was sitting next to her staring at her deep blue eyes.

"Um, where am I?" asked klara yawning.

"Hi, I am Rio, and you fainted by the river. So I carried you to my home. Boy, you were heavy" Said the boy with a smile on his face.

"But the camp, the leader, I have to get back!" said karla with fear as she stood up to run, but the moment she did this her legs felt weak and she fell on the bed.

"You're so weak, and the doctor said that you won't be able to stand on your feet for three weeks" said Rio as he stood up to leave the bedroom.

Karla's heart was bumping with fear. No walking for three weeks? But the camp will leave tomorow! Karla noticed the medicine next to her, with a note sticking on it written "Take this medicine, to get better" Karla opened the medicine and got a pill and swallowed it. Then Rio came with a doctor.

"Show me your hand, I wanna get sure of the pulse" The doctor said with a raging voice.

Karla streched her hands slowly as the doctore checked for the pulse.

"Good, but you need rest. You may be very awake now but you need to sleep." And then the doctor left the room with Rio talking with him.

Karla felt dizzy, and the room began bluring. The medicine! It must have made her sleep. And then she dozed of sleeping.

In a strange room, in a strange village.

Karla found it very hard to escape.

Every time she tried to get out of the bed, she would end up flopping on the floor like a fish out of water, gasping as an intense pain unlike anything she had ever experienced would engulf her calves and thighs. Like someone has taken a hot rod to her legs and jabbed at her flesh in random strokes of sharp, scorching aches. And every time, that suspiciously kind boy would enter the room, pushing aside the long drab cloth that separated her from the outside world and letting it fall behind him to obscure her view. He would lift her up back in the bed, huffing and puffing in a dramatic fashion and throwing a quick smirk-and-wink combo that was apparently his signature look before pressing a pill into her palm and leaving. And she took the meds like a faithful mutt every time, falling asleep soon after.

Why was her mind not making the connection? Clearly, items given freely by strangers equalled unsafe, and Karla knew that. She knew it so well because it was the first rule curated by her parents whenever they let her and her sister Ilisabith go on these camping trips with random people. So why, why, was her brain not correlating these things as it used to? And what was crippling her so that she could hardly even wiggle her toes without hot flushes skittering up her legs?

For the first two days, all she could think about was cursing her sister to the Heavens and wondering how far along the route her group had gone. If they had even bothered looking for her. But after the third evening of laying bedridden in a remote village where no one answered her questions, even Rio, she began to reflect on the actions of those who had visited her.

The doctor was very curt with her, speaking in direct and short statements before seemingly sprinting from the little mud hut she inhabited, though she had never spoken a single word to him. She never really got a good look at him, quick as his entries and exits were. When she asked Rio where she was and what the name of the village was, he simply shook his head mischievously, his copper locks straggling around his cheekbones that were too sharp, with hollow dips in his face. Something about his face was... uncanny. In that unsettling way in which you've seen something not quite human, though you were sure they must've been. Something was missing that gave the quality of humanity.

Perhaps it was the flat, listless pupils that held no colour, absorbing light from the surroundings. Or maybe it was the thin, cracked lips that signalled signs of dehydration, though he never seemed weary. Though it was probably the greyed skin and the stench of decay emanating from his being, as if he had been carrying around spoiled meat in his pocket for weeks.

Karla didn't know that his appearance was the most tame in the village compared to what she would see later.