She checked the quality of the nearby bush leaves. They bent in her hands, cracking off in the middle. They'd be too weak on their own. Thatching them together would require doubling up. Not wanting to agitate her wounded heel further, she tip-toed around to find shelter-worthy sticks. As long as she could find something suitable to secure it with, she could create a lean-to for herself.

Shreya got to work. Gathering what she needed turned out to be more difficult than she expected. Too many of the sticks she found were either too thin or too short to support one another. It kept falling, the sticks sliding out of formation. On the third time the structure crashed, Shreya switched to interweaving leaves for the rooftop.

Breathing in, she caught the scent of running water. She tasted its dirty, murky smell on her tongue and regretted it. River water was lousy with sickness. Shreya had learned that the hard way when she was younger. Desperation had driven her to drink from a lake that stole her strength away. Too weak to fend for herself, she had to have her food brought to her. It wasn't an experience she wanted to relive, especially here when she didn't have anyone to help her.

Heat would take care of the water's toxins. Boiling it over a fire was a solution that came with more problems. Shreya didn't have anything that could function as a pot. No gourd meant that she couldn't store any of the water she made. She'd just have to ignore the dryness building up in her throat.

Shreya sat down against a tree to take another look at her foot. Tender to the touch, it pulsed with pain. How could one little barb do so much damage? She swatted at her arm. Another bug bite. The old one had turned into a bright red splotch that stood out on her medium-brown skin. She itched at it.

Her shelter was only half-built. There was so much more work left to be done, and yet she still hadn't gotten started on the fire. The flames would have the dual job of keeping her warm and keeping the bugs away.

The sun's placement in the sky told her that the communal morning meal was behind the wolves. They'd be doing their daily work and contributing to the good of the Marjani community. The hunters would hunt. The weavers would weave. Danilo and Shanti would be at the crèche. Shanti...she should be glad that their mother didn't say anything about her to the Elders.

Shanti always seemed to get a pass. She'd been wandering in and out of Stockbrunn's territory for a long while now. Shanti was good at not getting caught, but on the few occassions when she had been, their mother had only beat her or forbid her from eating. The Elders had never gotten involved.

"But they did for me. Bullshit." Shreya spat into the dirt. She would've gotten her face cuffed for saying that in the village. Without anyone around to hear it, Shreya could let her blasphemy fly free. That may have been the only upside to her situation.

The roughness of the bark behind her back got to her. She leaned away from it, and then slapped her other arm. Something felt like it was creeping along her skin, but it turned out to be her imagination. Being this bare for so long wasn't something she was used to. The sun exposure worried her.

Led by the river's scent, she headed for it. By the time she made it there on her limping foot, the sun had reached its highest point. Without the shade of trees, it glared down at her in full-force. Crouching at the river's edge, she scooped up mud and painted it all over her body. Down her arms and legs, all over her torso, what she could reach of her back, and more.

Shreya gave into the river's temptations and opted to stay there for a bit, basking in the cool air it gave off. She peered into the water. Her reflection stared back at her. Adolescence had narrowed out her face and given her an effortless scowl. Her ears, the same color as her hair, came to rounded points. Thick, neck-length hair framed her face. She'd shed the baby weight she once had as a puppy.

She'd been the smallest of her litter mates. Big, blue eyes. A natural pouty expression. She looked like something that needed to be protected, a tiny, easily-crushed thing. No one had marked her down as a survivor.

Those predictions had gone to the ones they'd lost: Sharmila, Sher, and Sheela. Not Shanti, the unfocused one, and especially not Shreya, the fragile one. The one who never ran as fast as the others. The one whose arms got tired at the lightest of loads. The one who never got the crèche lessons on the first try.

But, somehow, they both survived. Shreya had lived while the others had succumbed to illness. First, had been Sher. His body gave up on him months after their Papa passed. It rejected all of the food he tried to eat. Nothing stayed down. That was during a particularly hard time in their community. He hadn't been the only one to struggle that way, but it was his face that she'd never forget. The gaunt tone to his cheeks. The nothingness in his eyes.

Sheela's death, she hadn't been there for. According to her sister's friends, she'd collapsed and never woke up. That'd been a couple years after Sher's death. And then a couple months later, a coughing sickness struck the community. It squeezed its victims of air and forced blood from them. Shreya and Pravaah had been spared. Sharmila and Shanti hadn't been so lucky. The former perished, and the latter recovered.

Later, Shanti told Shreya that she'd survived because she kept telling herself that there was no way she'd let Shreya live longer than her.

So, that was how the least likely to survive lived beyond the rest. Luck and stubbornness.

-------------------

A/N: Chapter 20 is out now on the main site. Voting for Chapter 20 will end on Tuesday at 11:59 PM EST.

The next update to RRL will be Chapter 11.4 - the last part of Chapter 11.