My sense of touch begins to awaken as I come out a REM sleep. After a few hours nap, Alexia woke up to parts of her body cold. It had begun to snow lightly an hour before. She brought her legs up into the sleeping bag, smooshing my hands into the warmth of her body. We brought the bag over our heads and I hide my face into her shoulder. I had now been napping till the sunrises.

I nuzzle my face into the side of her neck for comfort and warmth as I awake fully. I breathe in a sweet scent that’s close to vanilla, I’m rather becoming fond of it. I breathe in deep a few more times, Alexia begins to wiggle around.

“Hey, that tickles” she lets out a giggle. “Oh really” I tilt my head up towards her ear, “then how about this” I rub my cheek which has the beginnings of a beard onto her neck.

“Would you stop that?” she tries pushing my head away with her’s and begins to move more than indeed. “Ow ow, yes yes, that’s enough of that” I settle her down before the pain gets bad.

“Well that was your own fault” she gives out a unpitying tone. “Yes yes” I shake my head “I’ll make sure to be more careful next time” I whisper into her ear. She let’s out a shiver, could’ve been caused by any number of things.

“So, what’s going to happen now?” Alexia asks me while putting more wood on the fire. She grabbed her coat from under me to keep warm. “Well our best bet would be to wait here for at least a day, and if they haven’t gotten here within some time, we should travel down the river a bit. One we need to get out of this cold den, and two we need to hopefully find your pack if it washed up on the bank” I hug the sleeping bag around me.

“I’m sorry for losing it” she looks a little sad. “Don’t worry about it, I would rather lose it than you. Or rather, I wouldn’t even be alive if not for losing the pack. Nice to see my life is more important than the pack” I smirk at her.

“I don’t know, some of those items might have been better” she states. “Thanks for that boost of confidence” I lower my head. “You’re welcome” she beams.

I look up to the sky and a snowflake lands on my cheek. “If we’re going to be staying, we better get a shelter setup to block out this wind” I think out loud. “What do you have in mind?” Alexia asks.

“Ha. You’re the architect, what do you think?” I retort back. “Well a tent would be nice, but we still should have an opening for fire and to watch out… A lean-to would work” She comes up with the idea. She walks over to the beginning of the trees to check out the area.

“These two trees would work, they have a good distance between them and are sturdy. But what would we use? Blanket? Tent, but that’s a bit much” she wanders off in thought. I smile “You know the tents have the waterproofing canvas. It’s not very big but it’ll work just for now”.

“Oh, you’re right, that would be perfect” she exclaims. She walks over to my pack and pulls out the tent for the canvas. I wish I could help but it’s best to not get breathing heavy or I’ll have a bad day. She ties one side of the canvas around four feet up both the trees, then she hammers in the other side to the ground with the nails. With this the wind coming off the waterfall should be blocked from hitting us. The only problem now is we need to move the fire but really won’t be that hard.

As Alexia gets the fire near the lean-to going well, I get some water from the river and put out the old fire. I grab my pack and halfway drag it over to our new shelter. “I can get that for you” Alexia jumps up to help me. “No, I’m fine. I do need my rest, but I also need to stretch it out. Going to have to move some point in time” I sit by the fire to calm my breathing before it gets out of hand.

Alexia grabs the blanket from the pack and wraps it around me. I hold one side out and usher her to sit down next to me.

“Do you think we’re going to be okay, really?” she asks while we’re snacking on some food. I tilt my head to the side, “Well, there’s a few ways to look at it. Firstly, the world has fallen so far already there’s not much more of a direction it can go but up” Alexia nods.

“Another part, the worst is dying. Though dying in itself isn’t really all that bad. The bad part is the people we’ll leave behind and how they’ll manage the emotional tie.” I continue on.

“Even if you say it that away, I don’t want to die” Alexia shivers. “That’s instinctual. And I’d rather you not die either. But do remember, we’re mortal. It’ll happen some point in time, it’s inevitable. You just have to make the most of what you have, and that increases in the apocalypse because grim is only a step away” I wrap my arm around her torso.

“But you’ll be there to protect me” Alexia burrows into my side. “Ha. That’s proven to be a rough adversary. But mind you, I’m only human. I can and will die, and I can’t be everywhere at once” I sigh helplessly.

“You won’t have to be everywhere if you just stick to my side forever” Alexia smiles at me. I chuckle “I love you too”. We sit in silence for a few minutes.

“Wish I had a nice lazy boy right now. Anyway I’m going to lay down and hope to get comfortable” I stand up and grab some extra things out of the pack including some medicine. (Some vicodin would be great right now) I kiss the top of Alexia’s head and scuttle my way over to the lean-to. I grunt my way down to the ground and wrap myself in layer. I bare the aches and pains till my bones decide to settle in. I lay there sifting through my memories, (What type of future do we have in store for us? Can we ever evolve past our doomed state right now?) I start to fantasise a life after this plague. I drift off to sleep imagining a family.

I wake to a sudden coldness (Did I kick the layers off? That’s rather careless). I open my eyes to find Alexia trying to sneak her way into the bed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. It’s just cold, even with the fire” she says as to be pitied. “It’s fine” I help pull her in and close the curtains “that’s why I told you we’d be sleeping together”.

“Yeah I see that now” she smooshes her arms in between us and presses her forehead into my chest. (This is going to be a lot harder than I thought) I partially feel her warm breathe, her hands and fingers moving across my abdomen, guess my shirt inched upwards while I was sleeping.

As nice as it might feel, if it continues I snap into a more primitive state of mind. I chuckle and put on hand on top of hers, she begins to fidget.

“I’m sorry, was I bothering you?” she stutters a little bit. (Not in the way you might think) “Don’t mind it, just get some rest” I urge her.

(Zen time, just got to mind over body this)