They sit cross-legged on the reddish brown dirt, within arm’s reach of a patch of sunlight shining through tangled leaves and gnarled branches far above them. The lilac sky grows lighter once the two suns hang directly overhead, a sight that looks impossible whenever Cora happens to glance up.

There’s not much to this world, at least apart from the flora and the few fauna that scurry through the foliage, such as tiny black lizards that leap from tree to tree–a few lizards gliding with webs connecting their limbs to their lithe bodies–the dead rodents, and birds.

If she can call them that. Tiny red things that are more flame than plumage, shining brilliantly when they take off to the skies. A few of them had snatched several flying lizards while she’d been explaining her plan to Liam. Her concentration never wavered, although the memories of seeing the birds consume the lizards mid-flight are difficult to forget.

Moments after she finishes telling him her plan, Liam stares at her in shock, his face pale. She doesn’t know why he’s terrified. If they stay here, then they will die. There won’t be another Liam to save the two of them.

“I’m telling you we should go to the mountains,” she says slowly, licking her lips again. Is it her, or are her lips chapped? Tongue sandpaper. Skin dry to the touch, their usual oils absent. She could drink another bottled water, but fears invoking Liam’s wrath. Or even worse–later in the day she could reach for a bottled water only to discover she drank the last one.

“That’s insane,” he mutters, drawing a finger over the blunt edge of his knife. Whenever he checks the sharp edge, she feels uneasy. It’s not that he makes her uncomfortable–okay, he does. His calloused fingers rotating the knife with deft expertise reminds her of him dragging his cold blade down the warm creature’s hide.

Not that she thinks he’ll turn on her, but still–she can’t be sure that he won’t. Even now, after having saved her life and given her two bottles of water, his heavy breathing and distant eyes send shivers down her spine. Maybe she’s reading too much into him and that’s just the way he is, without any hidden intentions.

In that case, that makes her the biggest jerk in the world.

“Have you seen any water?” she says, swallowing what little saliva she can muster. He shakes his head. Her throat aches as she continues. “I haven’t either, and those clouds are pretty far away, so it’s not going to rain anytime soon. If we walk fast, I think we can reach those mountains in a couple of days. There has to be some water up there.”

“What makes you say that?”

“This side has nothing but forest. My environmental class taught me that one side of a mountain has a lot of plants and the opposite side is usually dry. So there should be a river on this side of the mountains.” Her shoulders pull back in pride. And who said school wasn’t useful for something?

Liam’s eyebrows arch up. “That’s Earth, though. Have you seen what these trees do?”

“No…”

“Here. Watch.”

He walks over to the edge of their makeshift camp, close to the shallow dip in the ground where the thick overgrown plants seem to lie in wait for somebody unfortunate enough to trip into them, and spears one of the dead rat-like creatures with his knife. She flinches as he approaches a tree and presses the dead animal to the trunk.

A faint sizzle reaches her ears. By the time Liam turns away from the tree and shows her the half-burnt remains of the rat, she’s busy trying to hold her stomach down, fingers pinching her nose closed while the stench of burnt rotten flesh hangs over her.

He frowns, his nose wrinkling, and scrapes the body off the tip of his knife with an overhanging branch. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think it’d smell this bad. I swear.” He raises the hem of his shirt over his nose. “But we don’t know if these trees use water to live. What on Earth would do this?” He lifts his leg and gestures at the burnt body.

She inhales through her mouth. The stench is more bearable that way, but the dry air scrapes her throat and lungs, leaving a pinched sensation that’s difficult to dispel. “Lucky me, huh?” she says, using her free hand to fan the smell away. “I wanted to climb one of those trees to escape.”

The memory of the orange beast is a wall she cannot force herself past no matter how much she wills the events of the past half-hour to surface. Her brain refuses to cooperate with her, and she guesses that’s better than breaking down all over again.

“Good thing you didn’t.” Liam wipes the knife’s bloody tip off on the loose dirt. How many times he’ll have to clean his knife is a disturbing thought that raises the hairs on Cora’s arms.

Worse yet, how much time is she going to spend here? Just seeing the box alone makes her seethe in a way her arrival never made her. She’s a million fragmented pieces burning with the desire to destroy something. Anything.

Luckily, Liam interrupts her thinking. “I think you’re right, though. Not that we have a choice anyways. There’s a lot of plants. If they’re anything like back home, then they need water. We don’t have any way to protect ourselves up in the mountains, though.”

“You have that blanket.” When she hears her own logic, Cora mentally facepalms. “We just need to find a river. There’s probably lots. Then we can camp near one of them and figure out what to do next.”

The idea sounds logical. Yet, as she runs the rag-tag plan through her brain, her heart constricts at the thought of venturing out into deep wilderness. Alien wilderness. The dancing purples of the forest are a beautiful, deadly sight, but at night, they don’t know what will appear. The orange beast and the trees are the biggest examples she thinks of.

They don’t know if something will be wrong with the water. If there is any, although she silences that doubt. They don’t know what alien microorganisms live in the water. It’d be nice to have a choice, but Liam’s right. They have no alternatives. She even told him about this plan.

So why is she second-guessing herself?

“We should leave now, then,” he says, placing the bottled water back inside the torn packaging.

She dreads spending the rest of the day walking, but knows the consequences. If they don’t make a move now, night will fall upon them, and who knows what creatures prowl this world without light. Creatures worse than the orange monster, maybe.

“Yeah, let’s leave,” she says, struggling to keep her voice composed. She takes the first bottled water with a trembling hand. “I can fit all of them in here.” She unzips her backpack. The box is the first thing she sees. She grimaces, drawing his attention.

“Anything wrong?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “No, I just didn’t want to carry all of this.”

The first bottled water slides into the crevice between the side of the box and her backpack’s fabric. When she tests the weight, it’s easy enough to carry until she adds the second, then the third, and then the rest.

Her backpack bulges comically, the seams close to bursting, but she manages to zip the opening shut.

“I’ll carry first. We’ll take turns whenever one of us gets tired and wants to switch. How does that sound?”

She smiles in gratitude. “Thank you.”

She likes how he bothers to ask her, despite the two of them knowing they must alternate. They don’t have a choice, either. Yet, his thoughtfulness to offer first lifts some weight off her chest and shoulders. It could’ve been worse. That’s the type of thinking she must go by, so she will.

She glances around at the surrounding forest. It’s deceptively simple, the type of image that belongs at the front of a postcard back home, whimsical and safe. When she bids her final mental goodbye to this part of the forest, even she for a second believes that it’s safer here.

That the forest will provide and protect them. It’s Liam’s hardened expression that breaks her fantasy.

Worth a shot, anyways. Together, the two of them set off towards the distant mountains.

***

The shadows seem to close in around them as the first of the two suns begins to dip past the horizon. Cora pants, struggling to climb over a low mound of dirt. Liam takes her hand and helps her across with renewed strength in his trembling limbs. The backpack’s weight is less than it was seven hours earlier, both of them having consumed three bottles in total. Her one, him two.

Several times, their clothes brushed against one of the purple trees, with Cora’s denim jeans fraying at the edge when her cuff had dragged against a trunk, while Liam’s blanket suffered no damage. Even now, she winces when she pulls her leg in front of her–finally pushing her over the mound–and sees the tattered edge of her jeans compared to the pristine edge of her other leg.

Beyond this mound lies a dip in the earth that’s mostly clear of vegetation. The soil and forest are the same types as where they’d first been teleported to, but there’s some gradual changes that she wouldn’t have noticed had she not taken pictures throughout the day.

The soil gradually grew darker the closer they got to the mountains, resembling rich farmland from Earth. It might be her or the lower light levels, but the purples of the trees are muted compared to the morning, and the forest itself easier to navigate through. The creatures seem to either be avoiding them or camouflaging quite well, because she’s seen almost no other animals during her entire walk.

They hunker down near the center of the dip, setting down the backpack between them. Liam hasn’t bothered to ask about the box, and she doesn’t feel inclined to explain to him that she was the reason why he was teleported here.

The guilt gnaws away at her conscience, but she doesn’t want him to know that she’s the reason why he was stranded here. Not yet, anyways. The last thing she needs is for him to turn on her, and then what? They need to work together to make it out of here alive.

However they’ll do it.

“Which one of us will stay up and take the first shift?” he asks, adjusting his sitting position so that his lower back is flush with the backpack. Cora inadvertently catches herself yawning before she tries to answer, her hand balled up over her mouth. “Never mind. I’ll try to let you sleep as much as possible before I wake you up.”

“Sounds good,” she says, yawning again. She nestles herself onto her back, head on the lumpy portion of her backpack, neck strained, but otherwise she’s in a comfortable position to sleep. Far above, the first pinpricks of light hang in the sky, alien constellations that form new shapes, new figures, and may have their own stories, too, if there are other people on this world.

She’s too tired to imagine all the possibilities in this world. She’s seen a small glimpse of life here, and that’s enough for the day.

“Good night, Liam,” she says. As she sits up to adjust her position, she catches Liam smiling back.

“Good night, Cora.”