Red Rocks

“Hold your breath. We’re going under.”

They sank into the river, water filling every empty space with unusable oxygen, weighing down their lithe forms. They had almost been caught for the second time in less than 12 hours and he no longer wanted to risk being spotted. All he knew was he had to get her out. All she knew was he was holding her so tight to his person she couldn’t escape.

She had been 100 yards from her camp’s gate when he managed to capture her. Even in the moment, she knew it was revenge for leading the other factions' hunters to his safehouse. Shelter was hard to find if it wasn’t within the camps’ borders, but she figured as a previous Lost One he would have no issue finding a rock to hide under. The Lost Ones always managed to find some sort of crawlspace, though their madness proved to be better protection from hunters than any crevice; their loner, nomadic leanings also made them close to impossible to track. She had asked him before what led him to Heracleum’s gates, what happened to him, but his lack of verbal response and knife to her throat left no uncertainty that it was none of her business. Not that they were on speaking terms, realistically.

As hunters from different camps- him Heracleum and her Oenanthe- they were consistently competing for supplies, resources, anything they could get their hands on. And it wasn’t exactly a friendly competition. When Heracleum’s True Hunter announced they had taken in a new hunter who was a previous Lost One, there was an uproar in the other factions. She became Oenanthe’s champion, raised as a warlord, their only saving grace. The other two camps, Mercurialis and Arum, struggled to find true warriors within their borders. She was one of the few hunters who could match his skill and determination, but his cunning always outwitted her mental caliber. At their first faction games when they were 18, he had won their war of words, beat her in their physical sparring with his golden heart locket still attached to his neck, and made her blush. She never blushed.

But that was when the faction games were only meant as entertainment in a post-Society War 7 world.

Soon after, the already desolate landscape with red rocks aplenty ran low on sustainable resources- plant species not regrowing, animal birth rates declining, crime rates skyrocketing. When they became of age and became True Hunter successors for their camps, their fights quickly progressed to lethal as politics led their battles; their goal- survival. They both ascended quickly as natural-born leaders into their roles- his easy charm and charisma winning warriors and her quiet determination a lure for lovestruck fools to use as she pleased. They clashed as hard in the yearly faction meetings as they did in the outside zone, fighting for their camps, until even those meetings became too dangerous to hold, too many lives lost.

Now they traded sabotaged supply runs, sold out hideaways, and the bodies of their most loyal servants.

But rarely did they ever occupy the same space, which confused her when she could not avoid his capture; it was a game they had avoided for years- grown out of- but when they sparred, his golden heart locket glinting in the sun from days of old, her assured victory, she turned her back moments too soon. In the spirit of revenge, she had first expected a quick death by his hand, then torture as he made her trek along, but he consistently assured himself of her vitality, thwarting any malicious intent she thought up. Not that his sarcasm and crude manner went unnoticed, but his quick reaction to tend her wound after they were first spotted by Mercurialis hunters shook her. So did his cautiousness in their second interaction with two Lost Ones who ambushed their small camp.

After the two close calls, his decision to swim along the river was well-founded. They stayed hidden in the fading light from hunters and wilds alike, catching glimpses of more living entities than typical. Their banter carried them along the way. She traded his antagonistic taunts for vicious remarks. When enough silence had passed after one of her stinging barbs, her face grew serious as she finally asked the question weighing on her mind, “Why now?”

He stopped and opened the locket around his neck, revealing her photo, “It was always.”