“If that's what you think...” He said nothing else.
She hated him for not attacking her, snapping, yelling, disagreeing at least! Showing her something other than his cold outer shell. Maybe he's just cold and unfeeling all the way through. She huffed and swivelled on her heel, marching until she was out of his sight before running full pelt through the forest and back towards her cabin.
She didn't realize until she stopped running and her face was burning from the salt of her tears, that she'd been crying.
~Chapter 28 - Burn~
Several hours later...
Friday June 10th, 12:49 a.m.
Cabin No.2
It was just after ten that night that she began to feel very ill.
The room was spinning as if she was suffering a severe case of vertigo. Then she began shivering, sweating and panting. Her muscles pinched and twisted all over her body. Then she felt so hot she thought her brain would combust. She lay in bed with a bag of frozen peas on her head.
For once, ironically, Edda wasn't there. She had spent the day with her family. She had a husband but Jaz hadn't been introduced to him yet. Edda was quite secretive. She never talked about her personal life. Jaz was surprised Edda had introduced her to her daughters.
At first Jaz was glad she wasn't there, but when her fever got worse she swiftly changed her mind. The burning, stabbing, stretching, cramping pain increased to an almost unbearable climax. She muffled her cries with her pillow.
Edda finally came back at midnight. Jaz pretended to be asleep when she peered in to quickly check on her. Jaz didn't know why, but despite having waited impatiently for her to come back, when she was finally there, Jaz wanted to be alone.
Edda then closed the door quietly, heading back to her own room across the hall.
The pain in Jaz's limbs eased to a dull ache but after half an hour of tossing and turning, she couldn't take the heat anymore. It was already hot inside; the windows were wide open but there was no breeze. Even if her body hadn't been frying from the inside out it would still have felt very warm to her. Surrounded by the trees, the cabin became suffocated in a pocket of hot air, and she was swimming in it. She needed to get out of there.
But there was a rule; one amongst a long list that Edda had told her the first day she'd arrived: 'Never go outside beyond the cabin grounds after eleven at night. Especially, she'd emphasized, especially, never into the forest.'
So the curfew rule was confusing and a little disconcerting but when you felt like you'd stuck your head in a pit of hot coals and were drowning in it, the curfew became the least of your worries.
The river. The thought came to her loud and clear from amongst her muddled, feverish thoughts and the images of drowning in hot air swiftly turned into leisurely paddling in a cool, refreshing pool. The fantasy of bathing in the soothing water was too alluring to resist.
All she had to do was cross the fields, dodge the vegetable patches and she'd be there within minutes. It gave her the strength to lift herself out of bed.
She didn't bother putting on shoes and as quietly as she could, she climbed out of her window, landing a few feet from the edge of the nearest field which rose slightly higher than the path. The faint thud as her bare feet hit the dusty, gravelly path was loud in the night air.
It was cooler than inside her room but still humid and sticky. Her white vest and bed shorts clung to her body. She breathed in the air; the smells of the night clogging her sinuses, making her dizzy. She listened to the trilling of crickets and calls of the forest wildlife as they echoed in the darkness. The sound of a field mouse scuttering by made her flinch. She sniggered under her breath, shaking her head at her jumpiness. Then she scanned with her tired but sharp eyes across the moon-lit fields.
To her right stood the main building that was as black as ink and only distinguishable by the murky outline separating it from the sky and the faint lights glowing in the odd window. Bright lights weren't used in the buildings because apart from the fact they were uncomfortable to their eyes, Weres could see very well in the dark.
Jaz panned back across the fields with her ever improving vision, focusing momentarily on the glass greenhouses that reflected the light of the moon, drawing her attention upwards to gaze at it. Over half of the luminescent moon was visible in the midnight-blue sky. The stars were out in all their shining glory; the night curtain abundant with them.