Chapter 6 "My.. head…" Misty moaned, trying to sit up. Suddenly, a strong pain shot through her right leg and she screeched and froze, trying not to edge on the pain. Her vision blurred when she opened her eyes. Something big and grey was nailing her leg to the ground from knee-down. It was a dislocated bus seat. Other various, yet minor bruises that covered her body hurt like hell. She felt like a dead piece of meat and just fell back onto the dirty, toppled bus floor when her head hit something and she winced as she turned to look. It was a stranger's bloody arm… and it wasn't.. attached to anyone… She screamed and shot straight up, for once, taking in the horror of the inside of bus 177. Everything was tossed everywhere- from luggage, to body parts. The scent in the air made her stomach queasy- it was of rotting, bubbling corpses. Bubbling? Cooking… dead body parts?? She looked around and spotted a few places where lava gushed and squirted from the burned holes on the side of the bus to her left- also known as the front of the bus- where people lay unconscious and cooking. She wanted to throw up. Never had she seen such horror… A thin stream of the hot liquid shot through the windshield and then, she began to panic. The bus was melting and her leg was trapped. Misty grunted as she tried to pry her leg from out of under the unforgiving seat. Her numb leg was blue from the crush and she had no feeling left in it whatsoever, so she had to pull with her arms and back. As she struggled, more lava dripped into the bus. The acidy substance in the air made her eyes burn and water and the stronger scent of decaying bodies made her choke back her oxygen. Her muscles began to sore from the pulling, but she wouldn't give up. The bus cried out and the steel began to scrape along the ground again. For some reason, the bus was moving, crawling slowly along the ground. It took her a while to realize that it was sliding down something. She screamed when the seat in front of her clamped down on her leg further. It wasn't painful, but just the sight of it was enough to gross her out to the point of screaming. Was it the end? Will she die now? A small grunt behind her caused her to jump. "Oh my god, are you alive?" She looked over her shoulder and Clay was running over to her. Despite how much pain she was in, she couldn't have been any happier to see someone to help. In a matter of minutes, Clay had managed to pull the seat up from her leg. Misty attempted to stand, but only fell back down to the floor. He had to carry her out. Lava began to pour in through the front of the bus, and since it was shaking, Clay found it hard to run for the emergency exit at the back of the bus. Finally being able to look out a window that wasn't covered in ash or lava, they were able to make out that the bus was indeed sliding down to the base of the volcano, slowly, but surely. In seconds, they reached the ground and he hopped out of the exit. Lava. Fire. Gas. Clay ran as fast and as far as he could while holding the frightened girl on his back from the bus. It was bound to- …-blow up. The explosion caused the ground to shake beneath them and he collapsed into the dirt. Small fragments of lava glittered the air and bus metal went flying everywhere. He was only thankful that it hadn't blown up earlier. Misty was able to sit up, holding together a long, bloody scrape on her arm with her left hand. "Are you okay?" she asked. She noticed the bloody gash in the back of the man's head and gasped. Is he dead?? "Are you okay?!" The man groaned a little, breathing in a little dirt. "Yeah." She sighed in relief. Taking in her surroundings, the relief bubbled into a more previous feeling of worry. "Where are we?" "No! You can't eat the pink ones!" Alarmed, Clay tossed them to the ground, "Why??" She scoffed and rolled her eyes, even though her actions remained invisible to the back of his head. "You obviously have no outdoors skills." "And you do?" "For your information, I've been an outdoorswoman for nearly three years. But just because you're an indoors-type of person, it's no excuse that you don't know the difference between the pink and the red berries." He waited a while to ask. He sweatdropped. "What is the difference?" "Oh." Misty would've face-faulted if she could walk and wasn't being carried around. "I can't believe you're almost as dense as Ash is." "Who's Ash?" "He's… it doesn't matter who he is. The point is, is that you should know the difference between ripe berries and.. um.. un-ripe berries." "So the pink are the ripe ones and the red are un-ripe?" "No! Oh, give me a break…" "I can't believe you brought a gun…" Misty said nervously, digging through his open pack with her left hand. Her right arm was cut pretty badly and her right leg was useless as well. The two of them had managed to wrap the cut with some banana leaves and weeds to tie it. It wasn't the best, but it worked. Misty smiled and pulled out a bag of marshmallows. "You weren't planning to camp out were you?" "Huh," Clay looked up from his hand-made fishing pole with a questioning look. "Well, actually, I was. I was trying to get to Guatemalio before the storms, but I guess I'm a little late, huh?" "Here's your first aid kit." Misty announced happily pulling out a white box with red writing, "Alright, Clay, you need to help me, now, please." Clay sighed and set the long bamboo stick onto the ground near a tree. He carefully held out her arm and removed the 'bandage', peeling away a thick layer of blood from the pain in her arm. She winced and looked away. He clicked open the box and removed a dark brown bottle, then he squeezed a little portion of the liquid into the wound making Misty hiss at the tingly pain. It lasted for a little while until he wrapped a small amount of gauze around her forearm and the cut and fastened the ends with the little, metal butterfly clips. Misty smiled at the somewhat clean sensation that handed pain much more than a couple of tree leaves and weeds. Clay glanced nervously at her right leg. "I don't know what to do there. Maybe after a while, the feeling will return or-" "No, I don't think so," Misty said sullenly, "It sort of looks like the aftereffects of frostbite, and people with frostbite… need it cut off." Clay stared at her disbelievingly, "I'm not cutting off your leg, Misty." "I'm not asking you to! But I'm just saying that my leg is probably dead- the muscle, the tissue, the skin… everything." "Well, when was the last time you tried to stand?" "I don't know. Maybe an hour ago." "Try again, then. I mean, who knows. You might be the victim of a miracle." Misty chuckled sadly, "Well… with my luck, I doubt it." Clay smiled. "Come on, just try. You never know!" Misty screeched as he pulled her up to her feet in one swift movement. She inhaled sharply and expected to fall right back onto the ground and making her bruises only worse. After a shaky moment of concentration and attempted balance, she fell. Her one foot with feeling in it slipped forward, causing her to stumble, and eventually fall backwards, into Clay. "Ow." "You took the word right out of my mouth." Clay said. After he helped her back up, he held her to stand while gripping her shoulders. "Now, can you walk, or can't you?" He said to her face with a small, yet hopeful smile. "I cannot walk." She said dimly. "Well, I don't want to carry you for another five miles until we get to the next town. Now, try again." Misty's glare fell to the ground- the ground of which she will eventually fall onto yet again at her feeble attempt to walk with a dead leg. Clay wrapped an arm around her waist to keep her from falling again and maybe even making her condition worse than it already is. She lightly blushed at the all-too-kind gesture and it reminded her of Ash the last time she fell on her ankle and couldn't run through the rain without his support. 'Maybe if he was here,' she thought, 'I could walk right.' The sudden odd feeling of the empty-ness around her waist made her gasp and she suddenly heard Clay laughing triumphantly a few feet behind her. A few feet? And yet she wasn't on the ground in the dirt? As if the ground were to be listening to her thoughts, gravity pulled the rest of her to the ground and she yelped as she hit the ground. Her hand rested on her right leg and brushed it tenderly, feeling a lot of pain probing through her bad leg. "I can't believe you let go!" "You were walking." "I know I was walking!" She growled. 'Oh my gosh, my leg… it hurts. It hurts!' Misty grinned. "Clay, my leg hurts! It's so painful, too!! Ha ha!" Clay watched her smile at the pain and winced at the sight of this insanity. "Misty, are you feeling alright?" "No, this is the best pain I've ever felt in my life!" "Misty," Clay began, "Maybe we should get you out of the sun for a second." "Don't you get it, Clay? I'm not supposed to have feeling in this leg! But it hurts so much!" "Ah!" He grinned at the confession, "I guess it's healing then. Well, that's good to hear." "What do you think the stars are made of?" The topless tent of theirs lay on the skin of the beachside by an ocean. Clay wasn't too sure about the idea of lacking a roof over his head, but Misty insisted that the stars above an ocean are the prettiest and he figured that if the stars were visible, why worry? Clay turned his attention to Misty's inquiry. "Gas?" She shrugged, deciding whether the answer was worth her own. "Well, maybe scientifically, they are. But a friend of mine told me that the stars symbolize friendship and love. He said that everyone has a star and the closest to yours would be your soul mate or at least your best friend." "How do you know which star is yours?" He asked, finding her answer much more interesting. "Well, first, you close your eyes and when you open them, the first star that is most beautiful to you and the one that you feel 'closest to' is supposed to be yours." "Okay.." He closed his eyes briefly and slowly opened them. "There. The fourth star from the North Star." A slow silence ate at the atmosphere as if it were a surprise to Clay. Misty turned silent for a second, and he could see her look away from him. "What's wrong?" "Nothing. Mine's the fifth star from the North Star. I-It's the one right next to yours." -- "Well… So, I guess-" He was interrupted, not by words, but by Misty standing silently and walking out of the tent of overly large leaves. She stepped into the soft beach sand and made her way slowly to the ocean's water. The salty, warm breeze skimming from the surface of the deep blue swept her loose hair into tangles behind her neck. From a black volcanic rock, a gentle spray of water eventually ended up dripping down her knees. She looked up to the fourth star again and sighed. In the ocean breeze, she could faintly hear her name being called all around her. She felt the sand sweeping up around her feet and the misty breezes surround her. She looked down and saw that the soft sand was circling her ankles and soon, the rest of her. And her questions were all answered at once, when an ebony feather fluttered onto her shoulder. The sand settled, the ocean sprats rested, but her name on the wind continued to beckon her. It was soft, almost nothing, but everything altogether. Could this have been the place in which he died? No! Misty fell to her knees. She could never look into another ocean ever again without remembering his death. Could she never love the ocean again? 'Not while he's gone,' she thought, 'Not while I'm without Ash." The disturbed feather slid from her shoulder and into the hands ready to cup her face- the hands that needed her hide her tears from her own conscience. And from the ocean. And from Ash. Her name, mistaken for riding on the wind, now echoed from the huge ocean and all its water and contents. The water was screaming her name and yet she must ignore it for the rest of her life. Even so, there were no one to blame but herself. And why blame herself? Well, she didn't know, that's why she blames herself. "This… is where he.. died." She whispered sadly. "It doesn't matter which beach. It's still the ocean." "Misty?" She shook with surprised and stumbled as she tried to stand, covered from head to toe with embarrassment. "What." "What's wrong? Why are you crying?" She spun away from him and continued to face the ocean. "It's none of your business." She heard him sigh in retreat and she heard sinking footsteps leading away from her. "It's because-- You picked his star!" She confessed. He turned around with the utmost confused expression on his face. "What do you mean, 'picked his star'?" "You… Y-you stole Ash's star! B-but.." Misty's could feel the warmth clouding behind her eyes and the painful tears drip down her cheeks as her vision of his sympathetic expression became flooded and watered. "Is that what this is all about? Ash? Is that why you're always so quiet? Well, guess what, Misty, I have no idea who this guy is! You'd never tell me when I ask!" "Well, I'll tell you who he is! He used to be my best friend and he killed himself and now, he won't leave me alone, and I have to find him, and that's why I'm here, and that's why I have to keep it secret." "You have to find him? How do you find someone who's dead, Misty?? How do you expect to find him if he's a corpse?" Misty turned her posture to the water- the cool, crystal-clear, gentle ocean that had continued to whisper her name. She faced him once more before she began backing away, slowly into the ocean behind her, feeling the cold water lap at her sneakers. His moonlit expression turned to worry and she somewhat smirked sadly to him. "Just watch me."