#budjvl

It’s embarrassing, to say the least. Sylvia isn’t overfond of asking for help, even more unhappy with having no choice but to accept it. Ordinarily she’d send the stranger scuttling off with an unkind word, a withering glance but as it is all she can do is watch with wide eyes as crimson thickly from the pink that peeks through the hole torn in blue jeans. It’d happened so quickly she didn’t even realize what was happening until it was too late. An old tree with roots so long and dense had eroded the ground of the hill beneath her that it had given quickly and she had tumbled down, on hands and knees. Her palms are bleeding too. She supposes she’s lucky that the boy had happened to be passing at exactly this moment. Though she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t suspicious of a man who takes walks alone through the campgrounds at dusk. Wide, calloused palms come down on the wound and press; firm but gentle, stopping the flow of blood. Sylvia doesn’t wince but she looks pointedly away and inhales sharply. The woods are quiet and steadily darkening, there is no birdsong and the stillness is ominous; feels like a calm before a storm. “Thank you,” Finally, belatedly and with a thick tongue. “But we should get somewhere before it gets dark, shouldn’t we?” It’s rare that she should ask for direction from a man but now she does, seeing as she’s a stranger in these woods.