Embrace Your Inner Ginger

Now completely lost, Matt kept searching for Dave, his hope regenerated by the discovery of some more strands of long ginger hair. He walked for a good half hour, every so often picking up pace at the sight of a shape that resembled a body. He heard a loud thud in the distance and started to run to where the noise had come from. There was a silhouette, a curled up body. Maybe it was the hobo he’d met earlier… but no! He could see ginger hair glistening amongst the white snow.
Matt began to run faster and faster and faster as the relief of finding his friend hit him. Suddenly he tripped and was launched face first into the numbing snow. Fortunately, he was able to leap up unscathed and continued more cautiously towards Dave. He jogged towards him making a quiet, high pitched ‘aaaaaaahhhhhh’ to alert him to his presence. He found Dave curled up on the cold snow, ranting, to himself seemingly, about nothing in particular and with a small stream of translucent saliva creating an expanding puddle in the snow.

“David! Good! Looking for you! Come with me!” he said happily. His instructions were followed and he led the ginger out of the clearing towards the cliff face he could just make out through the trees, hoping to find a cave or something they could shelter in. They were lucky, finding a small alcove in the rock, full of leaves but no snow or puddles. Exhausted, Matt collapsed on the floor, checked Dave was doing the same, and fell straight to sleep.
He was woken by the sunlight reflecting off the snow drifts and spilling into the cave. By the position of the sun, he guessed it to be about half past six in the morning. The snow had piled up a lot during the night, making it tiring to walk any substantial distance, so when he wandered outside; he sunk into a snow drift. This reminded him of the events of the night before, so he hurriedly pulled his phone out of his still sodden pocket to ring the others to tell them the good news. A combination of the cold temperatures and melting snow had ruined the circuitry in the device though, rendering it useless.

“Jesus!” he yelled, “Why does nothing ever work when you need it to?” At this sudden outburst, David jumped in shock, woken from his hallucinations. Well he would have jumped if he was standing, but as it was, he sort of jerked sideways, sending leaves cascading everywhere.

“Where am I? How did I get here? What happened? Waaaa!” he cried.

“Dave!” Matt cheered, “You’re awake!” He jumped on his friend and gave him a massive bear hug.

“Get off me, I want to get up!” Dave groaned, pushing himself away from Matt and up onto his feet.

“Woah,” he continued, stumbling, “I stood up too quickly, I’m really dizzy now.”

“Are you sure? You look funny.” Matt rested his hands on Dave’s shoulders, steadying him, “Your pupils are massive! What did you do while you were lost?”

“I, I, I can’t actually remember…” He replied unsurely, racked his brains for his missing memories, “I think I remember a hobo and some mushrooms…”

“I saw that hobo. He looked rather dodgy to me. And what about mushrooms? You didn’t eat any did you?”

“I think I might have done. Wait, yes I did!” His voice grew louder as he remembered the encounter, “I ate mushrooms the hobo gave me…” He trailed off, realising what he’d done. Matt slapped him round the head in despair.

“You idiot. You ate food from a stranger! I’m pretty sure those mushrooms you ate were magic, and not in the good way. Anyway, you seem okay now, so we’d better try and find the campsite again. Everyone was really worried last night.” Dave looked slightly embarrassed, and coughed to hide it. He sauntered into the sunlight and fell straight into the snow drift Matt had found just a few minutes ago. Expecting to be laughed at, he was surprised when he heard nothing. He jumped up and spun around to see his best friend and saviour looking troubled and in pain.

“What’s up? You look like someone died.”

“Dave, I did something terrible. I lied to Holly. I told her I wouldn’t go wandering off on my own as I wasn’t stupid…”