My feet pound the jungle floor and branches whip my face as I flee for our lives.

Heart thumping, lungs burning, muscles screaming at me to stop. The girl I carry in my arms groans in pain as her broken leg is jostled. I whisper a breathless apology and run harder as the voices behind us draw closer.

Dusk had long since fallen and faded into night, with only the full moon and faint light of the stars to guide our path through the perilous jungle. The air was thick and damp, characteristic of the tropical environment and causing me to quickly be soaked in my own panicked sweat. The night birds' sweet singing had cut off long ago at the first shouts of men, and now the island had a strange quietness to it, despite the gunfire.

I feel the bullet whiz by my ear split seconds before the sound of the gunshot resounds through the jungle, the bare graze sending a sharp stinging sensation through the right side of my head. I curse. They actually dare to shoot me!

I know they want me alive. What are those buffoons thinking? Being unable to see me in the dense vegetation, they can easily shoot me in the head by accident.

Maybe they just don't care anymore. That would be problematic.

I duck my head as I hear another gunshot, and thunder through the bushes, panting. I weave between the trees as the pirate's voices slowly close in.

Skidding to a stop behind a particularly tall tree, I hastily begin to climb. I use one arm to hold my cargo securely, and the rest of my body to struggle up.

Heaving myself as far up as I can go, I huddle in the foliage, breathing heavily with scrapes up the right side of my body and face. I ignore the stinging as our pursuers' voices get increasingly closer. I hold my breath as the first of them run under oblivious to our presence. Five more run by before a man at the back slows to an easy run, looking around. The girl I hold whimpers pitifully, causing me to fervently shush her as quietly at possible. The slowing man stops abruptly under our hiding spot. He scans the area left and right. Dread descends and settles into my stomach like a heavy stone.

He heard.

His eyes stop on our tree, his gaze crawling up the trunk, scouring branch after branch. Just as it rests a few branches below us, a brown blur flies past me and my passenger and settles on the branch above the other pirate's head. The man jumps, taking a step or so backwards and eyeing the monkey warily. A cry erupts from the group ahead, prompting the man to hurry away, while the monkey scampers out of sight.

I only allow myself a couple seconds of breath before I jump out of the tree, landing on the ground with a grunt. The girl in my arms cries out in pain. I apologize hastily and whisper soothingly to the girl, before running again.

How long have we been at this? I wonder despairingly. My body aches with seemingly  hours of running endlessly.

Finally, I find a strand of salvation. We run into a cliff. At first I'm horrified, but then I spot a ground-level crevice. I'm too big to fit, but the figure I carry can easily slip in. I run over and gently tuck the girl inside. I take fallen branches from nearby trees and whisper to the girl in the cliff, "I'll come back for you, I promise."

The smaller figure nods weakly in response before I pile the branches in front of the crevice in a hopefully natural fashion.

With her in there, I was free of the extra weight, and she'd be safe from the pirates still chasing me.

Unless they stop pursuing me and find her.

I couldn't think about that.

I run back the way we came. I run closer to where I last knew the pirates were than I liked, but it is needed to draw them away from the location of my charge. I make sure to stomp and thrash about, even leaving a shred of my shirt caught on a bush for them to follow.

Minutes later I'm stumbling along, my vision becoming fuzzy, and the noise I'm making quickly becoming only half intentional. Exhaustion from a night of constant exertion eats away at my limbs, deadening them and making them unresponsive to my fervent commands.

I hear my pursuers gaining.

I trip, my exhaustion-weighted feet catching on some unseen object before I crash to the ground, rolling to a stop at the edge of the jungle. I manage to stand up as the pirates file in around me, gruff and nasty faces eyeing my near-delirium.

As they push forward, I step back. I don't hear the loud rushing noise over the blood pounding and crashing in my own ears, or see the waterfall until I go cascading downwith it. I see the men's faces vary from shock, to anger, to horror as I unknowingly step over the edge. Too little too late I see a couple lunge forward to grab me, but I'm already out of their reach. I don't have the energy to do much as mirror any if their expressions as I plummet down to my death.

As I close my eyes and fall to the rocky river below, I think of only one thing. The girl I was leaving behind, again.

Celia...