The silence was massive, almost pressing upon us. It was almost strange how quite it could be in a forest. This living city with a block-like structure except with trees rather than buildings. And animals, lots of animals.
- "Have you seen all the animals around us?" I dared to ask after a while. "It's almost like they're following us."
- "They are." Jamie said and stopped. I stopped in her tracks and so did all the animals around us.
- "Scary..."
- "Nah... They know me, and they know I usually walk alone. They're curious to who you are. They'll probably leave us alone in a couple of minutes"
- "You must come here often then... If they know you I mean."
- "Not as often as I used to... I think I have a special aura or something though. They always come and check up on me when I go into the woods. They don't usually stay this long though. Should we go on?"
- "You were right... I am having a hard time with my leg, so if you don't mind I'd like to rest for a while."
- "Oh..." she said and finally turned around and faced me. "I was hoping you could go for five more minutes. There is a creek up ahead that is a perfect resting spot."

It turned out to be more like half an hour of more walking, but I didn't point that out to her. She probably did the calculations with her own pace in mind, because even if I wasn't hurt there would have been no way we could have walked that distance in five minutes. She was however right, it was a good resting spot. Suddenly the trees were a bit less dense and the canopy opened up. The trees had tiny spots of lights dancing all over them from the reflected light of the creek. The water even swept with it a nice breeze, and the pressing silence was broken as the water rushed.
- "The water is clean enough to drink, and deep enough to soak your leg if you feel like." she explained as she put the backpack down and stretched.
- "Are you tired?"
- "Nah... Didn't even break a sweat." She didn't lie. We had been hiking for a good while now, and I was actually pretty hot and bothered, but by the looks of her she seemed well rested.
- "Do we have something to eat in here?" I said and slapped the luggage. I wasn't all that hungry to be honest, but she had been so adamant about carrying that thing so I just wanted to touch it. It didn't budge one bit.
- "Let me look and see what I can find. I'm not sure where everything ended up in there." She tried to shove me aside gently, but I grabbed hold of the backpack as she did, and neither me or the bag moved.
- "Seriously? What did you pack? This thing weighs a ton..."
- "But I have no problem carrying it right? Don't judge me... I thought... you're injured, and I know you know some about me so... I thought I didn't have to act around you." She must have thought a lot about this, but I felt a bit struck by her seemingly sudden defensive mode.
- "I'm sorry. I didn't know that. I should have trusted you." She must have picked up on my confusion and she turned down the hostility.
- "Don't apologize... I shouldn't assume that you'd figure that out... I want to be honest with you and just tell you, but I've been carrying this around since I was a kid. I've never been this open and it's new ground for me."
- "Don't sweat it... I know a little something about chosing carefully who you share information with and who to keep it from." I rolled up my pants, got rid of my socks and shoes and put my legs in the creek and let out a deep sigh.
- "It's nice isn't it? I love coming here and dipping my feet."
- "Yeah... Nice and cool... I can feel my pulse beating even in the healthy leg. Almost hard enough to hurt, but it's a good pain. Makes me want to strip down and lie in the water to see if I could make my whole body feel like that."
- "I don't think the water is deep enough." There was a pause and I could see she was thinking about something. "Do you like pain?" She looked a bit concerned as she finally asked. I got up and started to get undressed, and she looked away. "What are you doing?"
- "I'm going to get in the water. Take a chance and lie down. It looks deep enough to cover me, and it would be nice if you joined me." I waded out to the middle of the creek. "You're nuts. Look, it's already up to my belly button. I'll need to find a rock or something to sit on if I want to keep my head over water."
- "Or you could just sit closer to the shore?" She was starting to undress as well.
- "Good point." I found a good seat. The water was kind of rapid and clear and if I wasn't seated I would most certainly have been carried away. It moved fast enough to keep the banks clean from dirt so it was mostly rocks and pebbles to sit on. "It's not really pain I'm interested in. It's... I don't know. Fatigue... In my line of work I sit all day and concentrate. It's just nice to make the body work, makes me feel alive, makes the body sing in tune with the mind. All that concentration makes my mind tired but not the body, so I need to work it... The body aches but it's a good ache. You must feel it too, but perhaps you are more used to it than I... If you even get tired." I realized as I said it that I might be threading to close to her secret. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry..." She had already gotten into the water and she threw me a carrot.
- "Don't apologize. It must be so hard for you with this weird deal you made with me... not asking questions."
- "Right now I was thinking what this carrot is for..."
- "Weren't you hungry?"
- "Oh... yeah..." I had neglected to tell her that it was a device to touch the bag mostly. Or it started that way anyway. Once I started chewing on the carrot I actually found myself pretty hungry. She tossed me another one as soon as I was finished with the first.
- "As I was packing I thought to myself 'Who in their right mind packs carrots as a snack?' then I remembered it was basically all I had home."
- "I like it. It's crunchy..."

Small talk was has hard today, but I didn't care so much. She didn't seem to mind either. We just sat there and basked in the sunlight for a while. My whole body was pounding, and I started to feel the walk in my bones. I couldn't remember the last time I had walked for more than an hour straight, and even though I considered myself to be in good shape I was starting to feel tired as I sat there. It was nice in a way though. I didn't feel so stressed out. The only thing that bothered me was my leg. The water was helping, but it took much longer for my leg to relax than the rest of my body.
- "Are you having second thoughts?" Jamie said suddenly. I was obviously not so subtle about my ache.
- "Nah... It's a bit uncomfortable, but I can manage. Do we need to go?"
- "We can hang here for a bit longer, if you feel like you need it. The schedule is looking good so far."
- "You made a schedule?"
- "Not a proper one on paper or anything... I'm comparing to when I was looking for you as a kid. We're moving significantly faster than young me."
- "I thought... never mind... I promised I wasn't going to ask..."
- "Ask away... I'll answer if I feel comfortable enough."
- "Aren't you fast? Like faster than avarage?" She gave me a long hard look, and I could see the gears turning behind her eyes, mulling over wether to share or not.
- "It's not that I'm fast really. It's a by-product of what I am. Everything you've seen me do is not intentional. It just bleeds through from..." she was either chosing her words carefully or regretting telling me something, "the real me... When I was looking for you I did it as a regular eight year old. It was after I found you that I switched gears."
- "Did it start with me? Or were you able to do... what you do before that?"
- "It started when I was three... or I guess I was born with it, but my earliest memories of it are from around then. Realizing I wasn't like others." She just stopped there and gave me a smile and kind of spaced out. I figured she was done for now.

I decided to get up. Even though we weren't in a hurry I thought it might be best to get moving if we were going to get anywhere with my leg. Standing up was easy enough, but finding solid footing to climb out of the water proved to be harder. The cold rocks were slippery and my two first attempts just ended up with my feet sliding down to the same spot I started from.
- "Need a hand?" Jamie asked. She was still sitting down with a strange look on her face. A mix of amusement and concern. "Is the leg bothering you?"
- "The leg is fine" I lied. A small lie though, because the leg was felt better now, but I had a feeling it might be acting up again once we started walking. "I just need to find a not so slippery part to climb out of here."
- "It's pretty steep over there." She pointed to where she got in. "Might be easier to deal with than these slippery rocks."
- "Nice, thanks." I made my way over there. It was a pretty good ledge but the water was much deeper so I had to crawl out, and then I just flopped down in a patch of grass. I decided to lie there for a while to dry in the sun. I heard her move around in the water as well, getting close to the ledge.
- "Why do you feel the need to be so tough around me? I still see that your leg hurts. You limp a bit... also look at that bruise. It's got to hurt, and not in the good way."
- "Are you checking me out?" I said in a flirty tone as I tried to steer her away from the subject of my pain.
- "Well, you've had a couple of hours of trecking to look at me, don't you think it's fair that I get to have a look at you now?" she playfully retorted.
- "Fair? You think it's an even trade that I get to see you clothed and you get to see me naked?"
- "You could have looked while we were in the water if you wanted to... besides, you've had hours. I've only had a minute like this." I laughed and thought about it for a moment.
- "You have a point, but I still just saw the backpack mostly if I tried to look. Not that I'm admitting that I did. I was watching the magnificent nature around us." She threw water up at me.
- "Liar!" She splashed me again. "And that's for lying about the leg."
- "Aw... I was planning to dry in the sun for a bit, but you got me wet again." She snorted. "What's so funny?"
- "I got you wet."
- "Nice... are you five or something?" I closed my eyes to enjoy the sun when I heard her splashing and getting out of the water. I also felt that something was blocking the sun, and it started to drip on my skin. I could sense her looming over me. I was just about to speak when she dumped water over my face.
- "I'm only acting my age!" she sang as she sat down beside me. I tried to shoot her an angry look, but she had her head in the clouds and didn't notice me so I resumed the drying off in the sun.

- "I've been thinking about kissing you since this morning." she said after a while. "Not sure what to do about it... because I don't want to mess up you know?" She still wasn't looking at me. "It's a rare connection between us, and it's confusing. I haven't found that with anyone here in town, and I don't want to make a fool out of myself and throw myself into something that might mess things up. I guess this was what you were thinking about after the last time."
- "Yeah... along those lines... I believe you called it a jumpstart."
- "I hardly remember what we said. I just have the picture of you coming down the stairs with no pants while I was sitting by the table... There was a split second where I thought that this is what it is to live together with someone you really care about. To get to see the little moments where the world just disappears and there is just you... in that sweater with no pants... coming down to eat breakfast."
- "That really is a jumpstart."
- "Yeah... I hope I'm not freaking you out."
- "Not at all... It's nice to get it confirmed that I'm not the only one who is a bit confused."
- "So... should I kiss you?" She still wasn't looking at me.
- "That is up to you." I was looking at her until she finally turned her head around...