Up a Tree and Down Again
Posted on Sat Jan 30th, 2021 @ 7:56am by Lieutenant Bonnie "Bon-Bon" Durnell
Mission:
The Jungle
Location: Jungle
Timeline: Current
The climb was a slow slog as she moved from branch to branch. Not being able to use her arms independent of one another meant she had to be vigilant with her hand placements. Halfway up she found a double branch strong enough to hold her weight and wide enough that she wouldn't fall off if she nodded off in the night.
Balancing herself using a branch above herself and the joint branches below, she managed to settle in and get comfortable. Or as comfortable as one can be in a situation where everyone and everything is out to hurt you. Not yet tired she started using the tree and its bark to rub against the fibers of her rope bindings.
Slow steady strokes, one after another she scraped back and forth. The motion was weakening her bindings slowly, unfortunately it was also making a horrific noise as it grinded away the bark until she was left with just a sticky substance and the core of the branch left. Bonnie sniffed at the substance, it was a cross between maple sap and a sugary sweet hydraulic fluid.
Frustrated that her bonds had not broken, she locked her hands onto a small broken branch above herself and took to looking at the stars in the sky. She couldn't find any familiar constellations, and the canopy of the tree wasn't helping her to pinpoint anything which resembled a planet. Nothing better to do, she just watched the stars.
She allowed her eyes to close briefly, every little noise causing them to open once more. Never a camper she could never get used to the idea of being outdoors with the wildlife. As she sat there though, in the thick undergrowth, she began to hear a pattern in the noise. Something one who worked around computers would recognize. She listened closer.
Owl hoots. Two minutes later chittering sounds of mice. Two minutes later a growl of some cat-like beast. Every two minutes a new noise. Every thirty minutes the cycle repeated. She looked at the stars again, they had not moved. Neither had those distant clouds from earlier. She couldn’t confirm, but this environment didn’t feel real, but simulated. That was how everything was being so precisely controlled. It felt like a rather elaborate holodeck and like any computer program it was only a matter of time before it could be broken.
Morning in the jungle brought with it a rain shower. The tree cover provided protection from much of the rain but the wetness was enough of an annoyance to wake her from her nap. That and a pinching-tickling sensation upon her hands. She looked up between raindrops at her hands. There, nibbling at her ropes was a cluster of purple ants with small red stripes. "Ah Camponotus Consobrinus." She mumbled referring to the common sugar ant, which these were not.
They were eating the hardened sap in her ropes and simultaneously eating through her bindings. But they were also nibbling at the sap on her skin. She wanted to react but in a way they were doing her a favor, as long as they didn't bite her hands she just had to have patience.
It tickled at first. But then, it didn’t. As the sap on her hands dissolved into the mouths of hundreds of ants, they continued to nibble. And as they nibbled, she began to squirm. They had gotten a taste and now they wanted more. Even as she pulled her bindings away from the ants, they followed the scent and began marching into her direction, swarming into her hair. She violently shook her head, to brush them away.
Another nibble, and she began to yelp as she lost her balance and fell. Fortunately for her, the bindings on her wrists caught hold of a small outstretched branch, keeping her from falling to her death. Unfortunately, she felt one of her wrists snap under her weight, and her knee struck the core of the tree trunk. In pain, tired, and now sopping wet from the rain she looked down and spotted a new problem.
There below, interested in the noise she had made and the rustling of the tree was a hunter, rifle in hand. He had not spotted her yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Worse yet, the rope bindings, the only thing holding her in place, were spitting where the ants had nibbled through. She closed her eyes and longed for the routine of angry morning sheets.
