In the Forests of New France
The ankle hurts, and you know you'll be limited to a rather unsteady limp, but removing the boot would be a mistake. You know the leg will swell, and when that happens... Well, you don't really want to walk home barefoot, especially not with an injured ankle. You hope that maybe the boot itself will offer you a bit of support for the damaged limb.
Steadying yourself on one of the nearby trees, you scan the darkened wood for a fallen stick long enough to lean on, to use as a walking stick. Your eyesight, forever less than it should have been, denies you the night vision to look very far without walking. You see more deciduous trees a short distance ahead, however, and stumble in that direction, hoping to find a suitable branch.
Even moving that short distance is hell for you. You begin to question your decision to keep walking on that ankle, but know you have little choice. Thankfully, you think, you do find a reasonably long fallen branch from one of the maples. Tentatively bending to pick it up, you frown at the rough, sharp end. Still, in whatever mad rush brought you out here, you didn't bring a knife. Stupid, you know, but so far as you remember you had no intention of getting yourself lost in the forest.
Leaning heavily on the stick to take some of your weight off the injured ankle, you continue on along the clearest of the deer trails. You can only hope and pray that it will bear you to more familiar areas, or failing that to the river. If you can find the river, you can make it home.
You continue onward for several hours before reaching a patch of particularly rough ground. It would prove treacherous even if you were sound, but with a badly swollen ankle it might well prove impossible to safely navigate the tangle of rocks and barely-proficient roots that form the face of the hill you have reached. You think, however, that it might be possible to see something from the top of the hill that you cannot now, and perhaps that might give you valuable information to guide you home.
The path around the hill is quite smooth, and it looks like another clearing or else some kind of open area is up ahead. It's even possible there's a small settlement there, though you don't want to get your hopes up just yet. Most of all, you just want to get home. And for your ankle to stop hurting you.
Steadying yourself on one of the nearby trees, you scan the darkened wood for a fallen stick long enough to lean on, to use as a walking stick. Your eyesight, forever less than it should have been, denies you the night vision to look very far without walking. You see more deciduous trees a short distance ahead, however, and stumble in that direction, hoping to find a suitable branch.
Even moving that short distance is hell for you. You begin to question your decision to keep walking on that ankle, but know you have little choice. Thankfully, you think, you do find a reasonably long fallen branch from one of the maples. Tentatively bending to pick it up, you frown at the rough, sharp end. Still, in whatever mad rush brought you out here, you didn't bring a knife. Stupid, you know, but so far as you remember you had no intention of getting yourself lost in the forest.
Leaning heavily on the stick to take some of your weight off the injured ankle, you continue on along the clearest of the deer trails. You can only hope and pray that it will bear you to more familiar areas, or failing that to the river. If you can find the river, you can make it home.
You continue onward for several hours before reaching a patch of particularly rough ground. It would prove treacherous even if you were sound, but with a badly swollen ankle it might well prove impossible to safely navigate the tangle of rocks and barely-proficient roots that form the face of the hill you have reached. You think, however, that it might be possible to see something from the top of the hill that you cannot now, and perhaps that might give you valuable information to guide you home.
The path around the hill is quite smooth, and it looks like another clearing or else some kind of open area is up ahead. It's even possible there's a small settlement there, though you don't want to get your hopes up just yet. Most of all, you just want to get home. And for your ankle to stop hurting you.