Cadbury's Quest

Entry Two

Entry Two

         Figuring I should try to stay put just in case; I hung out near that tree until night fell. When it became dark, the hot humid jungle became cool and worst of all full of mosquitos and every sort of insect imaginable. The stars twinkled exceptionally bright uninhibited by any apparent signs of civilization. Too uncomfortable in my surroundings to sleep, I tried to find familiar constellations in the sky like Michelle and I had used to do during those endless summer nights of childhood. I searched for the familiar ones, the big dipper, Orion, and Cassiopeia, the ones I could remember and always find. To my utter frustration, however, the stars weren’t lining up quite how I thought they should. The big dipper’s bottom stars were pulled in tight together forming an odd pointed look. Orion’s outstretched arm seemed folded in closer to his body and the stars that comprised his belt seemed all bunched together in a single glistening band where you couldn’t really tell that they were separate. I couldn’t even find Cassiopeia. Eventually I did fall to sleep curled up around my backpack with my Bruin’s cap pulled snug over my face to protect from insects.
         It was the humidity that caused me to wake up. I checked the time on my digital camera and it was only ten after eight, but having not eaten anything the night before, I was starving. I was starting to get desperate. How long should I wait to be found before I should start trying to explore my new surroundings? After a few failed attempts to kill time by writing in my song journal, hunger took over. I pulled out my cigarettes again, there were only six left.
         With all the vegetation, there was sure to be some kind of edible wild lettuce or berries. I decided to walk around a bit hoping to find something to eat. In the end, however, I could never decide if a plant looked poisonous or not. It was better to be hungry than die or get sick because of a stupid plant so I gave up. It then occurred to me that it might rain, so I decided to come up with some shelter. I knew it was a futile effort and would be comprised of mostly fallen branches from the jungle foliage, but I had to kill time somehow. While I was struggling with a tree branch for my sorry shelter, I thought I caught a glimpse of a figure dashing behind some trees. I immediately thought that it was a rescuer and my spirits soared. I shouted and started to run towards the trees where I saw the movement only to get there and see the same shadow darting behind some trees further off. Suddenly discouraged that I was not going to be rescued I decided to spend my time studying the mysterious somebody or something that was watching and evading me. I tried snapping some photos with my camera to see if zooming in on the still images of trees could help me but all I got were pictures of trees. Discouraged I sauntered back to my crappy shelter of branches wedged between the ground and my original tree.
         Starving and wondering what was taking them so long to find me doubt began to creep into my mind. What if they didn’t know what happened to me? Surely top scientist would be called in and Jacob would explain his machine to them but no one had ever time traveled before. What if this was a fluke and there was no way to rescue me? What if I was stuck here forever? Then laughing to myself I thought well at least forever wouldn’t be that long I would starve to death first. As dark settled in for a second night, I knew I couldn’t starve for another day. If I wasn’t found by morning I was going to have to vacate my base camp and search for some real food.