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now, he had to get back to his family.
    The three people lay in the dirt their bodies stiff and unmoving as the man approached. He needed to be be as far away from their hibernation place when the settled people arrived, in his weakened state he wasn't sure if he would be able to take on more than one grown man. He knelt beside the woman and stroked her cheek. “Melissa we have to go. Danger is fast approaching and we need to get to safety,” he said and repeated her name again. She began to stir almost immediately at the sound of her name and he gently kissed her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered open and she focused on the mans face and smiled. “Nathaniel, are the children safe,” she asked.
    “They are safe and still asleep beside you. I am so happy to see you my love,” Nathaniel said and kissed his wife gently on the lips. She smelt of the forest and the rich aroma of damp woodland soil. He smoothed her hair as some colour started to come into her cheeks and she started flexing her fingers, “We are not in immediate danger but the settled people will come soon,” he said rubbing the pale stiff skin of her limbs as the circulation slowly started to come back into them.
    “How long have we been gone,” she asked as she propped herself up and leaned into Nathaniel's arms and gazed into his eyes.
    “I don’t know yet,” he said.
    Melissa sat up further and started to wiggle her feet. She glanced over at the two children still deep in hibernation. “Is the war over?” she asked and Nathaniel could see the naked hope in her expression.
    “I don’t know it’s all too soon to know. I didn’t smell any of our kind in the area,” he said as his strong hands started to knead the tight muscles of her neck and shoulders.
    “Feels like we have been out for a hundred years,” she said rubbing her thighs and then moving down her legs. “What woke you from hibernation?” she asked.
    Nathaniel stopped massaging her shoulder and said, “Do you remember that time in Paris right after the war?”
    “Which one?” She asked.
    “Two,” he said and continued, “It was right after the ceasefire and we were walking along the Seine hand in hand, a palpable electricity in the air. Everyone was feeling it. Do you remember the scent we caught as we got close to the Notre Dame?”
    Melissa spun around and grabbed him by the hand and said, “How could I forget. Did you pick it up again?” and she flicked a dry tongue across her cracked lips.
    “Thats what pulled me out of hibernation. The damn scent yanked me out of the dark embrace and when the world returned to me I had already clawed my way out of the earth,” he said.
    Melissa ran her fingers through her hair and smoothed it back against her skull and said, “Did you see who it was that woke you?”
    “I tracked him back to his house. He lives close by, it was a young boy maybe ten years old,” Nathaniel said.
    She lifted his hand to her cheek and stroked it gently and said, “When do we go and get him?”
    “Tonight my darling. We put the children back into the earth and we strike tonight. I will not let it escape us again this time. It nearly destroyed us before, never again,” he said and kissed the back of her hands. “Can you walk?” he asked.
    She got up slowly and flexed her legs and then twirled, flecks of muck flinging off her rotten and tattered dress. She took a few steps and looked back at her husband and said, “My strength is coming back. We better move the children.”
    Nathaniel looked down at his two dirt encrusted kids, a young boy and girl with only a year between them. Their faces looked marble hard and as pale as fresh milk, he scooped the boy up in his arms and his child automatically wrapped his arms around him and lay his cold face against his fathers neck. Even in deep hibernation the children could sense the presence of their mothers and fathers. Melissa picked up the little girl and she also wrapped herself around her mother in a loving