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drifting off into a dreamless sleep.
    She wasn’t sure how long she had been asleep when the noise woke her. Minutes or hours, it didn’t really matter. All she knew was that something unnatural had sounded in the night near her.
    Dylan sat up, reaching for the knife that still dangled precariously from her waist. She tugged at it, taking too long to pull it free. The noise came again, a huffing that vaguely reminded her of the noise Cook made when she moved a heavy box from one end of the kitchen to the other. As though something in the darkness was recovering from an act of great exertion. Or sniffing the ground for something…for Dylan herself, perhaps.
    She closed her eyes as she moved into a crouch, allowing her ears to become the dominant sense in the absence of sight. The sound came again, to her left. She opened her eyes, straining to see what it might be, but all she could see were different degrees of darkness. When the noise came again, it was behind her. She stood and moved around the perimeter of her little raised platform, searching the ground below her for something…movement, maybe. But there was nothing.
    “Go away!” she cried at the top of her lungs.
    She knew it was probably not the smartest thing in the world to do. But she thought that if it were a wild animal, maybe the sound of her voice would frighten it. If it was a human, well, she figured there was no way she could protect herself. She was pretty sure it no longer mattered.
    If she survived this test, it would not be because of her awesome survival skills.
     
     

Chapter 10
     
    Dylan spent most of the night in a crouch, listening intently to the night around her. She never again heard the odd huffing sound. There were a few other sounds: the skitter of something moving across the pebble-filled dirt, the tweet of a bird, the heavy footstep of some unseen creature. But nothing ever climbed up on her small platform of rock.
    She regretted not sleeping. Although her skin no longer ached as it had before, her muscles were sore from walking the previous day, especially her calves. She walked around her little platform for a while before setting out her clothing, including the heavy piece she had taken off the day before, wrapped tight against her to protect her from the cool breezes of the morning.
    She knew she could not spend the day here, as much as a part of her really wanted to. She had to find a source of water. She had denied herself the refreshment of the second bottle of water all night, but her willpower was quickly fading. She had to have more water.
    Dylan carefully climbed down the edge of the flat platform and began to walk again. She pulled her compass out of her pocket and watched the dial spin until it settled in a single direction. It amused her to watch it move with her movements. She was not sure she was still going in the direction the short, round woman had told her to go, but she continued to walk in basically a straight line. It wasn’t like there was a lot in her path, just those short, green plants with their sinister thorns.
    She heard noises behind her a few times, felt movement in the air around her as though something big and quick was rushing past her. But each time she stopped and looked around, she saw nothing. It was beginning to spook her, these things she did not understand.
    Only a short time after she began to walk, the heat began to rise. She slipped off her outer clothing only to discover that the odd redness on her arms was gone. Must have been exertion, she told herself. Like Deena, one of the younger D dorm girls, whose cheeks always turned a bright red when she played outside. Or maybe she’d simply been so tired that she had imagined the pain and the odd color.
    Or maybe she was just going crazy.
    As Dylan walked, she found herself remembering things Davida had told her late at night. Dylan had trouble sleeping as a small child. She often had nightmares that caused her to scream out in the dark.