Cruising the Unknown: Six Friends at Sea

The rain pelted down, a torrential flood of water that masked the landscape in a grey blur.

It had been raining all day, so much so that even the trees bent under the weight of their own water. The rocks were slick with algae, the mud thick and goopy. The group was quiet, each lost in their own thoughts. Harry’s foot slipped on a rock and he fell face first into the ground.

It took a moment for their senses to catch up to them. The pain was immediate and intense as they felt their skin get ripped open by the sharp bits of gravel. Michael grabbed Harry’s arms and pulled him up while Breayden grabbed his legs and pulled. They shifted him over to a patch of grass and sat him up. Thomas reached into his leather pouch at his side and pulled out bandages and alcohol, then handed them to Michael. Michael took them and started to wrap the wounds on Harry’s face while Thomas tended to his hands.

The rest of them watched silently as they worked, their hearts heavy with worry. They couldn’t feel safe in this weather anymore than they could feel safe back home before it all fell apart. The world had gone insane from what they could tell, but there wasn't anything they could do about it now except try to survive until it passed or until someone found them.

Breayden stood up suddenly, her eyes scanning the woods for danger. She held her knife tightly in her hand, ready to draw if she had to. The others looked at her confusedly; Breayden was a survivor but she hadn’t been acting herself lately. She seemed terrified at every possible thing that moved, which made sense considering the last time they'd seen people alive other than each other was months ago when they thought they saw some people moving through the trees ahead of them after a storm had passed in the middle of nightfall. They'd turned around as fast as they could and ran back towards home, terrified that whoever it was would be after them...but nobody ever came after them that night. They never saw those people again either, just flashes of movement here and there when they weren't looking hard enough...but there was always something there, always someone watching them from afar when they were too scared to look around them properly because fear kept them rooted right where they were...and then those things would disappear again once they looked back around at their friends who were all watching Breayden with worried expressions on their faces now that she'd woken them up from their thoughts like that.

At this point though there wasn't anyone else out here with them anyway so Breayden's frayed nerves seemed more like an excuse for her paranoia than anything else so Aaron decided not to say anything about it – he didn’t want her thinking he didn’t trust her or anything like that because he did trust her entirely; it was just that she didn’t need any more reasons than fears for things unknown keeping tabs on her as it was – so instead he just shook his head at her slightly as if to say “I don’t see anything either, you’re imagining things again” before going back to staring at the ground where Harry lay wrapped up tight against himself in fear at how badly he hurt all over his body and how close he'd come to losing everything good left in this world without having even done anything wrong other than trip on a rock during a thunderstorm while trying not to think about everything on his mind right now because he knew better than anyone else how terrible everything really was...the only thing worse than being alive right now was being dead because nobody wanted to be one of those things roaming around everywhere nowadays doing whatever horrible things people did before when nobody ever had to consider every single thing about humanity being wrong before this all happened because it just never mattered lest you ran into someone you didn't like or agreed with politically or whatever...it wasn't worth dwelling on something like that now though because nothing would change what had happened no matter how much he wished otherwise...what mattered now though is that these five people were still together despite everything trying its best not to keep them together anymore...and maybe if they could stay together long enough then maybe someone would find them eventually or maybe one day soon this whole thing would stop happening altogether if not for humanity then for God's sake because why wouldn't something happen soon if we're still here then? Why?

Aaron snapped out of his thoughts when he realized Thomas was staring at him intently with his piercing blue eyes, waiting for him to speak because every little thing outside their group mattered now – especially since Breayden wasn