Building Blocks

3rd Person:

Deep in a forest of Trees like an ocean of Oak rests a man, Resting in the shade of a colossal Oak tree he is clad in a light blue tee shirt and a well-worn pair of blue jeans. The man is on the younger side and doesn't look a day over 20, His skin is pale, his hair is black, well-groomed, and his soft hands and feet betray his easy life.

"ughhhhh",

"five more minutes" He groaned barely consciously.

The light persisted. Never dimming, only getting brighter as the sun rose high into the clouds.

"Ugh, fine" He whispered out, finally opening his eyes. His eyes Shine the color of rich Sapphire, and soon they are wide in a look of udder shock.

Whispering to himself "What the f---? Where am I?".

"I just went to sleep in my …" He whispered to himself but soon lost his train of thought as he was unable to remember how he came to be in such a place.

His head spun and the world suddenly became fluid he collapsed to his knees and vomited.

A few minutes passed and as soon as the world stopped spinning, he wiped his hands and sat down away from his vomit. Again, he thought about who he was and how he came to be in the middle of a seemingly random forest and came up with one word: Steven.

'Steven… that must be my name, but why can't I remember anything else.'

This thought refused to leave his brain, many variations of this question entered and promptly left his brain when none were answered. With no answers coming soon and his legs again stable enough to support him he jumped to his feet and wiped the dirt off his hands.

Inspecting himself, he found that his pants and shirt were already quite filthy and he had only just woken up.

Giving himself a few more minutes to fully appreciate his situation he quickly decided it was time to get himself busy.

'I need to find someone if I want to be rescued, but I have no idea where this is.' He thought quietly to himself.

There was only one thing to do: wander around the forest looking for any trace of civilization. So that's what happened, Steven chose a direction to walk in but not before planting a large stick into the ground right where he woke up.

After planting his stick into the ground he began walking while dragging a stick behind him, the track left by the stick was small and barely noticeable but by looking back while walking he would be able to tell if he started walking in a different direction of his path.

With that, he began walking…

The hours of walking ticked by and his feet started to feel worse for wear. Sometimes he would step on a stick or stub his toe over a root and a string of curses flowed out of his mouth.

During his march, he saw many wonderful things. Parts of the forest were lush with wildflowers that covered the forest floor.

The flowers seamlessly connected to others of different colors, the most beautiful sight he had ever seen, or at least the most beautiful he remembered.

Bushes with a variety of berries The trees were enormous, some seemed as though they scraped the clouds in the sky, but such a thing was a figment of his imagination.

Sometimes he would see sheep or rabbits through the trunks of the forest. When he neared the animals, they would hear him clumsily stepping on sticks and quickly dashing from the area.

Soon after he would return to his trail and continue on his way.

Continuing his merry way, the hours continued to pass while he saw more sights he had never seen before. Occasionally he would see horrifically large holes in the ground, these caves opened into the forest like the hungry Maws of a beast.

Just the presence of these caves sent a small shiver down his spine. Something about them just seemed misplaced, not their existence but just their general scale seemed wrong.

The caves were numerous but not enough to question whether their formation was artificial, they could very well be natural but just a little weird.

Soon the sun started to lower itself in the sky. It was rapidly approaching the horizon.

The day's temperature wasn't warm or cold, but it almost certainly would have been an unpleasant night if he didn't have a fire.

'Either I keep walking and looking for people that may or may not be there, or I build myself a nice fire and continue early in the morning' thinking to himself.

It's a rather easy decision, setting up camp and building a fire would let him keep his strength through the night and potentially let other people come to find him.

With his decision finalized, he stabbed his long stick into the ground in a small clearing with some space between the trees.

After establishing his camp, he began collecting logs and small twigs for kindling. After his last trip for more logs, he instead found a little bit of tree moss, nice and dry and nice and fuzzy.

'Yeah, kind of nice. I think I could sleep on this.' He stuffed it under his shoulder and walked back to camp.

Collecting his sticks into a pile he then began digging a fire bit with his stick. Overturning dirt and removing the plentiful grass from his fire pit he sighed.

"Even with everything happening it would be a shame to burn this beautiful forest" mumbling while on his knees constructing his pit

eventually resorting to using his hands to shovel the dirt after breaking apart the dirt with his stick.

Next, however, was the hard part; it was time to construct the fire itself. There were several methods to light a fire while camping, unfortunately, the only one within his means was the hardest, using friction to find the ignition temperature of the wood and thus lighting the wood aflame.

Logs in the pit and bedding secured there were only two things to worry about, his fire and the fact he was going to bed hungry. unfortunately, there wasn't much to be done in the way of food, but going to bed hungry wasn't the worst thing ever.

Sticking a particularly dry branch he found from a dead tree between his legs he took a smaller stick and began rubbing it quickly between his palms against the branch.

The spinning stick against the branch created heat but Steven wasn't able to make enough to alight the branch.

Eventually, the branch began to smoke "Just a little bit more" he muttered as he quickened his pace.

*snachp*

The stick in his hands did not seem up to the challenge and broke into two pieces in his hands.

Unfortunately, as quickly as the smoke came, it left.

"haaaa, fuuu---!" he yelled while throwing the broken sticks and inspecting his hands.

After 30 or more minutes of intensely spinning a stick between his palms, his hands hurt and felt like lead; They looked no better, the skin on his palms was rubbed raw and looked spotty.

Finally, the sun was beginning to set, deciding to rest a moment before retrying he watched the sun begin to melt behind the horizon.

After a few moments, he reassumed his position with the log between his legs and began rubbing wood together again. In minutes, much quicker than before he had the wood smoking and continued at a steady pace.

More and more smoke poured out of the connection between the pieces of wood and eventually a few small coals of fire could be spotted. Although he brought it for his bedding, he ended up putting the moss against the smoke and soon it was burning quite nicely.

With his kindling lit he then put it between smaller sticks and put it under logs in the pit. Feeding the fire more wooden sticks until it caught the logs.

Eventually, the logs were well-lit and a nice fire was roaring just a few feet from Stevens's body. Now that he saw how flammable the bedding was he was reconsidering sleeping so close to the fire.

Grabbing his bedding and moving a few more feet from the fire to keep his bedding from burning the sun finally collapsed behind the horizon completely. There was no light besides his fire, the moon, and the stars dancing across the sky.

Involuntarily a "Woah" left his lips, the sky was clear and the darkness of the universe brought even more beauty and meaning to the stars. Out of everything he saw today, this was the most magical.

After staring at the stars while attending to his fire he decided it was time to finally get to sleep, after all, he had a lot of ground to cover tomorrow.

With the vision of the stars in his brain, Steven drifted into his vast sky of sleep.