“Give me that!” The map was snatched from her hands and Hafa was roughly pushed away. Light greedily opened the map and came face to face with a blank cloth. For a moment he said nothing.

Hafsa drank in her surroundings. It seemed to her she could never escape from the woods. Something was different. She was aware of who she was and why the message was absent from the map.

Her jaw slackened. She was conscious of the fact that she was in the comic. She’d thought this was impossible. She was wrong.

Light was glaring at her. She could feel his piercing stare.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, it was an accident.” Hafsa lied. Lisa was the one who had seen the map. She didn’t want to mention Lisa inside the comic though.  Hafsa was afraid to characterise her.

“What did it say?” Light held her by the shoulders. “You must know what it said.”

Hafsa hung her head. She had no idea. Light’s grip tightened, his nails bit into her shoulders. She winced.

“I’m sorry, I wish I could help you but I don’t know how.” Hafsa’s miserableness doubled. She felt useless.

Something in her tone must have touched Light, he let her go. Hafsa slumped to her knees. She was in this world again. She didn’t know why. It was exhausting to be afraid all the time, to constantly be running away only to end up back here no matter how much she didn’t want to be.

She was sorry to Light, genuinely sorry. How could she be so evil as to put him in a world that made him despise himself and turn him into a demon? She knew what it was like being bullied, wanting to fit in and all that stuff.

“I want to help you,” she whispered, afraid how she would do this.

Light shook his head. “There's no time,” he said to her, tucking the map away into his tunic. “We need to hurry.”

He took her by the arm and dragged her through the long grass until they reached a clearing.

When he reached this destination, he dropped her arm.

Without warning he squat down and grabbed two handfuls of poop.

He smeared the poo on her uniform and rubbed it in her hair.

“Hey!” Hafsa protested.

Light raised a finger to his lips. “Trust me.”

She didn't see what was so trusting in being slathered in dung. She was rancid. Was Light going to bully her too? Hafsa made a face. He sat in a pile of and wiped his dirty hands over himself.

“You need to hide,” he said to her. Hasfa was pushed into the grass. She squealed. It stank of decaying . The smell made her head spin. She pulled her shirt over her nose and mouth.

Light went to sit down in the middle of the clearing. It was then that Hafsa noticed the little tools he'd made. Spears, axes, knives, swords, a twined net made from hairs. He was making weapons. She was rather hurt about being shoved into what was presumably a toilet while he made all these cool things from scratch.

Hafsa was about to quit her hiding place when the earth shook. She fell on her and into a squelching pile of poop. It went on her skirt and her thighs. She wretched.

As if he'd known all along that a bumbling Vantry was going to come bouncing along, Light ignored how the ground thundered.

“Hey, hey, hey Light whatcha doing here by yourself? We is practicing for the tournament. Ain't youse gonna practice with us?”

Light pretended not to hear and continued to sharpen his dagger with a flint.

“Hey, hey, hey Light, don't youse ignore us. We is not happy.”

Light screwed up his eyes to look at the Vantry. “I'm not in the mood to practice. I fell into a pile of dung in case you haven't noticed and I don't want to get yelled at.”

“Yes, yes, yes we thoughts to ourselves something smells new and stinky but it's just Light. Youse does smell. The elders not like smelly Light at home but youse got to practice with us. Youse gonna be in the tournament. We don't want youse to die first.”

Light gulped. He didn't want to be the first to die either. He thought about taking up the offer. He couldn't fight the same way as his brethren. They were too big and ferocious, equipped with claws and fangs while he was small, needed tools and all he could squeeze from his brain.

“I'll wash up first Chun. You go join the others first.”

Chun was happy enough with this. He bounced off like an excited pup.

Light sighed when he was gone. One or other was always running after him. He liked his tribes folk but sometimes it was overbearing. He didn't like being kept an eye on.

It was a common fact, everyone knew he was scheduled first to die.

He stared at his fingers pink and raw. Should he run away before he was collected for the tournament games? His chances for survival were slimmer than fine hair. Light didn’t want to die.

He pulled out the map he’d hidden and opened it up. He stared at it hard as if doing so would help show little markings of its former message. Everything was gone without a trace. He should have known his luck.

The Vantry leader said the Wishing Stone was nothing but a mermaid’s fable. There was no such thing because if it was real then someone would have found it. Light swallowed the bitterness of failure. It was too late for him to go chasing after the stone but running away? What a scandalous idea it was! Not that he hadn’t thought of it before but the notion of actually going through with it was so preposterous. The Vantry blood in his veins would never allow him to back down.

“But I want to live,” he uttered hardly over a decibel.

He crawled to his feet. He’d made a buffoon of himself by pretending to fall into . He was only doing this so that thing in the grass, that wasn’t an Erris would be able to go undetected.

The Erris were not perfect at using their noses to sniff out prey, but they weren’t dreadful either. Only he, Light, was different in more ways than one.

“You can come out now,” he called to her.

No reply.

Light ran a hand over his hair and scurried to where he’d hidden Hafsa. She was lying in the grass with her eyes closed. He carried her out of there and lay her down in the clearing.

“Hey, wake up,” he tapped her cheek.

No response.

Light shook her shoulders. “Wake up, this is no time for sleeping.”

“Leave me alone,” she whimpered. “I’m covered in poo, I’m embarrassed to death, please don’t touch me it’s so gross.”

“So you want to lie here and be eaten by the next thing that comes your way?”

Upon hearing this, Hafsa jolted into a seating position, her eyes shaking with fear. “Will I really be eaten? No, I can’t be. I need to be here for this story to move along. I think I figured it all out while I was being poisoned by poop fumes.”

Light gave her a strange look. “What are you talking about?”