Morning comes quickly in the woods. One moment I was asleep in the bed of Steve’s truck, Steve having taken the inside with no mosquitoes and soft upholstery to lie on, and the next I was up and thinking of breakfast. The sun was up already. That was both good and bad. Good because we hadn’t brought a lantern and the fire had burned down. Bad because we had a lot to do and we were burning daylight. No one else was up yet, either.
I took a quick look around. I didn’t see anything unusual. I looked again. Everything seemed to be okay. I Scanned the area. There was nothing I could find except Kaylee. Her control wasn’t habitual enough to last through sleep. Well, that and the fact that I hadn’t told her it was possible or told her how to do it. I’d have to make a mental note.
Fortunately, Steve had pulled the coffee pot out of the trailer the night before while Kaylee and I had been on our walk. I started the camp stove and put some coffee on. We’d be needing some fuel for that later. I took a short walk outside of camp and had a second to think while I was performing my morning ablutions. It dawned on me that we had been utterly stupid to have not set a guard the night before. We were all tired and traumatized but we knew there was a chance we had been pursued. I wouldn’t let that happen again.