She was cold, wet, hungry and in pain. The sun was dipping beyond the horizon again. She’d lost track of how many days and nights she had spent in the cave. Thank heavens she had managed to crawl to this cave, without it she would have been exposed to the storms of the previous nights and would not have survived. The food she had packed in her backpack had almost run out but she still had one and a half bottles of water. By careful rationing, and leaving empty bottles out in the rain, she had managed to keep going for this long. Was she only delaying the inevitable? A fresh batch of tears cascaded over her cheeks. Her ankle screamed in pain, the joint lay at a strange angle. Gut instinct told her, if she attempted to walk on it, she would be in danger of losing her foot. With this in mind she’d been holed up in the cave with her foot elevated on a rock. When she had needed to relieve herself, she crawled out of the cave to one side and then back again. Surely her parents would have reported her missing and a search would have been instigated?
