Chương 12: First Steps on the Path

Lloyd packed his backpack methodically, without unnecessary haste — like someone who had long since thought everything through and was now simply carrying out the plan. The black backpack lay open on the bed, and he placed things into it one by one: food for several days, two bottles of water, a first aid kit with basic supplies, a flashlight, spare batteries, a coil of rope. Nothing extra. Only what might be needed. He was dressed in black pants and a black heavy hoodie.

The room was quiet — only the refrigerator hummed through the kitchen wall, and outside a car passed by occasionally. The morning light barely filtered through the curtains — grey, diffused, without shadows. The kind of light that comes when the sky is covered with clouds from horizon to horizon and the sun simply dissolves into them, leaving no trace.

There were almost no marks left on his face from the recent fight — the bruise under his eye had turned yellow and faded, the burn on his cheekbone had healed over, his lip had closed up. As if nothing had happened at all. Only if you looked closely — a faintly visible pinkish mark on his cheek, barely distinguishable. When the packing was done, Lloyd reached toward the bedside table and pulled out a knife.

Not some cheap thing from the nearest hardware store — a proper one, heavy, with a comfortable dark wood handle and a blade he had spent a long time carefully sharpening the evening before. It had cost him a pretty penny, and it was worth it. Lloyd turned it in his hand, examining the blade — it caught even the dull morning light and flashed for a moment.

"Well. This is the only thing I can take with me. I definitely don't have enough money for a relic." He tucked the knife into the side pocket of the backpack — somewhere easy to reach — and zipped it shut. The backpack settled satisfyingly heavy in his hands. Lloyd weighed it, gauging. Fine. Not too heavy, not too light. He slung the backpack over his shoulders and adjusted the straps. He stood for a second in the middle of the room — glanced around it briefly, for no particular reason. Bed with a crumpled blanket.

Bedside table with a phone charger. Poster on the wall, slightly crooked. Same as always. Everything in its place. He walked out into the hallway. By the door, on the coat rack, hung an orange jacket — old, worn at the elbows in places, but sturdy. He took it down and threw it over his shoulders, zipped it halfway. Next to it, under the coat rack, stood his red sneakers — worn, with a slightly scuffed left sole, three years on his feet.

Lloyd crouched down, pulled them on, laced them up, stomped his foot against the floor.

"Now that's significantly better." This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. He straightened up and turned toward the hallway. — I'm off! Might be back tomorrow! — he called into the depths of the apartment. From Rozi's room came a reply, without pause, as if she had been waiting for it: — Be careful on your hike. And don't fall down the stairs again like you did last month. Then — a quiet laugh, barely audible through the closed door. Lloyd's face twisted.

"Didn't think she'd actually believe that." He stepped out and quietly closed the door behind him. Outside, autumn was in full swing. Lloyd walked along the pavement, looking at his phone — checking the map, confirming the route. Dry leaves rustled underfoot, swept along the curbs in thick russet layers. The wind kept catching them and driving them across the asphalt with a quiet scraping sound, spinning them into small whirlwinds at the walls of buildings and then dropping them.

The trees along the street stood half-bare — here and there a few last withered leaves still clung on, dark burgundy and brown, but most of the branches already blackened in bare tangles against the sky. The city looked the way it always looks in the middle of autumn — a little shabby, a little tired, but familiar in its own way. The sky was heavy. Grey, dense, low — the kind that comes before a prolonged rain, when clouds crawl slowly and inevitably and there is not a single gap between them.

The air smelled of dampness and rotting leaves — that specific autumn smell that cannot be mistaken for anything else. Lloyd pulled his gaze from the phone and looked up.

"Hope there's no rain. Though where I'm going, that probably won't matter much." He put the phone in his pocket and kept walking. There weren't many people out — an autumn morning, a weekday, everyone going about their business. An elderly woman dragged a wheeled bag, not looking around. Two people in business coats walked at a brisk pace, talking in low voices. A cyclist in a raincoat rolled past — hood pulled up, head down. An ordinary city. An ordinary morning.

Lloyd turned off the main street into an alley, then again — and gradually the buildings began to thin out. The asphalt gave way to a dirt path, firmly packed and damp from the night's moisture. The path led to the outskirts, where the city's buildings cut off sharply, as if severed — and a wasteland began, with withered grass, scattered hawthorn bushes bearing the last shrivelled berries, and low trees standing apart from one another.

The silence here was different — not the city kind, filled with background noise, but a real one, with occasional birdsong and the rustling of grass. Ahead stood a hill. Not steep, covered in yellow and brown autumn grass, with a narrow path running up the slope. The path looked untouched — the grass at its edges wasn't flattened, the earth hadn't been broken by other soles. It seemed no one had come this way in a long time. Or perhaps ever.

"First." Lloyd stopped at the foot of the hill. He stared at the path in silence for a few seconds. The thought was simple, almost mundane — but something in it still scratched at him. No reviews. No other tracks. Just a site with a brief description and coordinates that had brought him here. The wind swept across the slope, bent the grass — and died down. Somewhere high above, in the bare branches, a bird called out briefly and went quiet. He adjusted the strap of his backpack.

Exhaled — slowly, evenly — and stepped onto the path.