Rupert woke up alone. The rain gently plattered down on the canvas of his small green tent. His eyes were as bleary and tired as the rainy landscape he could see through the partially open tent flap. Waiting, hoping, praying, and waiting some more, it felt like a bad dream to him. It had been days since he'd last been home.
Slowly he remembered... the inn by the sea, family and friends.
But why did he run away into this wilderness?
That is a question he asked himself with growling belly the night before as he thought of the dinner he was missing. He asked the question yet again as he painfully pried boots from his blistered weary feet and sank to the ground.
Through the morning mist he saw a cloud of grey, minutely small insects drift his way. Not a breath of air stirred and the oncoming ball of moving and bulging midgies moved his thought momentarily away from feeling hungry as he curiously contemplated this natural phenomena. Mesmerized by their weightless motion, his eye caught the darting bird as it picked off the outsiders. Then, suddenly, they enveloped him in a frenzy, as if orchestrated by a flight general, sending him reeling into his tent - hurriedly closing the netting behind him, slapping and wiping his exposed arms, he wondered what he had done to deserve this bloodsucking onslaught.
Then with a sudden shift of perspective, this thought became, "What had the midges done to deserve such a fine warm-blooded feast?"
Rupert blinked, momentarily startled by the sudden shift in awareness. He was used to communicating with animals by now, but this was the first time he had linked minds with something as small as a midge... or was it the cloud of midges? Rupert wondered briefly whether each midge had its own mind or whether the thought came from the collective mind of the cloud as a whole.
But then his belly growled again, and his sympathy for the dining midges waned. He pulled a T-shirt over his head which ruffled his already toussled hair. Morning things, his brain slowly began to wake up. Run hand over face, no need to shave, roll up sleeping bag and tie it, tighten and tie his shoelaces, he'd slept with his boots on again.
He couldn't wait to find a stream today to soak his feet in some cool water. The drizzly rain was ending and he slathered some herbal insect repellent onto his arms, face and neck hoping that today it would work unlike the other damp, wet days he'd been facing. Light the campfire, put the kettle on to boil, take care of bodily functions. His mind was moving faster as he became more alert. What was that noise? He stood still and then pivoted in a circle to find the sound's direction.
Well, what do you know! He had a visitor!
In the space of an eyeblink, he could have sworn he had seen a grizzly cub rattling away with some glee at his camp cooking pot. But no, he was mistaken.