Runaways
an excerpt

Everything was shadowy and silent, a flat void. Once in a while, colored dots and streaks flew across Nicole’s vision, but then they vanished, swallowed by the black velvety silence. But wait! There was a sound, a faint beating that echoed through the cave of nothingness. No, it wasn’t really beating. More like a… a clacking sound. Clackity-clack, clackity-clack. Nicole listened harder, and it grew stronger. What could it be? It was too irregular to be a clock ticking, nor was it a woodpecker.
Then, Nicole realized that whatever invisible surface she was laying on in this abyss was moving along with the sound. Her mind grew slightly more alert, and she pulled herself out of the dream state to examine this movement. It felt a bit like a boat on choppy water, except whatever it was, it was warm- and it was alive!
Panicked, she opened her eyes- and nothing happened. There was something over her eyes, a blindfold blocking out the light. She wriggled her hands, alarm and adrenaline starting to rush through her. They were tied behind her back, wrists bound tightly with a thick, scratchy rope. As her senses became sharper and sharper, she realized that her ankles were also bound and hanging off of the moving surface, and her mouth was gagged.
Trying to calm herself, Nicole took in a deep breath of cold air through her nose. A distinctive, pungent scent filled her nose. It seemed familiar. She inhaled more deeply, trying to remember where she had smelled that before. Then, she heard a whip crack, and a loud whinnying. Of course, it was a horse’s scent!
Nicole’s satisfaction was cut short, however, when she heard the crack of the whip again. That meant humans. Now that she knew she was on a horse, she could sense the presence of a man riding it in front of her, and she could hear the hoof beats of more horses around her. People from her own village would have no reason to bind and blindfold her, Nicole realized with a sinking heart. That meant that they must be from the village across the river- the village everyone referred to as “the enemy village”. Nicole was captured.