They didn’t, of course. They had eaten the last of their food the night before and drunk all but the last few swallows of their water. Until now, it hadn’t seemed all that important. But their hunger was real and pressing, and suddenly they could think of little else. Bereft of breakfast and anxious to do something about it, they packed up the last of their things in preparation for setting out. There would be little chance for food until they got back inside the valley, and nothing that happened before then was going to make things any easier.

They began walking once more, still heading in the same general direction they had been going earlier, still looking for an end to the lichen-and-moss-shrouded forest. The sun rose above the eastern horizon, but the day remained overcast and gray while the air grew thick and sultry. Around them, the trees formed the walls of a maze that hemmed them in and held them prisoner. They could tell themselves there was an end to this, a way out, but it didn’t feel like it.

Neither of them spoke for a long time as they traveled, lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Pan didn’t know what was wrong, but something definitely was. Still clinging to the tattered remnants of his euphoria and anxious to share what he was feeling, he finally grew impatient. “What were you thinking about back there, sitting off by yourself?”

She glanced over. “Maybe I was thinking about you. Would you like it if I was?”

He grinned in spite of his uncertainty. “You know the answer to that.”

“I know the answer. But it isn’t what I was doing. I was thinking about something else.”

When she didn’t offer an explanation, he said, “Tell me.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. Tell me.”

“You don’t have to know everything about me.”

“I have to know this. Tell me.”

She shrugged. “I was thinking about choices and how we make them. About how some are so easy and some so hard. I was thinking how we make some because we want to and some because we have to. Does that help?”

He smiled. “Well, I hope last night’s choice was one you wanted to make and not one you felt you had to.”

“Actually, it was both.”

“Because it was something you’d been thinking about and…”

She wheeled on him suddenly, bringing them both to a stop. “Pan, let it go. I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

He could hear the irritation in her voice, and he was suddenly confused and hurt. “Don’t talk about it? What does that mean? I thought…”

“Last night was last night, and it’s over with. Don’t try to make more of it than what it was.”