Touchstone 1 - Stray

November
    Friday, November 16
    WTF?
    Where the FUCK am I????
    Writing that down won’t give me an answer, but at least there’ll be a record of what happened. Not that I know what happened. I only know what happened to me – and, yeah, I’m not making much sense.
    My name is Cassandra Eloise Devlin. Cass for short. Never Cassie.
    I was walking home from school. I turned a corner, and I was here. No flashing lights, no warning, no zoomy wormhole: nothing but me one minute in Sydney and the next here.
    Here is… here is the problem. It’s definitely not Sydney. I don’t think it’s Australia, either, unless it’s Tasmania. But I’m sure they’d have gum trees in Tasmania, and that’s the thing. The trees are all wrong. Hills covered in trees, too many to describe but none of them remotely like Eucalypt. The birds sound wrong too.
    No signal on my mobile. I can’t spot any buildings or power lines. No planes have flown over. I haven’t been able to see anything at any distance, so I’m trying to get out of these trees, or at least to a lookout. I’ve been walking for maybe half an hour. My watch says it’s 3.30 but the sky thinks it’s later. I’ve found a thread of a track and I’m going to follow it.
    I need new feet
    Trees, trees, and, oh look, more trees. Green hills in every direction, severely lacking in distinctive landmarks.
    All those stories where people navigate by the sun don’t take into account crazy, crisscrossing animal tracks being the easiest way to get through all the trees and bushes. I wandered around until I found an overhang of rock, and decided to collapse for the night.
    Still no signal on my mobile.
    My watch says 6pm. It should be full light, but the sun’s fading fast, so I’m not even in the same time zone. An hour or two ahead would put me where? New Zealand? How far ahead is New Zealand?
    Of course, having been raised on a diet of Doctor Who , Buffy and Stargate , I’ve no need to stop at New Zealand. I could be in an alternate Australia, any part of the planet at any time, or a different world entirely. Another planet. Or in a mental asylum, strapped in a straight jacket, giggling.
    Since I really don’t like that last option, I’m concentrating on gathering details. I was hoping to try and spot the Southern Cross when the sun went down, but it’s cloudy. And cool: colder than it should be for nearly Summer. So I’m in a different time zone, in a different climate or possibly at a different time of year.
    Today was the last day of exams. History. We were going to go out to dinner to celebrate. Mum will be so worried. Will she have called the police? What will I say, if I get back? No-one will believe I just walked to another…somewhere.
    There was a stream a while back, so I’m not dying of thirst, and I filled up the Fanta bottle left over from lunch. The water was probably full of bugs and I’ll end up sick, but I was so thirsty and it’s not like I’m a smoker conveniently carrying a cigarette lighter so I could make a fire and boil drinking water.
    A fire would be damn nice.
    A quick catalogue of my wilderness survival gear:

    - School uniform: blouse, skirt, blazer, stupidtie, socks, shoes, underpants, bra.
    - Ponytail band and butterfly hair clip.
    - Backpack.
    - Pencil Case of Doom, chock-full of writey stuff.
    - 30cm ruler
    - Modern history notes – useless (or toilet paper).
    - Jenna’s birthday present, a blank-paged book with a blue and green patterned cover, which I’m writing in. I was going to give it to her this morning, but she was sick again and didn’t come to the exam.
    - Little packet of tissues (definitely toilet paper).
    - Mobile – close to useless, especially once the battery runs out.
    - Wallet – about $20, mostly in coins, and other bits of paper and plastic.
    - 600 ml Fanta bottle, full of suspect water.
    - Half a forgotten muesli bar, going musty in the bottom of my bag! Yay! (Gone now.)

    No knives, no matches, no blanket. No shoes good for walking for miles. This isn’t fun. It isn’t exciting. I walked into adventure and adventure has given me blisters. I have to try and go to sleep sitting in the dirt in a forest full of things making noises, and I don’t know where I am, I don’t know why I’m here, and…I don’t want to think about it.
    Saturday, November 17
    SO hungry
    How do you tell what’s poisonous? Now that would have been a useful thing to learn at school. I’ve found a couple of trees covered in