Chapter 2

Chapter 2

When Amelia pulled up the chatroom interface, she was met with a digital dumpster fire. It was pure, unadulterated chaos.She could almost hear the collective screeching through the screen—the kind of frantic, high-pitched noise that usually gave her a migraine within seconds. Amelia had always preferred the company of trees to people. Bark didn’t argue, and rivers didn’t demand constant attention. She hated crowded places with a passion that bordered on the physical; the heat of too many bodies and the overlapping scent of perfumes and sweat made her skin crawl.

But she also couldn’t stand being trapped in a house, a suburban box designed to keep the world out.

So, she’d spent the last four years doing the only logical thing: fleeing into the wilderness alone.

It had started as a personal documentary, a way to prove to herself she could do it—that she wasn’t just “quirky,” but capable. But when her hard drive hit capacity and her bank account hit zero, she’d begrudgingly uploaded the footage to the internet.

“Who would want to watch me struggle to light a fire in the rain for forty minutes?” she muttered to the empty air.

Apparently, everyone. She’d turned her antisocial hobby into a career, much to her own lingering confusion. She still remembered a comment a fan had left that had stayed with her: