Chip didn't want to admit they were lost, but...well, they were. "I thought you knew how to read a compass." His companion, a rabbit known as Fable, rubbed the back of his head and turned on the spot, looking out into the woods behind, back whence they came. There was nothing but a cricketing silence, and the eerie ambience of the darkness beyond. He turned back to his friend, who shook the compass in his hand. Unlike Fable, Hollin was...skittish, that much was obvious from the way he trembled and panicked. The rabbit's friend, a hyena, began to pace and huff, rubbing the side of his head and looking from Fable, to the compass, and back again. "Hollin. Chill." Fable insisted, placing a hand on the hyena's own, and Hollin sucked in a breath. He sighed, visibly sagging in his hiking jacket and jeans, and he briefly leant into the rabbit's side, appreciating his input. "Mmh. Thanks." He murmured, and Fable hooked an arm around his shoulder, squeezing him tight. He leant in close, pecking him on the cheek, and the hyena looked visibly flustered. "You know, you shouldn't be this nervous on a first date." Fable reminded him and the hyena awkwardly avoided looking him in the eyes, turning his attention back down to his compass. "I just..." Hollin began. "This was working fine before we left, and now it's...like this." Fable looked down at the compass with his date and frowned. The dial, that would typically point north, was spinning on its axis left and right. It didn't seem to want to settle, and just the sight of it made the rabbit pause. He'd never seen a compass act that way before...but then again, he was something of a city boy, so his actual experience with a compass was...well, back in middle school, on a camping trip. "Well, look," Fable suggested, glancing back the way they came. "Why not just...double-back, see if we can find out tent and just hunker down for the night? It maybe wasn't worth hiking this distance just to see a river..." "Yeah, you're right..." Hollin sighed. "Let's go." The two of them turned and headed back what they considered to be the where they'd come, but honestly, everything felt so unfamiliar to the both of them. Neither could be sure if he was truly the right way back or not, and in his anxiety Hollin tried once again to rely on his compass...yet the dial spun as dramatically and frantically as before. He couldn't make heads nor tails of it, and he was the de-facto 'country boy' of the two of them; he was meant to be the expert when it came to hiking...so much for that. They continued to walk for quite some time until it became clear they were no closer to their camp than before. They had set up a flash light to illuminate where they had set themselves up, but it seemed like the light had gone or, or they'd gone the entirely wrong way. Hollin was growing more and more anxious as time went on, and Fable was attempting to do his best to calm him down...but in the end, there was nothing he could do to relax his date. Finally, something opened up before them: as they stepped past a set of trees, a light ahead of them flicked on, revealing a wooden porch. Anyone who'd watched horror movies knew what the sight was like, and both men were apprehensive as they stood several metres away from it. The wooden overhang looked old and riddled with cobwebs, and despite a light being on outside, the inside was pitch black and foreboding, as evidence by the darkness beyond the windows. "We shouldn't--" Hollin began, but he suddenly yelped and jumped on the spot when a loud 'bang' resounded from his hand. He shook his hand violently and Fable stepped away, taken by surprise. "What the hell was that?!" Fable exclaimed, and Hollin blew on his hand before he cradled it against his chest. "The compass..." He began. "It just...blew up in my hands! It started to get really hot, but I thought it was just me..." "Are you hurt?" Fable stepped closer and Hollin held out his hand, revealing a particularly marked, but not bleeding palm. "It must have exploded upwards rather than outwards, I guess...good thing you're not bleeding. Having metal in your skin would be..." "Yeah." The hyena shuddered, before glancing to the house. "This is...kind of a last resort place, isn't it?" "Uh...yeah." The rabbit agreed, and neither of them could really refute not going inside...it was already dark, and neither of them knew what danger lurked in the woods. That, and it was getting horribly cold. As if the house read their mind, the door slowly creaked open, as if it were beckoning them inside. The two clutched each other's hand and shakily moved forwards towards the wooden porch, heading through the front door and inside. Slowly, the door swung shut behind them, but neither seemed to notice; there was a simple reason for that. The second they stepped inside was the second their lives ended. The porch light flicked off and the rickety old house receded into the darkness, awaiting another couple lost souls in the woods who were desperately trying to find their way home.