Part 13 of "For Havenkeep", my Patreon interactive story. Poles are posted to my patreon for patrons to decide on outcomes. The story is updated shortly after poles end. The story is free to the public - but is posted first and foremost to my patreon. If you like what you see and want to see as its made, please join or follow my Patreon. My Patreon can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/springfallendeer

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The plan is made: You’ll hide Alisra in the forest then go looking for your parents
Check the house first


Though your mind is cluttered with worry, you quickly determine that you cannot afford to just stand around hoping that your parents will turn up. The stampede that had just charged through here had left everything in disarray. A lot of your livestock had died. Chances were that other families had suffered similar animal casualties. The amount of smoke in the sky made it clear that yours was not the only house that had been set ablaze. Something horrible had happened while you were away. You had no idea what; but you knew that just standing around doing nothing wasn’t an option. However - bringing your sister towards potential danger wasn’t an option either. There was no guarantee that you could help your parents at all.

Your sister, on the other hand, you could keep safe. If anything had happened to your parents, you could make sure that your sister didn’t share that fate. After surveying the scene, you quickly determine that the best place for Alisra is away from it all. You haven’t even let her lift her head to see what had become of the lambs and the chickens that couldn’t keep up with the stampede. Shaken but determined, you turn away from home to walk back into the forest. With the stampede having already passed, you convince yourself that the immediate danger had already passed. The forest is far from the blaze that is your house - for flames to reach the trees, they would have to cross patches of rock and dirt.

You hide your sister in the forest. You pick the sturdiest looking tree and set her down beside it. She’ll be far enough away from home to avoid having to see the destruction - but she’ll be close enough to hear your voice when you return to call her name. She stares up at you as you set her upon the ground, her eyes wide with worry and damp with tears. Of course she was afraid. Why wouldn’t she be? A child caught in the midst of chaos was helpless without someone to look after them. This was your attempt at keeping her safe while you went looking for your parents. If you found them alive - you would come back and get her. If you found them but they were not alive... Then hopefully you could find an adult that you knew.

Regardless of what choices you made, neither you or your sister were going to be entirely safe. As much as you wanted to keep her with you, you didn’t want to risk getting her hurt. So you take a deep breath as you place your shaky hands upon her shoulders, mentally bracing yourself for the hardships that are to come.

“Alisra. I need you to stay here.” You issue the command to your sister, watching as her anxious expression contorts to a mixture of fear and confusion. She reaches to grasp the front of your shirt as you remove your hands from her shoulders. As much as it pains you to do so, you must pry yourself free of her grip as you prepare to turn back for home.

“I want to stay with you!” Alisra pleads in turn, her voice hardly louder than a whisper but still laced heavily with desperation. You force yourself not to look her in the eye as she continues to stare up at you. As she makes additional attempts at clinging to you, you find yourself being forced to be more firm. She has to stay here. You cannot allow her to follow.

“A-Ali, sweetie... Listen to me. Something bad happened. Something really bad. I need to go find Mum and Dad. You have to stay here, where it's safe. Stay right here and wait for me. I’ll come back for you as soon as I can. Okay?” You do your best to explain the situation to your sister without having to share too many details as to what had happened. You’ve tactfully brought her to a spot where she wouldn’t be able to see any of the animals that had been flattened by the stampede. A spot with a wide, sturdy looking tree with obvious white marks on its bark. The tree stood out to you, so you would know what to look for when you came back. Your sister proceeds to timidly tug at the front of her shirt, tentatively stepping back against the tree.

“You promise?...” Alisra asks, her voice strained now. She sounds as though she’s trying not to cry. At this point, so are you - because you’re absolutely terrified. All that you can do is clench your eyes shut and nod.

“I promise. I’ll come back for you.” You reassure your sister. When you open your eyes again and dare to look in her direction, all that you see is the image of her sitting at the base of the tree and burying her face in her knees. You let loose a shaken breath before starting back towards home. All the while you mentally dread that you may have made a poor choice by spending so much time doing this. The house had clearly been on fire when you walked back into the woods, but the blaze hadn’t yet overtaken the building entirely. You feared the house would have been reduced to ash by the time you made it back. If not for your exhaustion from running earlier, you might have been able to sprint back towards home.

The best that you could manage was a jog. You weren’t moving nearly as fast as you would have liked, but you definitely weren’t being slow. You burst past the woods as you made your way back home. Seeing as the fencing to the field had already been destroyed, you made your way across the wreckage, doing your best to keep from tripping all the while. Once or twice your foot found itself snagged by the wire fencing. The staff that you found earlier made itself useful by helping you catch yourself. When you felt your foot fail to lift from the ground, you managed to stabilize your body by planting the bottom of the staff firmly on the ground. By the time you made it across the field and back home, you were able to see just how far along the fire had come.

The blaze seemed worse from the front than it did the back. The majority of the roof was on fire. One of the walls had completely burned down, with one adjacent wall well on its way to suffering the same fate. As you hastily make your way around the building, you find that the wall at the back of the house, where the back entrance resides, seems to be mostly untouched. An unwarranted sense of relief washes over you as you look upon what seems to be a viable means of getting in and out of the house. That relief quickly begins to fade, however, when you realize that the door is shut. No one in their right mind would remember to shut the door behind them if they had rushed out of a burning building.

If your parents hadn’t managed to escape through the front door before the wall burned down, then they most definitely hadn’t used the back. By this point, your worry for your parents has grown so intense that it's legitimately making you feel sick. The blackberries threaten to make a second appearance. The amount of willpower taken to keep them down despite all of the stress may as well have been enough to help you push a boulder up a hill. The back door led straight into the kitchen, where you had last seen your parents. The main room, where your father would have taken his nap, was just a few steps from there. You could make the bold decision to check inside. Just to make absolutely sure that your parents weren’t trapped in the fire.

Or you could play it safe and check elsewhere. If the fire had progressed this much then chances were that you wouldn’t be able to help your parents, even if they were still trapped inside. If by chance they had gotten out and were looking for you, then they must have gone to neighbors to see if any of them had seen you. That would certainly be the more appealing of the two outcomes.

The choices to make grow more risky. Will you check inside at risk of yourself, or will you check elsewhere at risk of them?