“I hope you understand why you have to go to New York, Oli.  It’ll only be for a few months, and I’m sure you’ll make plenty of nice, new friends.” I rolled my eyes as I listened to my mother’s speech for the 300th time.
“Why can’t they just hire someone to help them on their dumb farm? I don’t see why I have to do it.” I said.
“Olivia, you are well aware that your aunt and uncle can’t afford to pay anyone ever since the drought, plus you are the fittest person in this family.” She replied.  Just as I was about to rebut, we heard the train’s “Choo, Choo!”
My mother pulled me close, and I didn’t understand why at first, but then the train doors opened and we were suddenly flooded with hordes of people coming on and off of the train.  I could feel myself getting nervous as I realized how long I would actually be gone.  I think my mother saw my anxious face, because she held my arms with her firm hands and said 3 words.
“You are strong.”
With those words, I wasn’t scared anymore.
Soon, the crowds had cleared up a bit and my mother and I had said our goodbyes, so I headed towards the giant, smoky train.  I looked back, to wave at my mother one more time, before I apprehensively stepped on board.  I took a deep breath, just as she had taught me, gave the conductor my ticket, found my seat, and began patiently waiting.
It seemed like ages before the train gave its final “Toot!” and we were off.  I’d been on a train before, but that was when I was real little, so I don’t remember much.  For the first hour, I sat, glued to the window, amazed by the mountains and trees speeding by.  The vast landscape was mesmerizing.  The vivid reds, yellows, and purples of the sky were enough to make someone cry.  The way the thick trunks of the trees merged into the greenest grass I had ever seen, was magnificent.  I was so astounded, that I decided to write a letter to my mother that I would send to her when I got to my aunt and uncle’s home.  I told her about the beautiful landscape and my seat on the train, and then I put it away to work on later.
Suddenly, I started to hear small murmurs throughout the train.  Soon, the murmurs turned into loud talking.  The loud talking turned into gasps.  The gasps turned into screams.  The screams turned into chaos, and as I looked out my window to see what all the commotion was about, my eyes locked on to the horrifyingly broken bridge that our train was hurtling off of.
Sheer panic shot through my veins. I had about three seconds to do something, before our car got to the break.  I grabbed the cushion from my chair, squeezed in between my seat and the seat in front of me, and prayed that I would survive.  Then we were in the air.  I shut my eyes and braced for the impact.  Terrified screams erupted from all around me as we smashed into the water.  The river started pouring in and I quickly realized that during the crash, the seats had caved in on me.  What I thought was going to keep me alive, was actually going to kill me.
“HELP!” I screamed.  “I’M STUCK! I NEED HELP!”  A man with a bleeding head wound splashed over to me.
“Don’t worry sweetie, I’m gonna get you outta there.”  He grabbed my arms and pulled as hard as he could, until I had enough room to wiggle out.  I freed one of my legs, and used it to pry myself out.
“Thank you!” I sputtered as I raced towards the back of the train, which was still above water.  I got to the door and kicked it with all my might.  The lock popped off and I swung it open.
“Wait!” I heard someone call.  I turned around and it was the man with the head wound.  “You can’t jump into the river, the current is too strong!”  I looked down and saw that he was correct.  I turned back.
“So what do I do?!” I yelled.  I was panicking now and couldn’t think.  He replied calmly again.
“Just jump onto the closest piece of land.  You might break a leg, but that’s better than dying.”   I turned towards the door, and started to look for rocks in my reach.  “And remember kid, you are strong.” He said.  I froze at the familiarity of those words.
“What did you say?” I said as I turned back around to face the man, but he was already gone.  I stood there, confused, for a second, but realized that my time was running out.
I found the nearest rock, about 20 feet down, and threw myself off the train.  As my body slammed into the hard, wet rock, I knew something was broken, but I didn’t care.  All I need to think about now was getting onto some dry land, away from the river.
I laid on the rock, recovering, for a few minutes
“Was I the only one on land?” I thought.  “Who else mad it out?  Where did that man go? Am I going to be okay?”  I had so many questions shooting through my brain, but no one was there to answer them.  Just then I had a sharp realization that, it was just me now.  I was all alone.  No one was coming to save me, and I didn’t know where I was.
I decided that if I wanted to survive, I needed to get moving.  I raised my head and shoulders off the rock, checking to see if they were broken, they weren’t.  Next, I tried to prop myself up on my hands.  My wrists ached, but they weren’t broken, so I tried to sit up.  Once again, there was an ache in my ribs, but I could still move.  Finally, I was down to my legs.  I could already see both of my knees and shins starting to bruise.  I reached my hands down and tried to bend my right leg, as slowly as humanly possible.  The second my knee left the ground, a wave of agonizing pain rushed over me.  I immediately set my leg back down and moved on to the other one.  This time the pain was bearable.  I was able to fully bend my leg, but I still didn’t know if I would be able to walk on it.
“The only way to find out is to try.” I half-heartedly laughed to myself.
I spun around so that my back was facing the river.  Slowly, I started to pull myself up to a standing position, with another rock above me.  I tried to map out, in my mind, the driest and safest route to the top of the cliff. 
Inch by inch, step by step, I began pulling myself up.  Never before had I been so glad for butter churns.  Every new rock I got to, I had to stop and rest my arms for a while.  By the time I got to the very edge, my clothes were pretty much dry, and it was starting to get dark.  I pulled my body up to the final rock, and as soon as I felt the soft, dry grass on my feet, I collapsed.
The next morning I woke up to find myself situated dangerously close to the edge of my rocky demise.  Startled by the deadly drop, I lurched backwards and rammed my body into a tree.
“Ouch!”  I yelled, more out of anger than pain.  I quickly remembered where I was and the events of the day before, and I felt sad.  “Stop it Oli,” I said to myself, “There’s no sense in bein’ sad when you made it out that train alive.”  I almost tried to get up, but sharp pains in my legs told me that wasn’t a good idea.  I leaned against the tree, wondering how I was ever going to get home.  I felt like crying.  I’d made it all this way, but now I was just going to die in some strange land a few feet from the river.
“No Oli,” I said to myself again, “You. Are. Strong.”  Those 3 words had gotten me through every difficult situation that I ever faced.  “You. Are. Strong.”  I repeated over and over to myself as I struggled to stand up against the tree.  I took two steps and immediately fell over.  I got back up and tried again.  After many unsuccessful attempts at walking, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it on my own. 
I looked around, and spotted a few branches on the ground.  “Crutches!” I yelled out excitedly.  I took a small log, and used some ribbons from my hair to tie it onto the larger branch.  This gave me a platform to rest my arms on.  I finished the second crutch and decided to test them out.  I propped them against the tree and pulled myself up to a standing position again.  This time, I put the crutches under my arms and stood on my left leg.  They weren’t stable, or comfortable for that matter, but they did the trick.  I hobbled around for a while, to get used to my new walking apparatus, and then set off on my journey.
The first day was easy.  I found my way back to the train tracks and started walking alongside them.  Halfway through the day I got a little hungry, but it was nothing I hadn’t felt before.  I found a suitable spot to sleep, under a small tree, and spent the night there.  The next morning, though, I was starving.  It’d been more than a day since my last meal, and I needed food.  I knew that I didn’t have the heart to kill one of the rodents or small animals.  When I was little, I stepped on a bird’s nest, and cried for the next few days.  But, I didn’t know what plants were safe to eat either.  My mother had always tried to teach me, but I never listened.  I thought it was silly, seeing how all of our food came from the market or it was homegrown.
“Mother, if I make it back home alive,” I said to the sky, “I promise I’ll listen to everything you say from now on.”
I decided that the best way for me to get food was fishing.  I tied some lace, from my boots, to the end of a sturdy stick.  I didn’t know much about fishing, but I figured it couldn’t be that hard.  I took my hairpin and bent it into a hook, and then I found a big rock and hit the end, to make it pointy.  Next I fastened that to the end of the string.  I found a relatively large creek that led into the river, and stuck my make-shift fishing rod in it.
A good hour of trial and error flew by, before I saw it.  A foot long, magnificent monster of a fish, and it was just floating there, glistening by my feet.  I didn’t move a muscle as it swam closer to my hook.  I held my breath when the fish put its mouth around the hairpin out of curiosity.  It retreated, a bit startled, but then slowly made its way back to me.  The glorious fish made the mistake of trying to eat the hook this time.  I yanked on my fishing rod and stumbled backwards.  My dinner flopped around on the land for a while, before it slowed down and fell flat on the grass.
On any other day, I would’ve felt awful, and grieved for the fish, but not today.  I was hungrier than I had ever been, and I needed to survive.  I grabbed my prize and laid it on a tall rock in the sun, out of the reach of and pesky animals.  Since I didn’t know how to start a fire, this was the best I could do.  I left my fish to bake in the hot, summer heat, and headed off to look for other food.  I hunted around for a while, in a small wood, but I couldn’t maneuver my crutches in between all the sticks and roots and branches, so I decided to end my search and make my way back to my fish.
“OH NO NO NO!”I screamed, panicked at the sight before me.  “SHOO! GET AWAY! AAAAAAH!” I fumbled up to the bird that was eating my dinner, and threw my left crutch at it.  Annoyed by the big stick, it slowly flew away and left the fish.  I fell to the ground in relief.  “Ugh, this is why I hate birds.”  I said to myself as I struggled to get to my feet and assess the damage.  The belly of the fish had been nibbled on, as well as the face, but it was still edible.  I brought it back over to the creek and washed it off as best as I could.  I didn’t care that I might get a bird disease, or that it wasn’t fully cooked.  All I cared about was getting it into my stomach.  I devoured it, scales and all.  I ate and ate until all that was left was the bones.  When I was finished, I threw it in the creek and tied my fishing rod to my left crutch so I could travel, and made my way back to the train tracks so I could follow them home, or catch a train passing through.
A week of walking, drinking creek water, fishing, and sleeping under rocks crept by.  I wondered if I was ever going to get home.  I figures there weren’t any trains coming, because they were waiting for my train to get back, and nobody knew that it had crashed.  Every once in a while, a wave of sadness or loneliness would sweep over me, and I would barely make any progress on those days.  The thought of never getting home and nobody knowing how close I had got, haunted me.  Sometimes the only things that kept me moving were those 3 words my mother told me at the train station.  “You. Are. Strong.”  I said those words over and over again until they made no sense, every time I felt like giving up.  I was determined to get back home.
I woke upon the morning of my eighth day in the wilderness.  I got up with my crutches and tested my legs, to see if they were better.  They weren’t.  I decided to skip my routine fishing trip and walk all day.  I still had no idea how close or far I was from town, but the more progress I could make each day, the better.
I hobbled along the train tracks for a good six hours before I took a break to rest, and get some water.  A tall tree by the creek provided me with protection from the hot sun, while I drank as much water as I could hold.  After a short nap, it was back to walking.  Sometimes I wondered if I was even moving because, the train tracks looked the same all the time.
I stopped to adjust my crutches and check on my legs when all of a sudden, I saw a skunk out of the corner of my eye.  I knew that I wasn’t fast enough to escape it, even though his legs were the size of breadsticks, so I figured, my best bet was probably going to be to stand as still as possible and slowly back away.  It got closer and closer, and I got stiller and stiller.  The horrid creature walked up to me, about a yard away, and stared directly into my eyes.  I felt a tingling in my nose and lost all hope.
“Those stupid allergies pick all the wrong times!”  I thought to myself.  I knew running wouldn’t make a difference in the smell, even if my legs weren’t broken.  “Oh, for the love of God!” I said just before I sneezed, and a plume of skunk spray washed over me.
I slowly opened my eyes to see that the skunk was no longer there, but the smell definitely still remained.  Never before in my life had I smelled such a foul odor.  I gagged and cursed the world before hesitantly moving on.
As the sun began to set, I went and found another tree to sleep under.  I shut my eyes, and before I knew it, I was being woken up. 
“Olivia?  Olivia? Are you Olivia?”  A strange voice said.  I opened my eyes and there were 3 people standing in front of me.
“AAH!”  I screamed, alarmed at the sight of other people
“Are you Olivia?”  Another person asked. 
“What? Yes! Yes I am!”  I said.  The strange people chuckled in delight.  “Who are you?” I asked.
“We’re your search and rescue team.  After your aunt and uncle sent a letter to your mother saying you hadn’t arrived, she knew something’d happened to you-“ The first person explained.
“So she sent us.” The third person interrupted.
“So does this mean I get to go home?!”  I asked excitedly.
“Yup! You get to see your family again.”  Suddenly, everything went black.
I woke up in the back of a moving wagon with my head positioned comfortably on a pillow, and my legs at the perfect angle to where they wouldn’t ache.
“What happened?”  I asked.
“You passed out; you were so excited about goin’ home.”  The person in the front said.
“I can’t believe you guys found me.” I said, astonished.  For the rest of the ride, I fell asleep on a pile of soft blankets.
About an hour later, the strange people woke me up again.
“Are we home yet?”  I asked.  This time, the second person answered me.
“Well not exactly.  The wagon wheel in the front popped off and we’re still about a mile outta’ town.”  I laid back down at the thought of more walking.
“We’ll be able to get there before dark, but it’ll be a long voyage.”  The first person said.  “It’s better we get moving sooner, rather than later.”
We began our journey around the middle of the day.
“So what are all your guys’ names?”  I asked.  “I mean you did rescue me and all.”
“I’m Roger,” The first person said, “and this is my brother, Cecil, and my sister, Mary Anne.”
“We’re friends of your mother, so she called on us to search for you, just to see if something had happened to you.”  Mary Anne said.
“Plus, we were the only search team around that didn’t cost a fortune.”  Cecil added.
“But how’d you know I was along the tracks?”  I asked.
“We didn’t,” Mary Anne said, “We were just traveling along them to get to your aunt and uncle’s town, when we spotted you layin’ under that tree, at the crack of dawn.”
“Yeah, if we’d left any earlier, we never woulda seen ya.”  Cecil said.
“We wouldn’t a seen ya neither, if you were in those trees a little deeper.  We saw your head just peekin’ out from under the branches.”  Roger said.
Suddenly, I was so glad that I enjoyed the breeze on my face when I slept.  I laid with my head poking out from under the trees, only because, there were no branches or tree trunks to obstruct the wind.  I’d never even thought about possible rescuers, or people passing by.
For about an hour and a half, I tried my best to keep up with Roger, Mary Anne, and Cecil, but they still had to stop and wait for me every few minutes.  I feel like one of them was about ready to pick me up and carry me the rest of the way, because it was faster than waiting on me, when we saw the town peek over the horizon.
“The town!” Mary Anne shouted out.  We all jumped up and down and celebrated in excitement.
“We’re home!” I yelled.
We all picked up the pace; because we knew we were almost there.  When we were visible from ton, someone came out with their wagon to come retrieve us.  We all hopped in the back, and relaxed at the thought of our nice, soft beds.  We rode into town laughing and celebrating so loud that people came out of their homes to laugh and celebrate with us.
We rolled up to a very familiar house, and I started to cry tears of joy.
“Mother!”  I shouted from the road.
“Olivia!” She called back in amazement.
She ran up to me and surveyed my filthy attire and injured limbs.
“What happened to you?!  I was so worried!  Are you alright?!” She asked.
I didn’t reply to any of my mother’s questions.  I just hugged her as tightly as I could and didn’t let go until she made me.
“What happened Olivia?!” She asked again.  “You look awful.”
“I know,” I replied, “The train never made it to aunt and uncle’s house.”
“Oh my goodness!”  My mother exclaimed, “Come inside and get yourself cleaned up, and then you can tell me all about it.”
Cecil and Mary Anne helped me get inside; while Roger told me everything he knew from the moment they rescued me, up to the present.
After I’d taken a bath and gotten a change of clothes, I hobbled to my living room to find everyone sitting down with a cup of tea in their hands.
“Oh you’re back!” My mother said.  “Here, come sit down, I’ll get you some tea and then you can give me every last detail.
I plopped down on the couch and started reviewing the events leading up to the crash, while my mother was in the kitchen, listening.  I talked about how I survived the drop, the strange man who helped me escape the train, and how I jumped on a rock and injured myself.  At that point, my mother forced me to let her examine my legs.  I continued on about climbing the cliff, making my crutches and fishing rod, and the bird eating my food.  Everyone laughed at that part and at the part where the skunk sprayed me.  Finally, I caught up to when Roger, Cecil, and Mary Anne rescued me and I stopped.
I sat back on the sofa, exhausted from talking so fast for so long.
“Wow.”  Cecil said.
Everyone stared at me for a few minutes, before I broke the silence.
“So what now?” I asked.
“Well,” My mother replied, “You should probably get some rest, so you can heal faster.”
I headed to my room to lie in my warm, inviting bed.  My mother followed, to help, and when she was leaving, she stopped herself in the doorway and said 3 words.
“You. Are. Strong.”      THE END