With everyone gathering for lunch it was easy for Elliot to slip away. All eyes were focused on food and the crowd was big enough that one camper wouldn't be missed. Though he was careful as he snuck across the camp, not knowing where all the counselors, especially that bear, were. This place was wrong, and he felt like he had two voices in his head urging him to get away one that felt like an older version of himself and one that was, strangely, a woman.
But Elliot could feel his own memories getting stronger. Of going to school with his friends, of coming to this camp every year since he was eight. Wanting to be a counselor here himself when he grew up. The voices said those were lies trying to get him to stay. He wanted to stay but he wanted to be able to think clearly too.
He made it to the camp's arched gate and he could see the mostly empty parking lot beyond, dotted with a few of the counselor's cars. What would he do once he ran off? He was miles from anything else that could help him, but the memories pushed him.
He tried to step through but a sudden wind pushed him back. It felt like a warning. He wanted to take the warning, step away and go back to get lunch but those voices in him pushed him forward again.
When he stepped to the gate the same wind started pushing him back again. He tried to push through it, but instead it felt like the wind pushed through him, like he could feel it inside him, picking up debris and pushing it out. Debris in the form of two extra sets of memories. It felt like the wind was tearing something out of him, scouring it completely. As the wind blew the voices quieted and disappeared, the weird memories fading away. Even the journey from the lunch hall to the gate was forgotten. When the wind died down it was only the fourteen year-old camper named Elliot standing there.
"Elliot!" The voice was a growl, and he turned to see Soren running towards him. "What are you doing?"
"I.. I don't know. I think I got lost." Elliot felt out of place, but wholly himself. It was a different sort of confusion.
Soren looked at the cat and placed a large paw on his shoulder. "C'mon. you should be at the lunch." That seemed to snap everything back into place for the cat. He nodded to the counselor and bounded off to the dining hall eagerly, leaving Soren tapping his chin. He knew that Elliot was now in his new life completely and would be leaving with his new parents at the end of camp. "Was that necessary?" He said, eyeing the nearby tree line.
There was only the faintest rustle of leaves.
Soren sighed and remembered what Alex said, "The camp may not always make what seems the good decision, and you may not agree with it, but it's like a parent. It always has the best interest of the one involved at heart." Well, Soren couldn't disagree the woman Elliot had arrived as wasn't the most pleasant person in the world. Maybe a new trip through high school would adjust that.