A faint smirk and eyebrow raise appear on Christine’s face. She diverts her attention from the glow of her device’s screen, to the outline of her car she’s left bonnet-deep in nearby bushland - its brakes badly worn and with limited fluid, and its fuel tank savouring precious few drops, in a last ditch effort to prevent the onset of a series of open heart surgeries and rectal examinations resulting from her carelessness. In such darkness, she appears a moving beacon from afar, her phone screen illuminating the immediate area as she trudges through a patch of overgrown grass - one at a time, her knees rise high and extend through tangles of weeds, lacking the grace of a whooping crane navigating through shallow waters.

By this stage of the night it can be easily  perceived she is off the beaten track, and left to her own devices so to speak, in complete and utter solitude, but a road sits adjacent to the bushland she finds herself in - albeit quiet given the hour. She’d been on her stakeout and general patrol of the area for several hours. In that time she’d burned through one of her spare batteries, and her second, now dwindling in numbers is enough to cause distress in the eyes of any one person completely dependent on their phone. Until she finds solace in the form of a power outlet, only under dire situations would she then have a proper use for it. Desperate to save what little power remains, without second thought she disables her mobile data connection, GPS services, closes all apps, and takes the reigns of her screen brightness - reducing it to its most minimal, before setting the phone on standby.

Nearing her car, she shuffles her hand around for her keys in the deep pockets of well-worn cargo pants, a set which she’d picked up from an army disposal store that became part of her unofficial uniform. Once procured, she struggles under the veil of darkness that plagues her newly adjusting eyes to decipher the right fit. Despite holding the keys above her like a craftsman holding up a fine trinket, examining every little detail, shape and indentation, the keys remain indistinguishable under the sparse moonlight creeping through overhanging branches and leaves.

She collapses her head backward, attempting to capture features of tall, arching trees surrounding her. Faint with exhaustion of her day’s activities, she remains still, allowing her eyes to adjust to a point where she can make out the bark layering covering the towering natural monoliths. No sooner than she’s able to determine the rough details of her keys, a sudden scatter of sensations dart up the sides of her back and neck, caught by way of a gasp on her part, marking a drop in air temperature. Her toes tingle as a chill of air proceeds to fall upon the bushland - creeping down the trunks of trees, and spreading along the soil and plants surrounding her, from it releasing a fine mist that gathers around her ankles. Night critters are evidently upset by the cold snap invading their dwellings - their audible feet scurry along the floor of the bush - the odd snap of brittle twigs under their feet agitate her.

With some effort, she manages to unlock the busted door of her 86’ Corolla and slides in, 
shoving her backpack on the rear passenger floor behind her. After several attempts trying and failing to inspire life into her car, she notices what she deems to be the single most  important warning light amongst the countless others beckoning her - ‘low fuel’. For the past week, her fuel gauge had been feeding nothing but misleading information to its driver - a student short on cash, easily overjoyed in the notion that her car had finally adapted to her radical driving habits, and was burning less fuel as a result. Defeated, she crawls between the two front seats through to the back where she decides to rest with the intention of finding assistance by morning.