Closing his eyes, Damon lays his head back as he rides in the back of the taxi to his home. Dirty, tired and exhausted, he just got back into the country after spending the last few weeks with his team in Guatemala, taking core samples rock and ash as well as reading the newest data available to them. As volcanologist working for the United States Geological Survey, he has to visit volcanoes on a regular basis. He's been fortunate to have observed a few eruptions. One of the major focuses of Damon and his team is to try to create a method of predicting volcanic eruptions, but there is currently no way to do this.
Although traveling to volcanoes and studying them close up may sound exciting, most the work of his work as a volcanologist is not as adventurous. Volcanology and the related science of geology are very much investigative types of work. Much of the time, they study dormant or dead volcanoes and monitor current volcanoes to see if they may be reawakening. Their studies help them learn more about why volcanoes erupt, how they have impacted the history of earth, and how they affect people and the environment.
When the cab pulls in front of his house, Damon drags himself and his duffel bag out of the car. After paying the driver, he reaches into his pocket to pull out his key. Before he can even pull it out, the door swings open surprising him.
"Elena?"
"I was hoping to be out of here before you got back," she says, her arms holding a big box. Taking it from her, he sets it on the foyer table before closing the distance between them.
"Don't do that, Elena. I never said that I didn't want to see you again."
"You didn't have to, Damon. You were practically foaming at the mouth when you yelled at me to leave."
"You had me served with divorce papers just as I was walking out the door to catch a plane. How did you think I'd react?"
"I don't have any energy left to fight with you. I'm taking Jake with me when I leave."
"What? You can't separate them. Our dogs were puppies together, Elena."
"I'll take both of them then. You're gone more than you're home anyway."
"That's not fair and you know it," he snaps, fatigue and frustration combining to form a lethal mix. Throwing his duffel bag to the floor, he just stares at her almost as if he doesn't know who she is anymore. "I'm too tired to get into this with you now. I've been up for nearly forty eight hours so rather than one of adding another thing to our long list of regrets, I'm going to bed." Shaking his head, he trots up the stairs. Although nothing he does surprises her anymore, she picks up her box and leaves the house they once shared, pulling the door shut behind her.
Waking up the next afternoon, Damon stretches his arms and legs. Although he still feels tired, he throws his legs over the side of the bed and sits up. Staring at the picture on his bedside stand, Damon wishes with everything in him that he could turn back the clock. As hard and as utterly painful as their reality is, he's had to learn to live with it. As much as he loves her and wants to fix things with her, it's just too late. Too many things have been said that can't be unsaid. Things began to spiral and deteriorate not long after it happened. She blamed him, hell, he blamed himself but there was nothing that could have been done to prevent it either. After scrubbing his palm across his face, he stumbles into the bathroom, kicks off his boxers and steps into the shower.
Once he's dressed and ready, he jumps into his car to go to work, detouring only to get a cup of coffee. Pulling into the parking lot of the David a Johnston Cascades Volcano Observatory, Damon is just turning off the ignition when he hears a rap on his car window. Turning his head, he smiles when he sees who it is. Jumping out of the car, he gives Bonnie a hug, having not seen her for several weeks.
"You look a little worse for wear," she asks, palming the stubble on his cheek.
"I got home just in time to run into Elena. Needless to say, it didn't end well."
"I wish you two would get your shit together. Damon, I know you don't want a divorce. Why don't you talk to her?"
"Because she's leaving, Bon. She has this great opportunity and I don't want to take that from her."
"You big ass. You're both going to regret this, you do know that?"
"Yes, I do but too many things have happened and I don't want to hurt her anymore, Bonnie," he adds, looking beyond his friend at the mountains on the horizon.
"Damon!?"
"I don't want to talk about it anymore," Damon utters, running a hand through his hair. Turning away for a moment, he reaches into the car to grab his messenger bag. Throwing it over his shoulder, he motions for her to lead the way. Following her into the building, he heads down one corridor to his office while she heads down another. Passing the center director's office, he raps on the door frame, not moving till Ric acknowledges him.
"Damon, come in. I didn't think you'd be in till tomorrow. Elena mentioned that she was at the house when you got home."
"Yeah, I have a lot of data I need to go over. How many days does she have left, Rick?"
"She's done here at the end of the week. I haven't asked her if she's leaving immediately to go to DC."
Dropping his eyes for a moment, Damon points down the hall, excusing himself to go to work. After taking off his jacket and getting caught up on a few things, he grabs his core and ash samples and heads down the hall to the lab. When he steps inside, he finds his wife and his friend huddled in conversation. Clearing his throat, Damon drops his data and samples on the countertop. "How was Guatemala?" Brady asks, sidestepping Elena to look at the ash samples. Picking up one of the vials, he grabs a few ashes on the slides then puts them under the microscope for examination. "Have a look, Damon," he says, stepping aside. Pulling his glasses from his face, Damon nods and does just that. Under a microscope, ash from different eruptions can have very different appearances. Sometimes it looks sharp and glassy and that's because it is glass. When magma cools very quickly, it turns into a kind of glass, which can become part of an ash cloud. Whatever it's made of, a particle from a volcano has to be less than two millimeters across for it to be considered ash. Lots of volcanic ash is much smaller than that. Ash is often like very fine sand or dust. When particles of ash are small enough, they can hang in the air for several weeks, and travel on the wind for hundreds or thousands of miles. The smaller the particles are, the further they can go. Even far away from the volcano it came from, the presence of ash in the atmosphere can lead to spectacular sunsets, as low sunlight is filtered through the tiny particles. And although it usually only hangs in the atmosphere for a few weeks, volcanic ash's ability to block and scatter sunlight can even cause slight changes in global climate. The tremendous amounts of gases released from volcanoes have a much greater affect on the climate than ash, however.
"Can I see?" Elena asks, staring at Damon when he looks up. Stepping back, he motions with his hand for her to see for herself. When she looks up, Damon's back is turned to her as he digs through his bag.
"Look what else I found," Damon smiles, holding up a baseball sized gray chunk.
"Is that what I think it is?" Elena asks, taking it from his hand.
"Yep, it is."
"This is a nice specimen," she mentions, eyeing it appreciatively. Holding it up when Bonnie walks into the lab, she runs her fingers over the smooth surface.
After handing Damon a stack of mail, Bonnie gives her husband, Brady a quick kiss then asks, "Is that what I think it is?"
"Yes... Bonnie it's a volcanic bomb."
"I've never seen on before," Bonnie adds, taking it when Elena hands it to her.
"It's a mass of molten rock larger than two and half inches in diameter. They're formed when a volcano ejects viscous fragments of lava during an eruption. They cool into solid fragments before they reach the ground. Because volcanic bombs cool after they leave the volcano, they do not have grains making them extrusive igneous rocks. Most extrusive of volcanic rocks have small crystals in them. Basalt and obsidian are examples. Obsidian is found in volcanic areas where the magma is rich in silica and lava has cooled without forming crystals, creating a black glass that can be honed to an exceptionally thin edge."
"I'll let you and Brady get back to work," Elena says. After sharing a look with Damon, she walks out of the lab leaving Damon to wonder how he's going to cope when she's really gone.
Sitting at his desk looking at some of the data, Damon happens to glance at the seismograph in his lab. His eyes widen as he studies the graphs, noticing a series of small earthquakes at Mt. St. Helens. The volcano seems to have roared to life again. Hundreds of small earthquakes have been recorded in the last week and a half. Taking his binoculars, he walks over to his big picture window focusing his gaze on the mountain. He sees a plume of steam erupting. Although he's going to take a team over there tomorrow, he sees what he estimates to be about a two hundred foot wide crater covered with dark ash. It's a stark contrast to the snowclad southeast sector of the volcano's summit ice cap. Taking a deep breath, he puts the binoculars down just as Elena walks into his office.
"I was just coming to get you."
"Really?"
"Yeah, look at the mountain," he says, handing her the binoculars. "I'm going to go over there tomorrow to take some core samples and temperature readings. Do you want to come with me?"
"Damon, I'm leaving at the end of the week."
"Come on, Elena. An active volcano in the continental US. How can you pass that up?" he asks, quirking an eyebrow at her.
"Fine, I'll call DC to see if I can stick around for a little while."
"You won't regret it," Damon tells her, watching as the small eruption continues to blow ash into the sky.
I guess my time out didn't last very long! Eva and I have a couple of other new projects we're immersed in too. Plus the 2016 holiday story is ready to go too once we get closer to the season. I have put up some teaser pictorials for this story, the holiday story, and a couple of other ones that that are coming on my scarlett2112 facebook page if you're interested. There are also pictorials of some of my completed stories. I'm very proud of the fact that every one of my stories is marked 'complete'.
Huge thanks to Eva. She really is so vital. I know that I wouldn't be here without her brilliant mind. It's always swirling with ideas to get me over the humps.
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Thank you all so much. I probably wouldn't have been back this quickly, if at all, without your kind words of support.