Pumpkin, Texas, USA
June 20, PC 052
Del was working in her garden, trying to encourage her lunar glories to climb a new trellis and not the side of her cabin, when it happened.
The night sky split open and a fiery bird shrieked death as it streaked toward the earth. Del felt the crash in her bones, for all that the thing landed deep in the woods, and shuddered all the way down to her toes.
It wasn't a phoenix, whatever it was. They were drama queens, to be sure, but they rarely burned themselves out so close to human territories. And no phoenix had ever felt so much like—that. So world-shaking. No, this thing, whatever it was, had been man-made.
"It's always something, isn't it?" she muttered to herself as she stood and brushed the dirt off onto her jeans. "I wonder what the government's up to this time. Damn fools, always playing with forces they don't understand."
She kicked off her shoes and ran barefoot across her lawn, leaping the barbed wire fence with ease and covering the distance across the pasture with an easy, ground-eating stride. It was harder once she got into the trees, where the woods grew unkempt and untouched, but Del knew the forest as well as she knew her own two hands. The animals had gone into hiding, even the larger predators, and Del didn't doubt that she'd find a fox or two still cowering under her porch come morning, but she kept running into the face of potential danger.
And then stopped, panting, at the edge of the crater. Something, a small plane by the looks of it, had crashed in the woods. But no ordinary plane would make a crater so deep, or a fire that burned so hot. The metal was already cherry red and melting in places. Del shook her head.
Military, most likely, she decided, unwilling to get so close to the thing now that she'd identified it. Most likely the pilot hadn't survived, but she supposed he could have ejected himself at the last minute. It was also possible that this thing was a drone, and unmanned. Del couldn't smell anything but smoke and, past that, the reek of displaced time.
Time…Del shook her head again, backing away slowly. Whatever this thing was, it was better off burned to char. Too many things went wrong when foolish people dabbled with forces beyond their comprehension.
And too few people had any true comprehension of what happened when time was displaced.
No, this thing was definitely better off destroyed. The less anyone found of it, the better. Del turned her back on the wreckage and started walking home; the night was getting old and she wanted to finish tending to her plants before she turned in.
Notes: Short and sweet is the way to go for a prologue, I think, even if it isn't always fair to the reader. I bet you guys are wondering where the boys are, aren't you? Other than that, let me know what you think!
Yeah, I haven't been around much in a while, but it's good to be back. Check my profile if you want to know where I've been. If you don't know who I am at all, check out my other GW stories, starting with Leap of Faith. You're in for a treat, I promise. :D
