Disclaimer: I'm only crashing this party. Consider this a teaser for a potential Exodus Chronicles adventure. (Also know as the Chronicles of the Exodus of a Self Insert, meaning me, Mara, the small and crazy.) Mitch, I hope you learn this is why you don't say weird stuff around me. Chances are pretty good that it'll end up in crack fiction.
Remedial Kombat
Prologue
The two of them sat in companionable silence on the small dock, comforted instead by crickets chirping nearby and the occasional splash as a duck landed. Music spilled softly from a phone resting on the table, and smoke curled lazily upward from the cigarette the young woman held half forgotten as she followed the silvery mist with her eyes. It wasn't at all unusual for her gaze to linger in the sky, idly taking in the constellations in awe, but lately it was prone to get stuck there. Memories of a chain-smoking, tea-drinking pilot with a mouth like a sailor would surface, bringing with them the familiar ache in her chest. Her eyes would race across the sky as fast as her heart, searching desperately for the single speck she needed to see. And, inevitably, never found. Tonight was no exception, and the heavy sigh fell from her lips before she could stop it. The young man with her glanced over from the ripples of light bouncing across the surface of the water, curious, but she remained silent, eyes back to watching the smoke as she exhaled.
He frowned, watching her, noting the distance in her eyes and wondering what had put it there, and thusly didn't see the mist across the water begin to thicken ominously until it was curling along the edges of the dock. He glanced back at the girl, saw the sharp focus as she watched the encroaching fog, and wondered if they should leave now. He thought they definitely should go when her eyes narrowed, but found himself frozen when he followed her gaze.
"Hey, Mitch," she drawled, a smirk flitting across her lips. "Wasn't it you who said "You always get on the mysterious dragon-boat"…?"
A/N: Who said first dates have to be boring?