Twenty-four hours earlier…

"Laine!"

I look up with a start. The instant I do though, the heavy pack sags and I heft it back, before grabbing onto a passing tree and scrambling for a foothold as the wet dirt skids out. It involves clinging to the sparse underbrush with one hand, strangling a young birch with the other and scratching both knees, but I manage not to slip again.

"What?" I peer upward.

"Come on, girl!" Meghan, already at the top, runs fingers through her spiked hair. She shakes it, sighing a grin that looks out over the spreading hills. "The view's awesome up here!"

"Well it leaves something to be desired from down here." I reply, twenty feet under her combat boots, standing spread and planted firm. She looks not unlike the legendary wonder-woman, standing up there like that, and I can't stop from muttering.

"What's that? Sounds like curses to me." She grins, "You kiss your mom with that mouth?"

"Not in the last twenty-five years…" I shimmy over a fallen log, climbing the rest of the slope on its bark, grabbing and pulling branches as I go.

"You're not even twenty-three." She states somewhat flat, before folding her camouflaged, sleeved arms in a self-satisfied smirk. With the rest of the waving greenery, her dark hair and pants melt flawlessly into the scenery.

"So?"

"So you couldn't have fought with your mom before you were born."

"We'd manage." I brace my shoe in a crevice, gathering momentum and reaching for her offered hand, before leaping up the rest of the incline and skidding to my knees.

"God…" I breathe, collapsing in the dirt. Every muscle shudders in the cold, and exhaustion with a healthy blend of thirst cramps them up. I lean over, panting, before pushing the damp hair from my face and looking around.

The setting sun casts a yellow, beauteous light over the distant hills, Mount Mitchell, and the faint shimmer of Asheville beneath it, sitting like a painted picture on a sea of blue-green.

"Mountain climbing is not my idea of vacation." I wipe the sweat from my forehead and scrub my neck with trembling fingers, feeling, weak, overheated and cold at the same time, exhausted, excited…and hungry, I think.

"It's hardly a mountain." She says from somewhere behind, and though I slump down against the smooth, cool skin of a taller birch, overlooking the distant greens and yellows, she's already setting up camp. "And whatever happened to that great training workout you've told me about these last three years, Laine? You should be in shape."

"Twenty push-ups before bedtime and a three mile run is not exactly scaling Mt. Everest. Besides…" I sniff, shooting a glance, "…it wasn't me who ran off to the Marines. You're the Xena reincarnate."

I register that she laughs at that, but not enough to look again. I'm too tired for that. It isn't the woods that I mind so much, or even the exercise…I guess…but my Minnesota, summer thermostat isn't set for North Carolina mountains.

I tilt my head back, breathing a little slower and taking in a drought of thin air. The pines send an acrid, almost heady sensation on the breeze, thick and fresh. It reminds me of hunger though, and I rub my arms vigorously, digging through my pack for a protein bar.

"So, you never told me whatever dragged you from school." She speaks up. The sun nears the hills already, and I glance over, only to find the sharp smoke puffing into the woods comes from the fire she's created with just a little bundle of sticks and a lighter, "Or why you drove all the way from Minnesota just to visit me."

"I needed a break, I guess." I shrug, before grinning, "What better place than Camp Lejeune, North Carolina?"

She casts a glance at that, ruffling her hair and knocking the dirt from it, before resuming tending the gusting flame. "I don't know…anywhere? You're not the military type; more the 'run five miles, do some yoga and call it quits', type."

"Well, you're right there." I crawl over on hands and knees, before lifting my fingers to the fire's heat. The last sprays of yellow light shoot over the horizon, but dimly, so dusky shadows sink over the leaves. The little fire seems to glow brighter, and I rub my eyes. They burn in the cool air.

There're many other campers, hikers, and tourists on the mountain, but at the moment, it feels like there's not another soul for miles. Only the faint wind blowing through the trees breaks the quiet, and it's an almost unsettling difference to the city.

"So, what? Aren't you glad to see me?" I look up, crumpling the wrapper and tossing it to a nearby bush. She glances a frown my way when she goes to retrieve it, evidently her old boot-camp 'cleanliness' kicking in, before settling down cross-legged.

"Of course I am."

I stare into the fire, thinking about it a while, before smirking, just a little dark. "Or have you found yourself a new best friend?"

"Of course not," She looks up, shadowed eyes narrowing a little, "What's up with you, Laine?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you haven't been right ever since you arrived. Don't you even want to be here? I didn't ask, you know."

I stare at her a long minute, wondering if I should bother…before glancing away with a sigh. "I…I don't know. Just ignore me, I guess."

Her dark eyes don't shift, a dusky haze settling on the evening air. I try to ignore it, but it never really works.

"Boyfriend trouble?" she sighs finally.

"Oh geez," I snap out, "I don't have a boyfriend, already!" That topic has been the one covering most phone calls recently, and I have a feeling my co-worker Drew, in all his persistent glory, has gotten hold of her number. "And no, it's not that."

"What, then?"

I sigh, resting on a knee and cupping my chin. The faint creaking of crickets fills the air, shivering in the dropping temperature, before settling into the quiet and letting it calm me. "Bob thinks I should join the marines."

She blinks, but only once. "What?"

I nod slightly, "H-he thinks I should follow in your footsteps."

"Why would Dad even bring that up again? He knows how you feel."

"I know he knows, but I also know he knows-" I cut off, sighing and covering my face, before slapping them down. "He knows. He just doesn't care."

"What does Sheryl think?"

"Who cares?"

"She's your mother." Her eyes darken. "You should care."

"Well, I don't."

She exhales slowly, rubbing her face, before grimacing, "Laine…aren't you ever going to grow up?"

I flash my eyes up to hers, before pointing. "Don't get all big sister on me, lieutenant."

"Oh, come on!" She protests, throwing her hands into the air. "We are sisters now…technically…right?"

I look at her, chewing the inside of my lip, twisting a helpless blade of grass in my fingers, before dropping my eyes, "Sure."

I don't give the air a chance to turn heavy, or that dead silence that falls in the wake of awkwardness. We were friends long before Bob, her father, married my mother. I only needed to adapt my way of life for a year before moving out on my own, and I'm glad my friendship with Meghan never suffered. So I lean back and fold an arm under my head, feeling it and wondering how fatigue could overpower hunger so fast.

"It doesn't matter. I told him 'no'." I sigh finally. "I just wanted a little vacation, that's all. Give him a chance to let it go, you know?"

"So that's why you're here." She nods, lifting a sage brow.

It almost drags a laugh out, but at the moment, I don't have the energy. I shift down deeper instead, the cold ground like ice, and I glance over. "Well wow, you've earned those stripes tonight."

"Why don't you just go to sleep?" She rolls her eyes, grinning and settling back.

I don't reply, looking up to the faint, purple sky, before climbing down into my sleeping bag and breathing out a sigh. Thankfully, the needles on the forest floor feel better through a mattress…

"Meghan?"

"Yeah…"

"Goodnight."

"Night…twerp."

I smile.

We've been up since three o'clock this morning, driving and hiking, and we still barely reached our goal for sunset. Slowly though, I feel my eyes slip shut, and I listen to the night sounds. The city drowns them out, most of the time. A whir fills the air, slow and fast creaking…crickets. The breeze sends the leaves whispering like paper, and sometime, somewhere between the thin veil of sleep and semi-conscious thought, I listen to the waving of the treetops in the wind.

Spreading out over the leaves lies a distant heaven and a clear sky. In the faint, monotonous background, I can picture every leaf in the millions like it, fluttering in the gusts of night breeze, tossing aimlessly back and forth… quiet…sleep…

The night falls like a midnight blanket settling over the mottled hills and rolling forest, and I take in a deep breath, feeling my eyes slip shut...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Boom…

A flash of light explodes and I bolt upright.

Hazy spots rack my vision and flashes of light and darkness blurs it. I scramble out of my bedroll, fighting a bush to get up, before slipping out and slamming back to my derriere. It isn't daylight, I realize, whipping my head around, before a gust of powerful wind snatches my breath and I gasp.

Floods of crimson light flash over the trees and bathe the dirt in red light. Long, vicious shadows lap at the ground, and a terrible drone of deep, garbled whispers fill my head. A brilliant column of blood red fire lights the black with blistering heat, and it fills the open air past the cliff.

Meghan… I focus, scrubbing my eyes and crawling forward… What is she doing?

Her cropped hair whips back and forth, standing as a silhouette in the blazing inferno, feet apart and chin thrown backward. I just barely make out her face in the blowing dust and waves of heat, but her lips move, eyes blank and empty. An ethereal void glows from them, as if every spark of light were drained away, leaving a hollow, empty shell.

"Meghan…" I focus, shielding my eyes and cringing to cover my ears at the same time. The roar is thunderous and a terrible, garbled murmuring, like a thousand voices pulses and rises from the darkness.

"Meghan, what are you doing?" I shout.

With every second, the fierce wind blasts more unbearable heat. I can't even see her face anymore, before suddenly, the ground shudders violently and I lose my grip. The ground smashes into my face and I cough, wiping my mouth and peering upward…before letting the wind sap away whatever breath I had.

A swirling black mass has opened. The column of fire is nothing more than the glow around it, and twigs and leaves whip past in a blur, only to be sucked into its vacuum. She pulls back, arms outspread as I watch… before her fingers drop.

"Meghan…" I shake my head, panting, before staring wide eyed as she slowly takes a step to the opening. I reach out… and before I even have time to think, stumble out of the dirt and bolt forward.

"No!"

Suddenly, my scream chokes off and the world spins out of control. My foot hits stone and I careen forward. It's happened enough times to know I've tripped.

Fingers reaching to grasp her arm sail past and my head smashes into tree, before the fierce wind, sickening blur and dizziness takes its victim. I feel myself thrown backward and I tumble over the cliff, flailing for a desperate grip on the dirt and failing.

An instant before the world goes black, a flash of Meghan's eyes appear. It's already fading, everything, but not before her eyes, glazed over in a pale, milky white burn its image in my head.

Even in that moment of complete terror, confusion and panic, fighting to scream and I can't, I know that image, eyes so cold and lifeless, will stay with me forever…