Cassie Seabolt watched in amusement as her best friend pinned her brother down in a headlock and demanded he give up the last Sour Patch Kid.

"Let him up, Aubrey," she laughed.

"Never!" Aubrey cackled, hands scrabbling to reach the piece of candy Mark clutched in his hand. "Fork it over, hedgehog!"

"Let up, you freaky alpaca! OUCH! Cassie, help! She bit me!"

Cassie snorted. "No. I'm not getting pulled into this."

Aubrey let out a whoop of victory as she claimed her bounty, shoving the candy into her mouth before her brother could resume his protest.

"Sneaky," Mark grumbled, lifting his injured hand to his mouth. "Dang, girl, you drew blood. What are you, part warg?"

Aubrey groaned. "Can we please leave Middle Earth behind for one summer? Dad's not here to train us in the art of nerd."

Mark rolled his eyes. "Sure, Bree. But don't forget the material you're supposed to memorize before we go back home."

"Ugh, don't remind me."

"If you don't memorize it, what happens?" Cassie asked curiously. "You get grounded or something?"

"Or something," her friend muttered. "If I don't have the material memorized, I don't get to go to Ireland this fall with my dad."

"Ouch, that's a little harsh."

"Dad goes overboard with his passion, I think," Aubrey complained. "But he listens to me blabber on about music and literature, and Tolkien is awesome, so I can suffer. Plus, I sound like a badass at comic con when I talk in Quenya. Most people can only speak a few lines of Sindarin."

"You can only speak a few lines of Sindarin," Cassie countered, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, but I can speak Quenya. Because it's way cooler."

"It's easier, you mean."

"Cassie, stop using logic. Oooo, I should start singing music in Elvish!"

"And by music you mean Hamilton tracks," Mark snorted, choosing to ignore the previous comments about comic con and Sindarin vs Quenya. Those conferences kind of freaked him out, but Aubrey loved them. "I will murder you if you taint the language like that."

"Hey! No kinslaying allowed, loser! And don't go dissing Hamilton!"

"Kinslaying? Are we sure I'm related to you? Also, I'll diss it all I want, considering you had the track on repeat all the way up here," her twin grumbled. "All I heard on the four hours here was 'I am not throwing away my shot' and 'Talk less, smile more'."

Aubrey grinned. "We are outgunned. Outmanned. Outnumbered. Outplanned—"

"NO!" Mark shouted, covering his ears. "NO MORE HAMILTON."

"YES, MORE HAMILTON!"

Mark picked her up and threw her in a mud puddle. "NO."

Cassie rolled her eyes and left them to their little sibling spat. "What on earth did I do to deserve being stuck at camp with those idiots all summer?"

"Not helping me, for one!" Mark called after her, shouting in surprise when Aubrey yanked him into the puddle.

"Sheila is going to murder those two, and it's only June," Cassie grumbled, walking into the mess hall to grab some water.

"OOOOO, LOOK! A rock! It's shiny!" Aubrey held her bounty up. Cassie glanced at the object, then at her friend, sighing before she grabbed it and threw it at Aubrey's head. She missed.

"Come on, magpie. We're supposed to be meeting the others now."

"Don't see why we have to meet up with them if we're all splitting up later anyway."

Cassie rolled her eyes. "Because we're establishing a rendezvous point to return to in the morning. Good grief, why is Sheila even letting you out of the camp?"

"We're still in the camp!"

"Yeah, but in the wooded part. This isn't the main base, it's the part teetering on the edge of the National Forest."

There was a crackling noise behind her, and Cassie spun to glare at Aubrey. "Tell me that isn't a granola bar. Aubrey! Does the word bears not mean anything to you?"

"It means you're a worrywart," her friend snorted. "Here, eat half of this."

Cassie rolled her eyes and accepted the offered half. "Just don't litter."

"I'm offended you would even suggest it. Come on, amigo, I hear the others!"

"Shelia is crazy for letting us camp on our own tonight," Cassie sighed.

"You know you love me!" Aubrey sang.

"Yes, I do," she laughed. "Even if you're crazy."

"I'm not crazy!"

"You sing every other sentence."

"The elves do it!"

"What happened to "leave Middle Earth" behind?"

"..."

"Uh-huh, I thought so. I brought your books, dummy." Cassie tapped the bottom of her backpack where it hung on her shoulders.

"Cassie! Why?! Noooo!"

"What? If you don't go to Ireland this fall, then neither can I!"

"You can still go if I stay behind!"

"Yeah, but where's the fun in that?"

"Hmm, you're right! Mark's no fun!"

"And your dad scares me," Cassie laughed.

"Psh," Aubrey snorted. "What's so scary about my dad? I think Mom is scarier."

"Your dad is the most majestic hippy I've ever met, Aub."

"And that makes him scary?"

"You don't remember that time that idiot kid threatened you in high school? He looked ready to rip some limbs off—and he probably could have done it!"

Aubrey shrugged. It wasn't really that big of an incident. Nothing she couldn't have taken by herself. Her dad knew it, too, but he wasn't keen on the idea of anyone threatening his daughter in or out of his earshot. The kid had, unfortunately, been in his earshot.

"He isn't that bad."

"When I met him, I thought he was cursing me."

"He wasn't," Aubrey laughed.

"Right, because he was reciting Beowulf in the original Old English at me."

"Tolkien used to enter his lecture halls like that."

"That's another thing! He talks about Tolkien like he met him, but the dude was born the year Tolkien died. That's not normal."

Aubrey rolled her eyes. "Nothing about my dad is normal, Cassie."

"Yes! Exactly!"

"But that doesn't make him scary."

"Yes! Yes, it does! He's terrifying!"

"He is not."

"Normal people don't have old swords laying around."

"He's an avid scholar of Old English, Cas. Most of them make a habit of collecting ancient artifacts. Not to mention he's a craftsman—he makes all those things on commission for people."

"It's weird, Aubrey," Cassie grumbled.

"I'm weird, amigo."

"That was a given."

"HEY!"

"You said it, not me."

"Oh good, you two finally decided to join us!" Sheila's voice called as they came into a small clearing.

Aubrey faltered. "Uh, sorry," she mumbled. "I forgot what time we were supposed to meet."

"She was picking flowers when I found her," Cassie grumbled.

Sheila snorted and looked pained for a brief second before she clapped her hands and addressed the gathered group of individuals. "Alright, campers! Here's the deal. You guys are all in your late teens now, so I shouldn't have to tell you not to do anything stupid. However, because you are in your late teens and I've been stuck with you for an eternity already, I'm going to tell you: don't do anything stupid. I'm looking at you, Mark and Aubrey!"

Aubrey pouted while Mark grinned and gave a small wave with his fingertips.

"Here are the rules," Sheila continued, ignoring the twins. "You stay with your partners. Buddy-system. Your pairs are... Grace, Addy, and Hannah. Yes, thank you for grouping off. Mark, Reuben, and Camp...Behave, boys, I mean it! Allen, Hannah, and Josie, you three are together. And finally, Cassie, you're with Aubrey since you're already used to dealing with her."

"Yay," Cassie snarked. "I get to spend the night with Aubrey."

Mark's laugh was cut short when Aubrey elbowed him in the gut. Sheila raised her eyes heavenward as if to say "why me" before she sent them away to their separate spots she had already cased.

"Meet me back here at this spot tomorrow morning at 8:00! Don't be late, guys! I really don't want to have to hunt you down!"

"Aye, aye, Captain!" Aubrey saluted.

"Stop giving me sass, Miss McQuary!" Sheila shouted back, pretending annoyance.

"Yes, ma'am!"

Sheila shook her head and chuckled to herself as the girl laughed and traipsed into the woods after her friend Cassie. "I'm crazy for letting these groups loose in the forest. At least none of them are stupid enough to start a forest fire. Though, I don't think we talked about bears."

Sighing, the camp director shook her head and headed for the hammock she had strung up. "Dear Jesus, please keep those kids safe tonight. Especially Aubrey and Mark, the idiots."

"Aiii! Get it away, get it away!" Cassie ducked underneath a cedar tree, panicked.

"It's a bat," Aubrey said flatly as her friend tugged her along.

"Yes! And bats are diseased."

"So's my brother, but you don't go batting him away."

"He's nicer than a bat," Cassie grumbled, cautiously crawling out from under the foliage. She flipped her flashlight on and shone it around them. "Shoot. We lost the trail."

Aubrey sighed. "Well. That's nice." She rummaged around in her bag for her own flashlight. "Nothing we can do about it till morning. It's not smart to go looking for a trail in the dark."

"Well, I don't want to camp under a cedar tree. Not after we found all those ticks last time."

"Ugh, that's not a fun thought. We're not going far, though. Let me leave some markers as we go along."

"I didn't know you knew how to do that."

For all that Aubrey was easily distracted, Cassie was very rarely surprised by her friend's ability to have laser-like focus in a crisis. Usually, the crisis involved a prank on her brother or getting lost in a mega-mall as opposed to the woods, but still.

"Daughter of the majestic hippy man, here. We've spent a lot of time in the woods. Hey, this looks like a good spot!"

"SLEEP!" Cassie groaned, unrolling her sleeping bag and setting herself carefully down on top of it. "You picked a semi-decent spot. There are fewer rocks and roots here."

Aubrey smirked. "That's just what you think. You're just too tired to feel them now. Wait a few hours and you'll realize that this is just as bumpy as almost any other spot in the woods."

"Right now, I don't care," Cassie hummed, wiggling down further into the bag.

As she unrolled and situated her own bag near her friend, Aubrey had the odd feeling of being thrown off balance. The ground, though solid, seemed to shift under her feet, leaving her feeling rather nauseous.

"Cassie, do you feel that?"

"I don't feel anything," her friend mumbled. "Why, what do you feel?"

"Nothing," she replied quickly. "If you don't feel anything, it's just me. I thought the ground was moving."

"Well, it isn't. Go to sleep, Bree."

Agreeing that it must just be her, especially since Cassie should have felt it too, being on the ground and all, Aubrey settled into her bag and stared up through the trees at the dark night sky.

Squinting up at the shifting stars, an unsettling feeling crept into her bones as the lights seemed to flicker and dim, jumping around in the sky like the shifting of a kaleidoscope.

"It's just me," she whispered. "It's just me."

"Aubrey!" Cassie hissed, shaking her friend. "Aubrey, wake up!"

"Wha—I'm awake! I'm awake! OW!"

The two had smacked foreheads as Aubrey sat up in her sleeping bag.

"Ouch. I'm going to need an aspirin," Aubrey winced, clutching her head.

"You need one? I need two!" Cassie huffed, rubbing the sting out of the slowly forming goose egg. "Just what I needed. To be more disoriented."

"More? What do you mean more?"

"I don't remember setting up camp last night next to a freaking river! There aren't even any rivers in this area!" Cassie pointed to the flowing water about thirty feet away from their camp. "What's more, these aren't even the same mountains!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"What's that supposed to—LOOK AT THEM! The mountains the camp is at the base of aren't made up of mostly naked rock! They're covered with trees and vegetation! These mountains are—are—naked! And huge! They make the camp mountains look like anthills!"

Aubrey wrinkled her nose as she stared at the mountains. "Ah, yes. I see what you mean."

The mountains were naked. There was very little in the way of trees, or even shrubbery. And they were definitely more majestic than the mountains near where the camp sat at. Their caps were veiled by clouds, and they had snow near the tops as well.

"Uh, well, that's not good."

Hello, everyone! I hope you're all staying safe and well amidst the chaos of the world! If this story looks familiar to anyone, it's because I'm revamping it for my friend sweetdixie.17. She decided she was finished writing on this site (she still writes, obviously), so she asked if I was willing to take on some of her stories. Because I fell in love with her stories early on-they inspired me to put a story up on this site in the first place, so if you've read "Hit and Miss" she is to thank for that-I agreed to take some of them on. If you have read my other story on here, you'll recognize that this isn't exactly my usual writing story. For one, I'm trying to keep the spirit of sweetdixie.17's stories strong. I'm not writing about adults, but about teenagers. Of which I am one, lol, so this is pretty fun for me because I get to scatter references I'm familiar with throughout the story and have it match the characters' ages and purposes. And for two, this is mainly an introduction chapter. I'll definitely be adding more meat and detail in the upcoming chapters, but I wanted to keep this simple for now. More backstory will be added as well if anyone is concerned about that. Lot's of things will be straightened out soon. XD

I love all of you, dear readers, and I hope you enjoy the ride! I know I certainly enjoy writing this! Leave a review if you feel so inclined! I usually read and reply to each of them! They make my day brighter and help me recognize that people are actually reading this. Love you guys!

XOXO,

Piper and Snippy