I crawled up onto the hard, rocky shore, hacking and coughing the water up out of my throat and lungs. When I could do so without feeling like I was going to throw up, I looked around. The lights were gone and the cavern was washed in a thousand shades of grey. It felt much colder without that gentle radiance.

What was that? My head still ached from some of the things I half-remembered… seeing? Hearing? Feeling? I couldn't really map them to sight or sound or any other single sense. I shook my head. I'd think about that later. What mattered was what to do now. I was in soaked clothes and even if the cave was quite warm, it wasn't that warm. I could already feel the chill creeping up on me. I drew myself up into a kneeling position, hugging myself around for warmth.

Wait.

How come I could do that? My leg should have been screaming at me. Now that I was thinking about it the pain was there, but it was… distant, somehow. Not 'pain' so much as a notification, almost. Like 'your leg is injured' as opposed to 'aaargh, your leg is in PAIN because it's injured'. It was still the same feeling, but it lacked all the immediacy of pain.

What the heck is going on? I thought, starting to panic a little. Had I messed up something? Had the lights screwed me up somehow? Tinkertech was meant to be unreliable and dangerous a lot of the time, after all. Look at L33t's stuff. He was infamous for his volatile inventions.

A thought thundered into my brain. Did I trigger? Is this what triggering is like? Am I a parahuman now? I swivelled over onto my butt and pulled up my leg so I could get a better look at it. It looked less swollen, but that could have just been the lack of light and I couldn't make out the colours. Why couldn't the glowy-lights have just stayed, I grumbled to myself, then blinked away the afterimages as golden light suddenly flared back into existence. This time, though, the motes seemed to be flowing out from and around my skin, dancing like miniature auroras.

Okay. That's a thing. Another point on the 'powers' side of things.

Now that I had light, I could definitely see a difference. The discolouration had gone down to bruise-level and the swelling had vanished almost completely. Healing? I thought to myself. Well, that'll certainly come in handy.

Now that I was looking closely at myself, though, I noticed that my hands had that pale, wrinkly look you got after being underwater for a while. How long had I been in there? I looked at my watch, then looked again. According to the timepiece it had been almost three hours since the last time I had checked it, not long before I fell in.

Something serious was up. I didn't really dislike the results so far - apparent healing, glowing at will and not-drowning were all useful powers after all, if not quite Alexandria-tier - but I couldn't help but wonder when the other shoe was going to drop. The question of what I was going to do once I got out presented itself as well, but I pushed it away. I'd deal with it later. For now, I had to work out what I was going to do about getting out in the first place.

Tentatively, I tried rising to my feet. The lack of immediate pain was a blessing, but the feeling of warning got stronger. Probably not a good idea to try climbing up yet, then. How long would it take, though?

I closed my eyes and concentrated on what I wanted, hoping that this would be like the comics where you can make a power work by thinking hard enough about what you wanted. How long?

There was a sensation of acknowledgement but nothing came; no sudden realization. Disappointed, I opened my eyes to see that a small fraction of the golden lights had apparently decided to detach themselves from the rest and were marking out another one of those jaggedy patterns in front of my face. They went through the same lines over and over.

"Huh," I said to myself, speaking for the first time in a while. Was that… trying to tell me something? It didn't really look like anything in particular. An artful scribble, perhaps. After a couple of seconds the lines faded away and the gold rejoined the rest in its slow dance over my skin.

Weird.

Unfortunately, it was less than helpful. Given how my leg had healed in the three or so hours I had been out, though, I hoped it wouldn't be too long. The passage up was narrow enough that I should be able to shimmy up.

All I had to do was wait.

XxXxXxXxX

I was really fucking tired of waiting.

I had read through White Fang three times now, and had gotten bored enough that I had started taking notes in the margins about associations and contextual influences. I'd filled another half-dozen pages with sketches before that became dull, and for the last hour I had been playing with the lights, trying to form them into specific shapes. Mostly it was just amusing, but I did find a couple of handy things I could do like making them change colour or link shapes to my hands so I could move them around without having to concentrate, even though they still had all the solidity of smoke.

The trick wasn't to will the lights to do something or to subvocalize what I want, but rather to intend for something to happen. It was kind of like moving an arm. It required some mental gymnastics to work and quite a bit of concentration, but I thought I was starting to get the hang of it.

Now, though, I had more important things to think about. I had gotten to the point that I was confident with walking around and had tried jogging in circles as well with no real issues. I still got the not-pain, but it was more a feeling of 'you shouldn't do this for too long' than 'stop now this is a bad idea'. Also, I was sick and fucking tired of this damn cave. I was hungry, I was thirsty and I wanted to sleep on a bed as opposed to rock.

I peered up the shaft. It was maybe a metre in diameter and smooth, starting at about my shoulder height. I trailed a hand as high up as I could reach, looking for any kind of handhold. There weren't really any, but the stone wasn't too wet. If I could get myself up there, I could probably wedge myself in the middle and climb up that way.

I weighed my bag. It wasn't too heavy, but the last thing I wanted was to fall and have to wait all over again. I took out the small stuff - the pencils, the mp3 player and, after a moment's thought, White Fang - and stuffed them in my pockets. The book went in the stomach pocket of my hoodie. I took a moment to regret the lack of any kind of rope or string that I could attach to the bag to pull it up afterwards, then left it on the ground.

Here goes, I thought to myself, then bunched my legs and jumped. I managed to wedge myself in with my hands just like I had intended, pressing against the opposite walls. Already I could feel the strain in my arms growing, though, so I began to work my way up, inch by inch.

It was hard, and as I crept upwards it only got harder. The tunnelway shifted so that it was almost completely vertical, and as I looked down I could see it fading away into the dark. I shook my head and looked resolutely upwards, searching for a hint of light. The sphere of the glow that I had linked to my forehead to act as a headlamp bobbed above me like the lure of an angler fish.

The passageway began to narrow, becoming more like a diamond shape than a circular one, but it twisted a little as well so that it was closer to horizontal. Still too steep to crawl up, but the going was easier.

Finally, the passage widened again and my hand grabbed the upper lip. Exhausted, I dragged myself out into the much wider cavern which the school group had sullenly trooped through almost three days ago.

I stayed on my hands and knees, breathing hard. Slowly, the deep breaths turned into a choking laugh-sob. I was out! I had escaped that fucking hole!

Burning with the energy of triumph I sprang to my feet and yelled. I was a mess; filthy, stinking and tired to my bones, but I was going to live.

I hadn't really realized until I got out just how afraid I was, of how the notion of never getting out and no-one finding me had preyed on my mind. With it gone I could think again. I felt like singing.

I wanted to see the outside, though. I didn't want to be stuck in here any longer.

Driven by the same energy, I scrambled over the rocks and uneven footing of the outer cave. I remembered how we had got in following the young guide and I retraced my footsteps of three days prior. It seemed only moments before I was stumbling out between the two big rocks that hid the cave entrance and out into the piny woodlands.

I was on a hill, high up above a sea of darkness that rustled quietly in the night breeze. A gravelly trail stretched away beneath the evergreen eaves, down into the forest proper. We had come up that trail in the ancient Winslow minibus, rattling all the way. Through the cleft in the trees I could make out scattered spots of light, slowly becoming more and more numerous as they marched away into the distance. On the horizon I could see the glow of some town, lighting up the night sky.

I could stop here and rest, but that would probably be a bad idea. The sky was clear for now - and so many stars! - but it might rain and there was no way I was going back inside that fucking cave. Also, there were all kinds of animals and stuff which I really didn't want to deal with. Also, it was cold. It wasn't as unpleasant as it might have been in early December, but it was still really damn cold. I checked my watch - 10:37 PM - then promptly stuffed my hands in my pockets and started walking.

It was a long walk. I was infinitely thankful that it wasn't raining, but by the time I arrived at the door of a small cabin with warm yellow light spilling from the windows I was mentally cursing whatever or whoever thought it would be a good idea to have winter in New Hampshire be so damned cold. My ears felt like they were going to fall off, even under my hood and my nose wasn't much better. I reabsorbed the little globe of light that had accompanied me through the woods and raised a hand to knock on the door, then stood back, shoving my hand back into its nice, warm pocket.

I waited for a long moment, watching my breath mist in the air before I heard a shuffling on the other side of the door and the sound of someone fiddling with the lock. Finally it opened, revealing a youngish-looking man with messy dark hair and a close-trimmed beard in a fluffy-looking dressing gown. He squinted at me.

"Hello?"

"Hi," I replied. "Uh, I kinda got lost in the forest and I'm really cold. Can I.. come in? Please? Or just use a phone."

He raised an eyebrow. "Uh... Right. You're gonna need to give me a bit more than that."

"What is it?" yelled a female voice from behind him.

"Some girl's at the door. Says she got lost."

"Well let her in, then! It's the middle of bloody winter, Nick!"

The man rolled his eyes but stood aside. Gratefully, I stepped inside as he closed the door behind me. "Thanks so much."

There was a sound of sheets rustling and then a woman appeared, blonde-haired and pretty with a smile as wide as the horizon. And also naked, save for the duvet she had wrapped around herself like a giant burrito.

I blushed. She must have noticed because she laughed gently. "I'm Gwen, and this is my fiancé Nicholas."

"I'm Taylor," I shivered out.

"So, Taylor, now that you've gotten us both out of bed, why were you out in the forest in the middle of the night?"

I told them what had happened, leaving out the part about the glowing lights and falling into the water. I just said that I had waited until my leg – which I implied was only bruised badly – was usable before climbing up again.

By the time I had finished, the three of us had moved to the cozy living room of the cabin. I was sat in one of the armchairs and trying desperately not to just sink into it and fall asleep. Gwen and Thomas had taken up residence on the couch.

"And then I got here," I finished. I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost midnight, and the sudden realization of the time dragged a yawn from my throat.

"Well, that's... quite a story," began the dark-haired man. He had sort of snuggled up next to Gwen while I was telling the story and was half-concealed under the duvet. "Uh, if you want any food or drink or whatever, feel free."

"You can sleep on the couch if you want," broke in his fiancé. "We should... probably be getting to bed. Do you want to use the phone?"

I nodded gratefully. "Thank you so much."

"It's nothing," replied the blonde-haired girl.

I heard the two shuffling off out of the room, along with some muted muttering as I went over to the landline and picked it up. I paused, uncertain, before punching in my house number. If Dad didn't wake up I'd call again in the morning. If he did, I was sure that he'd be happier knowing now that I was OK rather than worrying through another night. And he would be worrying. If I knew him at all he would have spent all the time since I didn't come back with the Winslow group wearing holes in the floor and calling up anyone and everyone who might know something.

The phone rang once, twice, three times before it was picked up.

"Hello, Hebert household," came Dad's voice. He sounded utterly exhausted.

"It's me, Dad. It's Taylor."

"Taylor! Where are you? Are you okay? What happened? The school said you got lost in the woods and they couldn't find you." The exhaustion was gone. He sounded almost ecstatic, possessed by some great energy.

"I'm fine, Dad, I'm fine. I'm at a little cabin in the woods. I fell down a hole in one of the caves were looking at and it took me a while to get out, that's all. I got out a couple of hours ago and these two people are letting me stay the night on the sofa. They let me use their phone. I'll go down to a ranger station or something in the morning and I'll get a taxi or something back to the Bay."

"No you won't young lady," he said in his 'this is what will happen' voice. "You go down to the police station nearest to you tomorrow and I'll drive up and fetch you."

"But-"

"Ap ap ap! No, I'm coming to get you. I want to see you again as soon as I can. I thought- I thought I had lost you, little owl."

I felt something warm ignite inside me, even as a choking feeling grew in my throat.

"I know, dad. But I'm fine now. I'll – I'll see you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow," he replied, "I love you, Taylor."

"Love you too, Dad."

The phone hung up.

That... was exhausting. Somehow that short exchange with my Dad felt more tiring than the whole walk from the cave mouth to here.

A thought occurred. I had powers now, albeit not very impressive ones so far. Should I tell Dad? What would he think?

Now that I was out of the cave, I had time to really consider what I was going to do and what I wanted.

Mechanically, I pulled the woolly blankets off of the backs of the armchairs and pulled them over myself as I lay down on the sofa, propping my head up on a pillow.

I didn't really know what I could do, so finding that out was priority one. Once I knew that I could work out the rest.

My last thought before sleep swept over me was a vague gladness that my powers weren't something horrible or evil, or even particularly bad-looking. Given my luck, I would have almost expect something like blood control or having to eat people. With these powers, maybe I could make a difference, maybe I could get out of Winslow and away from the Trio. The Wards went to Arcadia, right?

Maybe, just maybe, there wouldn't be another shoe this time.

XxXxXxXxX

A/N: To the members of the Guest Collective - please get yourselves accounts! You say interesting things which I want to reply to and I can't. Why must you torment me so?