(Untitled)

[demon_rhynn]

It was like nothing She had ever experienced before.  One moment she had been There, completely entranced by the music around her, and the next-- something caught at her, gave a mighty tug, and then she was falling.

~*~

"----!!"

"What the Hell?!"

Rian Mitchell gaped at the northern sky, watching the meteorite fall from the Heavens in a southeast

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[demon_rhynn]

"Dave!" Sasha shouted. "Is it really that hard to imagine? Where are you going?"

Dave was unloading his gear from the vehicle and muttering fiercely under his breath.

"You two are both insane. Fricking INSANE! There's no 'Higher Power'. There's no 'Creator', and there are NO 'Angels'!"

Sasha recoiled from the vitriol in Dave's voice, but jumped forward to stop the other man when it appeared Dave was going to start walking back toward town-- which was close to twenty miles away. The nearest main road was five miles.

"Dave--"

"Let him go, Sasha. He will not listen." Rian stood on the plank, absentmindedly testing the strength of the wood and the bracing of the wedged stones at either end.

"But how could anyone believe there isn't a God? Come on, the mathematicians have proved the Bible true."

"It doesn't matter if you 'prove' one way or the other. It's about faith."

Sasha narrowed his eyes at the man. "For someone who refuses to even listen to conversations about religion, you're awfully spiritual."

"Religion is man-made, Sasha. It is faliable and it is corrupt." Rian returned the to the Land Rover and adjusted the placement of the gear, strapping it down, to balance the weight of the load. "I will have no part in religion."

"Then why are we out here?"

Rian froze, half-climbing into the driver's seat. He glared at the marble band around his wrist, then through the windshield at the crater.

"Sometimes, Sasha, you don't have to go looking for something to believe in. Sometimes faith comes to you."

Sasha's face twisted into the oddest expression of confusion and amusement. "Well, alright then. But if 'Faith' has red hair, I get the first date."

[demon_rhynn]

Dave hiked for an hour back the way down the rarely-used track. The way was rough, and at moments he had a hard time believing Rian had actually driven his Land Rover across this very same terrain. Eventually, though, he noticed a very slight brightening of the filmy sunlight ahead, a second before he stepped out onto the main service road.

He now had a choice to make. He could walk the rest of the way back to the main road and hope to pick up a ride there, or he could walk the few miles further from town to the parking lot at the Forest Service road where all the reporters would be, and catch a ride there. But they would likely want to know where he had come from and why he was there. He couldn't say that he had already been out camping and the meteorite had convinced him to head home early, because his gear was visibly unused, however, he felt uneasy about the idea of telling a reporter about Rian's by-pass.

After a minute or two of thinking about his options, Dave stepped back inside the treeline and dropped his pack, then spent the next five minutes making himself and his gear dirty and well-used.

'Right, that should do it. Now to catch myself a ride back to reality.'

He turned East and marched toward the parking lot and the reporters and, hopefully, a ride back into town.

~*~

She stared forlornly at the wall in front of her. She'd just waded across a hip-deep, freezing cold creek, turned a corner in the ravine, and found herself staring at a sheer wall of slick, moss-covered basalt. She had attempted three times to climb the wall in different places to no avail, and her fingers and knees were all bloody. Her simple robes were torn and smeared with the same frustratingly slick moss that made it so hard to climb.

'What do I do?'

The snowflakes were coming fluffier and colder now, putting an odd film over the forest floor and making it more difficult for Her to see the sun, much less to follow. And more, the angle of the sun was low enough that soon it would not be visible from her ravine.

'You must not stay there. A flood is coming.'

As the last milky ray faded and left her cheek cold, She turned to the place where the creek spilled over the wall and threw herself through the spray to the where the wall was shortest, but more saturated with water. The chill of the spray numbed her bleeding wounds and the burn in her arms and left ankle. The air was so wet it was hard to breathe, but she found a crack in which to wedge her hands and soon she was high enough she could wipe her face and not be immediately soaked again.

She pulled herself up the length of the crack by sheer will. She *would* follow him, even if she had to chip the wall down with her teeth. At the top, she hefted herself over the edge and looked down and felt something so peculiarly similar to the pain, yet *good*, that she gasped for air and forgiveness in the same breath, for she could only fathom that it was Pride, having never experienced satisfaction at completing a difficult, nigh impossible task.