Chapter Text
No one gets married expecting to end up asking for a divorce.
Not at the altar. Not when they're staring into each other's eyes and making promises that feel eternal. No one imagines those same eyes turning cold. No one imagines lying awake beside a stranger wearing the face of the person they once loved.
It doesn't happen all at once.
Love doesn't usually die in a dramatic explosion. More often, it bleeds out slowly. A thousand small disappointments. Broken promises. Harsh words spoken in anger. Silences afterward that cut just as deeply as the words that might have been spoken.
At first, you fight for it.
You have the hard conversations. You make compromises. You try again. And again. And again.
Then one day you realize you're the only one still trying. After that, you start looking for ways to fill the empty spaces.
Some people drink.
Some people cheat.
I hike.
I throw punches in crowded gyms. I run until my lungs burn. I push my body to its limits because physical pain is simple. Honest. It hurts, and then it heals.
This particular hike was turning out to be just how I liked it: long and hard—the exact opposite of my soon-to-be ex-husband.
Heavy breaths saw in and out of my burning lungs as I climb higher into the thin mountain air. I’m alone. Always alone, it seemed. Especially in my failed marriage.
So when my foot catches on a shelf of loose shale, I do not scream. I only curse loudly and snatch blindly for whatever foliage presents itself as a means to stop my fall. My hands snaps around a gnarled root. The rough bark bites into my palms and yanks me to an abrupt halt that wrenches at my protesting shoulder joint.
This part of the hike is exceptionally dangerous, with a wall of sheer rock spanning perhaps a hundred feet of gray Appalachian stone. Under normal circumstances, it would not have been a problem. I spend a great deal of time in the mountains. Thanks to my jobs, I also spend a great deal of time in the gym.
But I’m tired. Distracted.
My mind is stuck in a relentless circle around the impossible question of ending my marriage. Not even eleven years of military training, hiking, and martial arts could outrun the darkness consuming my thoughts.
It had been happening for a long time. The slow fracture of the foundation beneath us. Or perhaps it had always been cracked, and I was only now realizing I had spent eight years trying to build a house on broken stone.
Since the day we got married, I think. When he spent our wedding day hungover and left me to set up alone with the wedding party.
Since our honeymoon, when he dragged me through red-light districts lined with hungried-eyed women grinning like the Cheshire Cat, as though he were placing himself on a menu to be devoured.
Since he accused me of having an affair with my stalker. Or when he had failed to mention the vasectomy he got after our many, many conversations about starting a family.
All of that culminating on top of the thousand other small wounds that kill intimacy between two people. Ignoring me. Disregarding my hopes and fears. Putting me down whenever he thought I might outshine him.
I haul myself over the final ledge of ragged stone with a small grunt, hard-earned muscles straining beneath the weight of my body and the small pack slung over my shoulders.
The summit of this mountain is a thin strip of rock, hardly twenty paces across and perhaps a quarter mile long. Sparse, stubborn vegetation covers the mountaintop in a jacket of crooked pines broken apart by thickets of wild blueberry bushes and wind-bleached grass.
Sweat trickles down my temple in ceaseless lines that tickle my forehead. I swiped at it with the back of my hand and crossed the rocky surface to the edge. Beyond it lies a sheer drop to the valley below. Nearly a mile.
The Blue Ridge mountains spread before me in an endless canopy of forest so green it almost looks blue in the dim morning light. I lower myself onto a flat piece of gray rock and lean back on my hands. Slowly, my heartbeat quiets from the frantic pounding of the climb.
Cool wind blows against my exposed skin. My sweat-soaked tank top chills rapidly in the high mountain air. A shiver rolls through me as strands of jaw-length hair brush against my neck from where it has escaped my ponytail.
I untie the oversized powder-blue flannel from around my waist. I had bought it at Costco nearly a decade ago. It was the kind of shirt that would outlast the apocalypse and, without question, my favorite. The thick fabric, worn soft by use, settles around my shoulders like an old friend.
My knees pull up to my chest as I watch a cloud form in front of me, swirling languidly over the valley. It’s why I love coming up here.
It seems like magic. The mist moves almost like a sentient being, curling and spinning in the air high above the earth. Like a dancer.
Seeing it at eye level always makes me feel as though I have somehow cheated the system. As though I’ve stolen a seat at heaven's vantage point and am witnessing something the human eye was never meant for.
Plastic crinkles as I drain my water bottle in greedy gulps and rest my chin on my knees, my pack discarded beside me. For what feels like the millionth time, I wonder if I am making the right decision.
The sound of his quiet sobs from last night play mercilessly in my ear. Even the howl of the wind can not drown out the memory.
But then I remember his anger, too. The careful way I crept around the house when he was in a mood. The way I have to chose every word with care to avoid a tantrum.
The accusations.
The way his touch made my entire body tense. When I asked him to stop, he told me to relax.
I remembered his hands, other parts, his weight pressing against me every time I asked for space.
Rubbing at the tightness in my chest, I force my jaw to unclench. Lower my shoulders from where they have locked somewhere near my ears.
“Breathe,” I whisper to myself.
I let the stale air out of my lungs and draw in a deep breath of cold mountain air.
Yes.
Yes. I am making the right choice.
My family is disappointed in me. They think it’s a mistake.
I know it’s not.
My hand drifts to the tattoo on my back: the shards of Narsil, reforged. IT’s a symbol from my favorite books.
Starting over would be difficult. I don’t even know if I would ever want another relationship again.
But it was right.
Even if I had to start from nothing.
The cloud before me thickens considerably. I have never seen one form so quickly. Frowning, I pull out my phone and snapped a picture. Then another, intending to send them to my friends later.
While I tuck the phone back into my pack and reach for a sandwich, I miss the sky darkening. But I hear the thunder growling in the distance.
I freeze.
The last place I want to be in a lightning storm is on the highest mountain in the region. Turning toward the horizon, I try to judge how much time I have to make a descent.
There is only a second. A flash of gray rushing toward me. I do not even have time to breathe. Only enough time to feel the hairs on the back of my neck rise and an overwhelming dread curl in my chest before it hits me.
The gust of wind is so strong it knocks me backward. I slam into the rock with a startled oof.
Then comes the light. A crack so bright and violent it splits the world white. Roaring blasts through my skull. Wind whips around my body, forcing my limbs to flail helplessly.
Distantly, I realize I’m falling.
The cloud roils around me, vast and terrible. I can’t see the ground. I can not tell which direction I am moving. There is only motion. Icy wind tearing at my skin.
Tears stream from my eyes, blinding me. My mouth parts on a scream, but no sound comes. The air is stolen from my lungs into whatever surrounds me.
I fall and fall until black spots crowd the edges of my vision.
I am going to die. These are my final breaths.
Not yet. I beg silently. Not yet
With a thunderous crash my body slams into a surface. An involuntary sound of pain bleeds from my lips in a thin, broken moan.
My lungs seize. The shock of the impact collapses them into useless things my brain desperately tries to force back to life. When breath crawls into me again, it brings pain.
My body cannot seem to decide what hurts the most, so it settles on all of it. Still, my fingers curl. Then my toes. It takes two attempts to push myself onto my hands and knees. I focus on breathing and startle at the cloud of white that escapes my mouth.
That is wrong. It’s July, isn't it? I was just at a family barbecue, minus one husband. I should not be able to see my breath.
That does nothing to explain the thin crust of frost covering everything around me. Cold bites at my fingers where they dig into the earth, into a bed of orange and brown leaves.
That is wrong too. My brows furrow as I sit back on my heels and look around. The entire forest is wrong. There should be pine trees, not deciduous trees.
There are no rocky outcroppings. The trees are too large. Too old. Their trunks rise smooth and pale into the sky, the bark almost seeming polished. I can’t even tell what sort of tree it is.
“What the fuck,” I mutter, touching the side of my head.
Am I concussed?
If I am, would I even know?
Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought. Maybe I am dying.
“H-hello?” I call in a rough voice.
The sound vanishes into the trees. I hold my breath and listen. Silence answers me.
There are no birds. No insects. No movement in the underbrush. Nothing.
The hairs on the back of my neck rise. I have spent enough of my life in forests to know that no sound at all is a bad sign. Sometimes you are the reason for the silence. Sometimes something else is.
I plant one foot beneath me and manage to only whimper a little as I stagger upright. Spinning in a helpless circle, I try to decide which direction to move. Then I try to decide if I should move at all.
Maybe someone will come looking for me.
I pause.
Probably not.
When in my life does anyone come for me? Since never. Usually, it's the other way around.
Sharp panic surges through me, hot and immediate. My heart throbs against my ribs as I take several steps in one direction, then change my mind and stumble back the other way.
The forest stretches endlessly around me. Suddenly, I do not care if there is something else out here with me. Even a serial killer would be better than this.
“Is anyone there?” I shout.
My voice cracks against the trees and vanishes.
“Hello? I need help! I’m lost!” I try again, voice begging to fray with the edges of panic.
“I’m lost,” I say again, quieter this time.
The words sound small. Childish. Dread wells beneath the frothy surface of my distress, rising fast.
I start jogging. I do not care that my knee protests immediately—the old injury from my last deployment pulling hard with every step. I just need to move. Need to do something.
If I stop, if I stand still for even one second longer, I think I might come apart entirely. I run for several minutes before the forest grows so thick that I become hopelessly disoriented.
Forcibly, I stop myself.
“Stop,” I whisper aloud, breathless and shaking. “Stop.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and count backward from one hundred until I can think rationally again.
Ninety-nine.
Ninety-eight.
Ninety-seven.
By the time I reach eighty-three, my heartbeat slows enough that I can look around without feeling like I am about to bolt in a random direction again.
The forest is... neat. Too neat. There are no fallen branches or rotting logs. No undergrowth thick enough to trip over. The leaves spread across the ground in a thin, even layer, as though someone has swept them there.
It is too perfect.
Almost… groomed. Please let it be groomed. Because if it is, then people are nearby. I could find a trial. Hopefully leading to somewhere that has a doctor. Hopefully I am concussed and am not having a complete nervous breakdown in the middle of the woods after deciding to finally leave my husband.
My eyes scan the forest as I loosen my grip on panic and force myself to think. To fall back on what I know. I know humans. I know how to track a person. Look for the person, not the path.
Look for inconsistencies. For lines that are too straight. For things that do not belong.
There.
A meter ahead lies a dark shape pressed into the mud. A relieved breath escapes me as I hurry toward the unmistakable in the half-moon curve stamped into the damp earth. A hoofprint.
Crouching, my fingers brush over it’s edges. Fresh enough that there is still a worm squirming in the rich brown soil.
My head jerks up.
There is another print a few feet ahead.
Then another.
“Thank fuck,” I mutter in a wavering voice as I follow them.
The trail stretches on for what feels like nearly a mile. Gradually, small white stones begin appearing along either side of me, spaced with unnatural precision.
A path. My shoulders loosen a fraction. People. There has to be people nearby.
The trees thin slightly, though the forest remains strangely clean, too orderly. Nothing rots here. No branches litter the ground. The leaves lie in neat, windless drifts.
Something moves in the curving path ahead. I stop so suddenly my knee quivers. A flash of pale gray between the trees.
Gone.
I squint into the forest, seeing only the endless pillars of smooth trunks disappearing into the dimness. My mouth tightens. I know this feeling. I know what it is to be watched. It settles over me like a hand on the back of my neck.
I start walking again, faster now.
There—
Movement again.
To my left this time.
A shape slipping between the trees, too quick and too graceful to be an animal. I whirl toward it.
Only silence.
The third time it happens, I stop dead in the middle of the path.
My hand curls into a fist at my side. Anxiety knots so tightly in my throat it almost chokes me. I turn slowly, scanning the trees one by one.
“Come out,” I say, my voice low with anxiety. “I know you’re there.”
A branch creaks. Not loudly. Just enough that I spin on my heel. A tall figure stands in the middle of the path. My jaw drops.