Witch of the Wild Woods

Chapter 4 - Ashes of American Flags

Chapter 4 - Ashes of American Flags

They were deep in the trees now. Two hours into the wilderness that ran alongside the river beside them, Highway 503 turned into an evermore lonesome road on that last stretch toward Spirit Lake. Nearly a hundred miles of dense, scenic woods toward one of the most deadly active volcanoes along the ring of fire. Sure, it had been decades since tons of ash had been thrown up into the air. That didn't make it any less dangerous.

Luna had the window down in the passenger seat. Her monthly 'gift' didn't lend itself to comfortable travel. She'd loosened Lane's pair of blue jeans she was still wearing and reclined in the passenger seat watching the rays of afternoon light sift through the trees, strobing across the empty highway.

    "Did you read about the guy who died here during the eruption?" Luna asked massaging herself. Her face scrunched up, fighting back the pain.

    Lane kept his eyes on the road, "Yeah, I think a few dozen people died when it erupted back in 1980. Did you mean someone specifically?"

    Luna nodded, groaned, "There was this one man, Harry something, in his late eighties. He refused to evacuate as the lava came down the mountainside. Kinda makes you wonder, huh?" There was a palpable pain in her words, not just from the cramps, the motion-sickness, or bloating. A deeper sorrow hung in the air that neither of the Twins would fully understand until much later.

    "I suppose if there wasn't anything left..." Lane considered. He watched the lonesome road while the words rolled around in his mind. He watched a mental picture of the man staying behind with his stuff, his house as twelve-hundred-degree molten lava gradually made its way toward him. It wasn't a quick way to die. Lane's parents had impressed upon him that material goods were never more valuable than any one person's life. Even the memories attached to trinkets weren't really a part of the items themselves but were locked away in the individual's mind. Lane grimaced. He pitied the man who died for stuff and chose not to save himself. It was a despairing reality.

    Luna groaned, "There's always something left to discover. The man had no hope. He'd forgotten that tomorrow always comes."

    Lane scoffed, "That's funny."

    Still massaging her stomach, Luna countered, "No. That's the truth."

    "No, I mean, 'Tomorrow always comes,' is almost the exact opposite of what Uncle Dan told me this morning while you were... Busy." Lane caught himself. They'd lived with each other long enough that there was a quiet, respectable dance around openly talking about sexual partners. More often than not however Luna was the one who danced right on the line. Lane himself kept more of a healthy distance away from that subject.

    "You two were talking behind my back?" She tried to force a wink but ended up scowling through another bout of cramps.

    "No, not directly. When we saw the black wolf-" Again Lane bit his tongue.

    "Wolf? What wolf?" Luna asked in a near growl. Lane drummed on the steering wheel, hesitant to answer. Luna insisted, "Ursa Major?"

    "I don't wanna break my promise," Lane spat out. He kept his eyes on the road, the pines, the blue sky obscured behind the branches reaching over the road. He couldn't look at his sister. He knew, he felt her disappointment and the guilt that came rolling behind it.

    A moment of silence passed between them.

    "You saw another creature, like the one on the shore didn't you?" Luna whispered.

    More silence filled their jeep.

    With both their windows down, the wind rushed through their hair. Birds cawed in the distance. Forest creatures chittered somewhere in the woods. The mix of unseen sound and visible stillness all around them was unsettling, lonely, foreboding.