Descending Star

INTO THE WILD

Author Note:  Chapter title tribute to Jon Krakauer.

Kira awoke to the sensation of something wet and scratchy on her lips. She lifted the mask off her eyes and caught Cleopatra, millimeters from her face, in the act of licking her again. Then Cleo made a plaintive mew.

Kira threw the mask with a scream and shoved Casimir, hard. He groaned and sat up. He looked from Kira to Cleopatra, who sat between them.

"Goddamn it," he cursed, up on his feet. Kira understood, without words, the conclusion he had instantly drawn: their daughter had finally done it. He threw a robe around his shoulders, already headed for the bedroom door, and roared, "Run! Check the pool!"

Kira scrambled out of bed and caught the time on the alarm clock: four sixteen.

By the time she reached the main stairs, Casimir was already up in the attic, waving a flashlight at the joists, no doubt in search of hanging rope.

Kira grabbed the rails and descended the stairs three at time, glanced at the butcher block in passing, noted nothing amiss, no missing cutlery. She burst out onto the pool deck and hit the floodlights. Only then did she breathe, in huge belabored gulps. Nothing in the pool but water.

She spotted Casimir in the kitchen, rushing toward another door, heading for the basement. She frantically thought, 'Where else, where?' She raced for the garage door, to check whether Zoey had taken the Acura. She slammed into Casimir's car, scrambled around it, stumbled past her own car to the farthest bay, and let out a piercing shriek heard by Casimir in the basement and half the neighborhood.

Moments later, Casimir reared up behind her with a heaving chest, looked for himself, and tore at his hair as he snarled, "I have a commute in two hours. I'm going back to bed."

Zoey, on her hands and knees on the concrete floor, said, "Dad I'm heading out, and I'll be gone for awhile, so I should say I love you and take care"–

"You're not going anywhere."

"What? I'm grounded again?"

"I love you, too. Yes. You're grounded. Forever. Kira. Deal with this."

Zoey had opened the garage bay, and she had backed the Acura out onto the driveway. All four doors were open, as well as the rear gate. She had also mounted the Thule cargo carrier on the roof racks.

She had taken all of the camping and climbing gear down from the garage loft and had arrayed the lot of it in concentric circles. Tents, awnings, vestibules, screens, sleeping bags, stoves, grill grates, the campfire espresso boiler, milk crates packed with dry food and coffee, cases of emergency energy– jerky, gel packs, powdered electrolytes, all kinds of rope, from clothesline to dynamic kernmantle, chalk bags, harnesses, and every possible manner of bouldering hardware.

She presently wore her favorite white Mammut crash helmet, chin strap loose, at a cavalier tilt.

Kira pulled her nightdress more tightly around herself and stamped her foot with brewing fury that accelerated rapidly toward a boil. "Going somewhere?"

Zoey registered her mother's cool demeanor, transparently forced. It wouldn't hold. She glanced upward distractedly and hastily swiped the helmet off her head. "I'm not running away. I was going to wake you. After packing."

Kira panned warily across the dizzying array of cams and chocks, which completed a full orbit around Zoey herself, a steel and magnesium asteroid belt. Then her eye fell on the tents and sleeping bags. Whatever she was doing, she wasn't packing for Phoenix.