The What

6

Kat didn't hear anything but a great rushing wind, like the gusts across the grand canyon, whipping unlucky individualisms to their rocky death. White knuckles gripped the wheel as she struggled to grasp at reality. Everything was fuzzy, but not too fuzzy that she couldn't make out the body lying just past the hood of her truck. The brilliant blue NASA hoodie he'd gone missing in just a blue fuzz, but recognizable. As if she could forget that color...

BANG BANG BANG "KATARINA SNAP OUT OF IT"

She snapped when hands gripped her shoulders like vices, Chase's face taking over her field of vision. "Whass- I" she gracefully slurred out, taking in his gold irises, the freckles across his nose, the curls falling over his face...

"My dad!" She grabbed at his forearms. "How- I- Is he ok?!"

"It's not your dad, K-" She shoved him aside, stumbling out of the cab and scrambling over to the body in the road. That was his face and his hoodie. The exact, 32 year old face of her father when she was just a toddler. The face that went missing over 10 years ago, it hadn't aged a day. She fell to her knees beside him and tentatively reached out a hand to touch his sleeve-

"No, Kat, don't do that." Chase snatched her hand away and hauled her back, arm around her waist. "You've heard of fairy rings, right? This is like that. If you touch him, you'll be taken too."

"What are you talking about, that's my father! Let me go, he needs help, please!" She struggled against his strong grip, tears starting to fall silently down her face. "You don't understand, please, just let me go to him! I'll do whatever you want, I'll help you with all that bullshit you were talking about, just let me go help him!"

"Stop! Stop. Listen." He spun her around, his hands a vice grip on her arms. "That. is not. your father. You're a smart woman, Kat, think. Even if it was, even if he was alive after all of this time, he would be much older by now. That's not him. It can't be."

"I-" She struggled to breathe through the tears, "How do you know for certain?"

"I just do."

"But you could be wrong."

"I'm not."

"But you could be."

"Oh my god, you-"

"I'm just saying," She reached up to grip his forearms, "If what you say is true, all that whosy-whatsits and things, you can't say for certainty that it isn't my father. Some magical thing could've taken him and frozen him in time or something, I don't know but... There's a chance, right?"

Kat searched his eyes for anything, and she found exactly what she wanted to. Exasperation and concession. She could be right.

"Ok. Ok!" He huffed out a breath and let her go. "But we do this my way. Because if it's not your father, it could be very dangerous. So you have to do everything I say."

"But-"

His eyes pierced her, hard and demanding. "Yea, ok, fine, we'll do it your way," She huffed.