The Hunter, The Dragon And The Smokey Mountain Angel

Julia opened her eyes, blinked and then wiped the sleep from her vision. The blurred image of a wood beam seen from inches away startled her and she jerked.

She was floating inches below the ceiling!

She flinched and the sudden movement rammed her head first into the ceiling! A shock of pain cut through her sleepiness and she saw stars, twisted and dropped but quickly she imagined a glowing sphere just above her and she stopped herself before she crashed into the floor.

A split second later, the pain vanished.

“Don’t move a muscle,” Julia said to herself as she took a few deep breaths. She had practiced float–walking all the way down the mountain and then the few miles to her house but she hadn’t thought about what to do while floating horizontal, face down or face up. Then the video from the clinic, the one the nurse had made giving the doctor’s instructions on how to move flooded into her mind. That, along with all she had learned from the long walk home yesterday gave her the answer she needed. She up–righted herself, crossed her legs along neutral lines and settled Indian Style before the smoldering fireplace.

Her mind felt fully awake and she wondered if smacking her face into a wooden support beam every morning would be better than a cup of coffee. She rolled her eyes and glanced down at the neatly stacked cooking dishes on the hearth.

She still wanted a cup of coffee.

Then she froze in place. She could see her breath but her skin felt warm. The room was freezing but she wasn’t cold at all. She could feel energy radiating from her body like a magnet and she wondered how the treatment worked.

None of this makes sense. How did a mining company get technology like this and why aren’t I in a lab? So many questions with no answers.

She was sure that the force that was holding her in the air wasn’t electromagnetic. It felt anti–gravitational and something else too. She not only floated but she could produce a pushing or pulling force. The best part was she felt no pain. She wasn’t numb. She could tell where the pressure was different in the room, she sensed that this was a cool space and she wasn’t uncomfortable. However, she did feel hungry and she was ready to get the day started.

It took a few minutes to get the fire going and cook another can of baked beans. Then she filled all the empty cans, pans and her only tin cup with water and let it start to heat up in the fireplace.

She pulled out a bottle of hot sauce from her bag, dumped a healthy supply of it on her beans and started eating. The fire crackled and her mind relaxed as her breathing became even. She methodically fed herself as she watched the fire licking the cans filled with water. Little bubbles started gathering inside the cans. The idea that soon the water will be boiling came and passed. She ignored it until she began to feel a slight rumbling in her stomach and she started thinking that the beans were fighting back against her body. However, the sensation wasn’t coming from her body.

The room around her faded as the same comforting sensation she felt last night came over her, it was the presence. She let her mind focus and she saw a flash of white followed by a haze of blue light.

The thought,

Something else happened on the day the lightning struck you. Something else was going on, came to her mind.

Pain filled her mind and she winced even though the sensation was just a memory. The memory felt foreign, as if coming from an ancient mind that was in a state of terror and then rage. However, the pain wasn’t coming from the light that had struck her. This was a different kind of light. It was blue and she could feel its cold touch. It felt like a net compressing against... thick skin sending tendrils of pain shooting through damaged nerves. She was seeing from the presences’ mind.

This wasn’t something that had happened to her. This memory had happened to the presence a year ago on the day of her accident. The more the presence resisted the blue energy net the tighter it squeezed and then more pain. Deep blue shadows filled a small room where the presence had been trapped. She could see the bulky, long form of its body bathed in blue and contrasted by the darkness. However, she couldn’t make out the shape of the presence. The vision began to blur as her heart rate increased.

She heard herself asking,

What is this thing?

The vision continued. This presence, this being that had been communicating with her had been trapped but it could still see outside the cage of blue energy. This powerful being was locked inside some kind of wedge–shaped spaceship and just beyond its walls; she saw the void of space, planets and beyond them stars and galaxies…

Then her vision shifted and the sensations she felt changed to her own lost memories. This was still the day that the lightning had struck her. It was like seeing her own memory from the presence perspective but it was a memory she couldn’t recall on her own.

Her mind opened even more. She was standing in front of the quantum computer. A brilliant flash of white lightning had struck her but she had felt no pain, cutting or burning.

The light enveloped her and she suddenly found herself simultaneously inside the minds and bodies of countless people, some of them she knew from her dreams. Though she could feel her consciousness stretched across eternity her awareness only focused on one moment in space at a time.

Most of the people she saw were living regular–everyday lives but many were in life and death situations fighting indestructible opponents.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

People that looked just like her fought the same wars against the same enemy on countless worlds just like the one she was on. Some of the people she viewed were prisoners within their own minds. There were tiny things inside them that she couldn’t identify. In some worlds the microscopic things seemed symbiotic with the host but in others they kept purging information until they leached memories from every brain cell for all knowledge about… what– she didn’t know because she didn’t stay long enough in one body to see what would happened to them. But she guessed...

Nevertheless, what she saw terrified her. The invaders flew black spacecraft that resembled the one that the presence had been trapped in and enemy soldiers looked like demons from childhood stories. However, these beasts new how to operate spacecraft, fire energy weapons, fight and all of them seemed keenly aware of what they were doing. They were reshaping the human race on each world they entered.

Her attention shifted, she was a nurse taking vitals on a battlefield, a moment later her mind changed perspective, she was on another Earth and she was in the body of a scientist named John. He was the one who had invented Aughra. He understood the math and engineering to bridge universes. He was the one who made the machine that started all this mess. Through the minds of all the others, she pieced together that Sapen was searching the multiverse for anyone that could lead him to John…

The presence that was guiding her thoughts paused…

The dreaded name Sapen echoed in the minds of all those she had known.

Her mind kept jumping from person to person and she tasted their pleasures and felt their struggles. It was as if she had lived a moment in countless parallel lives even though some of her other selves were living in what looked like the past while others were in the future.

She wanted to see every one of these other… people like her. The more she saw how similar they were to her the more she wanted to understand them and know them. But even though this moment inside the lightning felt like an eternity, it wasn’t long enough for her to see everything…

Then her mind returned to the lab. It was her last day of active duty in the Air Force. She saw herself standing before the quantum supercomputer she had been operating the moment before it exploded. She merged with her body, as she had done with all the others...

And to her surprise, she realized that there was a man with her but this person was unlike the presence she had been feeling lately. The man shimmered as if he were a god that had appeared before her but he was dressed in a tuxedo. His face was grim but not angry. He seemed to her as one who reluctantly bares a great responsibility and knows things that he wished he could forget.

Questions came to her mind but she let them pass, so she could concentrate on what she was seeing. Intuitively, she knew that the connection she had to all the others like her ran through him. In one hand, he held onto the lightning that connected universes and in another, she saw a thousand strands of light stretching out from his palm and into all directions disappearing into infinity.

And then, the dream–like quality of the vision dissolved and she realized that she had done all this before on the day the lightning had struck her... And he, this… other version of herself, he had been watching her response to the happenings of these other people she had seen in her dreams. As her mind relaxed, she saw that the filaments of light he held connected her directly to these other–selves and them to each other in an entangled relationship involving events that calumniated on a world at the end of the multi–verse.

All but a few of her other selves; all but the dark ones were engaged in individual conflicts against, something called Sapen, a being, a thing that was leading the invasion of their worlds and had begun running experiments on each of their populations. She instantly thought of the boy in her dreams that could fly and change the shape of his body. This boy, Louis, was also a part of her but he seemed so much braver and more powerful and she was… He was the one who had stood fearless and then fought off the zombies who were attacking his friends at the High School Gym. Later, he had done that same thing attempting to save his world from what became Sapen’s Experiment Zombie Apocalypse…

This, glowing man had been with her for a while now. She realized that he had been leading her through most of her dreams... or, her dreams were a reoccurrence of all she was seeing now.

She suddenly realized why she was still experiencing these dreams. One of those strings still connected her to this being in the lightning.

Like a smell awakening an old memory, she knew the quality of his spirit. The full knowledge of whom or what he was–was like a name just outside of her memory; an oddly–shaped answer that wouldn’t fit into its square hole... There was something else about him and it was right in front of her but the knowledge sat in her blind spot. He was a part of her... but...

This is too much.

Like all the other, slightly different versions of herself she had just experienced, this man was also her… But he was the combination of all the good that she had seen in every person she had experienced in the vision; he embodied all their best qualities.

There were huge differences though. Through his eyes, she thought him very old though his overall appearance seemed young. And the longer she looked at him she noticed that he was looking into her trying to see if she was... worthy.

She felt uncomfortable under his gaze. With a small shift in his posture, he questioned her motives and her honor but for what purpose she couldn’t guess. It was clear that he knew all about her; as if her life was his life. She felt ashamed at many of the things she knew about herself. He saw everything. He didn’t like that she was a killer but at the same time; she didn’t feel he judged her too harshly for what she had done. He had seen so much death and violence that, to him, her life seemed like a dark fairytale, rather than the nightmares she had just glimpsed.

Julia waited for the mysterious man in the light to give an explanation about all this disjointed information she now had but none came. The man remained silent and the moment stretched on and on. It was as if he knew all there was to know about her but one question remained in his mind.

Then he leaned in closer and looked into her eyes and she knew he had his answer. He saw all that she stood for. She lived, so that her son could have a better life than the life she had. She fought terrorist, so that her son wouldn’t have to fight them in the hills of Tennessee. She held no ill will toward any person who lived freely and caused no harm. When this understanding was clear, and he knew all he wanted to know about her, she felt a surge of energy and an unspoken question;

Are you ready?

Then he said the only words he would speak, “Fear not. God is with you. Make all the children in this world your children too and you will find the strength to face the coming invasion.”

In a burst of understanding, he revealed himself to her. To thousands of people on countless worlds, he was called The Journeyman; his name was Joshua, the one slipping between realms uniting the strong and preparing them for the final battle that is to come at the end of all things. Lavar, the Last Protector of TOL, had sent him. And there were other powerful beings with unknown intentions skipping through the shattered dimensions of this section of the mega–verse. She saw faces, some beautiful while others horrifying, some human some... She couldn’t tell what they were.

A thought, like a memory, slipped deep into her consciousness: Blazer and Princess Tuyena are on their way to this world. This world now harbors the most dangerous being in all existence... then the thought faded...

She fought to hold the idea but decided not to question this knowledge or try to keep it fearing that the whole dream might fade...

Seconds later, she saw the quantum computer she had been operating pulse.

The alien looking machine buzzed. Sparks flew all around her even as Joshua looked away from her and into the light from where he came.

The quantum computer exploded bringing a second flash of light, almost as quickly as the first one that had brought Joshua.

All that she had witnessed through Joshua had happened in an instant!

The shockwave from the exploding super computer twisted her body as ice–cold metal shards struck her in the back. She could feel and hear her spine popping as the shrapnel tore into her skin. The shockwave shattered the rest of the bones that the shrapnel missed. When the pain came, the flash of light from the lightning bridge Joshua had traveled through faded and the connection with Joshua and all her other selves in the multiverse terminated.

The memory of the pain was unbearable. She wanted to scream in frustration as the vision lost clarity...

I don’t understand!

The presence receded from her mind and she felt naked. Then the whole cabin began to shake.

She opened her eyes, her military training kicked in and she said aloud, “What invasion!”

The fire hissed as two of the cans sitting in the fireplace began to boil, spilling their water into the fire. She blinked and her mind returned to the present. The fire sparkled as the water splashed into the flames.

My bath!

She floated close to the fireplace and took hold of the metal containers from the fire. Then she floated to the bathroom and set them into the bath she had prepared last night and then paused as she looked at her palms,

My hands should be burned...

She turned her palms over and then back. They weren’t red. They were a cool shade of pink. She had felt warmth, along with the ridges and the smooth curves of the cans but their surface wasn’t hot.

The water in the bathtub should be cold from setting there all night. She placed her hand in the tub, ready for the cold shock but the water felt fine.

This foam does more than make me float and relieve pain. I really wonder what else it did to me.

She didn’t need to heat the water anymore. She raised her whole body over the tub and slowly lowered herself into the bath. She shivered then stopped herself. Her body was confused. It couldn’t tell that she felt fine.

Her thoughts returned to the memory the presence had brought her. The thought of going to the police about all this came,

They’d just think I’m crazy.

Her mind went over everything she could recall and she felt relieved knowing that her injuries weren’t because of something she had done,

But is this some kind of cosmic accident?

She shook her head and took several deep breaths. Nothing made since to her. Something her uncle used to say came to her attention,

“When there’s nothing you can do, do nothing.”

Julia took a deep breath and relaxed.

After finishing her bath, she tried calling her son again but this time the phone just clicked before the voice mail picked up. Anger began to build inside her and she let it flow for a few moments before taking a few calming breaths. Anger had served its purpose.

Her body felt stiff as she rose out of the tub. The titanium rods and braces only allowed her to twist so much before the metal interlocked limiting her movements. She practiced bending and doing squats so that her range of motion increased. She found that she could push her limits far beyond what she could do before when the pain had stopped her.

She thought,

I still need to be careful. Just because it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t mean that I’m not hurting myself.

Then she float walked around the house naked but stopped in front of the bathroom mirror. She watched herself as she moved around the small space.

I do look like I suffered a stroke– though my face looks normal.

Then she turned, found her bag, took several items and returned to the bathroom mirror.

She sat a cup, a brush and her clothes down on the counter. Then she paused and thought about how long it took and how painful it had been to do the simplest things.

With some work, I might be able to pull off a natural look.

She knew how others saw her when she ate dinner or drank from a cup. It was hard to block out all the staring eyes. The thought of how strange her hands shook while eating or doing anything that required fine motor skills was something she had to ignore. The memory was so stressful that it had given her indigestion but now the thought also motivated her to practice.

She leaned toward the mirror and said aloud, “I don’t care what anybody thinks,” but the look she saw in the mirror said that she did.

She closed her eyes, then opened them again and watched herself as she went through all the little motions required simply to take a drink. Her arm wobbled and she had to force the image of little spheres dotting the path where she wished her arm to move. Her arm responded better but sometimes it moved too quick, then slowed and then shot down stopping just past the mark she had in mind.

I’m over thinking this.

She tried it again but this time she did it with less focus on the spheres and more with her imagination. She wanted her arm to go where she wanted it to go while placing only a few imaginary orbs at the key points. She practiced this again and again, over and over. When she started to feel like she had made some progress, she picked up the cup and noticed that her hand no longer trembled, still the twisting and turning of her wrist and the way she had to orient the rest of her body using opposite motions took getting used to.

After several times of pretending to fill the cup from the sink, drinking and then setting the cup back down on the counter, she moved on to brushing her hair.

These new motions were very different from using a cup. They required her to make major adjustments on a small scale to pull off a natural looking stroke.

It’s a good thing they didn’t spray my hair with that foam.

Then she set the brush down, picked up the cup and filled it with water then drank. The action was spontaneous and it looked great. She smiled at herself and then brushed her hair. She still looked jittery but she could drink and brush her hair in only a few minutes.

Her smile broke into a grin and then laughter as she dressed herself. She tried not to cheat but it was a lot easier to put on clothes when she was floating rather than when she was trying to anchor herself to the floor while making all the movements necessary to slip on her undergarments and then a dress.

She looked in the mirror and adjusted her posture. The beauty she saw smiling back at her was now worth her time to put on makeup.

Then she stripped and practiced everything several more times. She thought she’d never get tired of brushing her hair, drinking water from a cup and slipping on a dress. She imagined that her motions were starting to look natural but she knew she would still look odd to anyone watching her every move.

Everything gets better with practice.

Noah was on her mind as she left the bathroom. The house was a mess but the chore now looked like a training opportunity. While cleaning the house she sang the theme song to lamb chops, “This is the song that never ends... yes it goes on and on my friend... Some people– started singing it not knowing what it was... and they’ll continue singing it forever just because this is the song that never ends!”

She could only sing the song a few times before she HAD to end it. She remembered driving Rand mad as she sung it but Noah would just sing along with her as they’d danced in the living room.

All the cleaning made her think of her special training she received in the Air Force. If the police couldn’t help her find Noah, she would soon apply her old skills...

The house was far from perfect. Getting it as clean as she wanted it to be would take hours but it was time to go.

She took her bag and started toward town. As she walked, her thoughts bounced from her plans to find Noah, her upcoming interview, lost Air Force papers, her money and Andrew... Noah... Andrew, Noah... Andrew.

She shook her head;

I don’t want to be on the needy end of a new relationship.

But Andrew wasn’t like Rand or any other man she had met. He had a way of slipping past her walls and making her feel like a woman.

Her right leg lifted a little too high and she started to spin but she concentrated on her forward momentum, adjusted and was back on track. Her new motions hadn’t become ingrained yet. Moving only the tiniest bit in the wrong direction, just a slip in thought created huge motions. If she didn’t pay close attention to every step and thought, she might swing her arms or bend her back and she would fly off into oncoming traffic.

As soon as she could, she stepped off the main road and took the back way, along the creek and behind buildings in order to avoid others seeing her. Her motions looked very natural but she was still practicing. If she were far away from the city, she thought about testing the limits of her new abilities.

A growing urge to jump into the sky was building inside her and she knew that eventually she would give into that urge but now wasn’t the time for playing. It was time to do some shopping.

It was still early when she entered Walmart. She had plenty of time to compare prices and brands, choose the right makeup for her skin and try on clothes. She was still too skinny from living a year stuck in a bed but in time that would change. The last time she had come here she didn’t bother with anything that wouldn’t help her get through the night and the next day. This job with the mining company would get her off the day to day survival mode and into the week to week category but this madness wouldn’t end until the Air force straightened out her accounts and she found her son. For now, it was time to do a little investing in herself.

After going to the camping department and selecting a larger pot, just big enough to fit in her bag and the fireplace, a camp shower and other basics, she found a latch for the back door and a lock. Then she headed to the women’s department.

Living like a homeless person in my own home is a lot of work, she thought, but at least I will soon have a job and can afford a hot shower. Everything seems so expensive when you’re broke.

She had been all over the world over the past four years but the Air Force had provided everything she needed... And she hadn’t entered a single mall in all that time.

When she was younger, her uncle had to make her go shopping, get her hair and nails done and act like a lady. One day he said to her, “I’ve taught you everything I know but some things you’re going to have to learn on your own.” Then he gave her $200 and told her not to come back home until she looked like a lady. She hated shopping back then and she quickly learned that $200 was barely enough to get her hair and nails done. After getting a basic haircut and buying ammo for her guns and crossbow, she ended up at the thrift store with $20 and she came home with three dresses and a pair of shoes. She washed the clothes and then dressed up for her uncle.

He only smiled and then pointed to his shotgun. He repeated the old line, “Don’t make me shoot anyone.”

She put the “new” clothes in her closet and they sat there for a few weeks. The kids at school had noticed her hair and though none of the other girls would make fun of her openly, not after what she had done the last time, they were clearly jealous of all the attention she started getting from the boys.

She didn’t care about that. Since her parents had died, she had withdrawn into her own world that revolved around the mountains and everything her uncle had taught her. She spent all her extra time and money modifying her crossbows, upgrading her hunting gear, buying and cleaning her guns and repairing the old truck. It wasn’t until she met her first real boyfriend that she started to wear the dresses she had bought and put on makeup. After they broke up she reverted to her old ways but at least she knew how to attract attention.

The memory of her Uncle made her smile. She missed him a lot. After he died, he left her enough money, so she could put a large down payment on her home. That was also why she didn’t want to give up her house. It was the last gift he had given to her. That and the strangely worded letter she had found in his dresser from her parents...

Julia paused– that letter and the few photos her uncle had kept from when they were younger were all she had left to remember her parents by. Her uncle told her that all their belongings were in storage but a fire had destroyed their building before he was able to move their items...

The letter…

There was something odd about that letter from her parents. Her uncle had gotten it a week after her parents died but at that time, she didn’t understand what the letter meant. After her uncle died, she had taken the few valuables and things that reminded her of him and sold the rest in a yard sale. However, that letter had stayed with her until the day she left for boot camp. She had read and re–read it a 1000 times. Now, all her things were gone...

Her eyes went wide. She knew that letter word for word. At the time, it was mostly gibberish but now... When she got home again, she would write that letter down and re–examine it.

My parents meant for those words to be confusing, it’s a code!

Right now, she had to get ready for the interview. As she looked at the prices marked on the clothing rack she was reminded that the Officer at the Air Force had given her money and she hadn’t counted it yet. After searching through the duffle bag pockets she found the wad of cash and her eyes went wide, it was nearly $300.

“Holy cow!” she said aloud then stuffed the cash back in her bag.

She wanted new undergarments and the perfect dress for the big interview. It would give her confidence to look her new boss in the eyes. Perhaps he could overlook her other shortcomings.

At the same time, she felt weird knowing that she was over qualified for a simple job like data entry. She knew of many people who had college degrees that were working in restaurants and cleaning houses. But most of their degrees didn’t match the needs of the present economy’s needs, she believed that her’s did.

Her mind kept racing over all the possible outcomes. All she wanted to do was spend her time searching for her son but if she didn’t take advantage of this opportunity then she might end up searching for him from behind iron bars.

The shelving started shaking as a feeling passed over her. An enormous struggle was taking place somewhere just below the surface. Her mind bent as she tried to make since of the warped images that flashed in her mind but forces beyond her comprehension were in conflict.

The people around her held onto their buggies and children as the trimmer continued. Then the shaking stopped and her mind returned to its own struggle...

But what if I lose this opportunity over something as simple as the color of the flowers printed on my dress. I need something conservative, something that says, “I don’t mind being bored for hours at a time...”

Then she stopped and hovered in place.

How long can I do this job before I am bored out of my mind?

She would be stuck in a tin can, without windows, copying files and entering miscellaneous data. She had done this job many times before, sometimes for months at a time but in the end she usually got to destroy everything she had done and burn the place to the ground. This would be different...

She started feeling trapped. The walls were already closing in around her and she could feel her heart beating rapidly.

Before the Air Force, she had considered being a park ranger, a tour guide, mechanic or anything that kept her from being chained to a desk... Of all the things she had done this somehow seemed like it would be the hardest.

Then a memory of her son laughing and clapping when she had finished putting his bunk bed together came to her mind and she calmed down.

I will do anything for him...

She thought of what Joshua had said to her, “Make all children like your children.”

She looked around the store and saw several children walking with their mothers, some were acting silly and a few were crying. Every mother and most fathers here and around the world would give their lives for their children in a moment...

She returned to her shopping but everything was too expensive. After trying on five different dress–suits and two plain, loose fitting single–color dresses she selected a simple white dress.

Then she found the clearance rack. All the panties before her were a little too big or too small and that wouldn’t do with a conservative dress on. The thought came to her mind of her standing before her future employer explaining why she was the right person for the job and then, all the sudden, her too–big panties dropped to the floor.

She shook her head at the image and decided to pay an extra five dollars for the ones that fit. If she could wear pants it would be fine but men liked the way she looked in a dress, conservative or whatever.

Dropping my panties before the boss on the big day–– not good. That’s a level of desperation I want to avoid.

She had seen other girls do it...

But if it comes down to it...

She shook her head again and with that last selection, she was done shopping. After the interview, she would go to Good Will and buy a few more dresses but for now, this one was all she needed. This dress looked great on her but not too great.

Then she purchased all her goods, stuffed everything in her bag but the dress and headed for the hair salon.