“Quickly! Wake up now!”

A sharp sting to her face, then another one.

“Get up, come on!”

Sharp darts of light pierced her eyes. Giselle wanted to shield her face with her hands, but something held them down.

“Slap her again!”

“Stay back, kid. It’s too dangerous. Ma’am, you must come out now. It’s not safe.”

She knew she had heard those voices before. She knew them. Knew one of them intimately. Child. Her child. One of the two.

Her eyes flew open, and she shot upright, feeling the gel around her give way reluctantly, trying to cling to her as long as it could.

“Petal! Where’s Xandra? Where are—“

The light was blinding, even as it trickled down from between the leaves, but it was... different.

There was something wrong with her. Sitting up didn’t feel right. The light wasn’t right either. Her head felt heavy, too heavy.

“Careful now. Don’t let go all at once. I'll try to catch you.”

She had heard that voice before. A woman.

A flash of panic, bright light, rushing people, blinding terror.

Ah, she had met her in the hallway. What was her name? Willow.

What did she mean, catch?

More of the gel gave up its grip on her body, and she dropped a few inches.

Dropped!

Realization struck as hands gripped her upper arms from below her. She hung upside down from that transport pod, with only part of her legs still encased, and slipping further and further down.

“I’ve got you,” Willow said, pulling at her arms until the last of the grip gave way and gravity took firm hold of her, sending her tumbling down, taking the other woman with her.

They landed in a heap; the impact driving the breath from her lungs. Disoriented and dazed, she lay there, looking up at the scorched, battered oblong that hung above her. Last she had seen it, it had been impeccably shining silver. Now it was a mess. It was blackened all-over, one side looking half-melted, deep gashes scoring the other. Sparks fizzed from some of those cracks. The transparent cover was gone. By the look of the thing, it was torn off the pod at one time or another.

Willow grunted in pain, then moved from beneath her.

“Come on,” she said.

“We really shouldn’t stay underneath that thing. It’s unhealthy.”

“W-why is that? Radiation or something?”

“The last ten of them blew up. It’s just my medical opinion, mind you. Feel free to stay in the blast-zone if you must—No, scrap that, I didn’t go through all this trouble to let you get fried. Come on.”

When Giselle didn’t react, Willow took her hand, dragged her to her feet and pulled her with her as she scrambled away.

“I don’t… I don’t understand… What do you mean, blow up? Cars don’t blow up after a crash, that’s just in the movies—”

“That’s not a car.”

Her head hurt. It was so hard to think. Her thoughts rolled around in a messy tangle, and it felt as if half her brain was on fire, the other half sparking as much as that transport pod had done. Images kept flashing before her eyes. Half-remembered memories and things she had forgotten, popping up faster and faster, like someone was rifling through a stack of photographs. With every image there came emotions, flitting from one into the other, furious rage one second, glorious joy the other.

She rubbed her eyes with one hand, tried to catch her breath, while Willow relentlessly pulled her onward.

Pressure built and built behind her eyes, the onslaught of impressions swelling into a crescendo, nearing its climax. It was too much. She couldn’t bear it, couldn’t contain it, it had to get out.

“S-stop,” she said, but the roaring in her ears was too loud, she couldn’t hear if she had spoken out loud or not. Willow didn’t stop, nor did the thoughts.

There was something else now, something behind her. She could feel it building, almost as much as the tension that was inside. This was different, though. Colder. Darker.

Danger!

She stopped, ignoring the pull on her hand. Strange, she thought, with almost amused detachment, her hands didn’t hurt anymore. The pain had gone, not only in her hands, but everywhere but in her head.

Standing there, her feet rooted in the squelching soil, she slowly turned around, facing the pod. That’s where that odd sensation came from. She could almost see it, emanating in dark waves from those shining sparks.

The pod was stuck in the branches of a tree, wedged between them, after a trail of burnt and broken greenery.

Something was wrong there. There was something that should not be. She didn’t know how she knew that. She didn’t know what it could be. All she knew was that it was dangerous, and it was growing.

“—hear me? Gotta move, your daughter is waiting!”

The sound finally reached her ears, with a sluggishness as if it had been swimming through ice. That last part sent a jolt of lightning through her, freezing the images in her mind in place, sending electric shivers from the top of her crown to the bottom of her soles.

Her daughter!

She had to protect her, protect them.

She remembered now. The fight, the attack, the terrible, terrible danger. The screaming, that all too adult, all too determined look in her little girl’s eyes.

Protect! Now!

She screamed, anguish and rage melding into bellowing sound, as she stretched out, wrapped her arms around a startled Willow, and bore them both to the ground, her trying to cover every bit of the other woman.

The wave of heat and pressure struck her back seconds later, searing through her clothes, burning into her skin. She kept screaming as the force of the blast drove every pebble, every bit of wood, every grain of sand, into her skin. Larger things ripped past her, shards of metal burrowing themselves deep into the surrounding ground.

She was burnt to a crisp and rebuilt again, over and over, standing in the heart of a raging star. Until the heat struck something else, something new, a wall of cool air, a smooth, icy surface that gently glowed with a magenta light.

The heat faltered, stopped its progress, then slowly failed, buckling under that spreading coldness. It radiated through her, spreading a soothing balm, calming her nerves, pouring into her skin, her muscles, her bones.

When she finally drew a ragged breath, it was like drinking the clearest, purest water. She inhaled and inhaled, enjoying just that single sensation, every breath calming her even more, bringing her back from the pain and fear.

The gasp below her was what finally got her back in to her body, opening her eyes and releasing her almost crushing grasp on the woman in her arms.

“Sorry,” she said, and it came out as a whispered mumble, like for a moment, she had forgotten how to speak.

“Mom?”

Her head snapped up at the sound of Petal’s voice. The small clearing around her had become much larger, with trees flattened and snapped like matchsticks, and heat and dust still shimmering in the air. Despite all the debris and the distance, Giselle could see her standing, leaning on a heavy stick as tall as she was, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open in shock and incomprehension. What was going on? What was Petal looking at?

Taking a step away from Willow, she looked back to where the transport pod had been. The pod had gone. So had the tree, and all the trees around it.

“How?” Willow came unsteadily to her feet, following her gaze around the now a lot larger clearing, taking in the brutal damage, then pointedly returning to the small patch of ground they had huddled over.

Giselle jumped in shocked surprise. Green!

A little knoll of grass, unscorched, untouched by the violence, while around her the ground steamed and hissed from the release blast of heat.

“Mom?”

Petal did a hesitant step forward, then stopped.

“Petal, honey! Come here! I’m fine, baby, I’m fine!”

Giselle tried to walk towards her, but her head was still spinning and she couldn’t feel the ground under her feet. Best to let that clear a little.

Petal didn’t move any closer, and Willow looked at her with a mixture of fear and fascination. Well, she must look like a wreck after having that blast wash all over her. She was probably in shock, because she didn’t feel wrecked. In fact, she felt fine.

Shock, she decided. Best to find a doctor as soon as possible. If she got burned as much as she felt she had, she might be in big trouble, seeing as she was in some kind of forest, and not near any clean burn ward, or even a regular hospital.

“I think,” she said to Willow, “I need a doctor.”

Willow nodded, still fixing her with that strange stare. It was getting really uncomfortable, and it made her more anxious by the minute.

“Is your sister—“ Giselle stopped as another wave of dizziness crashed over her, together with the sudden memory of her precious little one’s dark eyes, before she threw herself and her assailant into the portal. She shivered, feeling her clothes shift uncomfortable lose around her. Singed badly, she thought. Maybe burned or melted into her skin. She couldn’t feel that, but she had read that burn-victims rarely felt the damage at first.

“Are — are you a doctor?”

She thought Willow might be, going by what the woman had said, but it was best to be sure. Willow swallowed, her eyes still too wide, with that edge of panic still there, but fading as her warmth returned.

“I—I am. Uhm…” Another convulsive swallow, “Are you OK?”

“No.”

Giselle shook her head and looked pleadingly from her daughter to Willow.

“I don’t think I am. I think something’s very wrong with me. I'm so confused... I—I need… Where are we? What happened?”

Petal prodded the steaming soil with her stick, reaching out with the toes of a tentative foot and sighed.

“I’ll tell you everything, I promise. But…”

Giselle frowned as Petal kept flicking her eyes back to her feet. What was going on that it kept drawing her daughter’s attention?

She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to see what mess was left of her feet. The moment she saw it, she would feel it, she was sure of that. But there was something going on here and she would have to face it, eventually.

Biting her lip, she looked down and gasped.

“Mom,” Petal said, “you are…. You are floating in the air. Can you please come down?”