Astyr was in her seventh period P.E. class when she got hit in the head with a basketball. Her mind was on the clock instead of the game she was supposed to be playing. The coach blew the whistle and told them all to head to the locker rooms. They were done for the day, finally.

"What's wrong with you today, Astyr?" Jenny asked in a petulant way. Jenny had no memory of what had happened after they finished watching the movie, but Glin had decidedly broken up with her, giving her a very flimsy excuse. Jenny had been left to come to her own conclusions and, despite Astyr and Hakon being publicly closer than ever, she had decided to take out her anger on Astyr.

Astyr really couldn't care what Jenny thought, though. All of her energy and concentration was focused on the search for the run-down shack where her mother was trapped. There had been a few days of panic when she thought that without Loki her mother would starve to death, but careful examination of Randy's memories had shown that the accomplice Randy had scented was different from the vile man who had pretended to be Loki as a trap for Tyr.

Astyr, Gunnar, Hakon and Glin had been forced to go back to school to keep up appearances but Astyr could barely concentrate on anything any of her teachers said. Even though her body was sitting at a desk, her mind was once again travelling through the dark woods of Randy's memories, searching for clues that could give them a place to start from. The problem was that Randy, so distraught and careless of his own well-being, hadn't cared where he was and hadn't been paying attention.

Astyr, with her photographic memory, could clearly remember every moment of Randy's life and even though it was largely painful, it was the very first time that she was grateful for her gift.

Astyr, in the locker room, mechanically went through the motions of changing back into her black skinny jeans and hot pink t-shirt. When she was done, she grabbed her bag and headed out to the parking lot. Glin and Gunnar were already sitting in the backseat of Hakon's Camaro waiting for her.

Glin had suffered pretty badly in the aftermath of Loki's attack. When Queen Elianna discovered that Glin had been absent from his post during the one time he had most been needed, she had been really angry. When she discovered that he had been away because he was driving his human girlfriend home, she was livid. So, in a fit of intense rage, she had sent a bolt of energy right through his beloved Maserati. What was left of it afterwards greatly resembled a work of modern art. Glin had been demoted in rank and was given orders to never be more than fifty feet away from Astyr at any given time.

Queen Elianna, for her part, had come straight away when she found out that her daughter was alive, but missing. She was staying in a nearby hotel and keeping a close eye on the search. Her first reaction was to suggest bringing in an army of Alfar to comb through the woods, but Tyr reluctantly had to refuse. It would have been too hard to keep the humans in the area from noticing their presence. 

Astyr suggested that they try to reconstruct the part of his journey from the shack back to the mansion since it was the one sure marker they could place, but that didn't make it much easier since Randy had taken a route back that was purposefully misleading in case Loki had discovered he'd been there.

Another problem that Grima had pointed out after watching the memory was that it had taken Randy a couple of weeks to reach the shack. After taking into account just how much ground a lone wolf could cover in one day while tracking a scent, the search area became frustratingly large.

Astyr was really happy that school was over for the day, and for the week as well, because now she had the entire weekend to spend helping in the search. It was more than she could bear sitting in school all day knowing that her mother was out there somewhere and not being able to beat a path straight to her. She spent her evenings on the computer using satellite pictures to try and find the little shack but it was like trying to find one grain of sand on the beach and it left her feeling useless and ineffective.

The weekend meant she would be able to head out with her father, Hakon, and Grima, with Glin in tow; putting the images in her mind to good use.

They travelled light, carrying everything they needed on their backs and sleeping rough around a campfire when they were too tired to go on. The hardest part of trying to recreate the journey backwards was that the view of the forest was completely different travelling in one direction from the way it looked coming the other way. It was like trying to find their way by only walking backwards. Another problem was that Randy had made the journey during the winter when the trees were bare. Now that new leaves were sprouting all over, the scenery looked very different.

Despite all the difficulties, by the time they made camp late the first night, they had covered a good distance. Hakon entered their coordinates on the hand-held GPS system they were using while Tyr and Glin built a fire and Grima and Astyr laid out sleeping bags and got some food out of the packs. When the work was done they sat around the fire eating and watching the flames dance over the logs; everybody was exhausted and eager to get some rest.

"This reminds me of when I was younger," Grima said nostalgically. "When I was old enough to go out on my own, there was a shift in the world's climate. The great Ice Age came to an end and the temperatures rose quickly. My father's home was in the far Southeastern tip of Europe, in a land that afterwards was known as Thrace. The waters of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea started to rise, leading to panic by the people who lived on our lands.

"I was curious about the change, and there were stories among our kind of this happening before, so I decided to travel to the north and see what was happening to the giant glaciers that covered the land and seas.

"I set out in the spring and made my way up the coast of the Black Sea to where the great river led up into the heart of Europe. It was the sleeping out under the stars that reminds me of tonight.

"I followed the waters up to the lands that were emerging from the retreating glaciers and that's where I first met Arianna.

"I had somehow managed to get attached to a human and his boy who were traveling north on a quest to save their village. It seems that an old Alfar woman had taken a liking to the blood of their children and she was using a great beast to go in and snatch them. The human, Wolund, was a brave blacksmith who had volunteered to go find her and kill her and the beast. The man had no idea what he was up against and he would have been slaughtered if Arianna and I hadn't been there to help him out.

He was a good travel companion, though. Keeping good company is the most important thing one must do when on a mission like ours."

They all sleepily murmured their agreement as they settled in for the night.

The next morning found them up with the sun, clearing up their make-shift camp and consulting with the GPS maps. Astyr wandered around the edges of the clearing they had slept in, stopping to look at everything from every angle and comparing it to the image in her head. The clearing was bounded by a variety of trees; there were a couple of different kinds of pine trees, with full canopies of fluffy, green needles, there was one very large live oak that still wore a leafy coat and several thin, small saplings scattered around it, and there was both a beech and magnolia tree filling in the remaining space. The early morning air carried a fresh smell of green life and the cool weather was rejuvenating to Astyr's overworked senses.

She tried her best to picture everything as it would have looked months ago but it was like trying to imagine a room full of people with their clothes off. Struck by inspiration, she got down on her hands and knees and started to slowly circle the edge of the clearing again, this time paying attention to the trunks and undergrowth only.

"Astyr!" Hakon called out in a worried tone, "What are you doing?"

She looked over to him with an amused expression. "Well, I'm trying to look at it from Randy's perspective. I thought it might look different from down here."

Hakon started laughing, drawing the attention of Tyr and Grima. Glin was making a point to avoid looking at Astyr any more than was necessary.

"That's actually a very good idea, Astyr," Grima said, "It's just not possible to scour the woods for the entire distance on all fours."

Hakon was putting in some effort to stop his laughter but even Tyr was fighting to keep a straight face.

Astyr, getting thoroughly annoyed at the two of them, ignored them and answered Grima, "I wasn't planning to do this the whole way. I just thought that if I figured out where he entered the clearing, it would point us in the direction he was coming from."

Tyr let himself smile at that. He was constantly surprised at just how clever Astyr was. "That's a very good idea," he said in a voice full of pride, "that's exactly what trackers do."

That finally put an end to Hakon's chuckles and he came over to where Astyr was crawling and got down on his knees with her. He looked around at the pattern of browns, greens and grays on the opposite side of the clearing and tried to compare it with the image in his head of Randy's memory. It had taken them a long time the night before to make their way to this spot. Far too much time had passed to make it possible to track Randy's trail the old-fashioned way; this was a purely visual puzzle and it was a challenge to fit each small piece of it together, one after the other.

Astyr started moving again, going slowly over the damp ground, with Hakon beside her. They got to a spot that was about a third of the way around from where they had entered the clearing the night before and Astyr stopped.

"Do you see that trunk?" she asked Hakon.

He looked carefully at the tree she was pointing at, taking his time to compare it with the other plants surrounding it.

"Look," she said to him, turning to face him, "Take another look at his memory and see what you think."

Hakon did as she asked and smiled as he gazed back at the scene in front of him.

"I think you're right," he told her. "It looks like he turned sharply to throw off the trail. Anyone would have expected him to just go straight across."

Astyr stood up and brushed off her jeans. Tyr came over and casually put his arm around her shoulder as they peered into the forest from where they now knew that Randy had entered the clearing. There was the barest trace of a path through the budding and blooming undergrowth.

"Well," Tyr said, squeezing Astyr in an affectionate way, "it looks like you've found our starting point for the day. Good job."

Astyr felt a warm flush of pride creep up her neck and she let a happy smile cross her face. There was just something indescribably good about getting praise from her father.

They threw their packs on and got started, making their way through miles of woods and trees. For the next two days they made great progress, moving ever closer to the old shack.

Late on Sunday night, they used the GPS to get to a nearby road so that Hakon, Glin and Astyr could be picked up. They had to be at school the next morning no matter how badly Astyr wished otherwise. The car that met them brought Laure, Thor, and Frey with fresh supplies. They were going to spend the next week working with Tyr and Grima to keep following the trail.

Before Astyr got in the car, she ran over to her dad and threw her arms around him.

"Be careful," she said to him, "I'll be back on Friday afternoon."

Tyr hugged her tightly as he replied, "I'll miss you, baby. You take care of yourself."

After a quick farewell to Grima, Astyr climbed into the car and headed back home.

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