where's a match when you need one?
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 14:54:11 -0500
author: teri

Lungs burning, head foggy, she tried to control her movement, but the water
was relentless. She was spun around and around, water invading her ears,
nose, and mouth. Another rock caught her in the leg, and pain blossomed
there as she was carried away once more. Teri grimaced helplessly, heart
pounding as her air-starved lungs screamed in her chest. Her vision was
darkening, and her body was going numb. The water tossed her again, and she
was suddenly flying headfirst at a jagged outcropping the surging water had
carved into the stone. This was it, she couldn't move, couldn't evade. She
held her arm up to try and ward off the blow...

that didn't come. She opened her eyes on an entirely different scene. Her
arms were wrapped, vice-like around Stana's waist and her face had been
buried half against one arm and half against the older woman's back. The
sound of the rushing air that was their flight-- she had mistaken this for
water as she had once held an empty glass to her cheek, in the middle of a
crowded dining center and marvelled at the sound of rushing waves from her
"seashell" drinking glass. The delicate filaments of her day-dream frayed
and evaporated smoke-like from her consciousness; as a clinging part of her
mind protested, tried to hold the image and demand an explanation, she was
brought to the very immediate reality of their situation, and the daydream
slipped from memory.

"We're surrounded," she murmered against Stana's back, and felt the woman's
heavy assent through their contact.

In the limited scope of her vision, flushed cheek still glued to Stana's
back as Clip reared again, Teri saw the forest come alive with creatures.
Beast and fowl erupted from the shadows of the foliage in a constant
avalanche of bodies hurled against the soldiers.

The lime of desperation and the faint fuzz of exhaustion mingled together on
all fronts- she felt it as surely from her companion as she did from the
frenzied forest and the tired, steadfast soldiers.

Steadfast, resolute, and deadly. Teri closed her eyes again against her
swimming vision. Unable to do anything else from the horse's rump but hold
on, her thoughts turned to elemental hopes of internal combustion, sudden
forest fires, and an angry visitation from smokey the bear..

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"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The
second is to look things in the face and know them
for what they are." -Marcus Aurelius

Teri Champ
Vassar College, Box 1763
Poughkeepsie, New York 12604-1763
x3089

http://vsa.vassar.edu/~m4m

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