Aster abruptly stopped, suddenly rooted in place as if she were part of the woods. The flower was tall, but it had no brothers or sisters to keep it company. A red ocher tried to burst forth from the closed up buds, restrained by the summer mizzle coating the mountain. The footsteps ahead and behind Aster stopped.
“You guys know what this pretty flower is?”
Dr. Kerioth turned to look where Aster was pointing. “Sorry. Botany is outside of my wheelhouse.”
Aster turned behind her to look at Kassidy. Kassidy just shrugged and smirked. “Maybe if you used a smartphone like a normal person, you could take a picture of it and look it up later.”
Aster rolled her eyes and pulled out her disposable camera. Kassidy had been giving her crap about this for days now. “I take pictures with a camera. Like a normal person.”
“You know when you get those developed, they’re just printing out digital copies of the film.”
The flash whined as Aster primed it. “Yes, I know. And I’m not a Luddite, so I don’t care.”
“What are you, then?”
Aster sighed as she twisted the film reel. “You want a manifesto?”
“You know me, I’d love one.”
Aster snapped a picture of the flower. “Alright Dr. Kerioth, I’m ready to go. sorry for the delay.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” said Dr. Kerioth, starting onward again. “That picture is as valuable as any rock sample we’ll collect today. And you already know research isn’t about sticking to your field, or you wouldn’t be here.”
Aster nodded to herself and began following him again. It was infuriating, really. A few of Aster’s professors had offered her undergraduate research positions for the summer. Go figure her geology professor for her crappy gen-ed class was the only one she could bear spending the summer with.
Aster focused on the trail in front of her feet, flicking her eyes up from time to time to glimpse the scenery. The Appalachian mountains occasionally poked their heads through the trees, their age evidently not dampening their playfulness. She smirked to herself as she plodded forward. She loved hiking, but she’d never heard anyone talk about what it was: trying not to trip.
A few moments later she fell into the rhythm, letting her mind wander as her subconscious guided her steps. Hopefully she’d come up with some good ideas. Characters and events began to flash through her imagination, fueled by the landscape around her. The scenery around her blurred with her imagination as she became lost in her thoughts.
Some time later, Aster’s face lit up as she hit a particularly good idea for a plot point. She pulled a crappy beat-up notebook and a black pen from her pocket, scrawling her thoughts down as she walked so as to not trip Kassidy behind her.
“You keep jotting things down on that,” Kassidy said, making Aster jolt. “What is it for?”
“Random ideas and thoughts.”
“What kinds of ideas?”
“Writing, art, programming, that sort of stuff.”
“That’s cool. I didn’t know you were an artist too!”
“I’m not. I’m not really good at any of those things. Yet.”
“At least you do them. You’d be surprised how many other seniors I meet that want to be art majors but that don’t do anything outside of class.”
Their conversation was cut short as the trees and ferns suddenly gave way to scraggly shrubs and short grass.
Kassidy excitedly passed Aster and Dr. Kerioth, running out onto the bald and waving her arms around. “It feels like we’re on an adventure!”
Dr. Kerioth chuckled to himself before turning to Aster. “Between you and me, there’s not this many high-schoolers this excited to climb a mountain.”
In a few more moments, they caught up with Kassidy and mounted the top of the bald. The valley rippled with the shadows of clouds, making a river of light that writhed through the mountains. Aster inhaled deeply, the ozone-ripe air tingling her nose. The breeze licked at Aster’s neck as if savoring her peace. Gosh, she’d needed this. Nothing could touch her up here.
“You make some weird facial expressions,” observed Kassidy. Evidently she had been staring at her.
“Thanks?” Aster replied.
Dr. Kerioth clambered onto a large rock at the edge of the bald, motioning for Aster and Kassidy to join him. They settled in for lunch while enjoying the view.
Aster looked out over their immediate surroundings. Next to their rock was a flat patch of grass that slowly curved into the side of the bald. Aster stared, imagining a vicious duel. Sword against sword, the fate of the world hanging on every breath. The specters danced in her head, sparks flying off their swords as they wormed around each other, nearly gliding over the ground. Calling it a dance wouldn’t do it justice. This was far more than choreography. The very negative space between their forms was alive, writhing organically. The combatants ebbed and flowed, pulsating with the very beat of life itself as they rocketed around each other.
Aster looked back at her co-workers, who were eating in silence. Dr. Kerioth was lost in his own thoughts, his eyes drifting over the scenery. Kassidy looked back at her and smiled.
“You gonna write than down?”
“I’ll try,” Aster said, pulling out her notebook. She had filled more pages in it today than in the last few weeks.
This finished, she pulled out her packed lunch and dug in. The rest of the meal passed in silence, sans the occasional technical comment on the landscape by Dr. Kerioth.
Her meal finished, Aster leaned back on the rock and watched the clouds. After a while, she started. Something was streaking through the sky.
“The heck is that?” Aster asked, pointing. Kassidy and Dr. Kerioth swiveled to look where Aster was pointing. The thing pulsated brightly, then continued onward towards the valley.
Dr. Kerioth’s eyes widened. “Get down and cover your eyes and ears!” he shouted, scrambling off the rock and following his own advice.
Kassidy and Aster followed quickly after him and pressed themselves flat against the ground. Aster’s heartbeat was soon drowned out her entire body was vibrated by a deep crack.
Then, as soon as it had begun, it was over. Aster stood up, opening her eyes and taking her fingers out from inside her ears. They still rang from the impact.
Kassidy stared back into the sky, looking at the cloudy trail. “What. Was. That.”
“That,” said Dr. Kerioth, “was a meteor exploding in the atmosphere. Probably a superbolide if we’re being technical. If it had hit the ground, Everyone on this hemisphere would be dead.”
“Wouldn’t something this big be in the news?” Aster asked.
“It was probably too small. Something similar to this happened over Russia a few decades ago.”
“So… what do we do now?” Aster asked, her eyes following a fragment of the cloudy trail down to the side of the mountain.
“We take samples, of course,” Dr. Kerioth said, scanning the horizon and grinning. “There,” he said, pointing to a faraway smudge on the mountain underneath the trail. He began ambling towards it, motioning for Aster and Kassidy to follow. “We’ll get first dibs! I’d say opportunities like this don’t just fall out of the sky, but this one just did.” Kassidy groaned and Aster chuckled, but they both followed after him.
After half an hour of walking off the beaten path, they arrived at the smudge Dr. Kerioth was after. A meter-wide rock sat in an impact crater several meters wide, embedded into the side of the mountain. Fresh dirt was strewn everywhere around it.
“Alrighty. This is obviously too big to take back with us, but I can record the GPS coordinates and let other researchers know. This is a good place to start looking for other samples.”
Dr. Kerioth pulled out his phone and began messing with it, evidently to record their location.
“So… this is it?” Kassidy asked.
“Huh?” Dr. Kerioth looked up from his phone. “Oh, no, this is just one fragment from the airburst. There’ll be a bunch of other pieces, mostly smaller ones, scattered in a large area around here. Once I’m finished with the GPS we can start looking for the smaller fragments.”
“We’re just going to take them? Is that… legal?” asked Aster incredulously.
“Legal enough,” Dr. Kerioth replied.
“Meteorites are the property of whoever finds them,” Kassidy explained confidently.
“No they are not,” Dr. Kerioth said, putting away his phone. Kassidy pursed her lips sheepishly.
“They are the property of the landowner,” Dr. Kerioth continued. But, since this is public land, and we’re taking less than ten pounds each, this is an exception.”
“You seem to know a lot about meteorites for a standard geologist,” said Aster.
“I had a short stint where I was working with some of my meteoriticist friends. They’re going to be absolutely thrilled when they find samples in their mailbox just days after they hear of the impact.” Dr. Kerioth rubbed his hands together cartoonishly. “If they’re quick, they can be the first to publish a paper.”
He looked around the large meteorite, surveying the terrain. He took off his backpack and fished around for a minute.
“Here they are,” he said, pulling out a few fridge magnets.
“Why do you have those?” asked Kassidy.
“Testing the iron content of rocks. Only crappy fridge magnets work.” He handed Kassidy one, then walked over to Aster and handed her a magnet with a generic picture of a bass on it. “We’ll be looking for the small ones that fragmented off of this piece, but they will be hard for you to tell apart from the rocks already here. You can check rocks that you pick up using your magnets—if it’s magnetic, it’s from space.” Dr. Kerioth waved a hand towards one side of the slope. Now go forth!”
Aster and Kassidy scrambled around the slope like children looking for skipping rocks at the river, one shouting excitedly to the other when they claimed a magnetic prize. Aster periodically stole glances at Dr. Kerioth, making sure they never got too far from one another. What he lacked in youthful speed he made up for with a trained eye, deftly adding meteorites to his pack without wasting his time on look-alikes.
Before she knew it, Dr. Kerioth was waving at them and calling them to come back to the trail. The sun hung dangerously low in the sky. Crap. They still had to make it all the way back down the mountain.
She jogged back to where Dr. Kerioth and Kassidy stood, her pack heavy with meteorites.
“Sorry girls,” Dr. Kerioth said sheepishly. “I suppose we lost track of time. We’ll be able to get back to our car before dark, but we won’t get back to campus until late. We can stop somewhere for dinner.”
“Well, let’s get a move-on,” Kassidy said, marching back towards the path without stopping. Dr. Kerioth and Aster followed after her.