THE MOON STONE

THE MOON STONE

By Hardrive

It was bitter cold and the fridge air hurt Danielle’s lungs. Every breath felt like razors ripping open her chest, but, in spite of the pain… she was forced to… take in large gulps of air… to satisfy her desperate need for oxygen.

The struggle to the top of the ridge was exhausting. The icy terrain made the climb difficult, allowing her only a few steps forward for each step she slipped back. That was frustrating but she had no choice but to persevere and do everything in her power to get to the truck before sunset. Tonight was the second night of the new moon and there is nothing darker than a mountain forest on a moonless night.

Danielle had forgotten her flashlight and without it she’d never find her truck. That could be fatal in the sub-freezing temperatures that were expected that night. Fortunately, her struggle to reach the top of the hill was fruitful and she accomplished her goal with enough daylight left to give her time to catch her breath.

Letting the backpack slip off her shoulders, Danielle dropped to her knees and pulled off her gloves. Cupping her trembling hands over her mouth and nose, she let the air warm up in the palm of her hands before taking a breath. It was one of the many tricks she learned from her father during the years they spent together tracking deer and other winter wildlife in the snowy Appalachia woods. Those were the good old days, but her dad was gone now and it was up to her to carry on the family business.

After only a few moments of rest, Danielle looked up, and spotted her truck through the white misty clouds that streamed from her dry lips. That was encouraging, but the daylight was fading fast and there would be time enough to rest after she got the gear into the truck. With an audible grunt, she hoisted herself to her feet, and though every muscle in her body ached, the thought of sitting in the heated cab inspired her to move on.

As she approached the waiting truck, Danielle thought about the task that brought her to these cold and snowy woods. With a deep sense of satisfaction she reviewed her profitable day of hunting. For a while, she had almost given up. After hours of patiently sitting in her blind, high on the branch of a sturdy Birch, she had nothing to show for her patience other then a little frost bite and a very full bladder. Then her patience was rewarded. A herd of white tailed deer stopped to graze just a few hundred yards away. Finally, her luck had changed.

Peering down on the herd through her twelve hundred millimeter lens, Danielle rested her cheek on the gun stock and pressed it firmly against her shoulder. Through the viewfinder she followed a large 12 point buck and watched as it passed by a group of does. It paused momentarily to look at the females and then continued to walk away. Holding a steady beam on the large buck, Daniel took a deep breath and slowly squeezed the trigger. A satisfied smile curled her lips as the buck presented a perfect profile just as she got off her first shot.

It was a beautiful, but Danielle quickly fired off a few more shots just to make sure. Without hesitating she quickly moved to another target. It was a doe sitting with her faun. She didn’t hesitate to take 4 or 5 shots of the mother before moving on to the baby. Daniel waited until the faun lifted its head, its large brown eyes opened wide with curiosity. Two shots were all she was able to get before the faun’s head went down and she had to move on to a new target. Scanning the heard she spotted two yearlings looking directly at her. She got them both with one shot but then zoomed in and took individual head shots of both. All and all she was able to get dozens of excellent shots before the sound of her rapidly clicking shutter spooked the herd and they moved away.

Yes, Danielle was a hunter but her gun was a long lens DSLR Reflex camera mounted on a custom gun stock. That adaptation helped keep her aim steady and accounted for much of her success as a photo journalist. Some of today’s pictures would be very useful illustrations for the articles she’d submit to several environmentally conscience magazines. Articles she hoped would help save the habitats of her beloved animals. The rest of the pictures would go to various Nature Magazines.

The pictures of the does with their fauns were the meat and potatoes of her stock portfolio. People just loved pictures of baby deer huddling with their mothers. Those were the real money shots and for a moment Danielle thought about following the heard to try to get a few more pictures, but the light were fading fast and it would soon be too dark to work. That’s when she decided it was time to pack up her gear and head back to the truck.

The first thing Danielle did when she got to her vehicle was to turn on the motor and cranked up the heater. While the cab warmed up, she put away her equipment and prepared to enter a few notes in her micro recorder. She always started with technical data… camera settings, descriptions of the animals and the locations in which she found them. Once that was done, she gave herself a little creative leeway to record observations she knew would catch the reader’s attention.

Pushing the record button, she began to describe her surroundings. “It was twilight,” she spoke into the recorder “and the snow covered valley below was… Transforming.” Holding the pause button she stopped to think before continuing. “The sky above the horizon has turned a deep purple.” Pressing the pause button again, Danielel hesitated for a few seconds and collected her thoughts. “Several gold and orange colored clouds hovered low in the sky floating just above the setting sun. These are the moments when nature is at its most beautiful and…” Daniel paused again. “… and makes you realize what an awesome artist God is.”

Pausing the recorder again, Danielle looked towards the bottom of the hill and saw the blanket of snow that covered the valley right up to the tree line. She described that and added, “How peaceful and serine it all seems. Nature is beautiful beyond my limited ability to describe. Even at twilight when the stillness and the darkness take possession of the woods… turning the magical green garden into a mysterious and foreboding place… it is still more beautiful than any moral words can convey.”

Danielle smiled; pleased with her poetic prose she stopped the recorder and turned it off.

She was just about to get into her truck when she saw four streaking lights emerge from behind the pastel colored clouds. Watching them trek across the sky made her smile. She had seen hundreds of shooting stars before and they always brought back memory of her childhood. Her father told her the lights were meteorites burning up as they entered the earth’s atmosphere. But her mom called them wishing stars and encouraged her to stop and make a wish whenever she saw then. So Danielle closed her eyes and made a wish. When she was done she was about to turn away when she noticed that one of the lights suddenly made a sharp turn and was heading her way.

The strange movement of that one light caught her interest and held her in place as she continued to watch it move in her direction. This was clearly not a shooting star since it was obviously flying under its own power. It was some kind of craft, she thought to herself, but it definitely wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen before. A jet plane can’t make a ninety degree turn and helicopters don’t fly that fast. This was clearly something else so she continued to observe its movements as it came closer and closer.

When the object was about a quarter mile from her position, it suddenly turned and dropped towards the ground. Even at that distance Danielle could see that it had no lights but rather the body of the craft itself was giving off a glow. It had an oval shape but no identifying markings or other surface features such as doors or windows. Then it suddenly touched down in the meadow causing the snow to fly into the air leaving what speed boat enthusiast call a roaster tail.

The fast moving object continued to skim along the snow for several hundred yards before disappearing behind the timberline. Danielle expected to hear an explosion after the craft entered the woods but all she heard were tree trunks breaking and branches snapping as the object plowed deep into the forest.