Wild Is the Wind
Wild Is The Wind
By
Lady MoonHawke
“Maybe a better man
would live and die for you.
Baby, a better man
would never say good-bye to you.”
Wild Is The Wind -- Bon Jovi
Steven stared out the windshield at the dusty mesa. Winds blew clouds of the stuff through his headlights, obscuring the road ahead. The engine idled near-silent under him, and he asked himself once more if he really had to do this, if he really had the courage to do it. The answer came to him again in a resounding positive as he watched Aurora cross the track ahead of him. For her, anything was possible.
She came up to the open window and leaned in, folded arms resting on the frame. “So, kiss for luck?” she asked, smiling.
“Luck for whom?” he retorted.
“I’m not going to drive tonight,” she replied. “You can keep it all for you, and have mine besides.” Her grin was infectious. To her, it was just another Friday night at the dirt tracks with her friends, the last before graduation would send some off to graduate school and others to careers.
“I’ll take it, then.” He studied her smiling face committing it to memory. There was no telling if he would ever see it again. “Be careful until I get back?”
“All two or three minutes. You’ll be careful until you’re back?” she returned.
“You know I will.” He brushed a hand across her cheek. “I love you,” he said simply. “I’ll always love you.”
Her lips were warm and soft on his, and he wove his fingers through her hair, imprinting the sensation on his mind forever. One last kiss for luck he would remember the rest of his life.
She pulled back, still smiling. No reason for her not to. She had no clue what was coming, because he was a coward. “I’ll see you at the finish line.” With that, she was back outside the car, and Steven rolled up the window. If he heard her voice once more, it might destroy his crumbling resolve.
He watched resolutely as she ran through the preliminaries to begin the race, edging forward when she indicated. The sight of her standing between the cars, arms raised, filled his mind, and the instant her arms dropped, he was off, racing toward an appointment with fate.
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One month before....
Steven dropped a large portion of the mail on the dining room table, then spared a quick glance over to Aurora. She had commandeered an end of the sofa, along with the coffee table, and was assembling a pile of papers, reshuffling them every so often. He walked over and watched her work for a moment.
“Isn’t that your final draft?” he asked. She had spread them out, and was stacking and restacking them in different order.
“That it is,” she replied, resorting them once more.
“So why are you changing the order? Are you going to rewrite it again?” The report had already chewed up a ream of paper and a cartridge of ink.
“Nope. I’m just changing the order a little bit, to build toward a stronger finish.” She flipped through the pages, then set it down with a sigh. “I think I’m satisfied with it now.”
“So it’s back to the machine to reprint?”
“No, thank God. I kept each point to one page. All I have to do is run it through the binder now.” She set the report aside and quickly rearranged a stack of notecards. “There. Now the paper can be turned in, and my notes for the presentation are in order. Not bad for 2:00 Saturday afternoon.” She looked up at Steven. “So did you want me for something?”
He lifted one eyebrow in a ‘handsome devil’ expression. “Always, but that’s not the point now.” He settled beside her on the sofa. “Do you ever think about your Dad?”
She blinked a moment. “No,” she replied finally. “I can’t honestly say that I do. Why?”
He handed her a large envelope, with a UESC logo blazing in one corner. “I requested this for you. There’s something in here I think you need to see.”
She tore into it quickly, pulling out a thick brochure and a sheath of papers. “Who is the UESC?” she asked, scanning the top page.
“A branch of military service They specialize in front-line defense against private terrorist groups. What you need to look at is in the front of the catalogue.”
She flipped open the slick recruitment catalogue to reveal he face of an older man, bald, wearing a dark blue jacket, cut in a military style. His eyes were brown, and Aurora knew them well. She saw them every morning in her mirror.
Steven took a deep breath. “Aurora, meet your father. Commander Edward Jahaziel Stargazer.”
She was silent a moment. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She stared at the picture. “Where is he?”
“I’m serious,” Steven replied. “His current assignment is classified. But I thought you should at least have some idea of what he does. And it may be your chance to find him, and talk to him.”
“Why on Earth would I want to do that? In case you hadn’t noticed, he left me. It seems pretty clear that he doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“Honey, you don’t know that. He might not be able to communicate with civilians. Or he might be afraid you were angry.”
“I am angry!” she shouted. “He left us 20 years ago. There’s no good reason for it!”
“There may be a good reason, Aurora. You don’t know,” Steven insisted.
“No reason is good enough.” She tossed the catalogue and its papers onto the coffee table. “I really don’t want to talk about this,” she declared.
Steven let it drop. He’d managed to get her thinking about the subject. Anything more now would be too much pushing, so he decided on a peace offering. “All right, fine. This came for you, too.” He offered her another large envelope, with a large “Tomorrow’s Bride” label.
Aurora’s mercurial mood lightened considerably. “Now this is more like it.” She happily tore into the package and removed a brightly colored magazine. “I’ve been waiting on this for weeks.” She curled up and started flipping through page after page of wedding gowns and other formal wear.
“Looking for another prom dress?” Steven asked. “I though you had it picked out already.”
“I do,” she replied. “This is just... research, let’s say.” She curled into a content ball and started reading.
Steven’s stomach sank. This could be a problem.
He stopped outside her room on the way to bed. The door was cracked open, and light blazed through to the darkened hallway. From inside, he could hear the unmistakable sound of typing on a keyboard, and an occasional soft murmur. Slowly, he pushed the door open and looked inside. Aurora was indeed seated at her computer, typing away furiously at something.
“Decided to re-write after all?” he asked, though he didn’t think that was the case. It had not escaped his attention that the UECS information had disappeared from the living room.
“No,” she replied, minimizing the screen. “Something else. For myself.”
Steven caught a glimpse of the application from tucked under some books, and let it drop. Putting any pressure on Aurora to explain before she was ready would only result in her shutting him out completely. “Okay.” He dropped a casual kiss on the top of her head. “Be sure to get some sleep, Beautiful. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Too late. It’s already past midnight.”
He laughed as he shut the door behind him.
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Present....
The cars raced toward the cliff, fast approaching the point where the road narrowed, forcing the cars into single file. Steven dropped back a hair, wanting the other car to take the lead. It wasn’t his normal tactic, but if something went hideously wrong with his plans, he didn’t want the added risk of someone coming up behind him.
The other car surged ahead, and Steven settled onto his tail, letting the dust cloud envelope him. With any luck, the others would blame what was to come on the lack of visibility. He certainly wouldn’t be there to explain.
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Two Weeks Ago....
Aurora burst through the door, gaily waving an envelope in one hand, the rest of the mail clutched in the other.
Steven looked up from his analytical chemistry notes. “Something good?”
She dropped down onto the sofa next to him, discarding the rest of the mail to better examine her treasure. “I think so.” She ripped it open, scanning through the paragraphs aloud. “Dear Miss Stargazer,.... Thank you for your interest.... Many excellent candidates.... Pleased and proud to include you with our candidates...” She clutched her hands together, crumpling the letter. “Yes! I made it!”
“Made what?”
She knelt in front of the coffee table and smoothed her letter back out. “It’s from Tomorrow’s Bride. I’m in the running for a $100,000 Fantasy Wedding. Isn’t it great?”
“Don’t you need a prospective groom for this project?” he asked.
She looked at him, her expression a little hurt. “I thought you would like the idea.”
“You know I’d buy you whatever you wanted. And it would have been nice if you’d waited until I actually asked,” he pointed out.
“So you are planing on asking me sometime, then?” she retorted. “We’re not just going to go on like this forever?”
“You need to finish school first,” he said. “Then we can get into this again.”
“Oh, in two week, then. Remind me to mark my calendar.”
“I mean your Ph.D., you goose. What are you going to do with your bachelor’s? I’ve seen mail room kids with that much education.”
Aurora shrugged. “I’ll work for my mom. She can fit me in somewhere, I’m sure. And I just wanted to see if I could be considered.”
Steven collect the rest of the mail where Aurora had discarded it. “Well, in that case, good luck.” He flipped through the remaining envelopes and handed her one. “Here. This one is yours as well.”
She accepted the heavy white envelope and opened it. After perusing it’s contents, she set it aside. “Well, that’s good to know.”
“What?”
“That school in California? The one with my father’s picture? They are considering my application to their post-graduate program. Comes with a terms of service, though. I don’t know about that part.”
He wrapped a reassuring arm around her shoulders. “You’d be great at it, I’m sure.”
“Who, me?” she scoffed. “Yes, sir. Reporting for duty, sir. I’d have to be brain-dead first.”
“You never know,” he replied mysteriously.
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Present...
Aurora frowned as the dust devil swallowed Steven’s car. He hated driving second around the curve, and went to great effort to avoid it. But for some reason he had taken it willingly this time.
The gravel crunched beside her. “Hey, Ror.”
She looked over. “Hey, Gi.”
“That Steven taking second string?”
“Yeah.”
“Thought he didn’t like that”
“He doesn’t.”
“So what’s going on?” Gigi asked slowly.
“I don’t know,” Aurora replied.
The cars were at the far end of the track, going into the sharp curve of Devil’s Turn. The dust obscured the details, but there was a cracking sound. Aurora stared, willing the dust cloud away.
One car emerged from the curve, racing toward the finish line. But nothing else appeared as the dust settled, except a hole in the flimsy wooden rails that bordered the road.
Feet were pounding in the dirt, bodies streaking past Aurora as she forced herself to move, to get to the edge, and find Steven’s car, and Steven, as well. She stumbled forward, picking up speed as her feet remembered their job, til she was almost flying over the rough ground. The edge came up quickly, too quickly, and was over it before she could stop.
An arm flashed out and around her waist, yanking her back and away from the edge. She shook it off gently and stepped forward slowly, standing between the clear tire track the ran straight off the cliff, and looked down.
In the ravine, she could see the car flaming.
“STEVEN!! NOOO!!”
She screamed herself hoarse, staring into the burning canyon. From below, there was a rumble, and gasoline-fed flames leaped up the cliff face. Again, Geoff was there, pulling her back from the wall of fire as it raced past. In an instant, the gas was consumed, and the fire settled back into the canyon.
Aurora stared down into the ravine, watching the orange glow from the burning car numbly. It was so far down that the heat from the flames barely reached her now. She started to shiver, and someone draped a jacket around her shoulders. Aurora dragged it on, and turned to her companion. “Thanks, Geoff.” She stared into the canyon until someone led her away.
A tall figure wrapped in a black duster stared down at the scene unfolding below and across the ravine. Geoff had pulled Aurora back from the edge, and stayed close until a group had led her away. The figure stared at her retreating form until she was swallowed by the shadows.
“I’m sorry, Angel. This is the last thing I wanted to do, but it was getting too complicated. You have other things to do, important things, and I’m in the way right now. You go do what you need to do. I’ll find a way to get back to you when things have settled down a little. And maybe you’ll forgive me eventually.”
Sighing, he picked up the bags tucked against the base of a rock and headed toward the waiting Range Rover. He had a long way to go, and a lot of guilt to drive off on the trip.
Epilogue
Aurora stared down into the canyon below Devil’s Turn again. The sun blazed overhead, and far below, light reflected off the exposed bits of metal, twinkling like stars. Search and Rescue had debated for hours about how to get into the ravine, and as far as Aurora, knew, they hadn’t ever settled on a safe plan. And retrieving the vehicle was definitely out of the question. So there it sat, rusting, waiting for an owner that wouldn’t return.
Friends had left bouquets of flowers at the edge, and Aurora picked out a few from each bunch to take home. People had stood here earlier, relating how much of friend Steven had been, how kind, how supportive, how protective, and Aurora had felt the tears running down her face, though she had been determined to be silent. Now the wind kicked up, tangling her hair and blowing stinging dust into her hair.
Carefully, she picked a red rose from the bunch she had selected and kissed it, pretending for just one moment that it was Steven. Then she gently tossed it over the edge, and watched until it vanished into the charred trees below.
“Good-bye, my love. God grant you sanctuary, wherever you may be.”
Then she turned and walked slowly away.
*The End*
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