Chapter 3
757 Words
Amelia
The farther north we traveled, the worse the damage became.
Trees no longer leaned.
They were gone.
Entire trunks had been snapped and thrown aside like matchsticks. Some still smoldered where bark had been stripped away, thin curls of smoke rising into the morning air.
The metallic smell hung so heavily around us now it coated the back of my tongue.
Even breathing felt different.
I slowed my ATV again.
Not because I wanted to.
Because the ground demanded it.
The forest floor had become uneven, gouged by deep furrows that forced us to weave around mounds of fresh earth and shattered roots.
Nora pulled alongside me.
"It hit here."
I looked at the churned earth stretching ahead.
"No."
She pointed farther into the trees.
"It hit..."
"...then kept going."
I followed her finger.
The trail widened until it looked less like something crashing...
...and more like something plowing through the forest.
Whatever it was...
It had carried an incredible amount of momentum.
Eventually the trees began to thin.
Sunlight spilled through the branches ahead.
Not because the forest ended.
Because it had been torn away.
I stopped so suddenly that gravel crunched beneath my tires.
The others pulled in beside me.
No one spoke.
In front of us lay a crater nearly the size of a football field.
The earth had been peeled backward in great waves, exposing raw red soil beneath decades of roots and grass.
Broken trees ringed the edge like giant spears driven into the ground.
Thin wisps of steam drifted upward from blackened patches scattered across the crater floor.
The impact should have left a jagged hole.
Instead...
The center held a long, smooth trench.
As though whatever had fallen had skipped once...
...then slid.
Wren climbed off her ATV first.
For once...
She didn't say a word.
Even she looked overwhelmed.
I killed the engine.
The silence that followed was almost unbearable.
No birds.
No insects.
Nothing.
Only the faint hiss of cooling earth.
I stepped forward carefully.
The dirt beneath my boots was still warm.
Not hot.
Just...
Wrong.
Like standing near a wood stove hours after the fire had gone out.
Nora crouched beside one of the long gouges carved through the ground.
"This wasn't random."
"What do you mean?" Ivy asked quietly.
She pointed toward the trench.
"It stayed level."
I frowned.
"So?"
"So things that fall don't usually do that."
She looked toward the center of the crater.
"They tumble."
"They bounce."
"They break apart."
"This..."
She slowly stood.
"...this stayed under control for a long time."
A gust of wind swept across the clearing.
The smoke shifted.
Something dark caught the sunlight.
Half buried beneath torn earth at the far end of the trench.
Smooth.
Curved.
Far too symmetrical to belong there.
Wren finally found her voice.
"...Amelia."
"I see it."
"It's..."
"I know."
But I didn't.
Not really.
Because my mind refused to accept what my eyes were telling it.
It couldn't be.
Nothing made by people looked like that.
There were no sharp edges.
No flat sides.
No exposed framework.
It looked...
Grown.
As if someone had shaped metal the way rain shaped river stones.
The surface shimmered somewhere between charcoal and midnight blue, catching the sunlight in ways polished steel never could.
Nearly half of it remained buried beneath loose soil, but enough was exposed to reveal its shape.
Long.
Rounded.
Almost...
Seed-like.
I remembered Arthur once handing me an acorn when I was little.
"Everything starts small if you give it enough time."
For some reason...
That was exactly what this reminded me of.
A seed.
Only impossibly large.
None of us moved.
I wasn't afraid of it.
Not yet.
I simply couldn't fit it into the world I understood.
Nora took one cautious step forward.
"I've never..."
She stopped herself.
"I don't even know what to compare it to."
Ivy looked at me.
"What do we do?"
It was the question they always asked.
Usually I had an answer.
This time...
I stared at the impossible thing lying in the center of the crater.
At the trail it had carved through the forest.
At the complete absence of life around it.
Then I remembered the conversation from the night before.
"What if someone needs help?" Ivy had asked.
I looked back at the object.
Whatever it was...
If something had been inside...
It had survived a crash that should have destroyed it.
Or it hadn't.
Either way...
We weren't leaving without knowing.
I took a slow breath.
"We're going closer."
- Writer
