Enstranged Hearts

The first light of dawn it crawled among the thick pine forests of Silver Ridge, staining the countryside beneath into grey and emerald shadows. Aria Lockhart moved, and moved as practiced in silence, camera balanced against her hands with each step lying in the path of certainty. Slender pine needles and soft moss cushioned the movement beneath hiking boots—fallen pine needles and soft moss, as a natural dampener. Aria was thirty-two, and was good at invisibility. Not, in the literal sense, but in the way she moved through the world, an accomplished observer and a weird student of the natural world, blending unseen into the woods to capture raw, untamed beauty without destroying the extremely delicate state of the ecosystem around her. Wildlife photography wasn’t her job, it was her sanctuary. Aria wasn’t just sited at Silver Ridge. It was home. The Pacific Northwest small mountain town that had been her refuge for the past decade, a place where the wilderness spoke to her better than human conversation. Her small cabin, way outside of town, was little more than a base camp — lined with wildlife photographs on the walls, shelves stacked full of camera equipment, windows that ran from floor to ceiling, spanning over the forest. The sort of expedition she'd done a countless number of times previously. Assignment from a nature magazine to photograph the elusive wildlife of the region (particularly the recovering wolf populations) that filled the region. She’d won critical acclaim for her last series on the local wolf pack, a series of patience and keen eye. Such as the professional grade Canon with specialized telephoto lens where it could focus on finest of details from whatever distance, it was her most trusted companion. Her movements were minimal, her breath controlled, her movements were slow, and she moved slowly carefully. She knew by now the most remarkable photographs came at moments of absolute stillness. She looked up and heard a rustle in the underbrush. Her senses had been tracked for years, and the forest felt like it has heightened all of her senses to how it moved. Raising the camera, she stopped with the finger hovering near the shutter button. This movement was different than a small animal, or deer scurrying or a step in a cautious way. Further forest landscape began to poke through the morning mist. Natural columns that were created by towering pines where their branches intertwined to make a living canopy. And there was ethereal soft light filtering through, that lent obviously to the aethereal atmosphere, which felt like it also pulsed with some sort of concealed energy. Aria’s intuition panned across her shoulders; a feeling she had become accustomed instinctively to relying on through years of wildlife photography. Something was watching her. And not only watching; my eyes were studying her with all the intensity that felt almost… intelligent. All she'd seen up to now was movement, mostly just shadow now, but the shadow of something large darting between the trees was her first glimpse. Too large for a wolf, too fluid for a bear. Professional excitement mixed with a primal sense of caution she could not quite explain running through her veins as her heart rate sped up. Then she saw him. A figure stood approximately fifty yards away, hiding in part behind some massive Douglas fir, and for reasons she could not bother to explain, it kind of blurred the line between human and something else altogether. Muscular and tall with the stance of frank human intelligence and wild predatory grace. Even at this distance Aria could see his eyes an impossible amber that seemed to glow a light inside. For a moment, time suspended. Neither of them looking away as they locked in a mutual gaze, each, measuring the other with equal intensity. Kai Wolfe (who she didn’t know his name yet) made no hostile moves. He just stood, watching her, his expression a complexity of emotion that was impossible to place. Curiosity. Recognition. Something that felt almost as if anticipation. A tightening of Aria’s fingers around her camera. Professional instinct fought off a deeper, instinctive response it couldn’t label. Part fear, part fascination. She somewhat unconsciously stepped forward and took an involuntary step. The movement broke the spell. The figure, somehow part man, part something else, melted into the forest with something of a fluidity that did not fit natural movement. It’s either here, or it isn’t. Aria whispered ‘wait’, and she knew it was futile. Her camera was raised up and it captured nothing. There was no trace of the mysterious figure and the never ending green of the forest had failed to notice her sudden flare of unexplained emotion. Aria continued to doubt everything as the morning light grew. Just recently, her world, as she knew it and structured it, had been just disrupted from fundamental disruption, the disruption of the concrete wall between logic and the ineffable. Yet she didn’t know that everything would change. The forest kept its secrets. Aria Lockhart was about to be its most unexpected revelation. The next day had a different weight. The forest encounter, where Aria had been attacked, hung in her mind like a half remembered dream, edges softly out of focus, but not changed. Having her regularly kitted out camera bag, thermal coffee tumbler, topographical maps of Silver Ridge’s wilderness seemed ever so slightly off kilter. An assignment to track a potential location of a wolf den for a conservation magazine—potential funding being significant. Silver Ridge had standards, even the part of the mountain that you wouldn’t consider fully explored was remote. Aria always prided herself on being independent, so most photographers would have hired a local guide. Her way out, a Jeep Cherokee, a reliable sidekick covered in mud splatters, full of professional equipment, smoothed up and down the rough mountain trails. More than transportation, the vehicle was her mobile base camp: emergency supplies, extra lenses, enough technology to document the most elusive wildlife. Today the morning mist hung low and the landscape shimmered in the world between something more mysterious and reality. Her professional instincts were fine tuned, because a subtle electricity ran under her skin, she could not explain why. Today felt different.