Once again, I have to wrestle with categories. It's going in Humor, but please know it could also fit in Incest, Sci-Fi, Non-Consent and others. Certainly not Romance, though. You've been warned. :) I've played with this theme enough, but wanted to try it from a slightly different angle. It's a short one.
***
"Holy shit, Deb! That couldn't have landed more than a mile or two from here."
My sister and I were camping in a remote park in northwest Arizona. The light reflecting from the moon was so dim, when the object came bursting through the sky with a flame of friction in its wake, it lit the ground around us. It didn't look very large, but it hit with a thunderous sound and we could feel the earth vibrate, a shock wave from the impact.
"What the fuck was that, Jay?" Deb asked, nearly breathless from the sudden surprise.
"I'm guessing a meteor rock or something. Maybe a piece of satellite that fell to earth? I think we should check it out first thing in the morning."
"Fuck, yeah. You think anyone else saw it?"
"We've been hiking out here for two days and haven't seen a soul. I doubt it."
"Wouldn't want anyone to beat us to it," said Deb. "I want to see what it is."
"We can't go now. There's too much nasty wildlife to contend with in the dark. Let's hit the sack and leave at the crack of dawn." Deb and I have separate tents. However, I also carry a middle section that allows us to connect the two together. We rarely use it, typically only if we stay at a site for multiple days. We weren't using it now, thankfully, which would make breaking down everything easier. "Catch ya on the other side," I said to Deb, as I zipped up my tent for bed. It's a phrase we often said to each other.
Deb and I are twins and closer than most. We both have engineering degrees and were roommates throughout college. We each have our own places now, but we still go camping together several times a year. It's a hobby our folks got us into when we were young; a love of nature we share as a family.
***
"Are you sure this is the right direction?" Deb asked the following morning. We'd been hiking about twenty minutes and were hoping to have spotted it by now. We weren't exactly sure what we were looking for, though.
"I'm thinking it was at least a mile southwest from where we were camped. I made a marker on the GPS," I waved the fancy satellite phone in my hand. "We're almost at the mile marker now. If we don't see it, we'll keep going a bit and then circle back. Hopefully, we'll see something. Lots of flat land here."
"It was so dark last night, I don't know how you can be so sure which direction..."
"I'm not, sis, but this is my best guess. We keep going that way," I pointed.
And we did. It was uneven ground and slow going, but we finally passed the digital marker I'd made on the map app. I was scratching my head trying to think how far we should continue and in what direction, when Deb tapped me on the shoulder. "See that?" she pointed.
I looked out to the horizon. "What?" I asked.
"That black thing. A rock, I think. It doesn't look like it belongs."
"What rock?" I couldn't see anything.
"Follow me."
We hustled a sixty yards or more before I made out what Deb was aiming for. It wasn't very big. A rock perhaps two foot high. It was almost pitch dark in color, which explained how I had trouble making it out from a distance. Frankly, I was surprised Deb had. There were a few pieces of the same rock substance nearby.
"It made a little crater," I said.
"I would have thought that crater would be bigger, considering how loud the impact was," said Deb. She reached down and picked up a piece of rock that must have broken apart from the bigger one. "Hey, this is light."
"Do you think you should be touching that? Shouldn't we call scientists or something?"
"You think it's radioactive or something?" asked Deb. "Come on, Jay. Let's take some back to Professor Watkins at the university."
"Oh, yeah, he'd love to see that," I said, fondly thinking back on the professor. He was one of my favorites. A geologist who wrote two books and was genuinely interested in every student's progress.
The piece of rock Deb held in her hand was maybe twice the size of your average dice. She put it in the front right pocket of her shorts and turned to me. "We'll just take this one shard. You got this place marked on your GPS?" she asked.
