AND THEN WE FELL OFF A CLIFF

26 FEBRUARY, FRIDAY, CONTINUED

Besides the feeling of cold air quickly pouring in, the way one might feel standing in front of an open freezer, the air suddenly hummed alive with the natural background noises of the woods.

I could hear the last of summer's cicadas chorusing. Winter was going to come as a rude shock to them! But I didn't have time to worry about how the creature residents in these woods were going to cope with the sudden switch to winter, there was a much louder and ruder sound - like that of an old truck, noisily rumbling and jangling towards us up ahead.

{Trap} Boo reminded me.

The old truck sputtered and clacked loudly, completely oblivious to our presence, and then it appeared... a dirty pick up truck, just chugging along.

Once upon a time, perhaps this truck was white. It certainly wasn't white anymore. On it's back rode a few rogues, and a large cage filled with free wolf pups. One of the large rogues banged on the bars of the cage with a stick, just because he thought it was fun to watch his little captives squeeze themselves to the other side of the enclosed space in terror. That was the clacking sound.

Another horrid thing was cleaning the bottom of his boot on the back wall of the truck. He saw us as the truck cut in front of us.

"I found them! They're over here!" He shouted.

The third rogue banged on the cab of the truck, "Oi! Drive faster you ******!"

And then the rogues laughed, as if ****** was the most delightful word they'd ever heard. The cage rattled as the truck went bumpity bump over the forest path. The free wolf pups were crying. I could just hear them.

Immediately, the motorbikes around me began to rev, drowning out the rest of the forest around me. From the corner of my eye, Dad was waving the bikes to follow him forward. We were about to give chase.

"Let's go, Sam." Dad told me.

{Trap} Boo insisted.

I tried my best to scan for danger, but the trap wasn't anywhere around us. All the warlock enchantments had already been disabled.

"Goddess?" Ki started our bike and kicked up the stand, but he waited for my order.

By now, Dad and Beta Lucas and Bell had already overtaken us, squeezing by on what was left of the narrow magic path. Harvey stopped his bike next to us, the horses and snow wolves right behind him.

"Is something the matter, Alpha?" Harvey's question snapped me out of it.

"It's a trap!" I yelled then.

I really should've yelled it earlier.

"What? Where?" Dad yelled back, still riding forwards.

At this moment, I saw the rogues pull out something from the floor of their truck. It was a long black tube - it looked heavy, but I had no idea what it was. One of the rogues mounted it on his shoulder.

"Get off the path!" I yelled, flaring.

"You can't!" The big nasty rogue sneered. "You can't get off this road!"

"Incoming!" Harvey yelled, and suddenly I managed to placed the strange weapon in my mind - it was a projectile weapon. A really big gun. Like a bazooka or something I had only seen TV.

"Scatter!" Beta Lucas ordered.

"Hahaha!" The horrid one with muddy boots laughed, "We got you now!"

Why were they so confident?

The rogue shot and suddenly something hot was speeding towards us with an alarming whizzing sound. The trap had sprung!

My hair shinned metallic as it shot forward to form a shield. Dad, Beta Lucas, and Bell had already dropped off the side of the path and mysteriously disappeared. I knew my hair could block arrows or gunshots, but a missile? How did the rogues get their hands on a missile launcher, bazooka, or whatever that thing was?

Ki swerved the motorbike to the side to get out of the way, and suddenly we were falling. I grabbed at Ki and caught him around his waist.

WTH just happened?

Okay, the rogues just shot a missile at us. Dad and Beta Lucas drove off the path one way and disappeared into the trees. Bell drove his motorbike the other way. My hair flared to form a shield, but Ki drove us off the path too, and out of the way of the incoming projectile... we should be crashing through undergrowth and desperately trying to avoid rocks and stuff now that we were off the path. There should've been an explosion, a kaboom, or something. Even if all of us managed to get out of the way, shouldn't the missile hit a tree or something behind us?

But there was no sound other than the motorbike engine, the wind in my ears, and Ki and/or I hollering, "AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" It all happened so fast, I wasn't sure who was shouting.

I turned my head away from Ki's back to look. He was holding for dear life to the motorbike handle bars, but the bike was taking a nose dive and Ki's body was flung back whilst I was clinging for my dear life behind him. We were pretty much plummeting down a rocky cliff and were fast approaching the ground. WTH!

"Ki, do something!"

The moment I shouted Ki's name, he startled as if snapping out of his initial shock.

And then he let go of the bike, kicked it in mid air, and we watched it tumble away from us and then fall to the ground and explode.

My eyes widened as the ground got nearer to us.

Ki pried my arms off him. WTH!!! What are you doing, Ki? But at that moment, I was so shocked that nothing came out of my mouth. I shut my eyes tightly and waited to hit the dirt.

Then somehow in mid air, now at the end of our free fall, Ki managed to wrap his arms around me and turn us so that we landed smack against the foot of a tree, Ki cushioning my fall with his own body.

I heard something crack. At first I thought we broke the tree. I opened my eyes and realized the tree was okay. It was Ki who was broken. I scrambled off his glowing body, "Ki? Ki!!!"

His eyes were closed. I resisted the urge to shake him awake, and then I noticed his body was crumpled in a weird angle. Otherwise, he looked okay, there wasn't any blood pooling around or anything.

Okay, calm down, Sam. I looked around quickly. Our motorbike was on fire. It made a sudden creaking sound, popped another little explosion making my hair flare, and then continued burning like it was a merry little bonfire.

Around us was grass, we were on the edge of a cliff. Above us spanned the taller cliff we had fallen over. How was there a cliff like that? It looked so high that I could barely see the top. And how was it that it was just next to the path in the woods - the very flat woods that we had biked through?

Beyond the tree Ki was lying under, were other trees. Everything was green. We were in Summer.

I had decided by now that I hated the warlock lands. Nothing here made sense.

I turned back to Ki. Since I didn't think we were in any immediate danger, I guess we could stay around here for a while. I eyed the motorbike suspiciously, maybe it wouldn't hurt to move Ki a few more meters away in case it exploded. In movies, vehicles could explode pretty bad sometimes, although that's just the movies and we all know how they exaggerated everything on the big screen.

But just to be safe... I carefully straightened Ki out on the ground. Using my cape, I managed with great difficulty to slide it under him. Then I dragged Ki on my cape very carefully and slowly away from the burning bike - just inching him along because while I worried about the possibility of a Hollywood style explosion and being stabbed by motorcycle parts, I was more worried about shifting something inside him and stabbing an organ with a broken rib or something.

Yeah, I was quite sure his ribs were broken by now.

We made it as far as to the next tree. Beyond these trees were a few more trees and then the towering wall of the first cliff we fell from. The actual real estate we landed on was a relatively narrow strip that jutted out on one side.

I contemplated unzipping Ki's jacket to check him. But what should I be checking him for? A jutting bone? Actually, now that I was looking more carefully at his unconscious form, there was something sticking out from his side. I bit my lip, a little afraid of what I'd find under the jacket. What if inside he was soaked with blood and had a bone completely stabbed out of his chest? What should I do then?

At Lycan Study Group, we had first aid training once a year, because our elders believed that first aid was a life skill. Thanks to that, I knew how to help if someone had a cut or a burn. I knew how to stop the bleeding and call emergency. If it were an arm or a leg that was broken, I knew how to immobilize it... at least in theory. I was pretty good at bandaging too - it wouldn't be too loose or too tight.

But no one had ever taught us what to do about broken ribs. I probably shouldn't have moved Ki. But the burning motorbike felt dangerous to let him lie next to.

Okay, be brave, Sam. Just open up his jacket and take a look. I didn't smell blood, but if for some reason he were bleeding secretly in his jacket, I could deal with that, right? I just needed to deal with what I knew. Ki was a healer wolf. All I had to do was hang on till he woke up.

I can't say how relieved I was that he was still glowing nice and steady. It made me feel like everything was going to be alright. At the very least, I knew for certain he wasn't dead.

I unzipped the warrior jacket. It was getting quite warm anyway. To my relief, there was no blood. Not even any visibly misaligned bones. Just a gun that came loose from his holster. Which I now suspected was the main cause for the broken ribs.

I did my best to pull off the thick warrior jacket for him. Ki was wearing his usual dark blue suit under that. I unbuttoned the suit jacket and loosened his tie. Okay, that was probably the best I could do. The morning sun was quite high up by now. I stripped off my own jacket, I even took off the white knitted turtle neck dress till I was down to my black tights and tshirt. I pushed up the sleeves and enjoyed the sun a little.

It was pretty warm. It was really summer. My boots felt too hot and my woolen socks were soaked in feet sweat. I had to take them off and go barefoot.

Then I sat down on top of my jacket next to Ki and waited for Ki to wake up. I should stay on guard since we were in this weird place.

It shouldn't be for much longer, the color in his cheeks and around his mouth definitely looked better now and his glow was still calm and steady. I could feel my own body recuperating from the shock and tiredness while sitting by his side. I took a deep breath and released a sigh.

Okay, it's going to be okay. By now, my hair had settled, spilling over the grass around me. My wolf ears had popped out too... probably during our free fall. As usually, it wouldn't shift back at will.

Okay, it's going to be okay.

I don't know what just happened, how the forest turned into a jump off a cliff, or how we survived falling from that height, but we were both in one piece and it's going to be okay.