India Rose & The Eternals - The Fountain Of Youth Chronicles Vol. 1

Chapter 2 - The Hunt and the Hunter

Hope Springs, Maine, United States, 1982, 1:45 P.M, 87th Day Of Spring

Across the ocean and the years, twelve-year-old (soon-to-be thirteen) India Rose was playing a game of "cat and mouse" of her own. With her back to the trunk of a wide oak tree, she cradled her weapon and peaked around to the other side of the tree. Surveying the scene, she spied several adversaries on the far end of an open field in front of her, but none near enough to do her immediate harm. Confident in her ability to sniff out danger, India rounded the tree trunk and, keeping a low profile, proceeded out into the open ground before her.

She was a tall, blond young lady, with the kind of thick, wavy hair that often gave her a "windswept" look, even on a calm, mild day, though there were not so many of those in her seaside town of Hope Springs. The wind off the ocean often curled around the houses on the shore and made its way around the streets and shops of the ocean front businesses, blowing shutters closed and doors open. India and her family spent many days on the sea, exploring the many deserted islands around the mouth of Saunders Bay in the family's small outboard boat (built with loving care by India's grandfather in his shop many years before), and after these excursions India's hair was often a swirl of action that took her mother much brushing to untangle. Wind was like a constant, noisy neighbor in Hope Springs, but one that had been there a long, long time, so was little thought of by the folks bustling about their day.

On this spring day, the wind was in fine form and India's hair was immediately blown around as she stepped out from the shelter of the oak tree on the far side of the field, her projectile weapon sill cradled in her arms like a sleeping child.

Out in the open space, India knew she would stay unnoticed for just a short time, so she ran for the next tree, twenty yards off to the left. From there she planned to climb to the top of the fort a few more yards ahead to get a good look around. Her enemies were nearby, she could sense it, and they would show her no mercy when the time came.

Making it to the second tree, India took a deep breath and started on the final leg to the fort, and relative safety. If she could summit the ladder that led up to the top of the structure, she could hide behind the safety of the wall of the fort while still having the option of using her weapon whenever she needed to. And perhaps there might be more weapons stored up there. She had been told of caches of weapons all around the battleground, and she suspected that the fort might be holding one or two inside.

Emerging from behind the second tree, she immediately saw a figure peek over a large bolder to her right, on the far side of the fortress. The head of a slightly-younger girl was now plainly visible above the large rock, and India recognized the freckles and equally wavy brown hair of her younger sister, Ireland.

Ireland was frantically signaling to her. She waved her arms away from the fort in a sweeping gesture, and made motions with her hands, though she too had a weapon in her arms, making her attempts at silent communication much harder.

India and Ireland had secret, silent communication down to a science. Many years of practice in the back seat of the family's car during "silent time" (as her dad called it), or in their rooms across the hall after lights out, had honed wordless communication skills between the sisters. Their parents often thought that the two had developed ESP skills. When sound was allowed, but the sisters still desired to communicate in secret, made-up languages were the rule of the day. This is a common enough thing among sisters, but the Rose girls had elevated secret language to a higher art form.

But on this day, even those high communication skills were no match for a high-tempo, combat environment, and as Ireland struggled to signal something over the distance between them, India figured that she had to get closer.