Invisible String

Out Of The Woods

"Walkie me, if anything happens. I want to hear about all the squirrels you see!" She patted your shoulder and headed though the open door. You heard a shuffling noise as Megatron's alt form came into view. You watched as they flew above the trees and out of sight. A sigh left your lips as you looked around the little ranger station. It wasn't too messy, if just cluttered, so it was easy enough to start organizing. You started with sweeping, then dusting all of the tabletops. Time had slipped away but you hardly noticed. Nor did you care about the feeling of being alone.

You had gotten lost in sorting a rock display when you had finally realized it had been almost two hours since you had been left alone. Wiping your hands on your shorts, you decided to check in with Dorothy. You beeped the walkie to life and spoke into it.

"I just figured I would check in. No squirrels so far." You joked.

"Too bad, I was hoping to catch the one that keeps throwing acorns at Megs." You giggled at the prospect Megatron being harassed by a small woodland animal and set the walkie down. Before you could sit down the device whirled to life. You heard what sounded like a gurgle of voices coming from the speaker of the walkie. You stood in silence for what seemed like forever but was in reality only 30 seconds. The walkie talkie burst to life again as Dorothy's voice came through.

"Did you hear that too?" There was worry in her voice. You grabbed for the device and scrambled with the talk button.

"Yeah, I heard that. I wasn't even near the walkie when it did that." Your heart started to beat faster, and you could feel a sense of panic and adrenalin kick in. Dorothy's voice broke the silence again.

"I can't hear you." She said your name a few times. "Can you hear me? Beep twice for yes." You took a deep breath as you tried to slow your rapid heartbeat. You clicked the talk button twice, hoping that was what she meant. The seconds felt like hours as you waited for her reply.

"Megatron and I are turning around, if you can hear me Hun, stay where you are. We will be back as soon as we can." Her voice broke through the silence, and you felt relived. You set the walkie down and paced around the station. Every leaf rustling left you on edge. You looked around the little room and tried to think of anything other than the thousands of ghost stories that ran through your brain.

You started to clean more to get your mind off of waiting. You stood by one of the floor-to-ceiling windows and started spraying it down. Taking a cloth that you had found, you started to softly scrub on the glass. Movement in the trees made you pause and scan the brush line. You swore you might have saw a tail, but you tried to hold yourself together. When you convinced yourself that you had made it up and you were ok, you continued to clean the glass.

From the corner of your eye, you saw a dark spot dash from one bush to another. Your breath hitched in your throat as a giant cat emerged from the forest. It was dark and looked like it was plated with metal, if not made out of it. You held in a scream as it slowly stalked closer to the window you were in front of. You looked around for something you could use to defend yourself but found nothing but small rocks and a heavy book. A crashing sound caused you to let a yelp out.

You fell to the floor in shock, a shard of glass had made its way under your hand, and you felt a small amount of blood drip from the cut. You backed up and tried to scramble to your feet as the cat got ready to pounce again. You were able to jump out of its way on onto your feet as adrenaline entered your blood stream. You booked it out of the station and started to sprint into the woods. You figured you would be able to lose the cat if you weaved through enough trees. Maybe it would lose interest in you. You ran until you couldn't hear the growls anymore, and quickly hid behind a tree and tried to catch your breath.

"I can't seem to catch a break." You muttered under your breath. You looked down at your hand and inspected the wound. It wasn't deep but it needed to be cleaned and bandaged right away for it not to get worse. You looked up at the sky and figured it had to be just a bit after noon. You were hoping to catch a glance of your "heroes", but you saw nothing fly across the deep blue sky. You started to look around and realized you didn't know where you were.

The sound of heavy footsteps brought you out of your daze and eased your mind, until you remembered why you had sprinted into the forest in the first place. Maybe this thing could walk like a human. You didn't want to find out. You put a hand over your mouth to try and quiet yourself, as the footsteps started to get closer. You had hoped it was Megatron but at this point a bigger, meaner robot could have shown up out of nowhere to finish you off and you wouldn't be surprised.

Your body was tense, and your hand was starting to ache. You could hear someone muttering the closer the footsteps got to the tree you were hiding behind. You held in a breath as a metal leg stepped to the side of the tree. You looked up and took your hand off of your mouth as you recognized the gray robot as Megatron.

"Oh, thank goodness. it's just you." You let out the breath you were holding and relaxed against the tree.

"Just me?" Megatron's voice almost sounded hurt. You looked up at him, confused.

"I mean, "just you" as opposed to that mean cat thing." You looked away from him as you felt a warmness start on your cheeks. You hated that you blushed when he was around all the time. You heard him mumble something, but you couldn't hear what he said.

You heard someone call your name and turned to see Dorothy running towards you.

"There you are!" You accidently waved with your injured hand, and you heard her gasp as she grabbed for it. "Oh Hun, let's go get this cleaned up." She looked up to Megatron and nodded. You didn't ask about the disappointed look you saw on the mechs faceplate. 'Just another reason for him not to like me', you thought.

You kept quiet as Dorothy led you back to the ranger station. Once you weren't being chased through the forest, you could admit to yourself that the scenery around you was beautiful. It was late July and with autumn right around the corner, you were able to take in the fresh air and the dark green of the Appalachian flora better when you weren't being chased by its fauna. You thought Megatron would follow you two back, but it seemed like he was occupied with searching for the animal you described to him. Sparing him one last glance you caught his eye and instead of contempt or distain you could sense worry in the look he gave you.