Always, August

Chapter 1

Several years from now. A prologue, if you will. We will continue where Smoldering Light left off in the next chapter, but this flash forward is very important. Welcome back, friends. Please keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times.

"Captain Bishop, this is Blackbear One. Repeat last coordinates, we are wheels up, 3 minutes out."

The sharp crackle of the dispatch radio blaring in her ear snaps Maya out of her calculated internal panic, pausing her incessant pacing at once, leaving a small cloud of dust in her action's wake.

Maya's eyes sharpen, looking over the horizon to her left. Her jaw twitches as she does the math in her head, clenching, her teeth squeaking as she wills her mind to race all that faster, to push, to crank a little quicker, as fractions were sparse, not a shred of time to be wasted.

Connor nudges Garrett next to her, the boys stood waiting for instruction at the ready, admiring their Captain's brilliance on display. "What a rookie." Connor scoffs, nodding over to the probie who was trying his best to keep up with everything on his first wildfire call. He had a map of the terrain, twisted upside down and partially wet from their safety stream in one hand and a compass in the other.

"Probie, for fucks' sake," Garrett says, snatching the map out of his hands, earning a bewildered and frazzled look.

"Hey!" the young man swipes, "Gimme that! I'm trying to help. How on earth is she going to know our coordinates without the map!" He pouts incredulously, trying for his map and whiffing as Garrett tosses it to Connor who stood chuckling at the display of ignorance.

"Watch the greatness unfold, kid." Connor says, placing his hands on the man's shoulders and facing them toward Maya as she works.

Axe across her back and shoulders, muttering under her breath, belly poked out in complete focus as her eyes darted back and forth across the terrain, scanning them like some sort of top-secret computer program, the kind the hackers use in the movies.

She saw the trees. The valleys. The peak they were pinched off of, the fire line they missed.

The inferno turned into a damn near tornado barreling toward them at an agonizing pace. A blistering beast that lit the sky up a burnt and angry orange, the reds and violets burning so hot, the only smell aside from acrid torched wood was the sweet sear to the topsoil, its nitrates singeing and decaying each passing second.

The heat danced off of her skin, through her brush gear and against the soot covered and heavily exposed skin of her cheeks, sweat mingling with ash smeared across the firm lines of her thinner and more mature jaw.

Maya steadies her focus, accounting for distance, wind, terrain and fire path. The miles per hour. The seconds since last call for air support. Her brain slows, the blur slamming into her senses like a superpower, slowing the world, muting it, turning the color, the heat, the pain, the panic off for just a second.

She breathes a deep breath, her weathered hands still shaking with its forever tic, the nerves shot, her back aching, her knees screaming, the third dose of meds she ignored begging for choosing. The world fades as she closes her eyes and recalls her first lesson in high-wind fire support.