In the eye of a hurricane there is quiet WHO Josh Foley OT Lucas Greyson, Rayne Hawthorne, Emily Lockheart, Jace Lockheart, Myra Hughes WHAT Josh’s miserable life continues, thanks to the storm. WHERE Miller’s Wood WHEN August 10, Noonish RATING PG for ouches?
Summer had been better than Josh had expected. He’d moved in with Rayne, found a job at Loaf Around, and was set to start at Havenwood Community College in the fall. He and Emily had been spending as much time as they could together, and he’d decided that even if they ended up breaking up one day, she was still one of the best friends he could ever have.
He’d even managed to develop more control over his powers, after some training with the frogs from the biology lab. Miss Masterson had pushed him to really study the biology texts she’d given him, and now he was at least able to sense what was damaged, even without seeing it, and consciously repair it. No more intuitive guesses, or just “letting it happen”. His powers were now on-demand, and he was almost ready to ask Rayne to conjure up one of her clones so he could practice on it. Almost. He still wasn’t entirely prepared for all the screaming.
The first downturn had been Miss Masterson’s announcement that she was leaving to go back to England. Josh still hadn’t talked to her about it, or seen her since she sent out the letter. Here he was, making all this great progress because of her, and now she wanted to just skip town and leave him all alone? It hurt him more than he cared to admit, and in his stubbornness, he’d just taken to going on long runs instead to clear his head.
Today was no different. He’d left the apartment and run to Sullivan’s Point, before coming back along Main Street and heading to Miller’s Wood. He’d managed to get about halfway through when he thought he heard lightning overhead, and stopped to look up. In an instant, the sky had gone completely dark, storm clouds swirling angrily across the sky, which he so did not remember from the weather report that morning.
Still, a little rain might do him some good. As the heavy drops began to fall, he pressed on; it was actually nice, having the backdrop of rain showering the woods around him, the slight chill on his skin helping to keep him comfortably cool. He was enjoying himself, until he hit a loose root and a patch of newly formed mud, and took a hard fall. His head connected with a rock that was hiding under fallen leaves and debris, giving him a nasty gash and knocking him unconscious in the process.
A few minutes passed, and Josh had finally started to stir awake. He felt sick to his stomach, and as he tried to get up, quickly realized that not only had he bruised himself pretty badly in the fall, he’d managed to sprain his ankle, too. He dropped himself back down, rolling onto his back, but the sky seemed to keep spinning overhead, which made him feel sick to his stomach. Squeezing his eyes shut to fight the nausea, he tried to concentrate on what had been injured and what he could fix, but it was a lot harder than working on a frog. The pain kept fighting for his attention, the nausea threatening to undo everything.
Just do it, Foley, he admonished himself. Stop being such a pussy. He blew out a breath, and focused on his ankle first. Torn ligaments started knitting back together, broken blood vessels started to heal. It hurt, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d expected it to be. It took him a minute, but when he was confident that his ankle was walkable again, he sat up. Overhead, the sky flashed bright as a bolt of lightning struck the tree next to him, sending splinters spraying in every direction.
But the last thing Josh would remember was watching the tree come down on him fast, and wondering how the weatherman could have been so wrong.