7. One Year Later

11:32 a.m.

Thirty more watch ticks and it’ll be 11:33. Almost there, Eadon thought to herself. Her legs burned with each new pump of energy that she focused into her strides to help keep pace with her other three companions who were sprinting through the forest.

“Keep up! We’re practically there. And when we do get there, we have to act fast. We’re late,” J.C McAdams yelled behind him from the front of the group. He was the fastest of the four and, among other reasons, was why he liked to consider himself the leader. Eadon remembered when she first met him in the cavern. It had been over a year, and looking back, she couldn’t believe how little she had known then.

“Guys, look up.” J.C was slowing his pace down to a jog, and the others followed suit. Mary Everling pushed her choppy black hair from her face to look. “Damn.” Eadon and Elijah Adams followed her and J.C’s gazes. A giant, intensely colored, translucent rainbow was practically thirty feet above them. Barely ten feet in front of them through the trees, it seemed as the rainbow actually touched down to the ground.

At an even paced jog, the group followed the rainbow to its end in the middle of a clearing in the forest.

Eadon hunched over trying to catch her breath. I got to work on my cardio, she thought. “Oh come on,” Mary smirked, “it wasn’t that bad. At least you were able to keep up this time.” Eadon narrowed her eyes, she hated when Mary did that.

“Guys. It’s time.” J.C had that determined look on; the one of a leader, Eadon noted. She slowly nodded her head and took one last, shaky breath. The four formed a diamond around the rainbow’s end. It was a simple ritual but it had taken a lot of practice to make it simple. Eadon had been the group’s missing piece and once she had mastered her part as well as everyone else could, the ritual became like clockwork.

It began with Elijah connecting everyone through emotions, creating the strongest form of empathy ever felt by any human. Then Mary linked everyone’s minds making all their thoughts transparent to the others. Eadon’s turn was next. She used her newly discovered skill to lift everyone, including herself, off the ground and into the air, making them feel weightless to the world. J.C finished the ritual with a flash a white light, the same light that had sent Eadon to Mab. Within a millisecond, the group was no longer suspended in the forest’s air and the rainbow had disappeared.