[Backup] Water and Earth, Prologue, scene 1 -- Meeting in the Mountain

[JMR20190312: Backing up Water and Earth.
Working draft: https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2018/05/we-0-01-meeting-in-mountain.html

The novel: https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2018/05/we-title-toc.html 
Originally written between November 2017 and January 2018, first published in my blog beginning May 2018.
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Table of Contents

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The early morning mists drift in patches and clouds along the mountains, streams, and lakes in the pre-dawn light under the nether and hinter moons, giving a sense that this is a magical country. By turns, they hide, then reveal the path, the vegetation, and the view. Amid the shadowed greens, blues, browns, and flashes of watercolor hues we might almost not be surprised to meet fairies and other creatures of magic playing and working in the half light and shadows as we travel the mountain paths.

And when we see through the mists a young woman in a pale blue summer dress bending down to search among the rocks, flowers, and grasses of an open field, we might wonder if she is not just such an enchanted creature.

But her countenance is a bit ruddy and her build a bit solid to be a fairy.
(This young woman is one of our recent charges.)

As we watch, she stops, having found something written on one of the stones half hidden among the grasses, and calls out to a man and a woman who are searching in like manner nearby. They come, and she reads from the stone haltingly, not quite comfortable with the language, of the birth and death, and briefly of the life lived by one whose passing is marked by the stone she examines.

The older woman smiles and takes out a notebook, writing what the younger woman reads and checking over her shoulder, while the man examines nearby stones and takes notes of his own.

By their appearance, we might guess that the young woman and the couple are closely related.

Some two hundred meters distant from this scene, we note a young man in running gear, who stops for a break and stretches the muscles in his calves and around his Achilles, then drops to the ground for a set of pushups.

We see another man and woman approach, and he stands.

They exchange greetings of familiarity and pass, and he drops for another set of pushups. When he stands again they are approaching the young woman and her parents. They hale the three, and soon they are talking together. The young woman takes out her own notebook and listens intently.

The young man stretches his legs and lightly stretches the muscles in his inner thighs, then begins running again at an easy pace along one of the mountain paths. As he passes below the five, the young woman looks up and it seems their eyes meet. She smiles shyly.

The young man smiles and nods casually, continuing on his way. Whether they are acquainted or not does not seem immediately clear.

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Table of Contents

Next: Warning

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