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“Captain Sobczak, this is ranger station Zulu X-Ray, over.”
The reply always came with a faint overlay of static. “Go ahead, ranger.”
“Ranger Meteor reports: nothing unusual seen on scope, no smoke, no thunderclouds. Will start my walk in one hour, over.”
There’s a brief chuckle on the line before the Captain replies. “So, the usual, ranger?”
Meteor sighed. “Yes, the usual, Captain.”
“Alright, keep up the good work, ranger, out.” More laughter before the signal cut out.
She pressed the cool metal of the radio against her forehead for a brief moment before clipping it back on her belt. Sighing to herself, Meteor adjusted her hat to better shade her face before she sat back down in her chair. Beside her on one side was a small table where her binoculars, radio, lute, and signalling equipment rested, and on the other side was a small cooler full of drinks and sandwiches. She pulled a cold one out of the cooler and slammed the cap against the edge of the table to pop it off. Technically, she was still working, but one beer would hardly make a difference, and besides, nobody ever came to her middle of nowhere station. This area of the woods was quiet, boring, and lacked any real interest for campers, being devoid of ponds, lakes and rivers, so aside from the very rare check-in from the ranger captain and the once-a-week delivery of supplies, she was completely alone.
It was the twenty-seventh day of her summer assignment to this lonely forest ranger outpost, and Ranger Meteor had begun to think that she might have gone insane.
But she shook those thoughts away and took a long sip from her bottle of beer. Other rangers didn’t get such privilege, but, being the newest hire, she was blessed with the forest’s most in-demand area for patrol.
It took her two days to figure out why it was so on-demand, and the rest of the week to stop feeling bitter over it.
Signing again, Meteor swapped her beer for the radio and tried tuning through it again, to no avail. Even if she could figure out how to tune to the right frequencies that stations actually used, this far from civilization, there were no music stations in range, so the most she could hope for was some crank in the wood broadcasting their doomsday signal. Still, she fiddled with the knob in vain for a minute or so before shutting it off and swapping back her beer.
At least she was smart enough to bring her lute, like so many other Rangers, so she wasn’t completely devoid of entertainment, and being totally alone in this section of the woods meant that she had free reign to forage all of the chanterelle and porcini mushrooms she came across, which helped immensely with her rather boring diet of mostly truck stop sandwiches alongside canned soup and beans. Sometimes, she’d also find some pretty flowers to pick and take back to her outpost to dry out and add to a scrapbook. She had the vain idea that maybe it would help her woo a pretty lad when she was allowed to return to civilization.
After all, boys liked flowers, right? Flowers were pretty and colourful, anyone should’ve liked them, not just other girls.
She was halfway through strumming and humming along to her favourite song when the closed band radio on her hip spoke up again.
“Ranger station Zulu X-Ray, come in, over.”
Gulping loudly, Meteor’s first thought was someone had spied her drink of choice and radioed it to headquarters, so she sneakily stashed it under her chair before replying.
“This is uh, Zulu X-Ray, I read you, over.”
“It’s your lucky day, Ranger, I’ve got an assignment for you. Got a call for a missing kid that was last spotted in the region south-east of you, so we’re calling all adjacent lookouts to be on watch, which includes you. Congratulations, over.”
Just her luck. The moment she got comfortable, real work got dropped on her lap. “Got a description, Captain?”
“Yeah. Twelve-year-old boy, blond hair, white dress shirt, denim overalls, was on a camping trip with his family and wandered off, apparently, over.”
Meteor frowned. She already felt guilty for getting briefly frustrated. After all, this was her job. “Noted, over.”
“Oh, and Ranger?”
“Yeah?”
“This kid? He’s an HVI, so, I think whoever finds him can probably expect a fancy reward, if you need extra motivation, heh.”
She wanted to stick her tongue out through the radio at that, but she chose to just let her displeasure come out through words. “Fine, understood, out.”
There was a small checklist of items to note before she went off on her impromptu manhunt.
Full canteen, both for herself, and the missing child, when she located him.
A large, detailed map of the area, which was necessary for the style of grid-based searching she did.
Her compound bow and quiver of arrows, since dangerous game was sometimes in the area.
A pair of space blankets, in case an emergency camp out before returning was needed.
Food, binoculars, compass, radio, knife and multi-tool, sewing kit to fix holes in clothing, and a fire starter kit which included matches, a flint, and some drier lint to catch sparks.
Once she was ready, Ranger Meteor picked a direction to start and started walking.
Good eyes were a requirement for many aspects of Meteor’s life: forest ranger, archer, forager, and even musician, for when she was reading from sheet music. She kept her eyes out for any sign of activity in the area, both human and beast, anything from footprints in the underbrush, to scratches on tree bark, and bits of hair or fur caught in twigs and branches.
It took a couple of hours of hiking in a growing spiral, but a lone pair of footprints left in a coat of moss that bore the outline of a young person’s sneakers was her first clue, so Meteor marked her position as best she could on her map and continued on in the direction the prints seemed to have indicated.
Half an hour after that, she spotted a shiny brass button on the ground, its threads still poking out the back as if it had been snagged and ripped off.
And then, only a few minutes away there was a pinch of blond hair caught in some tree twigs hanging around a metre and a half high.
She was close, she felt it, and… was that humming coming from up ahead?
Once Meteor cleared the last few branches she got a good, clear look at someone who could only be the child she was sent to find. The child was sitting on a large mossy boulder in the middle of a small clearing, golden blonde hair illuminated by the afternoon sun ahead, and looked to be reading a book, back towards Meteor at a slight angle.
There was just one small point of confusion as Meteor continued to approach, and that was that the child was clearly wearing a dress, not overalls, and the child’s hair was really quite long, much longer than any young boy Meteor had ever seen. The dress was also missing a button in one of the rows along the side.
She stopped a few metres away to announce herself. “Excuse me!” She called out to the child, “Are you lost?”
The child turned to smile and wave at Meteor, with said smile showing a couple of pointy-looking teeth alongside equally golden, yellow eyes. “Hello to you, Miss! But, I must not be lost if you’ve found me, haven’t I?”
Meteor paused to blink a few times, then let out a short chuckle. “Well, I suppose you have a point, but kids your age don’t usually wander off this deep into the woods, do they?”
The child pouted slightly. “I’m not a kid, I’m twelve! And I’m not defenceless, either! Ciocia’s been teaching me to fight!” The child shifted more to the side and showed off and patted a small, sheathed dagger clipped to a belt. “Besides, I told mama and tata I’d be back by sundown, I just used my arts to light the way so I could find some peace and quiet to read my book.”
Meteor raised her eyebrows as the child produced a bright orb of light between them, but this also led to a new question. “How long have you been walking, kiddo?”
“I told you, I’m not a kid!” The child replied in a slightly annoyed tone. “And… I dunno, I left soon after breakfast, but… feeling pretty hungry now…”
Now, Meteor sighed slightly, and she walked up to and knelt beside the child. “My name’s Malina, what’s yours?”
“Margaret!” She replied with another smile, quickly adding, “But my friends call me Maggie!” She then paused, her smile sinking slightly before she quietly mused. “Though, I suppose right now I don’t have any friends to call me that…”
Meteor smiled and fully sat down next to Margaret on her stump, figuring she could question why her Captain had said she was sent to look for a boy when Margaret was so clearly a fine young girl later. “Well, would you like to be friends?” She asked while holding out her water canteen towards Margaret.
Right away Margaret smiled just as brightly as before, and she nodded quickly before opening Meteor’s canteen and taking a long glug from its contents. “Ah! Thank you, Malina!”
Margaret handed Meteor her canteen back and she took a long swig from it as well. She then looked up briefly, saw how high the sun still was, checked the time, it was still early in the afternoon, they had plenty of time.
She figured: why not sit and chat for a bit?
“Want one?” Meteor asked Margaret, showing her a trail mix bar from her bag. Margaret happily nodded and quickly began chewing bits off the bar once it was open. “So, why come this far out on your own, Maggie? If you just wanted some peace and quiet I don’t think you had to go this deep, right?”
“Mmm… there’s always someone watching me, though,” Margaret replied wistfully. She looked down at her shoes and twisted one of the tips into the grass and dirt as she hummed quietly in thought. “Mama and tata always seem to be worried about me. They took me out of my school and put me with private tutors a couple of years ago, and they’re always cautious about who’s allowed to see me and who I’m allowed to spend time with. Even at our camping site, it’s mostly empty, and there aren’t any other kids my age I can play with.”
Meteor frowned and hugged her knees closer to her chest as she asked, “Is that why you came this far? To see if you could find someone else?”
Margaret giggled softly. “Perhaps, but, with having no one else to spend time with, I’ve been reading a lot.” She explained while patting the cover of her book. “But even this is difficult. Someone is always finding issues with the novels I pick out. You’ll get the wrong ideas from that book, son. You’re too young for that material, child. What would others think if they saw you reading that, Ma-”
“I-I think I get it, sorry,” Meteor interrupted before Margaret could finish. She had a clear idea of the issue Margaret was facing now but had no idea how to approach it. She also wiggled her feet in place, unsure how to ask what she wanted to while Margaret looked puzzled at her with her big, round, golden eyes. Eventually, she decided to skirt around the topic with a different question. “What book are you reading there?”
Margaret smiled briefly before pulling back a little. “You won't tell anybody?”
“Not a soul.”
“Not even my parents?”
“If they ask, you were reading my ranger’s handbook to pass the time.”
Margaret giggled again, and, feeling assured, turned the book upon its side atop her lap and showed the cover to Meteor. “It’s a book about a girl named Alanna who trains to be a strong and noble knight her whole life and later gains magic powers that let her part a sea so the people she protects can cross it to escape from a calamity.” She explained with the biggest, widest smile possible. “I’ve read it multiple times but I never get tired of it. My ciocia gave it to me as a birthday present, but my mama and tata don’t like me reading it.”
Meteor smiled. “That sounds like an exciting read, Maggie.” She replied, to which Margaret shined even brighter.
“It is!” She exclaimed, barely able to keep still in her seat.
“Say…” Meteor paused as she leaned closer to Margaret. “Do you like this book so much… because you want to be like the girl in the story?”
“Uhuh!” Margaret answered cheerfully while looking back down at her book. “I’d love to get to be a knight someday! My parents are both knights, and so is my ciocia… it’s just mama and tata seem to think being a knight is… bad? They always say I should look for a different path in life… but I wanna do what they do! I wanna be cool and inspire people just like they and the girl in my story do!” She then turned back toward Meteor. “What about you? What do you want to be like?”
“Me?” Meteor asked puzzlingly, putting a hand to her chest. “Well, I would say I’m happy doing what I’m doing now! I love being a ranger, love exploring the woods, and I loved getting to meet you because of it, Maggie.”
Margaret nodded, and Meteor held out a hand which she took.
“I’d love to see the kind of woman you grow up to be.”
An hour later, Meteor walked Margaret back to her tower and radioed her Captain that she had been found. She came by soon after on a small buggy and took Margaret off Meteor’s hands, but not before thanking her for the hard work and diligence. Before she left, Meteor shared a hug with Margaret and gave her a spare compass to take with her.
“In case you decide to go for another walk, you’ll need this.”
Margaret’s “rescue,” made front-page news the next day, as Meteor discovered when she picked up some old newspapers at the supply shop. Her name was completely cut out, with Captain Sobczak having taken all of the credit and reward money, which didn’t surprise Meteor, but she also didn’t care.
This was her job, and the reward she experienced was worth far more than any amount of money.
…..
Decades passed.
Operator Nearl decided on a whim to check out the list of new hires Rhodes Island had taken that month, and on it was a name that instantly stood out to her.
Malina Meteor: Operator Meteor
She caught her at the archery range while practicing, and cleared her throat behind Meteor’s back.
Meteor recognized her instantly after she turned around.
“Good to see you again, kiddo.”
Having blushed a little, Nearl regained her composure as she gave a short bow, then took Meteor’s hand like a proper lady and kissed the back of it.
“It’s good to see you again too… I’m surprised you remember me.”
Meteor smiled and held her hand close to her heart. “You were such a cute kid… I can see now you’ve become quite the handsome lady.”
Nearl’s ears twitched and she put a puzzled finger to her chin. “Cute? Was? Handsome?”
Meteor chuckled slightly as she reached up and gave Nearl’s slightly messy bangs a little ruffle. “Don’t worry, you’ve got some of that cute charm left, still.” She teased.
They both laughed, ending with them smiling at each other.
“Tell me… did you have to give up on your dreams?” Meteor suddenly asked, her smile paused somewhat. “Or did you find another way?”
Nearl gave a slight nod but said nothing.
Truth be told, she didn’t have a proper answer for Meteor.
Not yet.
And she understood.
Dreams don’t have definitive ends, after all.