Disclaimer: I own nothing except for Maria and Holly. The wonderfully creative people behind the Warcraft Universe, Blizzard, are to be thanked for the escapist hatch they've created.

Author's Note: Set in the World of Warcraft Universe. Yes, the first chapter is long. I wanted to give the feeling of two regular schmoes and a little character depth beforehand. The story itself is more of exploring Azeroth from a more realistic standpoint. For instance, I am of the steadfast opinion that Auberdine would smell of fish. Also, riding a griffin would probably be on my "oh God no" list of things to do. So if you, without an ounce of combat training, were dumped in a fictional world with large, carniverous beasties lurking about (and sometimes not bothering to lurk), what would you do? Yes, exactly. Maria and Holly will be doing quite a bit of running and hiding, when not savoring the lifestyle Azeroth has to offer.

Reviews and concrit devoured!

"Crunchy & Good with Ketchup"

The silence in the truck was tangible. Holly felt responsible somehow, as though it was her duty to keep conversation flowing between her passenger and herself. She looked over at the other girl and began, "So how's that class going? Er, the one with the paint and all that?"

Maria's eyes flashed in the darkness. "Don't you dare patronize me," She hissed. "And it's Charcoal Sketching."

Holly swept a sidelong glance Maria's way. "Hey, I'm not the bad guy here. I'm giving you a ride home."

"Only because your mother asked you to."

She adjusted her hands on the wheel and thought about how she should answer that. "Yes, but I probably would have done it anyway. I mean, come on, you're my roommate. Contrary to what you may think, I don't hate you or have any particular desire to see you strung up or turn to Jesus or anything. Look, if you're so uptight about religion, why'd you go to a private religious university? I don't want to convert you, I'm just curious."

"So you don't have to see me in church?"

Holly laughed. Seeing Maria in a holy place of any sort, draped in her odd Bohemian clothing, would have been quite a sight. "I wouldn't know. I don't go much myself."

"Not a Christian? Who'd have thought?" Maria snorted derisively. "Surprised they haven't strung you up, then."

"I didn't say I wasn't a Christian. I just don't go to church. I'm probably more unaffiliated than anything else. And honest to God, you'd make things a lot easier on yourself if you'd just fit in. It's not that big a concession to wear a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt." As an after thought, she added, "And to take off those hippie clothes."

"That's what's wrong with this place. I hate the South. Up North, individuality is appreciated"-

"But you're not up North; you're in the Bible Belt South. That may suck, but that's the way it is. It's a Catholic university we attend, not NYU. I know it's hard to believe since we don't see fresh-faced young boys being molested in front of the chapel, but I swear it really is."

"Alter boys?" Maria laughed. "Where the hell did you come up with that? Maybe you aren't horrendous."

"I'm not only clever at times; I don't listen to country music, either. Unless it's the Dixie Chicks, and that hardly counts."

"I saw you two-stepping once."

"We're in the South. I was born here, of course I know how to two-step. I could teach you," she added with a shrug.

"You would dance with a girl? Pshaw."

"With my grandmother every Christmas. You're lighter than she is; when you step on my feet I probably won't need a splint. I figure the deviance of dancing with another girl would overcome the horror of the two-step for you."

"Maybe," Maria allowed.

"But get rid of that ridiculous clothing. It really does look silly."

"Now? You trying to get me naked?" Maria cocked an eyebrow.

"Oh, well, only if you're offering," Holly drawled sarcastically. "Don't throw yourself at me, Maria, it's fruitless. I'll only break your heart. Largely because I am of the hetero persuasian."

"You use words with more than one syllable."

Holly laughed again. "I can spell my own name, too, and have most of my colors and shapes down pat. Maria, what the hell do you think this is? Not everybody here is a toothless redneck. You're not gonna hear the 'Deliverance' banjos striking up here. Why you bothered transferring to this school is beyond me."

"Yeah, I"- Maria cut herself off as her body shuddered, as if from a sudden chill. "What was that?"

"What was-holy shit-my truck"- Holly pressed the brake, only to find that she could well press it to the floorboards without any sort of change. "What the fuck is"- Her eyes flicked to the dash-the digital readouts were utterly blank. Ahead of the out of control truck was thick blackness, no headlights to illuminate the path. She turned the wheel slightly and pumped the brake to no avail. She had heard of cars shutting down utterly, but had never encountered it herself. Holly grit her teeth against Maria's shrieking and pulled the handbrake. The truck fell into a spin and she could hear debris being flung up around them in the mad whirling. The unmistakable sound of crunching metal could be heard and the occupants were thrown forward as the bed of the truck clipped a tree. Their seatbelts yanked them back cruelly, the material constricting their chests. Holly felt her head swing to the side with the truck's motions and connect solidly with the doorframe. Almost immediately she felt a warm stream running along the side of her face, fanning into her left eye and obscuring her vision.

And it was over.

Holly released a shuddering breath, rubbed her clouded eye, and ignored Maria's hysterical sobbing. She could hear the rush of air from one of the tires and the chirping of crickets in the surrounding forest. Her fingers tried for the belt release, but it seemed stuck. She opened the center console, felt around, and withdrew a hunting knife that she had meant to return to her uncle. The sheathing came away from the blade and she held the strap away from her chest, using the serrated edge to free herself.

"Maria? You okay?" Holly chanced a look at the other girl, wincing as her neck gave evidence of whiplash.

"I think so. My neck hurts like hell. What happened? What the fuck was that?" Her eyes were wide and staring, hands pressed against her cheeks and drawing furrows.

"Sounds like whiplash, don't turn too quickly. The truck? I dunno; it just shut down…never had a problem with a Chevy before. Can you move? We need to get out of here."

"My seat belt"- Holly heard the furious struggles as Maria tried to release the catch. "It's stuck."

"So was mine. Here, stay still." Holly cut Maria free and replaced the blade in its leather casing. She tried the door, which seemed caved in slightly and resolutely stuck. She put her feet to it and pressed, feeling it jolt open. "Can you get out of your side?"

Holly heard the creak of protesting metal and Maria's assertion that yes, she could.

"Okay. Good." Holly let herself out of the truck and into the open air. With no light source the black of night pressed in, only broken by an occasional lightning bug. She circled to the front of the pickup to assess the damage and groaned. "Jes-us", she muttered. The driver's side was hopeless. The door and front quarter had hit something dead on and she felt lucky to have her appendages still attached. It didn't look salvageable but there did not seem to be any fluid loss when she bent to check under the car.

As she rounded to check the passenger side Maria gasped. "Oh my God, Holly, have you seen yourself?" She rushed forward and appeared to be quite concerned with Holly's forehead.

"What? What, is it bad? Jesus, what?" She put her hand to her temple and felt it come away sticky. "How bad is it?"

"I need more light, but you're bleeding like a stuck pig. Oh my God, you need a doctor. That needs stitches. Oh my God, oh my God, Holly, what the fuck!" Maria exclaimed.

"Forget that, look at my truck! Do you have any idea how much I still owe on it? Sunovabitch! Son of a bitch! I'll never get a decent resale on it now that it's been in an accident. It's totaled," she announced, feeling slightly nauseous. She looked hopelessly on at the bed of the truck. The impact with what she guessed was a tree had all but torn away the bed. Jagged bits of metal nearly blended into the darkness. "I cannot believe this," she muttered furiously. "It just shut down, cars don't just shut down, and I'm suing those whores at the dealership, swear to God."

"Forget about the goddamned truck, you're fucked up, Holly. You're bleeding all over the place, look! It's getting everywhere."

"Good, remember that so when I go to court I can get pain and suffering, too. You saw it all, right? It just shut down, all of the sudden the headlights went out and it just shut down. I couldn't even steer, brake, whatever! We could've been killed. I am never buying American again, Jap cars from now on I swear." She went to the pickup again, climbed into the backseat, and emerged with two boxy shapes. She opened one and shuffled through it. She doused the roll of paper towels with hydrogen peroxide and called Maria over. "Clean up as much as you can with this," she thrust a few dry cloths into her hand, "and then mop up the cut with this," she indicated the sopping roll.

In a few moments Maria stopped. "It's done, but it's nasty. You really, really need stitches. It's still bleeding."

"How big is it? Is it deep?"

"Here." Maria's fingers marked on the other girl's forehead. "Yay big," she said, indicating by spreading her thumb and forefinger apart about five inches. "I think I can see bone, but it's hard to tell through all the blood."

"It doesn't hurt, at least, and I'm not dizzy. Thanks. What about you? I can't see anything, but do you feel anything cold or numb or too warm? Anything wet?"

Maria patted her hands over herself in a cursory check. "No, I feel okay, just the whiplash."

Holly nodded. "Good." She drew her cell phone from her pocket and flipped it open. "There's a flashlight in the other box. Kick it open and go through it, see if there's anything we could use."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, use your imagination. You might want to take a couple aspirin out of the first aid kit, though. Your neck's gonna get stiff pretty soon. There's a bottle of water in the backseat somewhere." Holly winced as her own gave a warning twang. "Hand me a couple while you're at it." Whiplash was a bitch. "You're fucking kidding me," she snarled.

"Now what?" Maria asked, alarmed.

"My cell phone's dead. I had a full battery when we left." She pressed the power button again. "It's not even flickering. Usually it starts up even when it's damn near drained. Do you have one?"

"What? Yeah, I think so. Gimme a minute." Maria went back to the car and came back scrabbling through her purse. "Got it." She frowned. "It's not broken, but-you're not going to believe this-I think the battery's dead."

"No. No fucking way. Mind if I see it?" Holly took the proffered phone and pressed the power button on it. "Oh, no, no, can't we catch a break tonight? Did I run over someone's kid or something? This kind of bullshit karma doesn't just happen."

"Holly…"

"Hold on."

"Holly."

"Maybe they got busted up in the wreck or"-

"Holly."

Maria's tone made her look up. "Yes?"

"We were on IH 74, right?"

"Yeah, goes past the park straight through downtown. I think we're five miles away from Pruitt Park, maybe fifteen miles outside of town"-

"No, I mean, where's the road?"

"What are you talking about? It's got to be right"- Holly stopped herself abruptly. Without a word she knelt down and pawed through the road kit, withdrawing a flashlight. Her expression did not change as she attempted to flick it on, only to find that it, too, did not work. "Bullshit." She snagged the extra batteries from the box and replaced the old with them. Still, the flashlight sat dark and defiant. With measured patience and lips set into a flat line, Holly set the flashlight back into its original place and stood up, stalking round the car. For a moment she disappeared into the shadows and then, face still expressionless, she came back to Maria's side. "Something is seriously off the fucking map here," she said softly. She stretched for the hood of the truck and took the hunting knife back, clipping it to her belt. "Okay." She seemed to be preparing herself for something. "Okay, Maria, let's just sit down for a minute. I think-I think I must have really hit my head in that crash-there was a crash, right?"

Maria looked at her as if she was insane. "Uh, hello, yes. Remember? The car shut down and you popped the brake. And you did hit your head-it's still bleeding, here." She took up the now-pink roll of paper towels and dabbed at the slice. "So say whatever you're going to say, all right? Then we start walking."

"Okay. Okay, look, this is nuts. Stark raving nuts." She walked away from Maria again, eyes intently focused on the ground. "Look here, see? Follow me on this. We spun out here"- she pointed at the broken grass and muddy patches where the tires had obviously cut into the ground, "-and we were driving before that, see, here," she trailed the flattened but otherwise unmolested grass a ways, "before I hit the handbrake. But where are the rest of the tracks? It looks like we went off the road when the headlights went out, right? Our tracks stop right here. And this is what gets me-see how muddy it is? But we've had a burn ban for a month now. We couldn't set up a campfire last time we went to Dogenes Park. It's spring but with no rain for over a month, and this isn't irrigated farming land. How did this dirt get muddy?"

Maria considered the grass. Holly was right, but that was crazy. The grass near the car was flattened or mauled by the wheels, and there was a straight line of tire tracks-flattened grass-to one point. "My mom was talking about that. She was pissed that she couldn't water the lawn. She talked about that on the phone yesterday. The ground was all cracked. And…did we bounce or something?"

"No, no way we did. I'd have felt that. Besides, where'd we come off the road? No road." Holly felt along the slice that descended from her hairline to the middle of her cheek. It still bled merrily, but it was not her main concern at the moment. "The road," she repeated thoughtfully, "We couldn't have just appeared here, what happened to the road?"

Maria bit her lip and scraped off some of her dark plum lipstick with her teeth. "Maybe we did."

Holly cocked an eyebrow. "I'm the one who bashed her head."

"Seriously, Holly, when we were driving, like, a nanosecond before the car shut down I felt this…don't you remember? I said 'what was that'. It was this…I don't know…like I passed something."

"Passed something? What, like a kidney stone?"

"Oh my God, yes, Holly a kidney stone," she said scathingly. "Of course not. I felt like…I don't know, if you didn't feel it, I can't describe it to you. Like a barrier. Like we passed a barrier and left our world."

Holly stared at her for a moment. "And you know this because you've passed through the barrier so many times before, making it readily identifiable. Man, Maria, when we get back to town, you are gonna feel like such an asshole. I mean, come on and listen to that. Look, maybe we really did take a big bounce off the road or something. Let's go back to the truck, grab some of our stuff, and get to walking. Pruitt Park can only be about five miles or so from here. We'll call a tow truck, get my head stitched up, and have a couple of beers to relax. It'll be a great story. And it'll end well, too, because in a year or so, when Chevrolet gives me a fat payout after my truck shut down while driving, I'll be fucking rich." She considered. "You, too. I think you look traumatized, and that whiplash will haunt you for the rest of your life. In fact, I'll bet you're going to have nightmares and have trouble sleeping, and blah blah blah, whatever the lawyers want to hear." Her face split into a grin.

"Sure," Maria said doubtfully. "Okay."

"Come on, you should be happy. This is great. All we have to do is get back to the park and get to a phone. Everyone will like you after this; it's such a cool story."

"If we ever get back to town," sighed Maria.

"It's only five miles! I've been hunting a lot further into properties than that. It's only…" Holly checked her watch. "Oh, man, this is broken too. The second hand stopped ticking. Well, we left the dorms at eleven, right? We were driving maybe thirty minutes, and we've been hanging out here for probably twenty or thirty. It's either midnight or damn close, maybe past a little. Mine stopped at eleven forty-six. Come on, let's start out. I'm in no mood to hang out in the woods like we're in some kind of horror movie."

Holly began the short walk back to the truck but stopped when she realized Maria was not following. "What?"

Maria pointed to her own watch. "Mine stopped too."

Holly paused. "O-kay…well, no big deal, right? Come on."

"Holly, I don't think this is sinking in. Right after we passed that barrier your truck stopped working. It didn't frieze up, it didn't lock up; it just stopped. It's new, too, not like it's really old or anything. Our cell phones don't work, and I know for sure I charged mine up this morning. Even when you put new batteries in it, your flashlight didn't work. Our watches stopped about the time the truck went. I just know they stopped at the same time. Hello? No road where there should be road, muddy ground when it should be dry! Holly, we are off the map, just like you said." Maria shook her head, eyes wild. "And denying it is not going to help us, so stop it."

"I have no idea how to answer that, except that shit like that doesn't happen. Perhaps you should stop with the drugs. And also the fantasy novels. You really do play too much of that dweeb game. What is it? Warcraft?"

"Whatever," huffed Maria, stalking after Holly.

Holly had gone back to the truck and retrieved a hiking pack. "Bring me the kits, will you? We might need them if we ended up in Narnia."

"Shut up."

"Okay, okay. Seriously, though, don't freak out. A couple of hours from now and we'll be laughing at this."

"I hope so," returned Maria noncommittally.

Holly began transferring items to the bigger pack. "Think we'll need swords? Ah, motherfucker, I haven't got any. However will we slay the dragon?"

"Oh my God, will you please shut your fucking mouth? Stop being such a bitch. I cannot wait to get home tonight."

"Lighten up, Maria, I'm poking fun. You know, like a human being. Jeez. Okay, check it out; I've got a few paper towels should my face start pouring blood again, cell phones if they decide to work, aspirin, a water bottle, flares, a couple of energy bars, and…that's about it. Go through there and see if there's anything you need. Oh, shit, my lighter!" She flicked the wheel and to her bemusement, it did not light. She tried a few more times, and shook it. "It's still full of fluid. Well, I'll take that, too, maybe it'll start anyway. Okay, anything else?"

"A blanket," Maria answered immediately. "What?" She snapped defensively at Holly's incredulous expression. "We might need it."

"Ah, yes, still doubting that we're in the real world. I've got a jacket in the backseat; you can take it, but you'll carry it. Hey, what kind of shoes are you wearing, anyway?"

Maria lifted a leg for Holly's inspection. "Sneakers, good, me too. Okay, ever been hiking? Hunting? Anything?"

"Not really, but I know how to walk."

"Ooh, frosty. Cheer up, Maria, it's not so bad." Holly frowned as the feeling of unreality passed over her again. Then, in a more subdued voice, she added, "If we don't find the road, we need to find a fence line. Fences mean people. They always eventually lead to people."

"All right," allowed Maria.

"So…let's go." Holly smiled reassuringly, not entirely feeling it herself. The air here felt oppressive and was beginning to make her moody. Maria kept to her side, eyes low and searching over the ground.

"Holly?"

"Yeah?"

"Look at the forest we're in. I mean, really, look."

"I know." Holly answered quietly. "You know," she said after a moment, "what's really funny about that?"

"What?"

"There shouldn't be a forest here at all, now that I think about it."

"Why does that not surprise me?"

"No, really." Holly stopped, face pensive. "The Jackson family owned a lot of the land around Pruitt Park…acres and acres, over a thousand. They ran cattle. From what my uncle was saying, they kept the areas nearest the highway cleared so poachers could be spotted during hunting season and so it was easier to clear hay. We'd have to have driven miles-fucking miles-off the road to get into any kind of forest, and we'd have known we weren't on the road anymore. And, uh, don't call me crazy or anything, but these aren't even the kind of trees that are supposed to be out here."

"Trees are trees, right? It's the South, lots of space and trees, I thought." Maria crinkled her nose in thought. She and Holly were beginning to develop some kind of dysfunctional friendship, she felt. Bizarre situation, maybe, but a friendship nonetheless. At least the conversation was flowing more smoothly.

"We should be seeing wesatche and scrub brush, being South Texas. Mesquite, too, with the thorns and the beans. This is…I don't know what species this is. It's fucking huge." She looked upward, craning her neck. "I can't see the tops. That's probably because it's dark, but, you know, still."

"Well, it's not like you're some kind of botanist or anything."

"True. But look, have you seen anything like these?" Holly stepped close and rapped on a trunk. "The bark is rough like oak, but the leaves," she leaned up and tore off a low-hanging handful, "are smoothly edged. The roots are visible, which is also something pretty foreign here. It sort of reminds me of really thick kudzu. I've never once seen this species here, and I've lived in this area my whole life. I wish I could see more, but it's just too dark out." The sense of worry was building.

"I'm telling you, nothing about this is right. Don't give me any shit about it, either. I know you feel it. If everything was all hunky-dory, we'd have found the road by now."

"It's only been five minutes."

"Yeah, exactly. If we left the road like you said we'd have felt it. There's no way we could've gone this far. If we left the road at all, it was when you pulled the brake and spun us. There's no way we would've gone this far." Maria reasoned.

"Yeah, and what are you implying? Do I even need to ask?"

"Don't fuck with me, I'm serious. I know I'm the weird one, I wear black and a dog collar and I'm a Yankee, but you're feeling it too. So I'm not crazy or full of shit."

"Okay, lay it out for me. Make it easy for me to understand. You know how crazy that sounds. Reality doesn't work that way."

"Maybe it does work that way, sometimes. Maybe we hit it-hit something-just right, like a thin place between…between our reality and somebody else's. Have you ever thought about those people who just disappear? The dependable people who the news says just seemed to walk away from their whole lives without having taken anything, and they're never seen again. Right? Maybe they walked away, not on purpose or by choice. Nobody hurt them, but they hit a thin place, like we did. They crossed a barrier. Haven't you ever wondered?"

"Honestly? Not really. I figured they ran on the wrong side of some nutjob who was smart or lucky enough to cover their tracks. The stuff you're talking about…movies and books and all imagination, in the end. Right now I'm more worried about sleeping outside. My grandparents own that ranch on the south side of town so I'm used to roughing it if I need to, but you look a might more delicate with your lily white hands. I figure even if we have to spend a couple of days outside, eventually our families will have the local police out looking. They'll get rescue groups together and we'll get picked up, treated for dehydration, and sent home. And then I sue the bloody piss out of Chevrolet for that extreme clusterfuck."

"I know, I know. But what if, you know? I'm not sure I believe it either, and I do read Tolkien and play Warcraft and stuff like that, but our situation so far is pretty weird. It's just…what if?" Maria shrugged and smiled.

"Well, in those books, what happened? Let's say for a minute that we did get tossed into some other place. Shouldn't we be finding the place we crossed over so we could go back?"

"We should after awhile, yeah. But have you ever heard of anybody else disappearing off of IH-74? If the rift was there all the time, don't you think that's sort of a secret you can't keep for very long?"

"Point. But why would it open up all of the sudden? Why us? There would have to be some kind of catalyst behind it." Holly rubbed her bottom lip thoughtfully. "And we definitely should have come to the road by now. I was following the tracks from the truck at first, but remember, they just stopped."

"Well, maybe it doesn't have anything to do with us. We were just in the right place at the right time. Or maybe we're important somehow, and whatever-or whoever-is running the show decided we needed to come here."

"A couple of people can't make that kind of difference. That's the biggest load"- Holly stopped herself, trying to be easy and friendly. "I just can't believe it, you know? That's just not even something that's a possibility. It may be fun to theorize over, but it's like winning the lotto. You can think about it, and its fun, but in the end that's just not part of your reality."

"So modern science hasn't proved it yet, so what? They haven't proved a lot of stuff. Keep an open mind."

"I may have to." Holly smiled. "Start looking for fences. If we find one, we should be able to follow it to a road at some point."

"I remember."

An hour passed. A second, and Maria was becoming more sure of her theory. She was a rational human being, but the facts pointed to something out of their realm of experience. There was always the question; What if she was right? What then?

Holly stopped. She frowned and cocked her head to the side in contemplation. After a few moments, she asked, "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Maria clutched the jacket to her chest and peered around. She could not see anything, but that did not mean there was nothing to see.

"Something…" Holly dropped her pack and knelt on the ground, almost prostrate. Turning one ear to the earth she listened intently. "It's not hooves, but something's headed our way. It's very soft, but you can just feel the ground rumbling with it. No, wait, it stopped." She got up and peered into the darkness.

Bright eyes caught the faint light that filtered through the thick overhead canopy. Holly took an instinctive step back. "I count six pairs of 'em," she whispered. "Turn around and check behind us."

Maria did as Holly asked. Her movements were jerky in her fear. "No. Just those to the side there. What are they?"

"I don't know for sure, but I think I've got a pretty good idea. Do you think you can make it to that tree to your left there?" Without moving her gaze from the glinting eyes she nodded toward the tree.

"Yes…Holly, what are they?"

"I can't be sure, but here's what's going to happen. I want you to turn around and get a good look at that tree trunk. Figure out how you're going to climb it. Then, when I tell you too, you run at it. Climb as high as you can as fast as you can. Okay? Can you do that for me?" Holly thought they might have just enough time to make it work. It would be down to seconds if they succeeded. The predators could not be more than thirty feet away and the tree perhaps twenty. She was willing to bet that the beasts were a lot faster than she and Maria, too. "Did you get a good look? Do you know how you're going to do it?"

"Yes. Um, seriously, what are they?" Maria sounded terrified.

"We'll see in a minute. Okay. We'll do this on three. Ready?" At Maria's nod, Holly began the countdown. "One." Holly took a deep breath.

"Two." She psyched herself up for the three second run from hell. Did the eyes get closer while she talked with Maria?

"Three!" Holly sprang away from her position and heard a snarl from the predator's direction. She sprinted toward the nearby tree and jumped blindly, grabbing at the thick ropes of root and plants that enmeshed the trunk. She could see Maria, higher than herself, staring down in horror. Holly ignored the expression and continued to scrabble up the tree as best she could. Just as she lifted her foot for a higher hold she heard the snap of jaws and snarling. Maria shrieked, her eyes almost comically wide.

Confident of her temporary safety, Holly chanced a look down. Her heart felt as though it skipped a beat or two. Circling the tree trunk were eight wolves, grey-white in color and all enormous. They snapped at one another and growled. They threw hungry looks up at their prey as they prowled around the girls' refuge.

Holly reminded herself to breathe. "Holy shit," she said, voice high and reedy with terror. Holy fucking hell! Where did those come from?"

"Well what are we supposed to do now!" Maria demanded. "How long are they going to stay there?"

"Who fucking knows? They aren't even supposed to be here! Those are wolves and this is Texas! We…never once have I seen a wolf in Texas! Coyotes yes, never wolves! What is going on?" Holly continued to climb higher. "Get to a thick branch if you can. We can't hang like this for much longer." Already the straps from her pack cut into her shoulders through her shirt and the bulk felt obscenely heavy. "Can you climb any higher? This is a shitty position."

"Sure," Maria grunted.

The pair struggled to reach a higher vantage point. The bark was gnarled and twisted with thick vines, providing excellent handholds and grips. Hauling their own bodies and scanty equipment up the tree was exhausting. By the time the duo made it to a thick, wide branch they were heaving deep breaths and bemoaning their aching arms.

Maria pushed herself up against the trunk, hands in a death grip on the bark. "What do we do?"

Holly shrugged and carefully repositioned her pack to sit in front of her. "I'll check the cell phones again. We might have been in a bad area or something." She fussed with the device, only to have it sit lifelessly in her palm. No reassuringly irritating ring tone or even a light flickered. She grit her teeth. Maria's phone was no better. "They're both still out. I guess we'll just have to wait them out for now."

The expression on Maria's face let Holly know that she hated that idea. Really, as Holly saw it, they had no choice. Until the wolves lost interest or someone came to their rescue they were stuck. "If you want to try to get some sleep, I'll make sure you stay upright," Holly offered.

Maria snorted. "There's no way I could sleep after all this. God, this is the worst night of my life."

Holly had to agree. "What's weird is that there are any wolves here at all. That's just so bizarre. The more I look at this tree the weirder the whole situation gets, too. I mean, look." She leaned back carefully and tore off a few leaves. "These leaves are purple. That might be common elsewhere, but I've never seen purple leaves growing wild like this, or anywhere else. I mean, what the hell?"

"It's like I said, Holly. What happened to the road? Why are there wolves here? What's with the trees? Something is so wrong." Maria sniffled.

"Oh, don't cry." Holly felt mildly panicky at the display of emotion. How did you calm someone down while tree'd by a bunch of vicious wolves following a bizarre car wreck? Under the best of circumstances she was emotionally insensitive, to put it mildly. "We'll get out of this somehow."

Their half-hearted attempts at conversation withered as the hours wore on. Without a watch it was impossible to accurately guess at the time. All the same Holly guessed that the sun would have to peek up from the horizon soon. She hoped it would drive the wolves away but time would tell. As it was the beasts had taken to lying around the tree trunk, knowing their prey would have to come down at some point.

Holly had not realized how close she was to falling asleep until a shocked yelp from below brought her around. She teetered precariously on the branch and scrabbled for a grip. None presented themselves. Her head connected with a nearby branch and she swayed, dazed, and began to fall.

Maria started at the yelp to see Holly falling. She shot forward and grabbed the other girl by her outstretched forearms and held on for dear life. Holly's hands were lax for a moment, then tightened around Maria's arms. Still, Holly was going over. For a moment she seemed to hang just sideways, most of her torso over empty space, and suddenly Maria was dragged forward as Holly was ungracefully dumped toward the ground.

"Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck, Holly, hang on!"

Holly's grip was so tight it was agonizing. Maria slid forward precariously as Holly's weight overbalanced her. Bark scraped along her skin and she bit into her lip to concentrate.

And then something happened that made Maria question her sanity.

The yelping below continued and was joined by frantic speech. She could not make out the words, but there were people! She looked down and almost let go out of astonishment. The speakers below were pointing at them, eyes luminescent in the darkness. There were four of them that she could see, all male. Their skin ranged in tones of marble white to light blue to almost mauve. They stood far taller than she had ever seen a normal person; possibly as high as seven feet, but it was impossible to tell in her panic.

She was insane or dreaming. Maria had no idea which.

What she certainly was, was overbalanced. Holly was a damn sight taller and heavier than Maria and they were both going over. Maria continued to slide forward, now bent over the branch at her stomach while Holly dangled. The situation could not hold and she slid to her hips, bark scraping at her skin. Maria's upper thighs pressed flat against the branch and still she moved forward. She wailed for help and suddenly she was flying.

Perhaps not flying, she thought dully as the ground rushed up to meet her. She let go of Holly and tried to position herself for the least damaging landing. Her shoulder impacted first and she was out cold.

Author's Note: Revelations and introductions are now in order. Being humans, Holly and Maria will be having a look-see at the Alliance territories first. Still, they will get around to Horde-held areas. Thanks for reading!