Halcyon

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The phenomenon was wholly alien to her. She tried to quantify it, to find an antecedent from her life that could compare. Nothing suggested itself; the sensations churned inside her body, fighting for some form of expression, for a way to get out. They manifested themselves in the motion of her limbs, the powerful pumping of her legs. On some instinctual level, she understood that if she allowed it, the heady rush of these new feelings would overwhelm her, take her beyond rational thought and into a realm of pure, animal reflex. In its own way, it was enticing.

The terrain was difficult and it did not lend itself well to stealthy movement. The rolling gray-white landscape shifted underneath her boots with each footfall, at times putting her off balance and threatening to tip her from her feet. There was little cover from the howling winds that scoured the shallow valley ranged around her. The hard, knobbed growths of stocky trees protruded from the hillside, hunched low against the weather. They were capped with spindly branches in spiked crowns, the thin twigs clattering against each other as the gusts caught them. In the dull light of the planet's sunset, the trees cast strange shadows that jumped and moved. They played tricks on her eyes, suggesting the forms of pursuers when in fact there was nothing there.

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