The flames closed in on the ranger. The fiery net constricted on him, forcing him to take shelter creekside where Rifle Creek flowed through a meadow. The fire blasted him with windblown smoke and ash, and consuming the free oxygen. Ranger Searles lay creekside, looking out at the fire encroaching on the edge of the meadow when he saw her standing there at the edge of the trees.
It was her, but she had changed. Her skin was streaked red as if with blood, and her hair hung strait to her bare shoulders. She wore straps around her torso, arms and legs to hold her quiver, knife, and what seemed to be darts. She wore nothing to serve modesty.
The ranger coughed and gaped awfully at her through a break in the high, stream-side grass. She seemed to be camouflaged for the fire, the rays of the flames licking her every curve as if dancing with flames. She would flash in and out of visibility with each blink of his eyes.
Ranger Searles shook himself. He reached for his pistol, and Cindy swept an arrow out of her quiver in a flash. She shook her head authoritatively.
Sam sprang down toward the creek and saw her standing before the flames. She held her bow taut, pointing an arrow down at something or someone he could not make out. He paused. She seemed utterly transformed—or possessed—or replaced. He snapped out of the momentary trance and continued crashing down the slope.
The ranger grabbed his pistol, and heard the arrowhead slice into his shooting arm. He looked at the wound and felt the pain rising out of the wound, and then he looked back at her. He grabbed for the pistol with his left hand as he noticed the steel arrow shining from her bow. He watched the pistol quaking in his grasp. Her hair was no longer hanging but floating in the charged air, and the arrow seemed to take on a faint glow against the firelight. Her face was suddenly transformed by a glowing expression of recognition, and she turned her gaze and her bow heavenward.
Cindy released the steel bird heavenward, and it sprang off her bowstring, followed by a long metallic streamer for a tail. It shot through layers of smoke, slowly decelerating with only the slightest tilt appearing just as it seemed ready to hang suspended high above her head, and then the bolt struck, and the sky cracked open where she stood with blinding light, and the ledge where she stood exploded and spilled in fragments down the slope.
Sam crashed down coughing through the willows to find the ranger’s body covered by the slide. Only his boots were visible. Sam looked up at the bald spot above him, and began frantically search the slide for some sign of Cindy. He tossed stones aside throughout the slide until the smoke overcame him.