Gemstones, Chapter one, continued. . .

Cassie Roberts, Somewhere in the middle of, Alaska

Cassidy was a pale skinned person with long golden hair that had two long strands at the sides pulled up into two buns on the sides of her head. The rest of her hair hung down her back freely. Her eyes were blue and she wore a deerskin poncho that covered her to her waist. She also wore a deerskin pair of pants with moccasins. All of these she had gotten when her father had befriended an indian chief on a reservation when he had been doing research there. right now she was watching fish swim beneath the ice lazily. Her father had been gone a week, finding "Samples". Even though it was fun to learn new things with him and have parties together when he made a rare discovery she wished he could be here more often. She always had to be

at the igloo tent when he was gone, and he could be gone at weeks at a time. He told her not even to go ten feet away from the tent or the research lab he had set up if she didn't have a life line on. He never even let her go with him. He said "It could be dangerous. A storm could hit while we're out there and I could loose you, like I lost your mother. Then he would look away and stare into the distance remembering. She didn't have the heart to try to push him into letting her go after he said something like that, and so she stayed. At times like this when he was gone longer than usual she wished she had had a dorky schoolteacher for a dad, at least she'd be able to see him on a regular basis. Her father was anything from dorky, he had sandy blond hair and a build and stance that had been built on many years of climbing mountains and walking rocky hillsides for many years. Of the rare times we actually went into normal cities and towns women eyed him. My dad never even noticed.
He would get in get out and get on with his next idea to find evidence for what he was trying to prove. My father thought that there were "other worlds" out there, and I don't mean aliens. I mean alternate worlds and universes different from ours. He even thought there were portals to some of those world from ours. He had chased down lead after lead year after year. When my mother had still been there she had always been there for him. From what my dad told me she had actually believed his idea's. To tell the truth I didn't know whether I believed it was true or not myself. I had lived with him my whole entire life. As a small five year old I had listened to lectures about it. I knew almost as much about it as he did. I had lived with him so long that I couldn't be sure whether my belief was belief or whether it was just me being used to it because I had been involved with it for so long.
This all had come from my grandpa. He had been a respected scientist studying the earth and basically just trying to find out more of this world we lived in. When my dad was ten he had disappeared. Then two years later he had reappeared, claiming that he had traveled to a different universe had had been trapped there. He had only recently discovered a way home. Of coarse no one believed him and he had been written off as a crackpot, but he had spent the rest of his life searching for that portal. He had used the immense wealth he had collected during his fame as a scientist to try to find it again. He had vowed to the world that if he ever found it again he would take his family and leave this wretched world once and for all.
My grandfather's theory was that the portals were part of some natural occurrence. Part of the earth itself, but he hadn't been sure in many parts. When my dad had grown old enough he had joined his father in the search. For several years they had worked together.
But then he had met my mom and they had married. I had been born, and two years after that my mother had died in a blizzard. She had been getting something from a storage container they had been keeping outside when it had struck. She had only been twenty feet from the house but she had been unable to find her way back. They had searched for her for days after the blizzard but all they had found was a frozen photograph of the four of us together.
Three years passed and then my grandfather passed to the world beyond too. My father had become the sole searcher for the portals.
About a month ago my father had come across evidence that there was a portal here in Alaska. When he had proclaimed that I wouldn't be going with him I had put up a great fight and he had had to give in. But in one thing would he not break. I was never to go out alone when he was there. I was never to go out without a rope on and I was not to go out at all if I saw a storm brewing in the horizon.
Right now I was only about ten feet away from the camp. With a rope on of coarse. I had stolen my dad's spare telescope and out of sheer boredom I was now watching the fish swim beneath me. I was enjoying the few hours of daylight in which the sun shone.
For a moment I watched the horizon. It had darkened considerably, which in itself wasn't unusual. The thing that made her look up was that the winds had picked up and the clouds above her now were relieving themselves of there snow.
A blizzard was coming. . .



Luke and Benjamin Anselm, Beaver Dam, Arizona

Luke was fifteen. He had sheet of midnight black hair cut angled up his neck, and he wore dark sunglasses. He was thin and tall and most of the time he had a look of complete carelessness on his face. He wore a black leather jacket, even though it was hot and the sun was out. Underneath it he wore a white T-shirt and a pair of ragged jeans.
Right now he leaned on a large boulder staring lazily into the trees. His half brother Benjy inspected a water snake a few feet away. Benjy was used to being dumped onto his half brother Luke and then being left on his own with Luke. Most of the time being completely ignored. If he was lucky then Luke would go off with his friends, but on Benjy's especially unlucky days Luke would follow him for hours and lacking anything else to do, he would tease and bully him mercilessly.
Benjy remembered a time when he and Luke would play together for hours. Their age difference never mattered. Luke was five years older than him they always had had time for each other, but now Luke had "grown out" of him.
Today was one of Benjy's especially unlucky days. All Luke's friends had gone out of town on a trip together. On a trip the their father hadn't allowed Luke to go on. Now Luke was sour about it and had actually decided to stick to his job of watching Benjy. With a small price, no mercy. Benjy had been playing with his cars his shoulders hunched and tense. Luke had slowly and carefully taken apart each of Benjy's special one of a kind collector item cars. Right in front of him. Benjy had been unable to do anything, if he told his father all that would happen would be that Luke and his father would get into another argument and Luke would storm out screaming behind him that none of this would happen if his mother were here. But Luke's mom wasn't there, only Benjy's and no matter how she tried Luke just wouldn't accept her. He hadn't from the very beginning, before Benjy had even been there.
So Benjy did nothing, he had just sat there and watched trying desperately not to cry. It had grown too much for him and he had run out of the house across the yard and into the forest that grew behind their house. Of course Luke had been right behind him, but Benjy hadn't cared. He just ran farther and farther into the forest.
Half an hour later Luke had finally been able to catch him but he had been too winded to be angry at him. So he had leaned against the bolder and that's how they got there.
Benjy picked up a long stick and poked the snake. It slithered away quickly across the water leaving barely a ripple. There was a boom and the sky started slowly grew overcast. Luke didn't even move, he just leaned there nonchalantly. Instead it was Benjy who looked to the skies curiously, the wind started up a great torrent of breath. Luke's dark hair blew in the wind, slowly his head tilted up and at that moment they both saw it. How hadn't I seen it before? Luke asked. Benjy just thought I'm too young to die, but they both knew death approached. . .