Justin hadn't been on the move for very long when he heard the sound of fast footsteps behind him.  Not being blessed with especially good hearing, he only barely figured out what was causing the noise when the woman he had made a pass at earlier caught up with him and kept pace.  For several moments, they simply ran on through the trees, able to use the distant smoke pillar above the tree line as a landmark for their direction.  She kept up with him easily enough, leading him to believe that she, too, kept up some kind of daily regimen of exercise like he did.  The sound of their breathing and the thud of their feet against the grass-carpeted ground filled the air for several seconds.

On the one hand, seeing her again so soon made his heart pound a little harder - and not just from the exertion of the run.  On the other hand, he did feel a little silly about having made such an obvious advance on her in front of so many strangers.  What if she had a boyfriend, or had been embarrassed by being approached like that?  The thought gnawed at him a bit, even as he chided himself for letting himself fuss over something like this, especially in a situation that could easily turn into a dangerous one.

He did manage to keep his eyes forward instead of letting them stray to his running companion after his initial confirming glance.  He let himself get distracted by trying to figure out how to explain how he knew her name, and where he had seen her before...

"Hey, uh, about what I said before back there-"

Suddenly, there was a tremendous rush of air in the distance ahead of them in the direction of the smoke pillar (which had suddenly gotten cut off, as if stopped at the source), followed by an eerie silence that punctuated the pine-scented air, before that silence was then punctured by another loud torrent of wind whistling through tree branches, and the smoke resumed.  Justin frowned to himself; had the crashed object detonated somehow?  His mind had completely forgotten his attempted apology as he and she both picked up their pace as if through some unspoken signal.

A few minutes later, they came through a break in the trees to discover the impact site, where the sight of the smoking triangular craft dug partway into a furrow in the ground dominated a long, narrow clearing that had not been there earlier this morning.  Justin and the woman came to a halt, partly to catch their breath and partly out of trying to piece together the scene - the splintered tree limbs, the alien ship, the dissipating smoke that was beginning to clear up now that any source of fire seemed to have stopped burning...

Justin pointed at the alien ship's open canopy.  "Whoever was in there," he panted, "isn't there anymore...so where'd they go?"

Ashley - he still was a little nervous about knowing her name but being pretty sure she didn't know he knew it - turned suddenly, and Justin heard the footsteps moments later.  He whirled to face one of the other women who had shown up, the one introduced as a Baroness, who had just caught up with them.  He thought she might have been close enough to hear what he had said just now, but he couldn't be entirely sure.  Either way, it looks like he had just walked into the middle of an odd mystery.

What he didn't realize, was that he had forgotten something important about the lodge...
[hr]"What d'ya mean, the door's locked?!"

Boxcar's exclamation - his second in so many minutes - caused Nora to flinch even as she tried the front door handle again as she and the wolf stood on the covered front porch.  The door rattled, but the handle kept from turning.  "It could be jammed," she tried lamely to explain, even though she knew, with a sinking in her heart, that even if this newer explanation was somehow correct, it would still lead to the same end result.  So much for trying to get everyone's luggage moved in while waiting for Justin to return...

Justin.  A light suddenly clicked in Nora's mind.  "He was going to give us a tour...but he never gave us the key!  He must have locked it without knowing we were just about to arrive, and with what happened, forgot all about it!"

Boxcar facepawed.  "This day just keeps getting better and better, don't it?..."