A/N: Honestly? I was feeling disconnected from FP and thought I should post something, despite the fact that I wrote this several months ago. The rest will be forthcoming. I am also shamelessly, selfishly, asking for reviews because I have nothing better to do other than go online check reviews/facebook/email. Which is a sad existence, but the one I lay claim to anyway.

I'm just classy like that.

"The highway's the strangest thing," Rianne mused from beside Clara. "This strip of cement laid down in the middle of the forest, trees leaning in from either side. It's a little creepy, if you ask me."

Her seatmate shrugged, uncaring. "It's only a road," she said, staring out the window. She found nothing unusual about such an ordinary thing, a means of transportation. As Rianne spoke, Clara leaned her head against the pane of glass, absorbing the bumps of the road that traveled through the bus.

"Just look at it," Rianne was saying. "All of this was untouched forest, and then loggers came and it was gone. Have you ever seen the pictures of the giant redwoods, with those early twentieth centuries gathered around, picnicking under trees they couldn't embrace if they formed a circle of six or seven? It's hard to imagine they even existed, now that they're all gone. Like they're some magic memory."

"Ow," Clara said.

Her friend looked at her in concern. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, the bus just jolted unexpectedly and my head was - God!"

Her exclamation was joined by all the other students on the bus as it swerved unexpectedly, as though it was pivoting on one wheel, bouncing like no vehicle ever should. Wide eyed, the two girls grabbed each other's hands and the seat in front of them, staring at each other with frightened faces. Clara only caught a glimpse of Rianne's terror before they jerked again, hitting the side of the bus with alarming force as it came to a quavering halt, vibrations still running through the metal body. It was now perpendicular to the road, Clara saw through her window, alone on highway between civilization and a state park.

Voices rose in confusion, demanding to know what had just happened. The three teachers stood and shouted for calm, and through the din, Clara could see the driver, still clutching the wheel with trembling fingers. She reflected in the mirror above her seat as staring at her hands in shock, as though she did not know what had come over them.

"Come on, everyone, calm down!" one of the teachers's bellowed from the aisle, finally gaining their attention. He herded them off the bus, warning them to not to move about, and huddled with the other adults. They were not quite quiet enough when their phones found no reception, and soon everyone was pulling out their cells, faces falling at the lack of one antenna among the forty people.

Clara tossed her phone back in her purse in frustration, and glanced up to confirm Rianne also hadn't had any luck. But Rianne was staring off to the side, at the trees, and rubbing her arms with pale fingers. She caught Clara's curious glance and flashed a quick, forced smile.

"Anything the matter?"

"No," Rianne said. "I'm just cold."

"Ming will probably lend you his jacket."

"No, that's ok." She turned to look at the bus. "Doesn't that look strange you?" she asked in that quite, serious voice that meant she was only half involved in the vocal conversation, and mostly caught in her own webbed thoughts.

Clara turned to regard the bus. "It is pretty totaled," she offered, and it was true. The front tires were flat, and the front of the bus looked like it had been crashed into, possibly by a moose.

"No, doesn't it look - wrong?"

"Um, yes, because it's not supposed to be totaled." She regretted her flippant answer as Rianne's face closed down. "What did you mean?"

"Oh, nothing." But then she shook her head and stared intently onward. "Do you ever feel like what you're looking at isn't real, and that if you keep trying, you'll be able to see right through it?"

Clara couldn't agree, so she stayed silent. Sometimes it scared her to be around Rianne, because she couldn't keep up with the conversations, and didn't feel the same strange feelings that seemed to be an integral part of her friend.

"I have to pee," Rianne said suddenly, changing back into the bright, cheerful girl Clara was more comfortable with. "Couldn't we have crashed closer to a bathroom?" She looked about and sighed. "I guess it's to the woods with us."

"'Us'?" Clara repeated, alarmed.

"Of course, silly. I'm not going to wander about by myself."

"Because the mountain lions might eat you," Clara said dryly. There had been no lions reported for the past fifty years.

"Or whatever hit the bus might. Come on."

"But the teachers!"

Rianne laughed, and affectionately hooked her arm through Clara's, and essentially dragged her to a teacher to ask permission, and then into the woods. The trees were dark and wild, and Clara rather imagined that if there had been any traffic going by, she wouldn't be able to hear it.

Once they were far enough in for Clara's comfort - Rianne would have just crouched at the forest edge if not for her friend's sensibilities - Clara leaned against a tree and contently watched the wildlife as she waited for her friend.

"Look, there's a rabbit!" she called out to her friend. "Never mind, you probably can't look. But wow, there's an awful lot of little creatures." She paused, amazed. There went another, a squirrel this time, skittering in the same direction as the rabbit. She wondered if they were running from something, perhaps from the noise of the students at the side of the road. If she was that small and little, she would run deeper into her home, too, when predators threatened. "I wouldn't've thought there were this many animals so close to the highway. Maybe they're the ones scampering across it. Wouldn't that suck, if someone lay down a road in the middle of your town?" She paused, waiting for a response. This was the kind of game Rianne usually liked to play, thinking games, while Clara was content to live in her ordinary world while listening to Rianne's unusual thought patterns. But her friend wasn't answering this time.

"Rianne?" she called out. "Rianne, can you hear me?"

No answer.

"Rianne, that's not funny," Clara said, exasperated. "Rianne?" She was embarrassed when her voice rose on that last note. But the truth was there: she was scared. Quickly, she headed in Rianne's direction, only to realize she hadn't the slightest sense of where she was, or even how to get back to the bus. "Rianne? Anyone? Help!"

"Lost, are you?"

With a scream, she twisted around, tripping over her own feet. She regained her feet but lost her restraint, staring ahead of her in terror. It was worse to be with a stranger in the woods than alone.

Maybe it wasn't a stranger, she thought in relief, as he came towards her. He was young, a student like her, and could have stumbled off her bus. He looked normal, dressed as any normal student would.

But she had never seen him before.

And he wasn't as normal as she had thought, either, she concluded at a second glance. He was something - else.

"You are lost?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "Do you know how to get out?" It didn't matter who he was, she decided, as long as he could get her out of this forest. While it had not seemed foreboding a minute ago, it had the power any wilderness had to close in on a person as soon as they were lost in it.

He smiled then, a small, secretive smile. "Yes."

"Good," she said, breathing a sigh of relief. "Because I was starting to freak out." She gave an embarrassed little laugh. "So where to?"

"This way," he said, and she began to follow him.

She wasn't naive enough not to have some misgivings, though. "Where are you from?"

He looked back at her, startled. "Is it so obvious?"

"Huh?"

"That I'm not from around here."

"Oh." She considered. She had actually been getting at why he was in the woods, not why he was in the country, but she could answer that as well. "There's your accent, and you have a funny speak cadence. But you look like you fit in. Where are you from?"

"Oh," he said, and gave her a strange smile, accompanied by a lilting laugh. "You won't have heard of it."

"Not if you don't tell me."

"A strange place - a discovery of Greece, if you will," he said, turning to give her another secretive smile, like there was a joke he wasn't sharing. "You'd like it there."

She stared at his back suspiciously. "How do you know?"

"Oh, most people would like it there."

So, as far as she could tell, he came from Atlantis. She snorted in exasperation. Past the Pillars of Hercules - ah, Plato. Well, meeting a boy from a long dead civilization would be more interesting then anything else that was bound to happen on the physics field trip.

Speaking of which, where were the buses?

When she voiced this, he said, "A moment. We're taking a round a bout way."

"I don't want to take a round-a-bout way," she said nervously.

"I want to show you something."

"I don't want to see anything you want to show me," she said, stopping in her tracks.

He turned around and rolled his eyes. His patented lack of regard made her feel a little bit safer, especially when he said, "Don't be a fool. It's just a view." And while she knew this might be the stupidest thing she had ever done, the twinkle in his eyes compelled her to follow.

He led her up a rocky incline, bouncing and jumping from boulder to boulder, while Clara was heaving for breath below him. She was painfully aware of how out of shape she was, and only her pride kept her from complaining. But she was a strictly inside girl. While she might enjoy nature as much as the next person, she did not reveal in it. That was Rianne. The mountain hikes were for her.

"Are you all right?" he asked at one point.

"Fine," she gasped out, trying not to clutch at the stitch in her side while he was watching. "Just - a bit - out of shape."

His smile said he knew she was more than a bit. "Don't worry, we're almost there."

There had better be a really wise man at the top of the mountain, Clara thought wryly, with the answer to the meaning of life. Otherwise she was going to have to push this kid off it, no matter how spectacular the view was.

"Here," he said, and she heaved herself the last few feet, giving in to exhaustion and collapsing on the now flat ground. "Well?" he asked impatiently.

She ignored him and lay back on the bare rocks, staring up at the sky. It was blue, as usual, no surprise there - but the sun was covered, and it was one of those dullish days when there were no shadows.

"Would you like water?" the boy asked, proffering a bottle. She had no idea where it had come from, but she was too thirsty to care. She downed it all, before finally being able to look around at the view her guide had been so eager to show her.

It was terrifying.

She gasped as she realized she was at the edge of a precipice, then blushed, feeling silly as she wasn't about to fall off the flat ground she was sitting on. But it gave her a dizzy, loose limbed feeling to see a drop off cliff less then three feet from it. Lying flat of her stomach, she stretched out to the edge, a chill going through her, concentrating in her hands and legs, as she looked to the ground far, far below.

But that wasn't the strangest thing.

For this was a rift, a ravine that cut away between two sides of the mountain, slipping them with no touching point for as far as she could see, and spanning about thirty feet. And from one side of the mountain to across the cut, there were spiderwebs, spun thickly, huge spans of them. In some spots they were so thick she could not see to the ground below, but in most places they were a delicate web that clouded the rift.

"Wow," Clara breathed, and decided that even though there wasn't a wise man, she would forgive him for dragging her up here.

And maybe she'd lost a couple pounds on that hike. She'd certainly sweated enough to be five pounds lighter.

He helped her to her feet, stabilizing her when she almost lost her balance. "There's something I want to show you," he said.

"The view, right?"

He shook his head slowly, forehead creased as though he was deciding how to put his words. "I want to tell you, but I know you won't believe me until I show you. So we might have to just do that first."

"Uh, that sounds dangerous," she edged. Probably more so because they were standing on a cliff, with wind whipping around her, catching her clothes and teasing her hair into knots. "Why don't you just try to tell me?"

He grinned wryly. "It won't work."

"Try," she said stubbornly.

"All right," he said, a little too easily, and a little too flippantly. "You're world is false and I am here to bring you into true reality." He tilted his head. "How did that sound?"

"Sort of Lord of the Ring-ish. Epic fantasy. I guess it comes from -" She clamped her mouth shut.

"What?"

She shook her head, trying to swallow laughter. She had almost made an Atlantis reference.

His face was serious again. "I need to show this to you. It's important, more important then anything else. You don't understand now, but it's true. This is life."

"And how do you plan on showing it to me?" she asked warily.

He smiled, trustingly. "We walk forward."

Which would have been poetic and all, except that forward, in their case, meant into the air, supported only by spider silk.

"Are you kidding? I'm not walking on cobwebs."

"Why not?"

"Is that a trick question? Because I value my life, that's why."

"You won't die."

She shot him a disbelieving glare. "Am I about to sprout wings? Or, wait, better yet, that filmy little stuff, spun by an inset I could crush with my pinky, is going to bear my weight."

"Don't you want to try?"

"Let me think - no."

He smiled, taking her hand in his. "Come."

She eyed him carefully, wondering if he was deranged. "I said no." Would he chase her if she ran?

"I need to show you this," he said slowly, sounding sincere. However, as crazy people could believe themselves perfectly sane, this was not comforting. "And I have to make you, since you would never do it by yourself. It's not your fault; you just can't fathom it."

That was it. She was running.

Yet the glint in his eyes held something, something she wanted to see . . .

"Come on," he said, covering her eyes with his other hand.

"What are you doing?" she asked nervously, uncomfortably aware of how close the edge was, how close they were to falling over the cliff.

"Walking on cobwebs," he said, and pushed them both off.