It was a warm, sunny day in the very twilight of spring. The university was abuzz with activity, as the students struggled frantically to survive their examinations as they looked forward to the blessed dawn of summer.

Lindsey was pressing her way through the crowded corridor of the girl’s dormitory, a backpack swung casually over one shoulder as she made her way back to her room. She had stuck it out through the remainder of the spring semester, and was planning to continue in the fall. She was determined to finish her degree, no matter where life took her thereafter. Despite a battery of excused absences in consideration of her purported ailment, it had nonetheless been hard going to recover after having missed a third of the term. However, she had proven up to the challenge, and among those who knew her there were not a few who commented that she had come through her illness a much stronger and more energetic person.

The black dye in her hair was long gone, and in its place was a tousle of deep walnut, which was her own natural color. Gone too was the heavy eyeliner, and indeed even her very silhouette was subtly altered, for she had gained weight, just enough that even the most critical of physicians would have considered her very healthy. And yet, for the first time in her adult life she felt good about how she looked. Indeed, having spent her adolescence hating her own body, Lindsey was quite confident and content with her own self, and took a certain relish in showing off just a little bit as a sort of rebellion against her own former self. On her feet were a pair of practical, no nonsense military style boots, which were curiously mismatched with a fashionable pair of tight, high cut summer shorts and black camisole top. And ever present around her neck was a small choker consisting of a single lavender tinged pearl strung on an elastic band. This she wore at all times, quite literally day in and day out, whether in bed or in the shower, in street clothes or dressed up. Never for the slightest instant was she without the pearl around her neck.

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Lindsey had just turned down her own corridor when up ahead she saw a man at the other end of the hall. He was a grizzled sort of gentleman, lean of build with a closely cropped salt and pepper colored beard and dressed in heavy grey slacks and an old brown blazer.

And he was standing right in front of Lindsey’s own door.

How the heck he’d gotten into the girl’s dormitory and what in blazes he thought he was doing hanging around her room Lindsey couldn’t guess. Her hand darted anxiously up to the choker around her neck as she broke into a jog down the hall. Yet even as she closed distance the man stepped away from the door and with his back turned he headed around the opposite corner and down the stairs.

“Hey!”

Even as she called out, the man was already long gone. As Lindsey came panting to a halt beside her door, she noticed that there was a small card stuck to it, tucked in the tiny gap behind the doorknob. Lindsey snatched up the card and read the legend.

Laurence Medina

Certified Specialist

Below this was a third line containing a phone number. And beside this, drawn on the card with a blue pen, the ink still bleeding into the paper, was a small image.

The image of the moon and the mountain.

The End