"Alec, hurry up you turtle!" Gabriela shouted from her perch on a boulder. The woman giggled as Alec clambered up to the top of the hill, clutching his walking stick for dear life.

"Gabby, you know this isn't my thing. Can you tell me why you had to drag me all the way out here for a hike?" Alec said, glaring at the softly swaying canopy overhead. 

"That's precisely why I had to get you out, silly.” Gabriela tucked a stray curl back behind her ear. “If it was up to you, you'd just waste the summer away before we go to college. You managed to get into that fancy school of yours, but it’s over five hours away! My mom won't even let me take the car to the store, how will I bug you then?"

Alec, struggling for breath, failed to notice the slight blush on the woman's face. After a herculean effort climb, he finally made it to the boulder and looked out at the rest of the hike. A peal of laughter erupted from his group of friends further down the trail. While he pulled air like a bellow, he wondered if he should have brought his inhaler, just in case.

A mountain Alec desperately hoped they were not scaling loomed over the two youths to the right. Instead of dwelling on that impending discomfort, he took a moment to admire the pines and the earthy smell of the forest. 

"I hate it," he said, adjusting the strap on his pack.

"You don't mean that! Come on, there is supposed to be a ton of waterfalls hidden away all around the trail. I betchu I can find one before you!"

Before Alec had a chance to respond, Gabriela jumped off the boulder. He could only look after his friend as she smoothly landed and jogged up another steep hill. A chill gust of wind cut through him. Shivering, he struggled with his zipper. It was his favorite parka and he didn’t want to wreck it. He slowed down, lined it up and it glided the rest of the length to his neck. It barely helped, but it was better than nothing.

He stood next to the boulder for a moment, but when his childhood friend finally disappeared from sight, he started to walk again. I suppose a little outdoor activity can't hurt anyone. I haven't had an attack in two years either...

While Alec followed the trail, the chill he'd felt grew sharper. He felt colder, but there wasn’t any wind to accompany it. The trees and bushes around him stood deathly still, yet the temperature continued to drop.

"Well that just doesn't make any sense..." he said, watching as his breath fogged before him. "Gabby!" 

His shout went unanswered. Picking up his pace, the cold raised his hackles. Or was it the creeping fear? The temperature continued its descent and his breaths grew ragged. His poor endurance reared its ugly head as he climbed. Just when he was about to let out another cry for his friend, Alec spotted something. His mouth clacked shut when he realized it had remained open in his shock.

"Light...?" he whispered. A mote of floating light drifted lazily out of the woods to the right. As he stared at the coin-sized light it popped like a bubble. The slightest of static buzzes, like when you pull towels and blankets fresh out of the dryer, hissed in the air.

In his wonder, Alec completely forgot about the cold. As soon as the first mote burst, two new ones floated out from behind a tree. When they reached the trail they popped as well. The youth followed the direction the three had come. Several of the motes flew into the sky, into the ground and towards the trail. Mesmerized, he took two steps out of the trail to reach one of the motes. He stared straight into its brightness without getting spots in his eyes, which only caused Alec to stare even more intently.

Before Alec knew what he was doing, his hand rose to try to clasp the floating light. When he closed his fist around it, a current of heat flowed through his palm all the way to his elbow. His hand shook with relief as the little mote dispelled the pervasive cold he now remembered was all around him. Just as fast as the warmth has spread to his hands did it disappear. There was a strange sense of longing for more of it. As if it was right for him to have that warmth. To own it. 

For several minutes Alec followed the trail of drifting motes, emboldening himself against the growing cold by touching more and more of the floating lights. He was even audacious enough to catch one on his tongue like a snowflake. The more motes he absorbed, the faster Alec moved. He didn't know how far he'd drifted away from the trail and when he finally took a look around him he saw a stream that had definitely not been near where he started.

"Well, that's just not good," he mumbled. Without the constant stream of the motes, the cold pressed down around him. It was almost as if it was a physical presence. His trembling fingers fumbled with the zippers on his bag until he was able to pull out his cellphone.

No signal.

The pair of words at the top right of his screen sent a whole new round of shivers down his back. Misting breaths formed a cloud around Alec as he struggled to get his panic under control.

"People get lost in the woods all the time, right?" he started. "I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere, or maybe I saw it on TV..."

As his sharp mind tried to process what to do, he recalled that following bodies of water was a good bet to find people. He didn't think he would find civilization out in the middle of a state park, but he could possibly find a trail or maybe a better vantage point. Or something. He watched the slow running water for several seconds, focusing on the babbling of the stream to calm his nerves. There was a reason he hadn't had an asthma attack in a while, and it wasn't just because he didn't do anything crazy strenuous. When he'd finished counting to ten, he knew his mind was his own.

"Further upstream is the mountain, clearly the source of the stream. Downstream, the water meanders and there are none of the little lights..." he discussed with himself. I would much rather take my chances warm than not. Having made his decision, Alec continued to follow the increasing number of motes upstream and towards the base of the mountain. 

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Before he knew it, the world darkened into late afternoon. He stared longingly at his empty water bottle as frost formed on his knuckles. Some of the panic resurfaced as he reached towards the nearest mote of light, but Alec managed to keep it contained. The little motes had served as beacons as the sun disappeared beyond the crest of the mountain. The cold had also become a constant companion for Alec, and he ran his whole body through the motes as much as he could to keep the feeling at bay.  

Just when he was sure the world was going to freeze him in place, the temperature started to relent. Of course, Alec wasn't sure where anything was outside of the bubble of light the motes provided but he was less concerned as the temperature climbed out of the freezing range. After clambering over a log to continue following them, he came face to face with something else impossible.

Floating stones. Alec did a double take as he noticed pebbles along the banks of the stream drift up into the air before dropping back down gently. Some of them plunked into the water while others drifted into their neighbors and clacked gently like pucks on an air hockey table. Still in a daze, but not wanting to lose the additional warmth of the motes, he walked further up the stream. The more he followed the motes, however, the more the stream bed rocks started to hover. Alec nudged a head sized stone out of his path and the thing traveled a good ten feet before drifting back to the ground.

As if he needed another reason to get distracted, Alec started to nudge the rocks in just the right trajectories so that they would bump into others and cause chain reactions of movement. Thanks to paying so much attention to his surroundings, he ran smack straight into a floating chest-sized boulder. The shifted boulder, other than giving Alec a knot on his head, hovered over the water and collided with the mountainside. The mountainside! 

Alec took a step back to evaluate the mountain's proximity, but ended up bumping into another of the hovering stones. He windmilled his arms as he fought to regain his balance, but ultimately failed. To his rear end's delight, the rocks around him actually cushioned his fall. The one below him gave some height but remained floating. 

While he was gathering himself, the boulder he'd nudged finally made contact with the mountain. A thunderous crack, followed by the rumble of crumbling stone revealed a spray of slowly falling rocks. The image didn't quite compute in Alec's brain. He’d expected the rocks to roll down and into the stream, but instead they bumped into each other and spread out like buckshot. 

When the majority of the rock had shifted out of the way, and the massive boulder ambled back away from the mountainside, the source of the motes revealed itself. A cave entrance shimmering with light led into the very mountain. Alec stood gaping at the discovery. He shot glances at the rocks that had moved out of the way and realized that it would have taken some heavy duty construction equipment to uncover the hidden entrance. 

"The stream must have just bubbled through the cracks..." he whispered. The man didn't even realize as he drew closer to the entrance, easily ten foot by four in a rough arch. Instead of drift, the motes in the tunnel that revealed itself hovered in place, like ethereal wall sconces. While Alec let his unreserved imagination and wonder lure him deeper, a constant buzz vibrated the air. He tasted the tangy zing of electricity in the air. Instead he followed the stream, back and back to its source. The tunnel opened into a cavern and still Alec only had eyes for the escorting motes and the hovering rocks. Boulders twice his size drifted lazily just out of sight, held aloft by forces the youth didn't comprehend. 

It was when the world brightened considerably that he finally looked around himself. The radiance didn't come from a patchwork of light like the motes provided, but a true sun underground and in the night.  Alec's eyes tracked the reflection on the water as the stream cascaded down three natural stone steps. 

At the top of those was a twitching mass of light. The man's brain struggled to process the sight before him as the orb shimmered, glowed, flared and otherwise shone every color of the rainbow. With every movement it did, a mote drifted into the air and circled around it like a planet orbiting the sun.

"Holy shit..." he whispered, the last dregs of cold shedding beneath the undulating rays of the light-mass. He reached for his phone intending to video the madness around him. Dead. It didn’t dissuade Alec.

Like a moth to a flame, Alec followed the trickling stream up to the first stone step. He wholeheartedly intended to get as close to the mass of incandescence as he could. As if the mass wanted just that the stone of the first step lifted into the air the moment Alec placed his foot on it. He teetered dangerously as the large flat stone shifted under his weight. Spreading his legs and holding out his arms to the side seemed to do the trick as the stone stopped wobbling.

Without any prompting, the stone hovered up and around the mass, revealing more of the cavern for Alec. His head spun as he viewed an entire galaxy spread before him. Just over the lip of top step was a whole world of impossible. As if the mountain had been hollowed out, motes of light drifted slowly in what he realized was a spiral headed away from the light-mass. 

"Like stars in the sky..." Alec said, brushing his hand against one of the motes nearest to him. He had almost forgotten his phone in his hand. 

Lost in that world of light and darkness, Alec missed when the boulder started to tip to the side thanks to his gesture.  The trance he'd been in broke completely as vertigo grabbed hold of his stomach. The pinpricks of light from the motes blurred into lines as he fell. He swore he saw his life flash before his eyes: his parents, his friends and even Gabby's smile as they pulled up to the state park. A moment later, all he felt was agony. His body landed right onto the mass of light.

It wasn't that the mass was particularly hard, or even painful to land on. It was the warmth turned to blazing pain that did it. The little lights that had led him to the cavern had sent a tingle into his body or zinged at the worst. What he'd felt from the motes bled through his clothes and straight into his flesh a thousandfold. Alec went from a cushy 98F to several hundred Fahrenheit at the speed of light. From the small sane corner of his mind that remained at that moment, he saw motes start to eject through his fingertips and zip into the air. The phone in his hand melted straight through his palm down his arm. He felt more than saw as the light seared itself into every cell on his body with every moment.

Within a breath, Alec was fully submerged in the mass of gathered light. 

The light doubled in size, then shrunk and twitched. A glitching video game graphic would have been an apt description for the 'twitching'. Arm thick bolts of lightning cracked against the sides of the cavern, spraying zero gravity stone into the air. As more bolts turned the atmosphere in the cavern to ozone, the hollowed out portion of the mountain could hold no more. Building size chunks of gneiss and slate crumbled onto the mass of light only to be cracked asunder by the next bolt. No one knows how long this microcosm of destruction ran for, but eventually the light started to wink out and the bolts to shrivel in strength. When a final tombstone collapsed onto the gathered light, it winked out of existence.

And into another.