Chapter 4

The violence slammed through her head, her ears numb after the incredible explosion that destroyed her.

"Come back from that, bitch!" an evil, vile voice snarled at her. A few seconds later, another violent explosion shattered her and she fled skyward and discovered herself merged with her twin, Tia, who was as mindlessly terrified as Tara.

'Flee! Go somewhere safe!' was the only thought that reverberated through both their overwhelmed minds.

'Come with me – I will take you to safety!' an unknown, yet familiar voice echoed into their terror.

The twins latched onto the thought! 'Safety! Yes! Take us to safety!'

'Recall a time when you felt safe, ' the Hurrah thought into their minds and received an image, the same image from both twins' merged minds. 'Now think of a place where you can be safe, ' it continued, then guided them through space and backward through time, down to a dying, though still populated Earth.

Darkness surrounded them – the glowing spirits of Tia and Tara, and the fuzzy visage of the Hurrah. _'You will need to create bodies using your fire, ' it told them, then watched as two young females appeared in the burnt, dying grass of someone's front yard, flaring bright blue of Phoenix fire then becoming solid flesh and bone as the twins remembered their pre-adolescent forms.

Tia looked over at her naked twin, then laughed as she looked down at her own naked form. "We're gonna need clothes..." she giggled. "People will get upset if they see two naked kids running around..."

"With their asses hanging out," Tara laughed, finishing her twin's sentence.

'You have a suitcase already packed, ' the Hurrah suggested. 'Simply think of it and it will... '

Before it could finish, the twin's beige, hard-shelled suitcase – the one they'd lost when traipsing through the forest in Colorado, long before Lisa had found them and taken them to Solar City, suddenly appeared between them.

'So this is where it went!' one of them realized, solving the decades-old mystery of the vanishing suitcase.

"Well, at least, now we have clothes," Tia grinned.

"And they should fit," Tara added.

"Now that we're that age again," Tia crowed, delighted that they seemed to be getting a 'do-over'.

"Now the question is," Tara asked as she flowed Phoenix fire over her body to create a blue t-shirt and a pair of black, skin-tight jeans.

"Where are we?" Tia finished the question as she created a black t-shirt and faded blue jeans to offset her sister's attire.

'You are where you wished to be when you were lost in the woods, ' the Hurrah informed them. 'And now, there is one last thing – one last act to perform.'

"What's that?" Tia asked.

'You are thirteen, once again, ' the Hurrah replied. 'Your memories of being older will be available no longer.'

"What?"

"No! Wait!"

"At least let us keep our fire!"

"Yes! Please! We need our fire!"

'Your fire is part of your soul, ' the Hurrah replied. 'You only have to remember, then it is yours.' Then it vanished.

Tia and Tara knelt in the dried grasses, stunned and confused. Tia looked around, finally noticing the house behind them. "We made it!" she grinned at Tara.

"Uncle Buck's cabin!" Tara replied, then picked up their suitcase as they wearily trudged to the door and knocked. 'We'll be safe here!'