Under the Pines

Elara’s alarm screeched at 5:23 AM, slicing through dreams of static and green fire. She scrambled for her notebook, nearly sending pens flying.

The radio had been quiet for hours, but her resolve hadn’t dulled in the least. The sunlight edged her curtains gold. She crafted a carefully worded text to Riley, the kind that took fifteen drafts: ‘Need you. My place, backyard. Weird science emergency. Bring that signal thingy from your uncle’s kit. Will explain. Urgent!’

It only took ten minutes before sneakers crunched up the back steps. Elara burst from her room, nearly colliding with Riley: cinnamon-brown hair stuffed under a battered ballcap, messenger bag bumping her hip, face bleary but curious.

“What’s so urgent? You realize it’s barely sunrise, right?” Riley mumbled, adjusting her glasses as Elara dragged her toward the radio perch by the window.

“Just—listen, okay? I saw something in the sky. Last night. Not a plane. Something else.”

“A meteor?”

“Not even close.” Elara shoved the notebook forward. “‘Received this after,’” she said, replaying the scraps of transmission: danger, help, lost. The words crackled in the silent room.

Riley’s eyes widened with every word. “You recorded this?”

“No, just wrote it down. My hands were shaking so bad…”

There was a long pause in which Riley stared at Elara’s scrawls, her thumb worrying the edge of the page. “Look, it sounds weird. Like, out-there weird. Could be interference? But you’re not making this up.”

A faint smile twitched at Elara’s lips. “If it’s nothing, we’ll laugh. But what if it’s not?”

Riley pulled out a battered plastic device loaded with switches and antennas. “Signal tracer.” She grinned. “For emergencies, or, you know, hunting for pirate FM at three a.m.”

Elara’s heart gave a little leap. “Let’s go check the woods behind Granger’s farm. That’s where the light faded. Maybe there’s a clue. Please, Ri?”

Riley hesitated once more, but her resistance finally cracked, curiosity winning out. “Okay. But if we get ticks, or chased by raccoons, I’m holding you fully responsible.”

---

They set out with the sun barely up, cutting through dew-wet grass that soaked their sneakers. The edge of the Everwood forest loomed, bristling with shadow and the faint green scent of sap and pine. Only birds and one determined squirrel watched as Elara and Riley ducked through a gap in the barbed fence, careful not to snag their jeans.

Riley’s signal tracer swept left and right; a tiny red LED blinked. “Picking up something—not local police, not AM/FM either. That’s…odd.”

Elara’s pulse thrummed. “It’s real. I swear, it’s not just my overactive brain.”

They followed the device’s faint beeps, deeper among trunks splashed with golden sunlight, ducking under tangled branches and spider silk. Fallen pine needles muffled their footfalls. Something strange hummed under their nerves, as if the stillness was holding its breath.

About twenty minutes into the woods, Riley halted. “Here.” She pointed. A neat ring of pressed grass showed where something heavy—or someone—had rested. Nearby, the soil held the imprints of feet: not boots, not even shoes. The shapes were long, with narrow toes and a splayed, three-pronged heel, as if made by a large bird, but far too heavy.

“Woah.” Elara crouched, sketching the footprint in her notebook. “Birds don’t make prints like these.”

“And birds don’t leave behind…” Riley trailed off, pointing to a lump in the moss. They drew near: a metallic, beetle-shaped object, faintly humming with blue light, half-sunk in mud. It was the size of a hockey puck with strange etched lines, like circuitry or unfamiliar writing.

“Don’t touch it!” Riley hissed, but Elara was already glancing at it from every angle.

A twig snapped nearby. Both girls froze.

The sound didn’t come from an animal. Heavy, measured, human steps crunched between trunks. The girls pressed themselves flat behind a fallen log, not daring to breathe.

A tall shape strode into the clearing. Elara risked a peek: a man with graying hair and a nondescript windbreaker moved in slow arcs, scanning the ground with a handheld detector. His eyes never left the grass. From his pocket dangled an official-looking badge—too distant to read.

Elara clutched Riley’s sleeve, heart pounding. The man knelt by one of the footprints, taking pictures and muttering into a radio. The signal tracer in Riley’s grip twitched, catching a signal that fizzed, alien and coded.

For a minute he circled, oblivious to the two girls lying motionless a dozen yards away. Then, satisfied, he moved off toward a narrow path through the trees, fading into the dappled green gloom.

“Let’s go, now,” Riley whispered, pulling Elara to her feet. They crept backward, careful not to disturb the leaves. Only when the man was long out of earshot did they permit themselves to move. Riley tucked the beetle-shaped device into a plastic sandwich bag and shoved it deep in her bag.

Only when they broke into a jog, then a run back toward the field and the shining safety of morning, did Elara exhale.

“That wasn’t a park ranger,” Riley panted.

“He saw the prints too.”

They paused at the fence, lungs burning with exhilaration and fear.

Riley fished the metallic object out slowly, eyes wide. “We’re way past prank calls and ghost stories.”

Elara fingered the torn page in her notebook—sketches, scrambled radio calls, a scrawled note: Not alone. They’re searching too.

But as the sun burned away the mist, she was sure of it now. The secret belonged to them, at least for a moment longer. They still didn’t know what the message really meant, or who else was listening, but they had proof—evidence in their hands and adrenaline in their veins.

“We need answers,” Elara whispered, voice trembling with hope and fear. “And we can’t let anyone find out what we have—at least, not yet.”

Riley nodded, her usual reserve a sheet of iron now. “Then let’s figure it out. Together.”

And, with the metallic object glowing faintly in Riley’s grip, they slipped back through the fence, the sun at their backs, into the new day and whatever mystery waited next.