THE SENTINEL

By Tessa Harvey

    Sylvia flew down the road, not driving to the conditions - not remembering many Lakeland roads are narrow, not even remembering this was a different climate from her former island home. It was autumn, but up north in the U.K. frosts can come early...and not melt off in an hour or so.
    The young woman noted the drystone walls, blurring away as she drove her little sports car and even in some corner of her mind, noted the bright clump of late foxgloves shining in the rising sun, which suddenly shone far too bright through the clustering fir trees and almost bare oak branches.
    The road curved suddenly and sharply. Unprepared, Sylvia skidded on black ice and smashed headlong into a small birch tree. There was pain and then a deep pool of darkness....
    A few minutes later, an older person drove around a curve on the opposite side of the narrow road. He was a very unhappy man, but the issues that troubled him seemed so minor when he saw the broken car and what looked like a broken driver.

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