Blue-purple mist danced upon the marshlands. Grey-black clouds of smoke mushroomed over the horizon.  Muffled echoes of gunfire rumbled throught he aging dawn.  Bone-chilling Reble yells signalled the beginning of the skirmish's end.

     Her legs ached from the mud's weight as she stepped among the broken bodies, eyes darted from one pained face to another.  Young faces - old faces. Most already wearing the mask of Death.

     Marsh grasses entwined themselves around her ankles.  She tumbled headlong into the malodorous waters.  Gasping for air as she pushed herself up, she swallowed the rising bile.  Her throat burned.  Wave upon wave of nausea rolled her stomach as she bent and ripped off the muddied bottom half of her skirt, freeing her legs.

     Tears tracked down her cheeks as she stood and gazed over the uniformed bodies - Federal, Confederate, buckskin.  The color didn't matter anymore - they were all ripped and bloody.

     She yanked the scarf from her hair and covered her nose and eyes against the raw sting of burnt gunpowder.

     The touch of a hand upon her cheek sent shivers slithering down her spine, rendering her legs immoveable, weighted with fear.  She peeked over the scarf.  She whitened.  His hauntingly-familiar face grimaced, then hinted at a smile.  From their hollow sockets, empty grey eyes stared at her.

     "Laurel, I - need - you.  Help me, Laurel."

     Matthew !

     Reaching for his hand, she dropped her scarf.  Their fingertips touched.  He came closer as if to embrace her.

     Cannons exploded.

     Smoke cleared.

     Matthew disappeared.

Maine - 1866

     Laurel MacGregor's perspiring body chilled as pre-dawn breezes, laden with scents of pine, wet earth, and the sea swept through the covered wagon.  Her breathing quickened.  Her eyes flew open just as she felt her chest would explode -- like the cannonfire in her dreams.

     But I touched him - I know I did.  His fingers - my fingers.  Our life's strength melted one into another just like when we cut ourselves and touched our fingers together as children.

     Laurel raised her hands and inspected them through misty eyes.  No mud.  No blood.

     "Matt, stay strong," she pleaded as tears slid from her eyes, dampening the pillow.  "I'm comin', I'm comin'"

     She drew the blanket tighter against the damp air.  Closing her eyes, she rolled away from the wagon side.  But sleep had abandoned her.

     Not wanting to arouse Eliza, her older Cherokee traveling companion and dear friend, Laurel sat up, drying her eyes with a corner of the blanket.  She flung her long black hair over her  shoulder and reached for her moccasins, still damp from a midnight walk after the first time the vision had awakened her.

     Hitching up her night shift, she climbed down from the wagon.  Gooseflesh immediately prickled her skin.  Reaching in to pull out the blanket, she bumped Eliza's arm.

     "Laurel ?"  Eliza's sleepy eyes blinked against the intruding light.

    "Can't sleep.  I'm goin' for a walk.  I won't be long."

     Wrapping the quilt around her shoulders, Laurel turned and made her way through the ankle-high dewy grasses and wildflowers away from the woods surrounding the wagon.

    The ocean, invisible during the moonless hours that she and Eliza made camp, thunderously beckoned to Laurel.  She stood at the meadow's edge mesmerized by the hypnotic rhythms of the purple-black waves swelling and crashing on the cliffs below.

     The intricate sky-dance of a pair of seagulls remined Laurel of ballet dancers.  The Christmas before her mother Quatie's death, people from all over the Chattahoochee River valley had turned out to enjoy the performance of a small troupe passing through the village on the way to Raleigh.

     Suddenly the gulls separated, soaring in opposite directions.  Laurel sighed, saddened by the abruptness of the dance's end.  She gazed over the churning sea into the peachy-orange haze.

     Was Matt seeing the same sunrise ?