It didn't take long for Lia to see the faint beam of Jen's flashlight swinging and bouncing over the sand as she swept it around, looking for Lia and the other girl. She was jogging, and small bursts of sand rose up behind her feet with each step.

Lia quickly ran toward Jen, and soon the two had reached each other.

"Lia! Where is she? What's wrong with her?" Jen said. She had one hand on her side, and she was panting.

"She's over this way, but shhhh." Lia pressed a finger to her lips and motioned for Jen to lower her voice. "She's very skittish and doesn't seem to like loud noises. Also, she seems to be bothered and frightened by the light. You should turn off your flashlight." Lia said, taking the flashlight from Jen and flicking the switch to the off position.

Through the sudden darkness, Lia could just barely make out a dark shadow that was Jen, and watched it move as she nodded in understanding.

"Over here, follow me." Lia whispered to Jen. Over the rain and thunder, it was hard to hear, so she was almost completely positive that the girl on the rocks wouldn't hear, but she still wanted to be careful, and didn't want to scare her any more than she had to, in order to make sure she was okay. She knew she would have to bring the young girl back to the house with them, at least to get her dry and warm, and to make sure her cuts and injuries were not too bad, although from what Lia had seen in the staccato light from the lightning, she knew that the wounds had to be painful, though to what extent of severity she was not certain. And this was not to mention that the rocks that she was on were anything but kind on bare skin. They were a ragged whitish gray stone, peppered with small flecks of black and other colors. Granite Lia thought, thinking back to the geology course she had taken the previous year, where they learned the names of many rocks and how to identify them.

Although most of the smaller rocks on this beach were worn smooth by the pounding surf, this rock was high enough out of the tide that only at the very highest tides would the water cover any more than half way up it's height, leaving the upper portion rough, jagged, and sharp. The mysterious girl was perched right on the top, where the sharpest bits were.

Lia suddenly found herself wondering how the girl had gotten there, and why she was there, of all places she could possibly be in a storm. Surely there was some place warmer, drier, and safer than a beach during a storm, somewhere inland a bit farther where she could be...

Lia walked softly across the sand, Jen close behind, both being careful of making too much noise and scaring the girl. As they approached, they heard a strange sound, and as they neared the rock, it was certain that it was a voice. The voice of the girl. It was somewhere between a wail, a whimper, a groan, and a scream, or some frightening mix of all four. It was unlike any sound they had ever heard, and it went on and on, long and low, for minutes at a time without pause, as Lia and Jen both hesitated, glancing at each other through the darkness.

"Uh... Hello?" Lia finally ventured timidly, her voice shaking a little more than she would have liked. She was afraid of doing something to scare the girl that would make her any more in pain or fear than she already clearly was.

"We're here to help you... please tell us what's wrong. What happened? How badly injured are you?" Jen asked, also a bit timid, but for not exactly the same reasons.

The girl turned sharply, and was illuminated for an instant in a flash of lightening. In that instant, she showed the two women her very white teeth and growled one word. "Back!" The way she said it, that one word seemed somewhere between a growl, a bark, a command, and a plea.

Jen and Lia both were a bit taken aback by her voice, deeper than they might expect from the small figure on the rocks. The girl's face was very pale, and as she looked at them, her eyes seemed unnaturally large. They were dark green, and full of fear, pain, and possibly a hint of rage, and something else that Lia could not identify.

As the sky once again went dark with the absence of lightning, the wailing cry started up again. It lasted for around a minute, then suddenly cut off as they heard a small sound of something scraping against rock, then a thud, and a splash.

In an instant, Jen had switched on the flashlight, and held it high to illuminate the sand below the rock, where a few inches of sea water curled and drew back, before reaching out to brush and stroke the rocks with salty fingers once again. In the light of the flashlight, the water and wet rocks were oddly reflective, giving it a slightly eerie feel, but there was no mistaking what they saw.

The girl was lying face up on the sand, eyes closed, and arms splayed out like starfish on a dock post. Her legs were close together, and both bent at an odd angle toward the other one. But what was most shocking, was her chest and stomach. What Lia had at first taken to be a green cloth hanging in tatters from the girl's hips, she now recognized as seaweed. The dark hair that had previously covered her chest was gone, to reveal that she wore nothing except for the seaweed draped over her waist and hips.

The most prominent feature about her, that had been hidden when her back had been to them though, was the wound on her chest and stomach. It was a long, red, jagged line, that ran down from just below her collar bone, to several inches below her navel. The wound didn't seem to be deep, but it was large, and with the salty sea water washing back and forth across her chest, they could just barely make out that it was a perfectly straight line, and that there was still blood, slowly leaking into the water, from many wounds. The girl's hand, which lay just above the waterline in the sand was completely red, as if she'd been trying to staunch the flow of blood with her hand.

Based on how little blood seeped from the wound right now, Lia couldn't begin to guess how long the girl had been there.

"W-what in the name of....?" Jen whispered as she covered her mouth in shock. Lia looked, and she too saw what Jen had seen. Where a second ago had been an open, red wound, now there only was a line of white skin, scar tissue from where the line had been, although the girl's hand was still red with her own blood.

"Lia, did you just see that?" Jen whispered, sounding much closer to hysterics than Lia had ever heard her.

"If you mean how her wound just... just vanished, then yes..." Lia replied, shakily. The girl on the sand was clearly unconscious, and as a slightly larger wave lifted her a bit, and a loud roll of thunder sounded, it seemed to bring the two women back to reality.

"We need to get her out of the water... and somewhere warm. Let's take her back to the house." Jen said, her flashlight's beam wavering as her hand shook.

"Yes... let's go." Lia said, taking off her thick coat and trying to tie it into a makeshift stretcher, using her and Jen's coats tied together. Although the girl was shorter than either of them, it still took effort to gently put her onto the jackets. She was surprisingly heavy. Soon enough, however, they had gotten her into a secure position, and began the careful, tense, slow trek back to the house.