“Jet, we need to head back,” Rin shouted to his friend who was way ahead of him

on the mountain slopes.

“Not yet,” Jet called down to him, “I found something. I think I know where they

headed.”

“Alright,” Rin sighed, a knot forming in his stomach. The others will wonder

where they were and start to think that they had disappeared as well. He ran up to join

his friend. When he got there, Jet pointed to a sword stuck out of the unusually dark

rocks, just a ways away.

“Ya see that?” Jet asked. Rin nodded. “Let’s go check it out.” The two of them

climbed higher until they reached a layer of flat ground where their observations were

located. Jet walked over to the sword and placed his hands on it. He tried yanking it free

from its grasp but was unable to. He kept at it for a while.

“Will you stop worrying about that one sword and look around you?” His

impatient friend ordered. Jet left the beautiful sword alone and looked up at his friend.

Rin was pointing to all the stuck items around them.

“Whoa! I wonder how all this stuff got here.” Jen ran to pull out another object.

Ran scanned his surroundings. All around him were objects trapped in dirt—or

was it mud? He bent down to examine it. “I don’t know,” he called back, “but it all

seems to be trapped in a past mudslide.” He placed a hand on the ground. It was

freezing. He removed his hand and saw mud on the back of it. “That’s peculiar,” he

thought to himself. He dug his hands in fiercely, until he’d gotten the frozen layer off,

and discovered tons of gooey mud underneath. It was very cold out. The mudslide

probably only happened a day ago, he guessed. He wondered who where the unfortunate

ones who lost their possessions, and did they make it themselves?

His thoughts were interrupted by Jet who was happily wearing a strangely

familiar hat that he had pulled out of the frozen mud.

“Hey Rin, guess all this stuff is frozen mud.”

“It appears that way, doesn’t it?” He paused to think. “Where did you find that hat?”

“Over there.” Jet pointed to the freshly ripped up mud. Rin walked over to it.

“What about it?” Jet questioned as he followed Rin. Rin crouched down and began to

dig into the gooey mud, his fingers going numb from the cold. “Why?” Jet asked again.

Rin stopped digging for a moment. “Let me see that hat.” He pointed to the

yellow, mud-covered hat on Jet’s head. “Why would he even want to wear that filthy

thing?” he thought. Jet took it off and gave it to him. Rin shook some of the mud off of

it. Some of the mud splattered all over Jet.

“Hey, watch it!” he fumed.

Rin ignored him. “Look,” he said, “doesn’t this hat look familiar to you?”

“Hmm…I don’t know?” He scratched his head.

“It looks so much like Simana’s,” Rin observed.

“Hey, you’re right!” Suddenly, Jet’s face became pale. “Do you think she…is

buried underneath all this…this mud too?”

“I don’t know, but look around you. This is our group’s belongings. Either our

search for them has come to an end, or they somehow escaped the treacherous mudslide.”

“Oh,” was all Jet said. The two of them kneeled down and began digging fiercely

in the mud. They had only dug a foot when they both discovered a snow-white frozen

hand sticking out of the mud. Both of them jumped back in horror and screamed.

Their screams were so loud it triggered a crack at the top of the mountain. They

felt the ground rumble as they saw a gigantic avalanche of gooey, sticky mud come

sliding down. They barely had a chance to move before they were caked, and then buried

in mud. The two searchers who were looking for the missing, became the missing too.