The night air was frosty as the moon dipped behind Sycamore Mountain. The campfire built to keep Jimmy and Katherine warm had nearly decayed to the point where the fire was falling short of its primary mission. So, Elizabeth set out to round up some dried wood from the dry creek bed where that old pine came down.

Elizabeth spotted an area about forty feet away where the kindling pickings looked pretty good. To get there, Elizabeth would have to traverse an area where the saplings were numerous and hard to avoid damaging. Elizabeth had speculated, probably the romantic in her, that the poor fallen pine tree knew that it would soon die, gathered its last bit of energy to produce the pine cones necessary to seed the area.

Jimmy and Katherine would never understand, after all she had taught them, if she were to just mow a bunch of these precious pine saplings down. So Elizabeth looked around and, noting that they were indeed alone in the woods, she raised up off the ground about a foot, enough to clear the saplings anyway, and quickly moved to the other side of the saplings and came to rest near the most likely kindling pile.

After gathering up what she needed, Elizabeth glided back to the other side of the sapling grove.

"Mom, were you hovering?"

"Just for a moment, dear," she replied. The children were well aware that hovering, amongst other things, were not open for discussion to anyone outside of their very tiny group.