One year later

The trees had grown back in. They were thinner than they used to be - fewer needles, more sunlight reaching the ground, but they were there, tall and stoic as ever. New green poked up from the undergrowth where the old clearing had once been muddy and torn by treads.

No signs of the USGS now. No field trailers. No crates. No scientists arguing. It was just quiet.

They met every year now. On the winter solstice, give or take. Nobody said it out loud, but it was Riley's day. The shortest day of the year, the day she'd saved the world and only a handful of people knew.

Abby, Autumn and Jacob arrived first. Teleporting the distance from SF to South Dakota still made her nauseous - she always forgot to eat beforehand - but she didn't mind. She sat at the base of the old common house tree, now wrapped in ivy, and waited.

Mari and Sadie arrived by car. They rolled up in a beat-up pick-up truck with a Yellowstone bumper sticker and a cracked windshield. Sadie still wore her ranger vest, she was just coming from work. Mari had cut her hair short.

JP and Louise arrived last. He looked stronger than he had all year - his hair had grown in thicker, and his laugh came easier now. Louise stuck close to his side, taller, older, more confident.

The treehouses were long abandoned. The bridges sagged, the ladders were frayed and brittle, but nobody climbed them anymore. They gathered on the forest floor instead, sitting in a wide circle where the fire pit used to be. Sadie set a bunch of branches on fire and set it in the middle.

Just like old times.

Autumn had started at Berkeley, taking physics classes. She still couldn't write a proper lab report without help, but that was what Abby was there for. Now that they lived in the same family, she was eager to help.

Jacob had started working on something useful, he promised. He would have probably told the others if they asked, but nobody understood the math ramblings of Stanford's newest Master's candidate anyways. JP and Louise had found a way to get by, although they didn't get into specifics. Autumn's money was on them being back with the carnival.

Sadie and Marigold had built a new trail system at Rushmore. They'd named one of the hiking paths after someone who also happened to have a president's last name. Truman Trail. Nobody knew who it actually was commemorating, but Sadie didn't mind.

When night fell, they all grew quiet.

The fire flickered pleasantly. Abby stared up through the branches.

She still teleported sometimes, even tried real jumps. Far ones. Across the country, she even managed to reach New York once. But every now and again, she slipped a little too far, landed in the space between for fractions of a second.

And sometimes, she swore she felt it. A hand brushing hers. A flicker of laughter. A shadow running alongside her.

She didn't tell the others. Not yet. She wanted to be sure. But tonight, under the trees, she let herself believe it.

Riley Truman was still out there.