Charlotte fell asleep curled in the bottom of the rowboat and woke up coughing.

She shot up and found the sky light above but clouds all around her, and a bright reddish light lighting the clouds up ahead. She reached back for the hood of her cloak and wrapped it around her mouth and nose, eyes squinting and beginning to water.

The light didn't seem to be getting any closer.

Charlotte placed a hand on either side of the boat, steadying herself as she rose to her knees. She peered carefully over into the water and found darkness a few inches down. Charlotte scrambled to the bow and found it beached in the black sand that swirled around below her. She reached down and trailed a hand through, finding it to be real and a bit warmer than she'd been expecting.

Charlotte took one look back into the mist.

Then she launched herself onto the island and began to march forward.

About ten minutes of walking and she found dark rocks and then she found a small river of fire, trailing off to the right and deeper into the island. The strange man had said follow the fire, hadn't he? So she would follow the lava.

Was this Eos' home? Should she be saying hello? Was she trespassing?

Charlotte began to snack on some of the dried meat she'd stolen and trying not to remember her departing conversation. Trying not to wish she'd gotten him to come with her. Or that Will or Elizabeth or even Jack were with her. Anyone.

Mostly James.

Charlotte stopped to brush her hands against each other, chasing away the feel of salt and oil from her skin and then reaching out to dry them in the heat of molten rock. The stream had widened and she thought she might be walking uphill. She had yet to see anything similar to her vision of Eos and her fortune telling friend. Charlotte frowned as she began walking again--what if this was someone she had to fight, not Eos? Had any of the visions told her what she was doing here?

Charlotte considered this for a moment and then pulled up short with a startled cry as she came an inch short of walking straight off a cliff.

She fought off hyperventilating and then her eyes swung toward the lava. How...?

The lava was flowing up the cliff.

Of course.

Of course, it was.

The mist was clear here, she noted. Down below she saw a white sand beach with crystal blue water and two figures seated near the water, looking away from her and sharing a bottle between them every few moments.

Charlotte squinted at the figures but the more she looked the fuzzier they became until they disappeared altogether. The beach began to fade as well.

She blinked and there was a fort there instead, the grey stones melting into mist where they met the ground below. The roof was about even with the cliff, about thirty feet further then she could jump. She heard murmuring voices and found a crowd gathered around the front of the fort. Her eyes followed, searching for someone she knew, then caught on the gallows that rose out of the mass of people. She could see soldiers carrying bodies around the corner of the fort, toward the ocean she could no longer get a good view of.

Panicked, Charlotte began to turn to follow them along the cliffside. She was interrupted by her father's voice in her ear, too quiet to discern any emotion.

"...not a commodore anymore..."

Another group was coming out of the gate. One prisoner among half a dozen soldiers. Too far away to be sure.

But she was sure.

What had she done?

Charlotte backed up and almost tripped over her own feet, the wind catching her just enough to stop a tumble back toward the river of fire.

"Stop!" Charlotte steadied herself on her feet and remembered her manners. "Please! Stop it!"

In an instant, the fort and the gallows and the crowd were gone and the entire world was mist.

Charlotte wrapped her arms around her chest, trying not to be sick. She couldn't see-she didn't want to see--she didn't know what she wanted. Her stomach was churning with terror.

The mist shimmered a little, a red light from the lava.

She heard the same voice she'd heard in that first vision, the voice that had said Eos and the voice that had told her to follow the fire. "Are you sure?"

Charlotte didn't answer. She wasn't sure enough what any of it meant.

There was a pause, the voice waiting and not receiving an answer.

"Is that happening now?" She said finally.

"No. Maybe it will never happen."

The voice paused again. Waited again.

Charlotte was shaking; "I don't want to see more."

A moment passed and then the world began to grow warm around her. The mist melted away and she found sunlight trickling in to replace it. She glanced around and found that the cliff was gone. In front of Charlotte now was a plain sand beach, a normal stream of water flowing toward the ocean, a small but proper boat sitting at the edge of the beach with its sails stowed as two distant figures walked across its deck. One of the figures waved at her to approach before returning to whatever they'd been doing.

Charlotte Swann stepped forward carefully, checking the ground before her with the toe of her boot before placing her full weight on it. Sure enough, the sand was real and she sank just an inch or two before it held her firmly.

The young woman considered this for a long moment, wondering what exactly had happened to get her from point A to point B. Had the island changed? Had it been a vision the whole time? Had she been teleported thousands of miles away?

The only thing she was sure of--more sure then she would have thought--was that this was definitely not a dream.

She did not like that thought.

It took about twenty minutes to make her way to the ship, shoving away all thoughts of the visions by singing songs she knew she didn't know the words to and replacing them with variations of the words 'I don't know this part' and singing anyway. She quieted when she thought she was close enough for the man and woman to hear her, but the slight smiles on their faces said they'd been listening the whole time.

One of the figures was Eos, wearing a pale pink blouse and loose pants as she polished a looking glass. The man had finally taken the hood off and, from what Charlotte could tell, was a native to the islands. He had hair cropped around the length of his chin and he wore dark clothes that seemed to shimmer and throw away light so that she couldn't quite tell where he stood, much less what exactly he wore. As she approached he began letting down the sails.

A second later, Eos was beside her.

Charlotte startled and reached for skirts to greet the stranger with a curtsey. She then remembered she was wearing a hat and trousers so, instead, Charlotte reached up and removed the hat. With one stiff movement, she placed the hat over her heart, leaned forward in a polite bow, and felt the cheese she'd placed there yesterday slide agonizingly forward off her head.

Turning red, Charlotte straightened and slammed the hat back into place, just barely catching the wrapped cheese before it fell. "Very nice to meet you." She managed.

The goddess' movements were just a little faster then they should be as she copied Charlotte's gestures, placing a hand over her heart and bowing her head. Her eyes were brown but glowed rosy pink where the light hit. The wind that tossed Charlotte's cloak was more playful as it curled around Eos' braids. There was no shadow behind her.

"The honor is mine."