“Pan, what are you doing?” Videl asked, curious as to what had distracted her daughter from bringing forth a raging volcano of snarling fire for roasting marshmallows.

    “Oh, just looking at the lake,” Pan replied absent-mindedly.  The dazzling splendor of the lake had her full attention; she didn’t fully realize that her mother had emerged from the tent, let alone made an attempt to communicate.

    “Oh?  Well, I think I’ll come look with you,” Videl mumbled.  She knew Pan wasn’t listening, that only the little creatures of the night were minding her—and they were only minding her out of fear or out of hunger.  Videl didn’t fear the dark or the outdoors anymore than nature mandated, and usually she was quite comfortable casually strolling through the dark in the middle of the night, which she often did when Gohan started garbling out globs of contrivances in his sleep.

    But tonight she was aware of an unknown something just enough to feel the most minor inklings of fear.  She felt the discomfort that would be experienced by a man with a very large gun turning around to see a very large bear wearing body armor and a top hat staring back at him down the barrel of a bright pink squirt gun.  She had rolled around various explanations ever since she embarked with Pan on this mother-daughter outdoor camping excursion, but not one really seemed to be the cause of her agitation.  The feeling had become a very annoying sensation as the night had carried on, and it was only made worse by her inability to identify the source.

    Anything to avoid the Son house, though.  She had made it quite evident to Gohan before she had hiked off into the woods that she would much rather face a pack of wolves—or a bear—than deal with another Son family vigil for Son Goku.  The deluge of emotions and swell memories would certainly, she thought, displease her more than the queer spirits of the night.

    An almost imperceptible tremor ran down her spine; but quickly she blinked, took a deep breath, discounted it as a chill, and struggled her way through the waist-high weeds to where her daughter was.  Actually, she was headed to where her daughter had been.

    “Pan!” Videl yelped in sudden realization that her daughter was nowhere in sight.  She irksomely scolded herself for being so aloof when her whole purpose for camping was to enjoy some absolute mental lethargy.  “Pan!”

    She was well aware of the strength of her daughter; Pan could easily protect herself from the enemies of the night, even if they happened to confront her with a battleship.  Videl, however, momentarily forgot that her daughter could fly, and consequently the dread that her beloved Pan had slipped in the darkness and plunged off of the cliff’s edge to meet her untimely death on the rocky shore of the black lake below furiously mounted within her.  The uncanny embrace of whatever was nagging her cajoled her enough to induce mild panic, giving her further reason to knock the annoying pest out cold.

    She wanted to run to where Pan had been, but the jungle of plants all around posed a formidable barrier.  Again a minute agitation took a brief grasp of her spine.

    “Stupid weeds,” she muttered.  It was dark under the canopy of the forest, so the enormous full moon could offer her no light by which to find a path through the overgrown underbrush.

    With a sharp jerk, her right leg was freed from entanglement in a thorny plant and Videl stood at the edge of the cliff.  Before her, stretching to the horizon, were the tacit black waters of the lake.  The cool breeze—maybe that’s what’s making me feel odd, she thought—lifted the scents and sense of the lake up the three hundred-foot high cliff to her.  It was refreshing.  The beauty had her in its grasp, tantalizing her with the gigantic full moon and its remarkable reflection in the lake.  The lake was so still that just watching it smothered her in quaint immunity from the entire world.  Slowly she looked around, at the high, snow-covered peaks surrounding the sprawling water, the dense forest weaving in and out of the valleys, and the faint twinkle of stars obscured only by the moon’s light.  She deeply inhaled the night and elatedly felt her heart pump it throughout her body.  It felt great until she once more felt the befuddling touch of discomfort.

    “Pan!”

    Videl gently ascended into the moonlit air, letting her inner energy alight her.  Her eyes frantically darted about in search of her daughter.  Something’s wrong, thought she thought.  Oh, what could it be?  Where’s Pan?  She quickly glanced over her shoulder to see a faint column of smoke rising from the Son house, which was a little more than a mile back through the forest.  Gohan was there—not very far away at all—and that fact made her feel very safe and the whole confounded idiocy of her panic seem laughable.

    She resumed her reconnaissance.  The broken beach jutted up below her like a cozy bed of jagged, rusty knives.  The sight and the accompanying scenario that careened through her mind twisted her stomach about in all sorts of ways.

    Or maybe the rocks themselves twisted her stomach about in all sorts of ways.  At the very least, with small waves gently lapping at their heels and snuggling them jubilantly, they opened it up to the beauty of the night.

    The first rays of morning light were yet to stroke the sky, but the faint glow of the approaching sun was adequate for Gohan to find his way by.  It was still actually quite dark, but the light was more the enough compared to the infinite void of darkness that the previous night had been.

    Gohan casually glanced down at his watch as he strolled deeper and deeper into the forest.  He made a minor mental note that it was much earlier than he normally awoke, but quickly he found himself captivated by the serenity of the forest.

    “Good morning, world,” he gaily commented.  “It sure is a beautiful morning!”

    He had wandered out of the house to clear his mind, and the crisp morning air was dutifully aiding him.  At least, he figured, more than the stuffy confines of his mother’s house had during the night.  Between the fire, which he had allowed to burn all night, and the subtle feeling of gloom slouching about in every corner of every room, the house had become a stagnant furnace.  Gohan never had been able to relax in a stagnant furnace.

    Maybe Pan and Videl are up, Gohan thought.  No, it really was very early; the sun probably wouldn’t rise for at least another half-hour.  But it couldn’t hurt to check on his two angels.

     He continued to merrily stroll back to the lake.  It was much colder under the trees than he had expected, although he really didn’t mind; the cold wasn’t getting through his pajamas too fiercely, and his bare feet noticed the kisses of the morning dew on the caressing grass just enough to pleasantly energize him.

    “Oh, if today is as nice as this morning, it will be absolutely wonderful!”

    Gohan rounded a bend in the old path—one of many that he and his father had worn through the woods when Gohan was still a little boy—and spotted the tent nestled safely among a grove of towering pines.

    He continued to allow the stunning magnificence of the morning to invigorate his mind and body, but the excitement of seeing his girls peacefully asleep, as happy as could be, excited him.  He really had become quite fond of life’s special little moments due to the tragedies he had experienced, and he vowed as soon as Pan was born to treasure every last one of them.

    Gohan soon found himself at the flap leading into the tent.  He didn’t want to wake them up, but he had to see them, so very slowly and carefully he unzipped the flap, fingers shaking with delicious anticipation.

    The flap succumbed to gravity and swung open with remarkable gentleness.  It stood smugly at the entrance, beckoning Gohan to explore the empty recesses of the tent.

    “Where are they?” Gohan asked himself with a mild bit of alarm.

    The two sleeping bags were undisturbed, as if Pan and Videl had never curled up in them to sleep.

    Gohan was still just tired enough to only raise an eyebrow and think.  And, to a very small degree, feel an awful horror perform a somersault in his stomach.

    He calmly turned away from the tent and scanned the area, looking for something.  He didn’t quite know what he was looking for but assured himself that when he saw it, he would know it.  He saw a lot of trees, the sky, the mountains, the lake, and the ground; but he wasn’t looking for those things.

    It’s too early to think, Gohan amusedly thought.  Don’t joke: this is serious.  Now, what am I looking for?  Ah…I hate it when my brain is stuck in neutral.  It’s too early for this stuff…it’s shaping-up to be such a nice day!  What am I looking for?  I hope mom makes pancakes for breakfast.  Gohan, focus!  What am I looking for?  Oh, I’m not looking for anything in particular; I’m just looking.  Am I even doing that?  Am I even being?  It’s too early for philosophy.  It’s too early, period.  Why did I even get up?  Am I up?  I might be asleep…no, no I’m not…

    After a few moments of standing about idly and not doing much of anything besides staring blankly at nothing, Gohan’s brain having coasted to a complete stop for a time, the absence of a campfire slammed into his mind, much like a comet, he imagined, crashing through a thin membrane of warm butter that is cold to a very fragile extent because of the emptiness of space and has been stretched across the comet’s path; the realization was huge and hard-hitting (the comet), his mind alive (the warm butter membrane) but tired (the cold butter membrane) and horribly disheveled (the comet’s impact with the butter membrane)—the peace and hope that Gohan had found in the morning also shattered much like the butter membrane after being struck by the comet in the simile used to vivify the relationship between the realization and Gohan.

    “Yeah, that’s what I was looking for,” he muttered in restrained disgust.  He had hoped that he wouldn’t find what he was looking for, an absent campfire, and therefore would be able to quit worrying, enjoy the fantastic morning some more, and wait for Pan and Videl to come flying out of the sky after an all-night game of aerial tag or something equally revelrous.  “Dad leaves one day, my daughter and wife go missing the next.  I swear…”

    Gohan hesitantly strolled to the cliff in fear of stumbling upon something that would further annihilate the rather good mood that he had established on his walk, the mood that had very rapidly fallen almost into ruin by the mere monstrous notion that his angels were in danger.  It had felt so good for the world to seem so pleasant, he thought, which added to the revolting idea he had that something terrible was about to shatter his life, again.

    “Life would be fantastic if each and every day was like this morning, except, of course, without discovering Pan and Videl missing.  Finding them asleep…much more preferable.”

    He was at the cliff.  But the beauty of the view that had been taken in by his wife and daughter the previous night was completely lost on Gohan.  He, instead, found himself entranced by perhaps the most nightmarish, disturbing sight he had ever, despite his extraordinary life, seen: his beloved wife, his precious angel Videl, impaled on the sharp rocks of the beach, her eyes glazed with death, soul-hauntingly staring at him from so far below.

    She seemed to be on the other side of the universe.  He felt his heart jump out and clutch her, leaving his body and mind twirling away at an infinite distance, and, somewhere in between his devastated shards, he saw his soul explode and his life crackle in the heart of an inferno that stretched to forever and back.

    Gohan’s knees promptly buckled, doing so at the same time his heart mortified and his mouth fell open.  He was then still, paralyzed with shock, dull eyes transfixed on the most grisly blow ever dealt to him.

    He was dead for a long time.  Animation slowly returned to his pale lips, spreading them as wide as the cold, heartless universe was.  He screamed.

    He screamed thunder.  All of the birds in the forest, most of which were resting the magnificent night away, took to the air in a massive black cloud of squawking, startled, squirming blackness that managed to become fully airborne at the exact moment that the first ray of splendid sunlight pierced the seal of the night, finally bringing glorious life to the newly reclaimed harmony of the world, the world that Gohan was screaming at in hopes that it would immediately die—that it would die the most painful death that the world could suffer, something far worse in all respects than what he was suffering, a death that was therefore impossible.  The aroused birds eclipsed that first, good-morning ray from the sun, leaving Gohan writhing in darkness.

    It had been such a pleasant morning.