Third Watch: The Woods - Madi and Cain

Posted on Mon Aug 3rd, 2026 @ 9:00am by Narrator & Marisol Cabral & Cain Cross

2,220 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 8: Shadows Over Avalon
Location: Avalon
Timeline: March 27, 1992

As Joey and Casey's watch came to an end, Madi and Cain quietly took over the last shift for the night. Thanks to the previous patrols, the immediate perimeter had been mapped well enough for the pair to follow a familiar route, tracing a slow half circle through the forest around the cave and campsite. The rhythmic patrol carried them between the flickering glow of the firelight and the shadowed treeline, where every rustling branch and distant call seemed amplified by the stillness of the night.

Great mysteries flitted through the trees. Centuries and centuries of quiet chaos and a power which couldn't be predicted. Great night with shining stars towered under the sky, and sleeping heads rested uneasy. Cain had not rested well, at least. His eyes had been held open by uncertainty. He grew up in danger, but it was tangible. Predictable. This place was like a different world.

He eyed his partner. She was cute. Very cute. He was almost well-rested enough to shoot his shot. Almost. For now, he licked his lips and pulled the humid air into his nostrils.

"Marisol, right?"

His tone was casual. Confident.

"What's that mean?"

Madi had also not slept well. She had gone back and forth between being annoyed at everyone for just jumping in head first and jumping at every little sound. Although, the previous watch did have to shake her pretty hard to wake her up, so she at least knew she had gotten some sleep.

So far, she wasn’t sure if she liked the forest better patrolling it or trying to sleep in it. At least this way she had someone to talk to.

Which could be good or bad- she would decide that later, too.

“María de la Soledad,” she answered in a perfect Mexican accent. “Or, Mary of Solitude. I was named for a friend of my mom’s.”

He had an interesting relationship with that accent. As soon as he heard it, he glanced at her for long seconds. Lemon cake, he was sure. That was what he smelled on her. Not like the bars his G-ma made.

"That's pretty."

He said it as if it were some profound statement or great compliment. It sounded as if it came gift-wrapped.

Madi gave him a sideways glance. She had heard far too many “compliments” from her fellow day laborers to just accept them graciously. But, she reminded herself that he was not a day laborer and she couldn’t exactly judge him by the same standards. Still, she was cautious. “Thanks,” she said guardedly. “I think it suits me.”

"Why, because you're pretty or because you like to be alone?" He looked into the trees. The branches were strange and moved slowly with an unquantifiable energy as the day threatened to begin. He didn't deliver it like a line. He didn't even look at her. Maybe it wasn't. She was probably more than half a decade older than him after all.

“I wouldn’t say I like being alone,” she replied. “But I often am. And I’m okay with that. I guess I’m comfortable being alone.”

"I grew up with street lights, car horns, Hip Hop. Loud talkin'." he said, glancing at her. "I miss the gunshots now that I'm here. Where you come from?"

“Michigan, by way of Arizona,” she answered. “I used to be an elementary school phys ed teacher, if you can believe it. Then I worked as a day laborer for awhile. I enjoyed that more than I thought I would.”

"Damn, my gym teacher back at home looked scary in shorts. I didn't think they even made em like you," he said with a smile, breaking the early morning rule. He didn't know what the hell 'by way of' meant, exactly, but he didn't want to ask. "You don't look Mexican to me."

“I’m not,” admitted Madi. “But my dad is. I’m adopted,” she explained. “By hm at least. Mom was my birth mom. No idea who my birth dad is. Or was, as the case may be.”

He had asked for the bio and he was getting it. The quiet woman was either too oblivious to detect his flirting or too smart to react to it. He was playing around. He was pushing boundaries. Not everyone could get with that. Adoption was heavy and he didn’t know what to do with that shit. So he bent over and picked up a smooth, heavy rock, his dark eyes gazing into the pitch-black edge of the forest. He had a better idea.

“Adoption, damn,” he said, barely giving it the attention it deserved. “I’ll tell you what, Madi. All this magic forests dark cave horse-shit - I bet you twenty bills I toss this rock into those trees and not a damn thing happens. No ghosts. No glowing yellow eyes type shit. And, if I’m wrong, at least somebody eatin’ good this mornin’.”

He tossed the rock a foot into the air and caught it again - a threat, an offering - and waited for her to place her bets.

“Don’t you dare!” she replied. “I am absolutely not betting on that. Don’t test things you barely know!”

Cain licked his lips. He had a look in his eye that only a bad kid who knew they'd found the right nerve to sit on could have. He tossed the rock in the air.

"You scared of the woods, girl? Forreal?" he asked. There was nothing about his demeanor that suggested he had any interest in stopping. "What you got a squirrel phobia or some shit like that?"

Madi’s papá had once told her ‘fear and respect are identical to the untrained mind.’ It wasn’t an insult- she had always known that- but even Madi, as socially clueless as she was, knew it often sounded like one. So instead, she told Cain, “there is a difference between respect and fear. I’m not afraid of dogs, but I’m sure as hell not going to wander around poking them with sharp sticks, either. That’s a great way to get bitten.” She gestured to the forest. “Maybe let’s not do anything to make this place bite us, eh?” she finished.

"Damn, you really was a teacher, huh?" he asked, tossing the stone again. "So you tellin' me you don't ever poke the dog? You just sit around thinkin' about gym class and givin' good advice and shit? You can't make me think you don't choose adventure once in a while."

He bit his lip and reared back with with the rock, tossing his arm forward and then stopping short. He glanced at her, the stone still in his hand.

“Adventure is not a synonym for foolishness,” she pointed out. “Adventure is petting the dog, not poking it.”

“You flinched, girl. Actin’ all wise and responsible..” He said with a smirk, taking a step toward her, his eyes on hers. “And you tellin’ me you wanna pet my dog, Gym Class? That’s inappropriate as hell. I’m like five years younger than you, type shit. You oughta be ashamed.”

Then he did it. He tossed the rock into the darkened trees as if it were the most innocuous thing in the world to do. As it landed with a gentle, low thump, he glanced at Madi again, triumph in his eyes. “Some people stay outta trouble by playin’ it cool and flyin’ under the radar. But me? Where I’m from, we make noise so they know who they dealin’ with. These woods can suck my dick, on the real.”

TAG Madi

The rock disappeared into the darkness with a hollow crack as it struck something unseen and for a heartbeat, nothing happened… Then the forest answered.

Leaves began to tremble all around them, not from any winds but as though unseen hands were dragging themselves through the undergrowth. Branches shivered overhead while the night itself remained unnaturally still, as the air became heavy enough to suffocate them. Whatever had heard Cain's challenge was moving toward them.

The presence reached them before the creature did. It settled over the woods like a crushing weight that was primal and ancient, raising the hairs on the backs of their necks and filling every instinct with the certainty that something was terribly wrong.

Then came the laughter. It drifted through the trees in scattered bursts in the delighted giggles of children at play.

One voice became three.

Three became a dozen.

Soon the darkness rang with the laughter of countless children, their gleeful cackles bouncing from tree to tree until it became impossible to tell where any of them were. Some sounded impossibly close, just beyond the next trunk while others echoed from deep within the forest, drawing the ear farther into the blackness.

There was joy in those voices and somehow that made them infinitely more terrifying.

Madi bit her tongue to keep from saying I told you so. “What. Did. I. Tell. You?” she hissed. “You poked the dog and now we’re both about to get bitten!”

“Hell nah, I ain’t bout to get ate by a gotdamn thing,” Cain said, standing tall and pulling off his back shirt with a quick tug. He was left there with cut muscles covered with tattoos. He stared into the woods, his eyes going totally black. “Come on then - I’m ready for whatever.”

It wasn't a single creature that burst from the forest, but rather hundreds. Tiny black shapes poured from the darkness in a living tide, each no larger than a child’s clenched fist. Alone they were insignificant, but together they moved as one in a swirling murmuration that twisted through the trees with impossible precision. Their chorus of giggles echoed through the woods as the flock descended upon Cain and Madi like a sentient storm.

For one dreadful heartbeat, it looked as though they were about to be swallowed whole.

The swarm crashed over them in an overwhelming wave of writhing black forms. Instinct screamed to fight, to shield their faces, to brace for teeth and claws.

But the attack never came.

Instead, they felt only the faintest brush of impossibly soft bodies. Each tiny sprite was as light as a tuft of dandelion fluff, their touch ticklish rather than painful. They darted across Cain and Madi in a dizzying whirlwind of feather-light caresses, giggling among themselves with the boundless curiosity of children examining an unfamiliar toy.

Just as suddenly as they had arrived, the sprites lost interest.

The living cloud broke apart, wheeled back toward the trees, and disappeared into the darkness from which it had come. Their laughter lingered long after the last of the tiny black spites had vanished, echoing through the forest like distant children playing somewhere beyond the reach of the light.

Madi stood staring after the board in disbelief. The encounter had been almost pleasant, if not for the fact she had been geared up to fight her way out. And the ending was so anticlimactic, she was almost disappointed. “That was…” she said slowly, “… unexpected.”

Cain’s pulse raced in his neck and his fists were balled like rocks. A force from Hell was after them kne moment, and the next they were standing again in the silence. Who could explain it?

He turned to Madi and licked his lips. The man was still shirtless, and his body seemed to draw a contrast with the danger of the night. Muscles and flame tattoos seemed to cut him from the same seamless cloth of the night.

“See? We poked the dog and not a damn thing bad happened to us,” he said, turning to her and grinning like he had just took on the devil and one. “And we had a little fun. You need to chill, girl. Relax. All that worry and good advice just gon dry you up.”

Madi glared at him. “Don't think that’s permission to poke again!” she snapped. “It may have been a warning!”

Madi's warning was enough to give Cain pause, and he wisely abandoned any further attempts to provoke whatever lingered within the forest. Instead, the pair gathered their belongings and continued their slow patrol around the camp's perimeter. Hour by hour, the night gave way to the pale gray of dawn before the first rays of morning painted Avalon in warm shades of gold.

Cain's brush with danger had led them to one of the forest's more curious and fortunately harmless inhabitants of Avalon. The rest of the team, however, had not been nearly so fortunate.

By the time they returned to camp, the smell of breakfast was already drifting through the cool morning air. One by one, the X-Men gathered around the fire and compared the unsettling discoveries each patrol had made. Their first night in Avalon had answered a few questions, but it had raised far more. Whatever this enchanted land truly was it had made one thing abundantly clear, its beauty concealed dangers as ancient as they were mysterious, and the coming days would only carry them deeper into its secrets.

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