Now the thing was that although a week after Michelles
vanishing her parents had contacted the authorities
the search was conducted in the wrong places.
Michelle had told her mom and dad that she was going to
be spending the long weekend camping at
Blackbeards Beach and Campgrounds,within the small coastal
town of Blackbeard.
She'd gone there all right that Friday afternoon,but without telling anybody else had gone to the small
Blackbeard Archives to see if there was any interesting
local history.
And there in the old newspaper collection from a century earlier
the World War One era
she'd found a few articles on a government run research facility
about 15 to 20 miles further up the coast only accessible by
walking a inland railbed from the 19th century or by beaching a
supply boat at the isolated beach at the bottom of the
tall cliffs on which the facility was perched.
It appeared from the short paragraph in the 1917 Blackbeard Chronicle
that there'd been a emergency when the supply ship had wrecked up the coast
in a gale and the research staff had used the abandoned rail
line to summon help.
So Michelle had then sifted through the archives collection of
yellowed nineteenth century maps,traced the location of the
rail line
the likely location of the old research facility near it and
a few mines and mining camps near it.
Likely now all crumbled to sawdust and cracked sagging
old ruins.
She'd slept in her car that Friday night and come extra early
Saturday morning ,with her tent,bedroll and camping supplies
on her back,found the starting point of the rail line and began the daylong hike up the coast,all without leaving a note or
informing her parents of what she was up to.
So as far as anyone knew,she had arrived in Blackbeard and vanished without a trace,except for her car parked at the fast food parking lot.
Michelle had finally arrived at the old
research facility late in the day at the end of the rail line.
She'd briefly explored it but had found it to be of little
interest since after a century there really wasn't any traces or relics left there.
Just a few old greenhouse ruins with a few ceramic pots labelled
DRAGONSWART SEEDLINGS to give a hint what the scientists
from a century earlier had been up to.
So she'd carefully made her way down the rusty swaying stairs
along the cliff and had noted the several open gaping storage chambers along the cliff .
The docks along the beach had long ago been washed away in
a storm but with her binoculars Michelle had
finally spotted a few rusty plates up the beach that might once
have been the wrecked supply ship.
The rest is history.Michelle set up camp in one of the roomier
supply chambers,gone skinnydipping in its pool and gotten herself infected with something,transformed
into a dragoness and flow off,leaving her abandoned tent,bed roll,clothing and other camping supplies in that Cliffside
storage chamber.
Since no one knew she was there in the first place,they'd
assumed her vanishing had happened 15 to 20 miles south of
where it actually did.
Days passed,weeks passed.......