Hurricane #15: The Branch (Patreon)

“You really don’t remember her name.” Serrano gave the bear behind Saint John’s bar a skeptical look. “Come on, Jay, you’re the owner. If anyone…”

He shrugged, sliding a whiskey and soda in front of her. “Never saw her, never met her. We get fill-ins from other bars sometimes. Somebody calls in sick here, the shift manager makes a call to somebody they know, get a friend of a friend.” He waved a hand. “If she was makin’ fancy froo-froo drinks, try some of the bars up in Parkcrest or Midtown. Echo Lounge, maybe.”

“It’s worth a shot. Thanks.” She sighed, looking outside at a steady rain. “Although maybe not tonight.”

He headed to the other side of the bar to serve some beers. She took a sip of her highball. Well-made, if decidedly not fancy froo-froo.

“I’m telling you, it wasn’t a magic potion,” a voice said to her right as someone sat down by her.

She jumped, turning to face—Sarah. The coyote looked up at her. “You’re back.”

“I am. So what have you found out since I left?”

“Let’s see. Last night a steampunk science hyena broke a hole in my wall and pulled out a gadget from another world, this morning my apartment manager brought a mysterious technician to my apartment with him and made vague threats without explicitly being threatening, and now I’m terrified to sleep in my own bed.”

Sarah lifted her brows. “Ah.”

“Also, it wasn’t until after I drank that hurricane that I started being able to influence these dreams. She said it was sympathetic magic, all about symbolism. Maybe it was just a fruity rum drink, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t unlock something.”

“Mmm.”

“So did you visit the world the storms are going to?”

“I did.”

“What’s it like?”

“It’s a branch not too far removed from this world, I think. Similar history, similar languages, similar religions. There’s only one dominant species, though.”

“Rabbits?”

Sarah lifted a brow. “No, it’s humans. Why?”

“The technician dude with the manager was a rabbit. What the fuck is a human?”

“A furless evolved primate. Like this.” Sarah shimmered. Her body kept the same proportions, but her fur disappeared, replaced by smooth pink-reddish skin. Her face became furless and far more delicate, with her claws gone, fangs gone, even tail gone. Somehow, she still looked like a version of herself.

“Whoa.” Serrano looked her up and down. “That’s alien. More attractive than I’d guess from ‘furless evolved primate,’ but that might be because you started out hot. Humans look pretty…fragile and delicate, though.”

“They are. I honestly don’t understand it. It’s as if they’ve evolved to have their asses kicked by literally everything.” She shimmered back to wolf form.

“So what’s happening with the storms they’re getting from here?”

Sarah shook her head. “I don’t know. They’re dealing with more violent weather than you are here, but it looks like that’s been going on there for years, not just the last few months. Whatever they’re pulling through you isn’t manifesting as storms on their side. The most obvious way that branch of reality diverges from yours is technology, though, and I think that’s connected to what they’re doing to you.”

“How?”

“The technology is mostly like yours, but there are bits and bobs that don’t fit whatsoever. Portable cold fusion power generators. Personal hovercraft. Laser swords.” The bear was ambling over, and Sarah nodded to him. “Whatever your strongest IPA is.”

“We only got one.” He ambled away again.

Serrano shrugged. “Those sound a little sci-fi, but plausible.”

“They don’t happen they way they did there. It’s as if some company put a modern jet airliner onto the market when everyone else was still making prop biplanes, without any explanation for how they could make them beyond ‘we’re just that good.’ Moreover, laser swords aren’t plausible. They only work that way in those kiddie movies about space wizards.”

“Those are classics!”

“You’re missing the point.” She sipped from the beer that had just been set in front of her. “There are some products there which seem to be literally magic, and that’s not a world that developed magic even in the weird, bifurcated way this one did. It doesn’t add up.”

“So what’s that mean?”

“Someone there has figured out how to steal from other branches of reality.”

Serrano’s left ear flagged. “Uh, as an immortal guardian who gets to see it all, how often have you seen that before?”

Sarah paused, then shook her head. “Statistically it has to have happened before, any number of times. But this is the first time I’m aware of that it’s potentially threatened Faerie.”

“So does that mean your Queen’s going to think about pruning that branch instead of this one?”

“I don’t know.”

“This is a pretty fucking casual way to talk about wiping out a few billion people. Or if there are other worlds across the universe, I guess a few trillion, give or take.”

“You understand most of those people would still exist in different branches.” Sarah shrugged, looking into her beer. “It’s…complicated.”

“No doubt. From the perspective of a mere mortal on this particular ‘branch,’ though, it’s apocalyptic.” She furrowed her brow. “And if your queen’s so powerful she can do that, why can’t she just snap her fingers and stop whatever’s happening to me?”

“Because she can’t. She’s not omnipotent. In many ways, she’s less powerful than your taur storm god.”

Serrano squinted. “You’re saying she can wipe out possible realities, but she can’t stop the rain.”

Sarah shrugged, spreading her hands. “That’s not her dominion. She has no control over it. And it may sound like I’m speaking of this all cavalierly, but undoing a branch of reality isn’t just a finger-snap, either. It might be a matter of which branch is easiest to affect, and ‘easy’ is…extremely relative. It incurs costs. Not just to that branch, but to other ones. Even to Faerie itself.”

“Great.” Serrano finished her drink. “So now what?”

“It’s probably too late to see your ‘steampunk science hyena’ or your magicians tonight, so we find a place for you to sleep that isn’t your compromised apartment, and go see them in the morning. You can sleep on my sofa.”

“You have a place here?”

“A room at the Marriott up in Midtown.”

“It has a sofa?”

“It’s a suite.”

“I didn’t know being a terrifying faerie wolf paid that well.”

Sarah stood up. “It just goes on the corporate card.”

“You’re just fucking with me now, aren’t you?” Serrano followed her to the door.

“Yes.” The wolf grinned, then looked out at the rain, up at the sky. “I know you might like walking through the rain, but it’s eight blocks to the hotel. Unless you can ask your goddess to stop this for a few minutes, I guess we teleport.”

Serrano raised her hands over her head and wiggled her fingers. “Oh mighty Ulohne, I beseech you to stop the rain!”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Teleporting it is, then.”

The coyote looked up at the sky, one ear skewing. “Uh…I think the rain is lessening.”

Sarah paused, looking up, too. The rain had already slowed to a mere sprinkle, and even that was starting to dry. She gave Serrano a sidelong glance.

The coyote shrugged, flashing a lopsided grin. “Probably a coincidence. Irsaw said it’s being an unusually dry year.”

“Mmm.” The wolf strode forward, motioning Serrano to follow.

The first couple of blocks went through the relative heart of the DMZ—or more aptly, the place its heart had been. Other than Saint John’s, the only open storefronts were a laundromat and a cigarette store maybe two degrees shy of putting up ILLEGAL DRUGS SOLD HERE window signs. Lately, the corner wasn’t occupied by the dealers Serrano had come to recognize, either, the merely shifty-looking types replaced by bonafide mean-looking ones. The streetlight had been out for the last three weeks, and the block ahead was completely dark. Her night vision was good enough it wasn’t a problem, but it still set her on edge.

“So they blame this blight on the college?”

Serrano shrugged. “Yeah, but I don’t know how true that is. Kind of a ‘convenient scapegoat’ vibe.”

As they crossed the street, it started raining again. Serrano squinted up at the sky. “Oh, well.”

“Hmm?”

“The rain.” Serrano spluttered as it picked up fast. “Damn, maybe we need to get some cover.”

“What are you—” Sarah stopped, turning around to look at the coyote, then up at the sky, spinning around with her mouth open. “Serrano, it’s only raining on you.”

“What?” Serrano spun around, too. The sidewalk was dry ahead, to the side, where Sarah was. It was damp behind her. She walked quickly from side to side. The rain moved with her.

Sarah laughed. “It loves you.”

“This isn’t funny, dammit.” Serrano ducked under the awning of an abandoned storefront. The rain didn’t stop. What? She looked up. The column of rain that had been following her had curved around the overhang to fall down from directly overhead. “What the fuck! Ulohne, if you actually do exist and can hear me, stop this shit.” She groaned. “I think it’s just getting stronger.” Her vision wobbled a moment, and she looked down at her arms. “Wait. Something isn’t…right.”

Sarah frowned, narrowing her eyes. “More water is running off you than falling on you.” She grabbed Serrano, pulling her forward. The coyote staggered, then fell with a pained yelp. It felt like she’d been trapped in tar, rubber cement.

“How is this happening!” Serrano screamed, waving an arm wildly, or trying to. She might as well have had a fifty-pound weight lashed to it. “I’m not dreaming! Am I dreaming?”

“No.” Sarah let go of Serrano, stepping back, looking around quickly, sharply. “But I don’t see…” Her voice trailed off.

“Sarah!” Serrano stumbled, finding herself on all fours, growing weaker. Maybe the rain was still just around her, only her, but it had become too heavy for her to see through. Was Sarah still even there?

“Sarah!” she tried to scream again, but it came out as a feral howl.