Hurricane #17: The Meeting (Patreon)

Serrano blinked awake, barely, at the second shake of her shoulder. “Mph?”

“Come on.” Sarah clapped her hands in the air above the coyote. “Rise and shine. We have work to do.”

Sighing, Serrano rubbed her eyes, sitting up on the sofa she’d been sleeping on, then making a glrk noise as she watched the wolf—the fully nude wolf—turn away.

“Hmm?” Sarah paused and turned back, then smirked. “We’ve both seen each other without clothes now.” She headed into the bedroom part of the suite.

Serrano stared after her a moment, ears skewing, then shook her head and got dressed.

When Sarah came out a few minutes later, clad in a denim skirt and a plain yellow blouse, she wasted no time. “We need to meet with your acquaintances at that magical college. Also,” she pointed at the little pot of coffee Serrano had just made with the in-room brewer, “that’s crap.”

“I don’t know if we can just drop in. But maybe with the librarian.” She hmmed. “I don’t suppose you can just do your faerie teleportation trick to get us there, can you?”

“Only if you let me use your memories.”

“What?”

“I’ve never been there. You have. You can visualize it, and I can use that to get us there.”

“Oh, boy. Okay.” Serrano took a sip of coffee, then made a face. “Wow.”

“I’m not saying I told you, but I told you.”

“Fine.” The coyote took as big a swig as she could stand—she had to wake up somehow—and stood up. “So what do I do?”

Sarah held out her hand. “Take my hand, close your eyes, and concentrate on where we need to teleport. When the picture’s clear enough, I can take us there.”

“Can you, like, rifle through the rest of my mind when you’re doing that?”

“Not as far as you know.”

She squinted.

Sarah grinned and wiggled her fingers. “Come on.”

Serrano sighed and took Sarah’s hand, closing her eyes.

Okay, so where could they teleport? Webb’s desk, she guessed. It was easy enough to picture: despite how new the library actually was, the building had the air of a much older structure. The grand open area with the tiled floor she remembered Webb’s elegant sandals clicking against, the dry scent of paper and leather, the big wooden executive-style desk the head librarian sat behind. She concentrated on that, on the weathered wood, the stately carving style.

“Got it,” Sarah said. “Hang on.”

The world lurched around her. Serrano opened her eyes to a vertigo-inducing black nothingness for a moment. Then all her senses returned, the smell of the library flooding her nose—wait, where were they? To their left and right stood giant wooden pillars, supporting a roof a dizzying three or four stories or so up. Directly in front of—no, directly overhead was—uh—

“Queen’s Blood,” Sarah muttered, ears folding back as she and Serrano stared up at Webb’s shapely legs, crossed at the knee. One sandaled foot was planted firmly on the wooden floor; the other sole swung idly back and forth overhead. “You didn’t say she was a giant.”

“She’s a giant.” Serrano flinched reflexively as the mouse flexed her foot barely a yard over the coyote’s head.

“Yes, thanks.” The wolf stepped back. “All right, hold on. I’ll—”

“Hey, Mrs. Webb!” Serrano shouted.

Sarah winced. “Don’t—”

The mouse made a startled noise, her other foot smashing down flat on the floor, missing Serrano by less than an arm’s length.

The coyote froze, pupils dilating, and let out a voiceless bark.

“Where…?” Webb’s voice came. A moment later, her head appeared as she leaned over. “What are you doing? Littles aren’t allowed to be on this part of the floor. Don’t you know how dangerous that is?”

“I do now,” Serrano squeaked hoarsely.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “I’m going to bring both of us up to your desk, if that’s all right, ma’am.”

“Please!”

The faerie wrapped her arms around the shorter woman’s waist, then lifted off the ground. The coyote barked in surprise, snapping out of her paralysis. “Holy shit, are we flying?”

“Yes.” Sarah soared up toward the desktop in a wide circle.

“Please tell me we’re leaving a trail of pixie dust.”

Sarah snorted and let go. Serrano dropped a few feet to the desktop with another bark as the wolf landed gracefully beside her.

“Ms. Layotl.” Webb lifted her brows, then looked to Sarah.

The wolf bowed. “Sarah Wylde, Guardian of the Faerie Realm.”

Webb cleared her throat. “Well met, Ms. Wylde. I confess I had doubts Ms. Layotl would succeed in summoning a faerie.”

“She didn’t.” Sarah tilted her head, giving the giantess an inscrutable stare. “You’re the one who suggested that, then. And found the connection to Serrano’s storm goddess.”

The mouse lifted her brows. “I found a mythology book with stories about a storm goddess and theorized there might be a connection. There truly is one?”

“So it would seem.” Sarah sketched out what she knew, with Serrano chiming in occasionally. Thankfully, she glossed over the more destructive parts with a blithe reference to Serrano’s actions in dreams being “clearly reflected” in the real world. “Now I suspect we need to bring Bob’s gadget,” she finished by holding up Bob’s ray-gun, “to this Professor Irsaw, so they can compare it with the device from Serrano’s wall.”

Webb nodded. “I’ll see if they have time to meet now.” and pulled the giant computer toward her, starting to type quickly on its keyboard. “What did you say happened to this ‘Bob’?”

“I ate him.”

The mouse paused her typing. After several long seconds, she cleared her throat and resumed typing, then watched the screen for several long seconds. “They’re going off to reserve a mixed-size office for us in the Scientific Arts building now. We should be on our way.”

“How do we get there?” Serrano pointed at herself and Sarah. “I mean, people our size. I don’t want to make you carry both of us.”

“Can’t Ms. Wylde fly and carry you?”

“No,” both Serrano and Sarah said simultaneously.

“Ah. Well. During class hours, buses between buildings run every ten minutes. There’s a station directly below the library.” Webb pointed toward the giant entrance door; smaller entrances could be seen to one side. “You could also walk through the subway tunnels, but I’d get there well before you.”

Sarah lifted a brow. “And we’ll get there at the same time riding as you will walking?”

She smiled very slightly. “No, I’ll still beat you.”

“Better idea, then. Take this.” Sarah handed Serrano the ray-gun, then crouched, making a giant leap off the desk—a literally giant one, growing rapidly in midair before landing with a solid, deep bass thump against the wooden floorboards. When she straightened up, she stood taller than Webb. “I walk with you and carry her.”

Serrano snapped out of her open-muzzle stare at the new giantess. “Wait, what?”

“All right, then.” Webb motioned for the wolf to follow.

“It is not yip!” Sarah’s hand closed around the coyote, cutting off her protest, and moved up to her shoulder.

Serrano climbed off uncertainly. “Is this, uh, stable?”

“Hang onto my necklace chain. Wrap it around your arm a couple of times.”

“So if I fall, I become a goddamn pendant,” Serrano muttered under her breath, but she did as instructed. Better a pendant than a stain. “Okay, got it,” she said more loudly.

Sarah nodded and walked briskly after Webb.

It took the coyote over a minute to calm down enough to look at the passing scenery. It was a hell of a view, though. Looking down at the ground was a touch more unsettling, although looking down straight ahead meant a look directly into the wolf’s cleavage and that gave her feelings she did not want to process at the moment.

The Scientific Arts building matched the century-old style of the library, but with more brass and metal trim, especially inside the entrance hall. “Wow. I feel like I’m suddenly in the retro future.”

“There are branches for that,” Sarah muttered, looking around with what seemed to be mild discomfort. “At least they like brass and not iron.”

Webb led them down the hallway to the right. “It should be…ah, yes.” She opened a door onto a small-for-a-giant office space, with three chairs for giants around a desk fixed to the wall. The desk, in turn, had a raised deck on it with a “little” desk and chairs. Professor Irsaw paced on the deck, looking up as they entered.

“Ah, Mrs. Webb! And Miss Layotl, riding the shoulder of…?” They raised their brows inquisitively.

“This is the terrifying faerie I told you about,” Serrano called.

Sarah sighed, moving Serrano down to the table. “Sarah Wylde. I think the gizmo that Serrano has there is a companion to the one she says you pulled out of her wall.”

Serrano held out the ray-gun. Irsaw took it and turned it over in their hands curiously. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Wylde. Hmm. Where does this draw its power from? Given the kind of draw the other device needed, it can’t possibly be battery-powered.” They furrowed their brow. “Perhaps it’s drawing it directly from you. Worrisome.”

“Wait. Me? What? And you know what it does?”

“Mostly, yes, and it’s worse than I feared.” They set the gadget on the desk, and looked intently at Serrano. “You were correct, Miss Layotl—the storms aren’t being generated by you. You are, somehow, plugged directly into the global hydrological cycle.”

Her ears skewed. “The what?”

“Calling it the power of storms is both poetic and accurate, but the scientific side of it is the power of circulation, in both the atmosphere and the water.” They looked up at the sky, spreading their arms wide. “Precipitation. Evaporation. The system that creates weather.”

Webb blinked behind her glasses. “That sounds worrisome.”

“Quite. I believe we are seeing the effects already. Less rain, slower wind and ocean currents, temperature changes. As of now, they remain within normal ranges, but my observations suggest the change is accelerating. If it continues, then at some point, not very far in the future, the system won’t be able to recover.”

Serrano rubbed her forehead. “And that means…?”

The hyena laced their hands together, looking down at the coyote. “The end of the world, Miss Layotl. It means the end of the world.”