Chapter 108

Chapter 108: 108 "I tell you. The world has gone crazy! Just crazy!" The fox was nowhere to be seen, but based on the man’s tale, it was a willy creature, almost capable of just about anything, including air dropping in to steal a hard earned lunch. "What’s so crazy?" asked Bran. "Surely you should know..." Bran shrugged with a sigh. "I live out here in the middle of nowhere. Take ages for me to find out anything." The newcomer nodded slowly. "Yeah, that’s true... You heard about physical computing?" "Physical... computing?" Bran asked, eyes wide. "What do you mean?" "You don’t know?" Bran shook his head, the picture of innocence. The newcomer sighed and some of the tension in his body faded. "Well, basically, they’ve invented a way for humans to gain magic powers. It’s really cool actually." "Ohh..." "Yeah, and now we’re in charge, so-" "You work for the government?" A flash of arrogance in those eyes. "No. The government collapsed a while back." "What?!" Bran didn’t have to feign his surprise this time. "Yeah, well, when all the crazy stuff started happening, you know, creatures like..." he glanced at the surrounding trees. "You know, then the government made an announcement that basically admitted that they knew for a long time then..." The man made a shrugging gesture with both hands out splayed, palms up. Splat. Bran doubted it was quite as simple as that, but he kept that thought to himself. "So who’s running things now? Is anyone?" "Sure! Arthur Penn," said the newcomer with confidence. "He’s going to change the world." "Wow." "Yeah." Bran let the man chatter on for a while longer, interjecting here and there to get more information out of him, until eventually the light started to change and he made a point of noting the reddish sky. "I’d better get back home," said Bran. "My mum will yell at me if I’m late." "You live with you mum out here?" asked the newcomer. "Oh yeah. And my little brother and sister. It’s hard, but at least it’s cheap." "True, true..." Bran rose and offered a hand. "Well, it was nice meeting you, uh..." The newcomer rose too. "Adam," he said, offering a hand. Bran shook it. "Nice to meet you Adam. I’m Long." Adam walked some distance back where he’d come from, turned, waved, then disappeared along the path. Bran waved back, made sure he was really gone, then headed into the trees and to Misha. The loong, surprisingly stealthily, sped up to him and coiled around him protectively. Bran let himself bask in that loving warmth for a moment, wrapping his arms around Misha’s neck. "We have to move," he quietly told Misha after a while, holding his head. Misha gave his chin a lick and Bran returned it with a light kiss on the tip of the loong’s snout. The night air was warm and Bran had originally planned to have a good sleep on the beach under the starry sky but he knew that was no longer in the cards. "My guess is The Unity’s made an enemy of everything naturally supernatural or magical and told its followers that all this magical power was purposefully being kept from him to make them weak. That’ll make them angry and more likely to follow Arthur’s lead." And lead them to where? Bran hadn’t gotten a straight answer out of Arthur as to what this ’Camelot’ was but it couldn’t be anything good. Any premise that began with saying that the ’hardware’ of certain people wasn’t ’good enough’ as others was definitely headed in a scary direction. And, like Bran had suspected, more time than just a day or two had passed since his battle on top of the tower against Arthur. The small teleporting machine made him think that that was probably how Misha got them out of there, having appeared in a nick of time after Arthur stabbed Bran, who was sad that he hadn’t gotten a chance to see Misha in action. He sighed and rested a hand against Misha’s neck. The loong’s milky white scales glowed dimly in the dark. Beautiful, but also dangerous if his suspicions about Adam were correct. Bran and Adam had talked for quite a bit, and while Bran had learned a lot about the current state of the world, he was very much aware that Adam had been fishing for information almost as hard as he had been, and not in a merely curious sort of way. And so the pair walked. Walked back to the beach and along it all the way until they hit a rocky bit that made Bran glad for his shoes, still wet as they were. He yawned and, like the creature could read his mind, Misha nipped and nudged at Bran until he got over the rocks to another sandy bit of beach then lay on the ground in a loose circle. "We need to keep going," he mumbled, brushing some sand from Misha’s hair. The loong crooned and lightly knocked his head against Bran’s hand. Rest first, he seemed to say with that single gesture. And, I’ll protect you. Maybe Bran was reading into it too much, or maybe he was just too tired, but the creature’s silent argument won him over and he stepped into the centre of Misha’s coils and lay down. -- Bran woke the next morning to a deep rumbling all around him and he opened his eyes to find Misha growling. He rubbed his eyes and looked around trying to see what had gotten the loong all riled up. He spotted it a few metres away among some tall, tough grasses. A fox. Bran put a hand to Misha’s neck to tell him he was awake. "What is it?" Misha stopped growling though he continued to eye the interloper. But why? It was just a fox, right? Bran’s eyes narrowed. Or perhaps not. Bran carefully extracted himself from Misha’s coils and took a step forward then crouched on the ground, a hand raised in offering. "Haayi?" The fox’s ears twitched and swung forward at the name. "Haayi?" The fox hesitated, glancing at Misha, then took a few mincing steps forward. Misha lay his head down on his forepaws and snorted at the sand, clearly showing that while he had the power to make mincemeat of the fox, he was choosing not to. The fox blinked then trotted forward to Bran and sniffed his hand and Bran noted the dark speckles down the creatures back. He was now certain that this was Haayi, the hulijing that had accompanied the crew to rescue him, at least according to Misha the human. Bran had never properly made the hulijing’s acquaintance but he’d seen her at a distance, in both human and fox forms, at various large gatherings of the supernatural and he knew that unique coat. The fox, Haayi, sat back on her haunches and looked between the human and loong opposite her. "Do you remember who I am?" asked Bran. The fox nodded. "Can you become a human?" The fox looked down and gave a small shake of her head. Bran sighed deeply and sat back heavily on the sandy beach. Haayi had her mind, she was okay, barring from the near-fact that she couldn’t transform. What did that mean for Misha? That there was hope, for sure, but... "Maybe it’s because she’s older..." he mumbled then gave a yelp as the small fox nipped his finger. Misha rose immediately, growling and Bran got up to calm the loong down. "I shouldn’t have said that," he quickly explained. "You should never say that a woman is old." He glanced down at the fox who was now daintily licking its paw. Yeah, Haayi, despite her form, was fine, mentally, and that meant there had to be hope for Misha. "Haayi, do you know where we are? Does Whale Toes know we’re here?" But sadly those questions fell on deaf ears as the little fox’s large ears flattened, a prelude to the impossibly fast exit into the forest. She might mentally be present, but it seemed that her animalistic instincts were stronger than usual. Bran trusted that, if the fox needed to find them, she’d do so, so chose not to give chase. Besides, he was sensing growing jealousy from his loong companion. He’d suspected months ago that Misha had a bit of jealous streak and that seemed to be proved right now that his human self wasn’t there to rein it back in. Bran found it adorable. Misha gave a growl, looking toward the forest where Haayi had disappeared. Bran couldn’t hear or see anything unusual but he trusted both creature’s senses more than his own, even now that they were back to normal. Normal... The thought stuck in his mind as they set off again along the beach. If he could find some good sticks and wood, maybe he could light a fire and cook up some fish. Just the idea itself made his stomach grumble loud enough for the loong beside him to pause momentarily with apparent worry. "Don’t worry," said Bran with a pat to the creature’s side. "I’ll figure something out."