Mana Pool Snippets - Keystone

Part 2

“I can try. But how is Andrea really?”

 “Well we got hear cleaned up and found some old clothes to fit her. I fixed the pants for her tail. Her old clothes are in a trash bag so to be washed. It took me a while to calm her down and tell her things will be all right still. She even told me that blast on you was her first spell.”

Scott stared at Katie. Even as a terran they have free reign of their magic, in limited quantities. But surviving in the wild without magic? That could be a feet on its own.

“I casted a few spells myself to really make her perk up,” Katie said.

“Anything big?” Scott asked and she shook her head.

“Just a towel levitation and water bending like Korra, that’s all. Made her smile a little.”

“Good, anything to make her smile will help,” Scott said. “I cam up to tell you what Jaruka suggested.”

Katie’s eyelids lowered a bit. “Jaruka. Made a suggestion?”

“I know. He said that we all go to the house and talk to Beth and Morgan, face to face. Crazy right?”

“Crazy,” Katie said, thinking on it for a second, “But it might work.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

And if that wasn’t a changer, Katie and Andrea were talking about it too. Go to the house, make the parents explain themselves, and make the Livingstons a family again before things turn even worse. Katie was for it, all the way. She needed answers and forgiveness from the old family friends. And Scott was again stuck with Katie’s decisions.

He checked on Andrea before talking to Jaruka again. She was free of the dirt and mud, her hair back to her usual style say for the elf ears making an emphasis. No surprise she was wearing Katie’s old long sleeve red blouse and jeans too big that they had to be rolled up. He caught some life in Andrea’s eyes, some. The trauma for the past week still lingered. Andrea’s tail was covered in a bandage to help heal the cuts.  Good idea, a lot of terrans started wearing “tail socks” for a while, even Katie did it a couple times.

Then again, the decision was troubling Andrea. One side, she was afraid of what would happen if things don’t work; the other, she really wants to be with Beth again. It had to be settled or else it would nag Andrea forever.

There was one problem to the idea.

“Uh, it’s like you forgot to what you were screaming at Mom and Dad in the first place,” Robert Walsh said in the living room. “I mean… come on. Really? You want to go there?”

“Exactly,” Katie said. “This is for Andrea you know.”

“Well you can’t take my Jeep,” Robert noted, “and I can’t let you. Mom and Dad are not home.”

“Which is why they won’t know. We will be out of there before whatever Mom and Dad had planned.”

Scott watched the sibling scuff, close but far from it. It compelled to agree a few times. Andrea was kept upstairs just to not hear them.

“I have magic. I can protect myself,” Katie reminded Robert.

“That’s not the case, you can’t go and certainly not endangering Andrea.”

“Scott,” Katie said, “I have to do this. Scott also. Look, the Livingstons support us; they’ve been in the family for as long as I can remember. We all know we can’t keep Andrea here, Mom can’t handle it.”

“Oh, she can.”

“But have you seen her lately? Every time she sees me I get that look in her eye saying she will be a terran soon. She keeps checking herself for a tattoo every day. Andrea is too much stress. Besides, this is child abuse written on billboard. We all know we had our experience in that.”

Robert looked down but could not help but beam a glance at Scott. Scott nodded, a little.

“Andrea needs us, and Scott and me are doing this. Now, let us have the Jeep,” Katie said before folding her arms.

The final fact that made Robert give up the keys was that Jaruka was coming, for protection. The alien glaring at him—piercing into Robert’s soul kind of brooding—really did it. Also, Jaruka did not like the fact that he had to wear his DNA mask, allowing him to look seamlessly like a human from the Caribbean islands.

Jaruka went in first; sitting in the back, quiet, with both eyes looking out the window. Not even looking at Andrea and the terrans. His clothes were changed from the mask’s technology: simple black t-shirt, blue jeans, and sandals. His skindreads were now hair-like dreads, bound behind him with a red bandana. His Halcunac digitigrade legs became long human plantigrade legs. Even with the mask changing his natural green skin to a light brown and added a hint of afternoon shadow on his sharp jawline, he still acted as usual.

Andrea looked at him and was about to ask, but Scott and Katie quickly told her he’s a winemaker transplant from Napa. Smooth.

The terrans did the same thing to hid who they were. Hats, sunglasses, and jackets. They totems entered their hosts as to not crowd the Jeep. Scott and Katie never felt so suspicious, ever. The fear of leaving the estate kicked in, but why they were doing it had more power.

“Ready?” Scott said to the group.

The girls nodded. Jaruka did nothing.

Scott took a breath, turned the key and drove off. He spotted Robert at the warehouse, watching them leave, and not waving goodbye.

Cabin fever is hard to deal with. Scott did not feel that way with fear looming beyond the driveway. The first few weeks dealing with Jaruka, government vehicles and vans were stationed at the gate, spying on them. Eventually the new president ordered the commander in charge to cease all operations in case tensions between the earth and Jaruka went too far. It hurt the winery too, financially. The other side of why the parents never liked Jaruka coming at all.

After the Area 51 attack, zombie bodies were all over the valley. On the side of the road, the sidewalks, inside buildings, and in one case on the estate itself, they suddenly died from a massive brain hemorrhage that made the brain to rupture out the skull. All the bodies were picked up, but those images still lingered for Scott, and trying to forget was hard.

The purple crystals—the larger ones impossible to remove—were still imbedded in the ground like natural monuments. The smaller ones were collected, either as souvenirs or scientific study. Who knows, at least they are not out puncturing tires.

As for the city of Temecula, the damage was still prevalent on the buildings from the Wave. Some buildings were repaired, while some still waited to be patched. Driving down the main road, Katie spotted a few terrans in the open, living out their lives normally. Just the younger types, including their totems. One terran girl had a snow owl totem on her shoulder as she filled her car’s gas tank up. Another ran as her snow leopard coached her to keep her pace steady.

Any other totem, Scott thought, must be in hiding. If anybody was foolish to attack the runner and car filler, they would get more than a kick and a punch.

Which is what Scott hoped it would never come to at the Livingstons.