Mother of Magic

Landing Zone

The next time Stephanie and Le awoke, it was to the scents of bacon penetrating the thick covers. Stimulating consciousness. The sickness was gone and replaced with empty hunger.

Flipping back an edge of the heavy, thick yet somehow fluffy cover, more bacon scent wafted Stephanie's way. The scents of cooking were accompanied by morning light and cold air.

Her emptiness explained its need to be filled. Oddly, there was no reluctance on her stomach's part to accept food now. It was as if the previous night had not occurred.

Yet it had. Every wrong thing about it absolutely occurred.

Her surroundings testified to that. Stephanie was not home, in bed. Nor was she post-coitally curled up on her living room floor. She was in a bedroll with Le in the great outdoors.

Stephanie peered over the blanketed bulk of Le to see what was happening. On the other side of the circle of campfire stones, the woman at the center of all these oddities had set up a fairly large black metal frame over the fire. On the top of the frame was a large cast iron-looking skillet which she was stirring. Sizzling and popping noises came to Stephanie.

Bacon.

Lovely bacon.

There was what looked like a coffee pot off to the side of the metal frame. Like the rack, it was black. Either from campfire soot or because the metal is black. Stephanie could not sure at this distance. As Stephanie watched with suspicion, the woman ladled out a large number of bacon strips and placed them on a platter. It took more than one pass to get it all. There was a lot of bacon frying there.

The formerly floating and glowing but now fairly normal-looking woman reached down beside her, out of Stephanie's line of vision. She pulled eggs out of ... something. A tray? A bag? She began cracking them into the skillet and the bacon grease therein. The shells went into the fire beneath.

It took a while. At least a dozen eggs went into the pan. Either the woman was extremely hungry or she planned to not starve Stephanie and Le. The blankets and clothing Stephanie was bundled in argued for a very odd sort of care. The woman knocked them out, abducted them to parts unknown, but then dressed them in warm if weird clothing, and once they were done being sick somehow lay the pair of them down into warm and weather-appropriate blankets for the night.

The light of day gave Stephanie no idea where they were. It looked very much like the mountains to the west of Fort Collins. Unlike the area around their house, there was no sign of civilization around them anywhere. Not a road, or the sound of any traffic. The circle of boulders and rocky outcroppings looked exactly like the same formation of stone at her place. Unlike the ones at her home, this formation did not lead to anything. Not her driveway or her stairs.

Stephanie had no idea how the woman had brought them here, more or less all of the supplies. There was not a vehicle in sight, and no way anything short of an all-wheel drive could get here. A helicopter could have gotten to here, but there were no clearings in line of sight large enough to land.

The larger circle of outcroppings and boulders looked like the same natural formation that had caught Stephanie's eye about the lot she later decided to build her house at. A chance natural formation of tumbled-down boulders and flint-like rock outcroppings that caught her fancy. The real estate person had tried to talk her out of the place, because the ground was not very even, and building there would be a challenge. Require a great deal of carving stone upslope and installing piers downslope to get everything level for the house.

Stephanie did not care. The raw beauty of the mountains is what appealed to her. She could afford to get the house the way she wanted it even before she married Le and his income entered the picture. Their bonuses from the previous season were both substantial and they had a lot of money left even after the donations to the hospital. Le had been equally taken with the area.

Stephanie bought that lot, plus many acres on all sides around that parcel of land in order to ensure their privacy. The house she originally planned and built became their house. 

The unique rock formation had a lot of appeal to Stephanie. She could park her car, and walk outside, thread her way through the stones to the stairs. It looked so natural and welcoming. It greeted her every time she came home. A sort of rock garden. With the way she and Le traveled for games all the time, it was nice to be greeted by mother nature like that. 

Part of the builder's contract on building the house was to leave her stones unmolested and pristine. They could not even be used as sawhorses. The movers had not enjoyed navigating the formation, then going up the stairs to the porch of the house either.

Their entire lodge was designed to blend into the countryside. All natural-looking materials and stone. It was weird that their house is not here. To be here would also be odd since there are no roads to get to here.

The woman looked up from her cooking and saw Stephanie watching. "Breakfast shall be ready in a few minutes. I am sure after the Transition Sickness ... " (Verbal capitalization Stephanie thought) " ... you are quite famished. Most are."

Stephanie did not even ask who 'Most' was in that odd sentence.

Le stirred and sat up. He surveyed their surroundings the same way Stephanie had. Le looked around to where the steps to their mountain lodge would be. If they were home. His expression carried the same bewilderment Stephanie felt.

Le next looked downslope and away, to an even, snow-covered decline and then rise. He studied the visible portions of the next upslope. The peaks beyond that. He shook his head. "Weird"

"Tell me about it." Stephanie agreed. "Look at what you are wearing if you want a double dose of weird. Or, for that matter, what I am wearing."

Le looked at Stephanie. "I can't see your clothes under the cover thing. Whatever this weirdly heavy-duty fluffy thing is called. An outdoor quilt on steroids. Army issue Duvet cover over marshmallow filling. Clouds in a blanket."

Stephanie pressed her fingers to the fabric. "I think this is a goose-down comforter. One of epic size and overstuffed to survive the cold of outdoors."

"What did you do to your hair?" Le asked

"I... What?"

Le gestured toward her face. "It's back and up and stuff. I have never seen you wear it that way. You usually just do a ponytail-like thing when you don't want to get your hair messed up."

Stephanie felt around. Her hair was in a swirl on the crown of her head, with a wave of it cascading out at the bottom to cover the back of her neck. "I have no idea. I did not do this."

Stephanie gave the woman a very suspicious glare. Dressed her and played with her hair while she was unconscious? This kept getting weirder. As if it was not weird enough already.

The recipient of Stephanie's glare was unaffected and did not seem to notice. Instead she pointed away from them with a cooking utensil. "The woods yonder are good if you have need to relieve yourself before you eat your breakfast. There are cloths to use in your ablutions over there. On that large stone." 

Le ignored the bathroom in the woods offer and instead said in accusation. "I am not sure I trust you to eat anything you made. Not after you abducted and poisoned us. Brought us to here. Wherever the hell here is."

The woman could not have been less disturbed by Le's tone of voice. "I did not poison you. That was Transition." The way the woman said the word made it once again sound capitalized. "You may suit yourself about the food of course. It is cold, and you need fuel. In addition to that, those after Transition are usually quite hungry. I also point out that you will need to relieve yourself sooner or later, so again: The woods there are clear enough to step through yet private enough. Also again: Any cloths you might need to clean up are there."

She again indicated a small stack of what looked like white handkerchiefs. "You can leave them in the woods after. Let nature reclaim them."

"Well, she is right about that." Stephanie told Le. "When you gotta go, you gotta go, and I gotta go."

Stephanie stood up. Looked down. She knew she had clothes on before now, but this was her first good look at them. "What the entire... where did this stupid getup come from? Some full-size 'American Girls' doll collection? Oh my god!"

"Pretty hideous" Le concurred.