Caffeine and Magix

And time’s up! I had a blast with this one, though I got a little caught up in wikipedia during it! Remember to post yours with the tag Caffeine Challenge so I can find it! I’ll put them all on the google doc soon, but if you don’t see yours on it, feel free to send me a message! Sometimes it takes a bit for them to show up in the tag.

You can read mine on the doc HERE or below!

Toby is watering the ice plant (not that it needs it, it’s only complaining because he’d planted the marigolds a little too close this year) when the woman collapses just on the other side of his fence.

There are several unusual things about this beyond the obvious.

First is that Toby hadn’t actually seen her before the collapse, nor heard any footsteps.

Second is that Toby actually doesn’t have any neighbors and the only thing at the end of his little road is an old grain silo from when his house used to belong to a farmer.

Third is that the woman is dressed in an evening gown. An evening gown. In the mountains. High in the mountains, in fact, where the roads are more dirt paths than roads and the nearest town is at the bottom.

Toby stares at her through his fence and slowly puts down his watering can. He’s been living up here long enough to know better than to question the disappearances, the strange footprints, the eerie sounds that echo from somewhere above the summit outside his front door.

He has not ever had the opportunity to learn not to question the appearances.

“Ma’am?” he calls out, taking a cautious step towards the border of his property. “Ma’am, are you alright?”

The woman, lying face down in the dirt, doesn’t so much as twitch.

Toby hesitates at the gate and looks anxiously up and down the road. A faint breeze blows past, rattling the rash of poison ivy he hasn’t had a chance to usher away from his house and making something deep in the woods groan. It sounds like a rotted tree about to fall, its base too flimsy and hollow to hold up its skeletal canopy.

Toby knows it’s not a tree.

He rushes out of his gate, his wards sliding over his skin like warm water, and snatches the woman up into his arms. She’s heavier than he expected and his muscles complain as he just holds her more tightly and staggers back towards his garden.

Behind them, a branch snaps and something growls.

“What a lovely day for visitors,” Toby says loudly, heart thundering in his chest. He kicks the gate closed with his foot, determinedly not turning as something huge moves through the underbrush across the road. “Just wonderful.”

The wind roars down the road, not daring to breach the line of his fence, and brings with it the scent of honeysuckle. Toby forces himself to keep walking despite the pain in his arms. He’s not overly strong, not overly anything in fact, and it’s difficult to open the door to his little house without dropping his visitor. He manages more out of fear than anything else and kicks the door closed much as he had the gate.

As soon as the door closes, the wind outside stops and it’s silent again.

Toby breathes a sigh of relief and gently lowers the woman to the wooden floor of his home. She stays limp as he steps away, long neck stretched so that he can see her pulse pounding in her jugular. She’s alive, but she looks pale with large, dark bags under her eyes.

“Now,” Toby says, hands on his hips, “just what am I going to do with you?”

The woman, of course, doesn’t answer.

Toby rolls his shoulders, wincing as his overtaxed muscles make their presence known, and steps around his guest to the bed. It’s messy and small, but he can’t leave her on the floor.

He sets about cleaning and waits for the woman to wake up.

———————————-

Toby doesn’t remember when he started living on the mountain. He might have been born here, one of those many things that grows in the hollows of the trees or the undersides of moss, but he doesn’t think so. He’s been up and down the mountain, to the town and to the summit, and he’s never seen anything like him. He sometimes thinks he might have come from someplace else, someplace where large, dark shadows don’t stalk you through the trees and where people don’t whisper about the magic man in the unnatural woods.

Toby doesn’t really think there’s anything unnatural about him. But, then again, what would he know? He’s not from around here.

(Except for on the days that he is.)

Outside, the marigolds begin to complain and he sighs. He might as well finish his chores while his visitor catches up on her sleep.

——————————-

Toby is singing to the flowers when the woman steps out of his house in her glittering gown. He doesn’t take his eyes off of the yellow petals, just observes her out of the corner of his eye. The way she’s holding the door tells him that she’s ready to take off at any moment and that would be bad.

The thing-he’s-definitely-not-seeing is still (not)staring at them from across the road.

“Where am I?” the woman asks. Her voice is clear like the brook running behind Toby’s house, but hard like the hail that had fallen the day before. When she moves, she slides past the door and slinks towards Toby, false confidence and arrogance that doesn’t match the vulnerability he can sense in her aura.

Water, Toby thinks and stops singing. The marigolds pout, but, then again, they always do. He stands and brushes dirt off of his jeans.

“You’re on the mountain,” he says and stays where he is. Her eyes are the color he knew they would be, blue and grey and steel. He keeps his hands loose by his sides. “I found you on the road.”

Her eyes run from his face to the road and back again. She jerks her chin up. “And what? You brought me in out of goodwill?”

Toby breathes in. Around him his garden comes to life, petals rubbing against each other, leaves shuffling in the breeze he lets slip through his fence. The smell of honeysuckle fills him, sinks down into his core where it whispers her secrets to him. She’s not the type to accept any secret that’s not her own, and that’s fine. Toby’s not much for them anyway.

“It’s bad to feed what was chasing you,” he tells her. When her eyes sharpen, he keeps his stance loose and easy. “I brought you in for my sake as much as yours. If you feed them on your land, they come back.”

“And this is your land?” Her dress sparkles as she turns, grey and green and blue. “You said we’re on the mountain. What mountain?”

Toby doesn’t like the ice in her voice. It’s been a long time since he’s talked to another person and it makes him uncomfortable. He shifts his weight between his feet. “I don’t know.”

He expects her to ask him why not. He expects her to ask him how he could not know. He expects her to ask for his name, his story, his intentions.

Instead, she breathes deep and asks, “What did the wind tell you?”

“Everything,” he says, shocked into answering. He presses his lips together as soon as the word is out and takes a step back. “Sorry.”

“What did it tell you to do?” she asks. She doesn’t sound angry or scared or any of the things the people at the bottom of the mountain sounded like. And she didn’t question about where they are again.

Toby furrows his brow. “It told me…to protect you.” He takes a step closer. “Do you– do you know where we are?”

The woman’s gaze softens and her mouth parts. “Oh,” she breathes. The ice drains from her body and she is like the ocean, calm and serene and knowing.  “I do. And you don’t.” She looks past him, across the road and her lips, painted pale pink, turn down. “But you know what’s out there. And I don’t.”

Toby feels the marigolds rub against his ankles, their complaints gone as they sense his confusion. He hums a little, tells them he’s okay, and licks his lips as they ease back. “Where are we?”

“We’re in the Shelter,” the woman says. She looks at the flowers around him like she knows what they’re doing. When she looks back at him, her face is, for the first time, kind. “I think you must have been here for a very long time.”

“I have,” Toby says. He hesitates. The wind had told him to protect her, but it hadn’t said to trust her. He decides to anyway. “I–I always wake up here. Every day. No matter if I go to town or to the summit, I don’t stay there. I stay here.” He gestures to the land around them, to the flowers and ice plant and vines and tree. “Here.” The word rings through the air, like a ripple, and what it touches sparkles like the woman’s dress.

“You’re the Guardian,” the woman tells him. She watches the land sparkle, something like awe in her eyes. “And you–you brought me in. You’ve given me sanctuary.”

Toby shifts again, back into his plants. Guardian, the word rings in his head. It feels right. “I had too.”

The woman nods. “You said you couldn’t feed it. The thing out there. I saw it, before I was here, just for a moment.” She hesitates, seeming to weigh something in her mind. “What– what is it?”

“What are they,” Toby corrects. He turns away from her to look across the road. His wards keep him from making direct eye contact, keep it from seeing that it’s been recognized. For now. “Though only one wants you.”

“What are they?” the woman asks. When Toby turns, she’s rubbing her arms like she’s cold although the sun is high and hot.

“Terrors,” Toby says. His lips quirk. “Monsters. Shadows.” He shakes his head. “Don’t name them.”

“Why not?”

Toby thinks about darkness and those little mushrooms that grow on the tops of rotten logs, the ones with the black dots on the top and the smell of death under their caps. This time, his lip curls. “Because they like it when you do.”

[END TIME (drat! I like Toby and the unnamed woman!)]