Authors: PL Nunn
“My God. My God,” he cried, and spun, knowing what he would find on the other side of the hill. A thousand lights winked back at him. A wash of white pinpoints that spoke of more than sprites playing in a fey wood. It was a city. A great city sprawled out before them.
Kansas City. And this was their hill. The one overlooking the airstrip he had loved as a boy.
“We’re home!” He reached down and hauled her up, spinning her around and around.
“How? How?” she cried, breathless in the grip of his enthusiasm.
“I don’t know. I pictured the plains – and I was thinking of this place. Victoria, we had enough power between us to open a portal home.”
“God,” she shared his sentiments to their deity, but there was something in her tone that hinted at less than overjoyed relief. He stopped and looked at her, squinting in the wan light of the stars.
Reflexively he tried to read her thoughts, her emotions and came up with nothing.
No spark of power. He tried to soar outwards and see the city of his youth and remained rooted to his mortal body. The power was gone. Gone with the fey land it had taken root in. Something inside him mourned the loss. Mourned the ability of flight without wings or the benefit of a metal machine.
“How dare you?” Her whispered accusation cut through his own distraction.
He turned to her in surprise.
“How dare you take me here without my consent?” The whisper turned to a cry of rage. Her fist slammed into his chest.
He took a startled step backwards, eyes wide. She slapped him then and the crack of that blow brought her to her senses. She turned away from him, shaking, holding her hands before her as if they might attack him again of their own accord. Her shoulders shook. Bitterly he wondered what she mourned the most. The power she had left behind, or the fey lover.
“He’s the one that told us to go. Don’t you remember? He told us to go where they couldn’t follow. They can’t come here.”
She said nothing. He did not know what to do. He felt lost and helpless in a place he had once felt most comfortable in.
“It’s larger,” she finally whispered and he turned back to her, desperate for anything from her.
“What?”
“The lights. They’re not the same. They spread farther than they ever did before. How could the city grow so much while we were gone?”
He walked to her side, afraid to touch her, and stared down at the vista of Kansas City. It was larger. It used to be that from this knoll the lights of the city took up no more than the space of his two hands end to end. Now he could spread his arms and not encompass the mass of the haphazard lights. It scared him.
Terrified him utterly. He took a step down the hill and his foot hit something light and metallic sounding. There was a discarded can at his feet. He bent down and picked it up. It was half crumpled, made of pliable, light metal. He looked at it, bemused, half recognizing the name spaced between the wavering red bands decorating the can.
Coca Cola. In an aluminum can.
Ridiculous. He tossed the can away and turned back to the airfield. They could get help there. At the very least, information.
He told Victoria his plans and she said nothing. But when he started down the slope towards the strip he heard her following.
Coke in a can. A city as wide as his arms. He was afraid of what he would find at the old air field. But he had to find out. Sooner or later they had to know what world they had returned to.
And somewhere very far away, a dark lord screamed in frustration.
The End