Chapter 14: 14. Isolated Incidents

"I had no idea they'd be here," Soneya half-whispered. "They quit the hike early, I thought they were going to head home."

The three of us were still standing in the hotel lobby, while the tall strong wolfgirl was dealing with some uncomfortable emotions after almost running into her friends just outside the doors.

I frowned, "Why'd they quit? I don't remember if you mentioned that before."

"They hooked up," she sighed. "Michael's bi, Shane came out as gay while the two of them were driving up together. One thing led to another, and by the time I joined them I was already the awkward third wheel. They decided to go celebrate their new relationship in private while I stayed behind to finish hiking that leg of the Appalachian Trail by myself."

I winced, "I've been the third wheel a few times, it's not fun. So maybe instead of rushing straight home they decided to stay on vacation? It's a nice looking hotel, there's probably tourist stuff to do around here, plenty of things to see."

The wolfgirl nodded slowly, "Yeah, that makes sense."

After another couple seconds she gestured, "We should go see if we can get a room. I think we've stood around long enough, everyone's staring at us."

She was right, pretty much everyone in view was looking at us, at our ears and tails. Nobody seemed to be looking at Lia though. Like they couldn't see her or hadn't noticed her.

We moved to the counter but the woman standing there just stared at us. She didn't say anything, and didn't respond when we tried to talk to her.

After a few very awkward seconds a guy came to help us instead. I realized part of the problem might have been a language thing, like maybe the woman didn't speak any English. The guy had a pretty thick French accent and we had to ask him to repeat himself once or twice, and he had to ask us the same a couple times.

Luckily we were able to get a room, I paid for it and put it in my name since that was easiest. With Soneya being from the USA they'd have probably wanted to check her ID, and that would have been more of a problem.

In the end we got a couple key cards then turned and went back out to the Jeep to grab all our stuff. Like before, the tall strong wolfgirl carried the backpack while I had the rolled-up blanket. And we both had our hands full with shopping bags as we went back in.

The room we got wasn't ideal but it was one of the last ones they had available. We'd have been fine with one of the budget rooms with two twin-size beds, but instead we ended up in a suite with a single queen bed and a small sitting area with a sofa.

We both dumped our new purchases on the bed and the camping gear on the floor next to the sofa, then I went into the washroom to have a look at that while Soneya moved to the windows. And Lia hopped up on the big bed to check it out.

When I turned on the light in the washroom the first thing to hit me was how big it was, and how much I was looking forward to not having to go in the woods anymore. The second thing hit me a second later, which was my reflection in the big full-length mirror next to the towel rack.

On the one hand I looked like a mess. There was dirt on my legs and my face, my hair was matted and desperately needed attention, my hoodie and cut-off jeans needed to be laundered. Or maybe burned. On the other hand I couldn't help staring at my new looks. My fox ears, my big floofy tail that was wagging back and forth behind me, and under all the dirt and clothes I could see a cute sexy foxgirl with a slim petite attractive body.

I pulled my hoodie off and dropped it on the floor as I continued staring. My t-shirt was too big but the contours of my new body were easier to see without the hoodie. I was tempted to strip completely naked to get a good look at myself, but I'd left the washroom door open and a moment later Soneya joined me.

She got a few steps in and was about to say something when she caught her reflection next to mine. And like me, she just stood and stared, seeing her new self for the very first time.

After a few long seconds she mumbled to herself, "Holy shit. I'm kind of hot..."

"Yeah," I nodded slowly. A moment later I added with a smile, "Well, not 'kinda'. You're very hot."

That made her blush, but she didn't pull away just yet. Judging by her expression she went through a few different emotions in short order as she stared at herself, before finally sighing "No wonder the guys didn't recognize me. I look completely different. I guess I assumed I'd still be me, just a girl? And uh, with the ears and tail. But I thought I'd still be me, you know?"

"I know," I nodded. I gestured at the mirror, "It's the same for me. And part of me is happy for that? Like this body is everything I could have ever wanted and wished for? But part of me is scared. I don't know what I'm going to tell people. My parents, folks at work, nobody's going to recognize me."

Alpine frowned slightly as we continued staring for another few seconds. Then she shook her head, "We'll worry about that when it's relevant. We're not home safe yet, but we're several steps closer."

"Anyways," she said a moment later, "We should get cleaned up before we get into our new clothes. You can go first, I'm going to check my messages and emails."

"Thanks Soneya," I smiled. "I'll try not to be too long."

She closed the door behind her as she left, but I didn't bother to lock it. I peeled off the rest of my clothes and left everything in a pile on the bathroom floor, then stepped into the shower. As soon as I turned on the water I could tell it was the normal, unchanged stuff. Whatever was going on around the park and the impossible mountain, it was a hundred kilometres away.

I wasn't actually sure if I was happy about that or not. There wasn't anything wrong with the normal water, but I almost felt like I missed the changed water. I knew we had a couple jugs of it in the packs and I was torn between wanting to drink it and wanting to keep it. I also had a weird thought as I wondered what might happen if I poured some in the water at home, like if I dumped a jug of it in Lake Ontario.

Then I promptly forgot about that I finally got the shower to the right temperature. Suddenly I was in heaven, standing under the steady stream of nice hot water.

At first I had some concerns about getting water in my ears, since they were on the top of my head now, but it wasn't too hard to avoid that. We hadn't bothered to buy any bathroom products but the hotel had a couple mini-bottles of conditioning shampoo and little soaps, which were good enough. As I got myself lathered up I resisted the temptation to do a little self-exploration, but only just.

Instead I took the opportunity to mess around with my water magic, which was just as exciting. I couldn't quite stop the water droplets in mid-air, but I found I could deflect them. It took some concentration though. I figured if I continued to practice I might get to the point where I could go out in the rain and not get wet.

That led me to wonder if water magic worked on snow and ice, then I thought about Soneya's fire magic and how that could come in handy in the winter.

Eventually I had my body and my hair and my tail clean. When I stepped out of the shower and saw my soaked tail in the mirror I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. And for just a moment I worried about having to spend the next three hours trying to dry my floof, before I remembered I could fix it with magic.

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I stood next to the shower as I focused, and carefully forced all the water off my body and out of my hair and fur. It condensed into a ball which dropped down the drain. I still needed to brush my hair and tail, but the only thing I needed a towel for was to wrap around myself when I left the bathroom. And once suitably wrapped, I gathered up my dirty clothes from the floor then left to rejoin the others.

"Shower's all yours," I announced. "When you're done in there I can use magic to dry you off if you like."

Soneya was sitting on the sofa with her phone in her hand and a frown on her face, Lia was laying on the bed next to the pillows.

The wolfgirl set her phone down and got to her feet. As she moved past me she stated in a quiet serious voice, "Check the news from the past few days. From Tuesday night onwards."

"Why, what's wrong?" I asked.

"Just check the news," she replied as she stepped into the washroom.

She closed the door behind herself, so I sighed and took her place on the sofa. I found my phone in my hoodie pocket, and a minute or so later I was connected to the hotel wi-fi. Then I went straight to the browser and pulled up a national news website.

"Oh crap," I muttered to myself as I stared at the various headlines. "It wasn't just here."

I forgot all about my new clothes as I sat there in a towel. I read countless articles and watched dozens of news clips as the enormity of what happened, what was still happening, started to sink in.

When that earthquake rocked the Gaspésie on Tuesday night it was just one of dozens of similar events from all over the world. Seismometers detected at least fifty individual quakes around the globe and they all seemed to strike at the same moment. Most of them were in areas that weren't supposed to be seismically active either. Needless to say that left a lot of scientists confused and worried.

After the earthquakes more reports started coming in about strange lights in the sky. And from the other side of the world where it was daytime, there were blurry long-range pictures of tall narrow rock spires sticking out of the ground. More impossible mountains, just like the one we'd seen in the park.

According to the news there were two sites located in Canada. I already knew where one of them was, the other was in Banff National Park out in Alberta. One thing I learned was the quake at Gaspésie was measured at magnitude six-point-six. I also learned that the geology in eastern North America meant the damage spread a lot further than quakes with similar magnitude on the west coast. The news even mentioned the quakes were felt as far away as Toronto, which backed up what Derek said in his text.

The news also listed a couple other confirmed sites around the world. There was one in Kentucky, in a National Recreation Area called the Land Between The Lakes. Another one was located in Arizona, in an undeveloped area north-west of Sedona. They mentioned one in the UK as well, in Cairngorms National Park which was in Scotland.

There were more in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. Seismometers even detected a couple of those quakes under the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and one in Antarctica.

One thing that struck me was all the locations they mentioned were remote or isolated. They were all well away from cities or population centres. The quakes and the impossible mountains all happened in big parks, recreation areas, or wild undeveloped land. The news people were mostly talking about that as being lucky and fortunate since it meant there were very few known or reported casualties. None of them commented on how it felt too big to be a coincidence.

By the end of the day Wednesday the tone of the news was less hyped and more routine. The Canadian government closed both affected parks in the interest of public safety. Though it was never explained why they thought there was something dangerous in the parks. The news reported that the army was called in to secure the areas and help evacuate anyone already inside the parks.

Another thing that struck me as I continued reading was none of the reports mentioned that technology wouldn't work in those zones. None of them mentioned anything about the water either, though it's possible nobody else knew about that yet.

The news from yesterday was even more routine, as though the excitement was over and news organizations were getting bored of the whole thing. They'd moved on to talk about the cost of the quake damage and economic impacts to tourism in the affected areas. There were a few very dull reports and interviews with scientists discussing the geology, but they were already coming up with mundane theories to explain it away as if it was a normal thing that happened.

I was still scrolling through news sites a half hour or so later when Soneya emerged from the washroom. Like me she had a towel wrapped around herself, but unlike me she was still wet. Especially her hair and tail.

"Tori?" She was blushing as she asked awkwardly, "Can I borrow your magic for a quick dry?"

I gave her a friendly smile as I got up, "Of course!"

We went back into the washroom so I had somewhere to put the water, then I apologized as I stepped right up close and wrapped an arm around her. "Sorry, it's easier if I have the contact."

Soneya blushed brighter but nodded quietly, while I focused. Sure enough it worked like it did for me, and a few moments later the tall strong wolfgirl was dried off.

"Thanks," she said as she stepped back. "So um, you saw the news right?"

I sighed, "Yeah. Not just here, but all over the world. This is huge, but it felt like the world's already getting bored with it."

"If the thing with the water is happening at all those places, and if we're right that the water is the source of the magic, then the world's going to go crazy before long," she said in a worried tone.

She looked like she had more to say but Lia's voice interrupted us. "Tori? Soneya? Something just happened."

We glanced at each other then hurried out of the washroom to check on our small sister, but both of us stopped in our tracks the moment we got a clear look. There was no sign of our little fox friend. Instead we found a stranger kneeling in the middle of the big bed. She was naked, and she looked surprised and confused, and maybe a bit anxious.

Despite the uneasy expression on her face she was incredibly cute. She looked a bit younger than me and Soneya, I'd guess she was around eighteen. She looked like she could have been a high-school senior or a college freshman. She had fox ears and a long floofy tail just like mine, and her long straight orange-red hair hung down to the small of her back.

Her face was familiar too, and I realized she actually looked a lot like a slightly younger version of the foxgirl I'd been staring at in the mirror earlier. Then it hit me, she looked like she could be my younger sister.

Or rather, my small sister.