Chapter 15: The Farm

ALICIA

And by pad, I mean a combination villa and home base. Surrounded by alpine woods, rocks, and shrubbery, the place had a cobblestone platform at its base that extended up further near where it had a small fireplace. The heat didn't go through a chimney though, as it had a more advanced system that funneled the heat through the house with no smoke and very little lost energy. The parts of the two-story house that weren't cobblestone were simple lines of wood and metal. It was a postmodern forest cottage, with asymmetrical roofing and enough glass that a stray rock would threaten to bring down the entire left side. It was a good thing that the other side was built substantially more sturdy. Much like Las Vegas, this building was more than slightly in contrast with its surroundings but the hardwood frame made it blend better. Something about the building lent to the perception that it was a temporary dwelling spun from rock and ore deep beneath the Earth together with nearby trees. I half-expected it to grow chicken feet and uproot itself. In any case, I didn't see how the occupants could manage it. After all, they had followed me around where I went, so there must be a trick.

I was ushered into their place. Honestly, I felt like I was back in Fox's family home or her apartment. Both of these places felt like a makeshift home rather than a real dwelling. Again, I felt like this house could be uprooted at any time. And so I asked her, "How exactly did you stay in contact with me? I mean, we moved a lot over the years, and took a lot of vacations, but no matter where I went, you always stayed nearby." It was different seeing Rena in her true hybrid form, after seeing her in disguise for so long. I took it all in. She was a gumiho, of course, but specifically a white marble red fox. She had long platinum hair with soft purple eyes and pale skin. She was beautiful.

The white fox was a beloved creature of the Shinto deity Inari, but that sort of white fox was actually an arctic fox. The marble fox is a domesticated variety, so while it's wild, it can't necessarily survive without human intervention. But they don't necessarily admit that to themselves. They nip, they sometimes pee all over the place, and they have far more feral instincts than a dog but at the same time they are out of place in temperate forests and they tend to get hunted before they grow up. If they do grow up, they are red foxes not white foxes, and cannot survive in the same cold places. But a marble fox could learn to survive, it's just that they are first target for whatever wants to hunt them, and unlikely prospects for mating. On the other hand, they are incredibly cute, so dogs, cats, and people just want to cuddle them and protect them. Bottom line, they still have the wandering and feral instincts of foxes, but a certain vulnerability about them. But neither were they codependent like a dog, they needed to do their own stuff. Since she was a red fox (even though her coat appeared white as a result of selective breeding), she behaved like one instead of a white fox. This meant territorial behavior, while arctic foxes were den creatures.

Non-domestic red foxes live everywhere include deserts, forests, plains, and tundras. But lately, even wild foxes have learned how to live in urban environments almost as well as humans. They tend to play around in cemeteries and backyards, scavenging random food. A real fox lives in cities and towns, but often in abandoned places. She answered my question, "Aellisa, show them."

The others went outside quickly, so I followed suit. Rena explained, "Each of us learned at least one new ability while we were waiting for you. Marina learned how to temporarily give others the ability to sing by writing sheet music. I uhhhh, that concert you got my autograph in? I wouldn't have been very impressive if I hadn't read her songs. I learned how to do my Foxfire thing (that took a lot of years), and how to shapeshift other people for long periods. I think you know without me explaining just how complicated Autumntwig's illusions have gotten. As for Aellisa..." Aellisa interrupted, "I think I can show her myself."

Extending her arms ahead of her, she spun them about much like someone doing macramé. There were no words uttered, since this was racial ability. The house folded in on itself, collapsing into a tiny wicker ball. "Oh I have so many questions," I said, "Starting with, what the hell was that? Then, if I was inside, would I have been killed? And after that, are the beds here comfortable?"

She took deep breath, then answered the questions in reverse order, "Ummm, yes the beds are comfy, and you're our friend, of course we want you to stay. No, you usually wouldn't be killed unless I burned the wicker ball with you inside it. But you would be trapped. And umm the earliest one... that was my Matter Reshaping ability. I can reform nonliving objects into any form I want, like so..." And then she demonstrated by turning the wicker ball into a full-sized ladder to nowhere.

"And after that," Arboria explained, "we just haul our home around us." Taking me hand and walking toward a tree, she teased, "C'mon, little brother!" She made a little portal in the tree for all of us to walk through. A moment later, I came out in Central Park in New York, where before I had been in a forest near my current home. "So long as there is a tree nearby, I can travel here," she explained.

I wanted to know, what did she do where there are no trees? So I asked her. She gave a long and complicated explanation that involved a rant about what a nuisance airports are, especially after the whole COVID thing. "In general, though?" Arboria said, "We just follow you in disguise in those cases."

I was led to the dining room to wait, while Rena prepared things she liked. The meal set before us was suited for omnivores, but a sort of odd mix of table d'hôte and buffet style dining. That is, Arboria could technically eat meat, but unlike humans, she could get sufficient nutrients from an all vegetable diet. Meanwhile, Marina had a restrictive diet, so Rena made her some kelp and seafood, avoiding carbohydrates, and most land meat. Her meal resembled a Japanese meal without the rice.

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For the rest of us, large plates were placed in the center of the table, and we were able to rotate the inner part of the table to grab what we wanted. Rena had cooked rice and a sort of starchy pancakes used for wrapping food, along with noodles. There were steamed or braised vegetables, cooked just enough to retain their flavor without making any of them bitter. Bok choy, mustard greens, collard greens, and radish greens were cooked together in vaguely Chinese dishes and well seasoned. Pickled or fermented vegetables were also a thing, with both kimchi and natto, along with things like radish pickles. But all of this only made up a third of the dishes on the table. Rena clearly favored meat, with the majority being beef, chicken and other poultry, and fish. There were some prepared insect dishes, organ meats, and eggs on the table as well. I noticed Peking Duck on the table, and Rena handed me some pancakes to eat it with. Rena on the other hand, it turned out really did like liver, just not human liver. She loaded up on chicken livers, wolfed down some grilled foie gras, and then ate an entire game hen. I noted that the way Rena ate while she was acting human was substantially different from when she was free to be a fox, comparing the perfect table manners before with just eating what she wanted. I was tempted to draw a comparison with reality TV like The Bachelor and the meals they show for the set versus the meals the people were actually allowed to eat. Still, the way she cooked was very much haute cuisine, with dishes paired with each other to create an overall menu and sauces perfectly suited for each dish. There was reindeer smothered in a berry sauce, there was rabbit prepared with wine and fresh herbs, there was wild boar. I suspected that some of this food was actually hunted from nearby forests (or stolen from nearby farms) rather than bought at the store, as it tasted very fresh and was prepared with a minimum of salt (except for pickled food, obviously).

As we ate, I asked about how she was doing all this time, and would up getting a pretty good history lesson that could probably be covered in previous chapters of this book. But the highlights of it that I focused on were thing that weren't. In between munching on a tendon, she said, "...No really, the French Revolution had nothing to do with liberty or equality, and everything to do with demons. Unlike the American Revolution where they were actually fighting for freedom, they immediately followed it with violent beheadings and with trying to impose new systems for measurement, timekeeping, and so on. Real revolutions don't involve immediately trying to take control, they are about freeing people from real oppression." To this, Marina got in a heated discussion, mentioning the Great War of Atlantis, and how the rules set up after that were needed in order to keep the peace between wars on land and those on water.

The two of them argued back and forth about some war I'd never even heard of, until finally I interrupted, "I've been meaning to ask, what exactly is the plan of these demons? Is it just destruction? Like, why did they attack my town in the first place?" At that, all eating ceased, and the mood turned serious.

Marina explained this one, "Well, you probably know that they were hunting for you. " I nodded, "Yes, but why?!? I mean, I used some strange holy whirlwind ability, but I haven't even been even able to make a flame after that. Just some simple sensory abilities and sorta being able to adjust my body temperature." She nodded, "I figured as much. Well, maybe it would be best to explain what happened when you were gone." She told in depth about how demons had destroyed almost all towns in Pangaea. The remaining towns, they waited a few generations for people to forget, and gradually poisoned their minds, teaching them magic, and eventually sorcery. I hadn't heard this part before, "Why would they do that? Weren't they worried that humans would have more power to fight them with?"

Rena grabbed a prism from a nearby room, and used it to split light by way of explanation, "Think of divine art as like this light over here. It is pure and combined, so a flame made through divine art is every bit like actual fire and can damage things that are resistant to magic. This was later called solid spells, when all knowledge of the true value of divine art is gone. There is radiant magic, but unlike that made by divine art, it can only injure demons, while the other usually kills lesser demons in a single hit. This is because the power is broken up, like this prism." She pulled out a black cloth and placed it in the path of the broken light, "This is what sorcery is like. Not only is it further corruption of the already corrupted magic, but it leaves only a shadow of power that had already been split. Now neither magic nor even sorcery can actually be called evil, but they are distorted from as God intended, kiseki, the power of miracles." She paused to let this sink in, "Such powers are no threat to demons, not without massively reworking them to focus on generating holy power. However, they seem on the surface to be very powerful because they are effective at killing other humans. I think you can understand where this is going, right?"

I definitely did, "So basically, they kept getting involved in stupid magical wars and killed themselves off." Rena corrected me, "Well, violence from magic and sorcery was substantial, but the population bounced back after wars. Demons used the fact that people couldn't totally kill their enemies to talk them into bigger and more powerful weapons, until finally they were told about a stone that later became pitchblende." I asked, "You mean, it became known as pitchblende?" She shook her head, "It became pitchblende, when before it was a regular stone. This was the ultimate sorcery, the magic of Creation and Destruction. Other elements are fused together to make uranium, then uranium releases large amounts of energy as a bomb. The Brahmastra and the Gayatri sutra. Under the advice of demons, they used these powers on each other over and over until there were no more humans. After that, demons continued to use their powers until there was almost no more life. We hid until they ran out of steam. I suppose they might have continued if a Prohibition had not been placed on it, banning demons from ever using it again. We survived by hiding." Talking about ancient nuclear spells had definitely turned the mood somber. I decided to grab some dessert while I listened. "So what is the demon's goal?" I asked while munching on some red bean buns covered with black sesame seeds, "And what exactly is yours?"

Rena answered, "Well, at first we thought it was simply to destroy humanity, but since humanity as a species regenerated entirely despite trying a few times to wipe it out, it seemed their plan was instead to oppress them. Humans would eventually master the divine art if they knew how to use magic again. And so, the demons worked on getting religious people to fear all magic (including the divine art) as witchcraft. I guess you could think of it as a sort of supernatural gun control. With humans now disarmed, demons could take over governments and cause pain and suffering. This is also why despite all of the fantasy stories ever published, the overall population does not believe magic is real. Our mission is to remind them of their power so that humans can finally live as God intended them, free from governments, demons, and any pain but what they have caused. And it's to remind you of your power, so that you can stand against Belial."

"Now, about my powers..." I said. Rena spoke up, "Ah yes, about that. The reason that you can't use magic or divine art or other normal effects is because you are the Oracle of Tao." I was visibly confused, so she volunteered additional information, "You don't have the typical blessings of divine art that other humans have. Nor do you have some of the normal blessings of humans. That is, when other humans have good or bad luck, you have no luck. Normal humans can for instance plant seeds and have them grow quickly enough to eat. Those with strong magic could say something like tuatha authrock mora hoatha or maybe let this bean/herb/kumquat grow big and strong and have it grow instantly, or have things grow overnight without doing a thing. But you wouldn't be able to have anything grow for you at all, not for awhile anyway. And I assume you've realized that your ability to hold a job or a girlfriend is pathetic." Hey! That's harsh. "But why is that?" I asked. She shrugged, "Just as the original Jesus came well before the empire of Rome, the real Lao Tzu tried to leave Pangaea, writing his words before he did. One of these was a vague mention of the Oracle of Tao. We understand the basics of your power, but nobody has any understanding of it. But we do know that it has a very strong tie to tai chi and prophetic understanding. One of the things mentioned was the ability to see events before they happen and learn things before being taught. Tomorrow, we'll try to help you figure it out. But for now, we're going to watch some movies and play video games." I thought this was a perfectly logical tangent between food and talking about demons and the near-destruction of the Earth. In any case, Rena did nothing without a purpose, even if the purpose seemed to be fun. We watched Christmas Perfection which was about an insane perfectionist who got stuck in a "perfect" Christmas village until she realized that she liked things messy (and she loved the other guy), followed by Willow which was a story of a non-human protecting a powerful chosen human, and the video game Final Fantasy X about a sports star who tries to save the world from an unstoppable being that seems to be immune to all attacks except for a final attack used against him. Autumntwig had second dinner with all the leftovers while watching us play.

After this long orgy of media, we tucked in for the night. As a genderfluid person, I had sorta lived halfway in between genders, mostly living as a male at my house, but Rena told me that now was the time to test my comfort zone. She put some cream all over my body that at first I thought was a depilatory, but it made the hair on my scalp tingle and the hair everywhere else feel like it was burning. "What the hell is this stuff?!?" I said, obviously disturbed by the sensation. "This," she explained, "is feminization cream. It doesn't make you turn into a female or anything dramatic like that. That would be magic, not a cream. But it makes your chest muscles softer and your face smoother, it makes hair fall out and never grow again in places where women generally don't get hair and it makes hair grow back even from slight balding where they do get hair. You will still need to wax your legs or something though." She spread it over me, and true to advertising, and balding I had on my scalp started to tingle and grow, while all my facial, back, or chest hair loosened. My eyebrows also appeared to thin. I took a shower and it slid off. While in the shower, Rena came in and shaved my leg and underarm hair while my naked body was working out what to make of her large breasts and nice hips, and all too obviously naked body sharing quite a bit of proximity. The real Rena, not the Kat Fox persona, had some interesting notions about boundaries, much like a real fox that would sit on your computer or important papers even while aware that your were glowering at them. We got out of the shower, and she started applying breast forms, a bra, and panties. She tucked my crotch even though I had done this before and it was wildly inappropriate. "I uhhhh... probably should do that myself," I tried to explain, but she would have none of it. "No, no, I need to tuck you in because you're getting hard," she explained. I didn't want to tell her that I was getting hard because she was touching me down there. Her fingers was very gentle, after all. She gave me some nude pantyhose and a nightgown, and I settled into the bed, sleeping on my side. No sooner did I start to get comfortable when a pair of arms wrapped about my waist, and a pair of breasts rubbed against my back. "Sorry," Rena said, "there weren't enough beds so I have to share one with you." I always slept alone anyway, so I guess some company was okay.

RENA

That was a total lie. There were beds in the attic and basement, and Aellisa could make more furniture if she wanted to. I don't know when it happened, but all the years I spent waiting for Alethea, and then suddenly here was her reincarnation in my house, and I couldn't keep my hands off of her. Hopefully, she wasn't too creeped out by my advances. The last thing I wanted was to come across as clingly or possessive and drive her away from me. But I needed her.

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