“You know, I understand nineteen feet, three inches but I really just expected it would look bigger, you know. Really underwhelming.” Bedelia arched her back, hands on her butt, looking to the top of a set of rectangular standing stones.
“I can open a door here.” Cybil ran her hand across the surface of the center pillar.
Scrub oaks and pine trees surrounded the monument. Their horses stood tied off to a crooked tree pushed up through the pavement of the old road just off to the North.
“Camping. Whee.” Bedelia dragged her ruck a few meters away from the stones and popped it out into a small tent. “Look, I’m not just going to sit here flicking my bean for a couple days while you just sit there and be all… glowy. So you better be ready to roll around on this hay or something. Momma gotta charge them batteries.” She flexed her arms, the solenoids in the adaptive armor whined.
“It won’t be that bad.” Cybil backed away from the stone and took off her backpack. “I like the quiet.”
“I like the quiet.” A high-pitched mocking hand puppet repeated her words from the flap of Bedelia’s tent. The blonde popped her head out. “You’re not the one that has to wear a fucking Faraday cage on your head out here to keep the mechanical sons-of-fuckers out of your goddamn brain.”
“Careful. You are dangerously close to understanding my whole life.”
“Yeah. Well.” She disappeared back inside the tent. There was a soft pfwhoosh as the capsule of her air mattress expanded. “Shut up.”
Twilight lingered in the woods long after the sun disappeared behind the trees. Cybil sat, cross-legged, facing the South side of the central granite block, several kilograms of crystalline orange flame on her lap. A small slot, a viewing aperture, was carved diagonally all the way through the middle of the stone. On the other side, the North Star burned against the fading sky.
Flashes of light rolled deep inside the mineral’s translucent cells. Cybil was lost to the outside world. Charging her own battery.
Bedelia walked around the stones. Tried to translate the languages on them using the English inscription as a guide. Without a wireless connection her efforts did not last long. After kicking sticks and leaves from the base, she posted up against one of the cornerstones. Orihalcum was creepy in normal light, with all the little flashes and twitches. Infrared and ultraviolet were a million times worse. She could see its mind, she could see it looking at her.
The distant sound of a motorcycle engine broke the women out of their fire trance. There wasn’t a headlight, but Bedelia could see the white hot engine flashing between the trees, the glowing trail dispersing behind it and, as it got closer, the enormous man folded up to fit on the frame. She trotted out to the road to keep the horses calm.
“Howdy, stranger. Didn’t expect you.”
“Hey, Bee. Where’s mom?”
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