Didn't See That One Coming

Leslie and Lagertha made their way back to the Delica. Ray had left their sniper’s nest and met them along the way. Lagertha was bordering on hypothermic, so when they reached the van, Leslie peeled off his coverall and gave it to the chattering pregnant woman.

“That went pretty well,” Ray pointed out while they were piling in the Delica.

“Better than expected,” Leslie said while he put the van into gear and checked the mirrors, “let’s get the fuck out of here.”

They departed the outskirts of the camp at a speed that, given the road conditions, could have been construed as irresponsible. Once they had made it down the hill and pointed south toward Kingston, and deemed the coast to be clear, they picked along at a more reasonable pace.

“Thank you, Leslie,” Lagertha piped up about halfway through the gulf, once her teeth had stopped chattering and she could get some words out, “you saved my life. That asshole would have burned me.”

“No sweat, Lagertha,” Leslie said, catching her eyes in the rear view.

“Stephanie,” she said, “I’m done with that bullshit. I’m just Stephanie now. I want to go home.”

“Well, Stephanie,” Leslie said kind of sullenly, “I don’t think that’s a super good idea.”

“What? Why?” She asked, “Take me to Burlington, I’ll catch a sub orbital to my parent’s place in Majorka. I could really use some beach time.”

It seemed that Stephanie was a bit out of the loop as far as the end of the world went, so Leslie tried to think of a gentle way to inform her.

“We’ll be heading to Kingston for a bit, I’m staying at Mr. Drake’s place. I have a sword that you can talk to that will explain everything.”

Leslie looked to the passenger footwell where the broadsword resided and saw only empty coffee cups. He brought the Delica to a screeching halt and actually put the thing sideways, taking up both lanes.

“Ray?” Leslie asked, suddenly out of breath, “do you have the sword?”

“What?” Ray asked, “no.”

“Fuck,” Leslie cursed, “Fucking Viking bullshit.”

“What’s wrong?” Ray asked, puzzled.

“The fucking Vikings took Mr. Drake,” Leslie informed everyone from the end of a long tunnel that his vision had put him in.

“Fuck all we can do about it now,” Ray observed, “If we go back there, Magnus is likely to kill us. I need to take a shower anyway.”

“Oh,” Stephanie added, “I could definitely use a shower. What’s this sword business?”

They rode back toward Mr. Drake’s place while Ray explained the end of the world and some of the sword business to the former Yarl who was just Stephanie now. She didn’t take it all that well as she had really settled on going to Majorca for some beach time.

Stephanie cried for the rest of the drive to the house. A little bit for the end of the world, a lot for not being able to go to the beach, and a touch because she was heavily pregnant and tired. She was roughly eight months along in her pregnancy and showing signs of severe pregnancy burnout. Had she been six months pregnant, she would have raged for an hour or so, but now she was just kind of tired. Forced by her condition into a sort of zen acceptance of the end of the world after a couple of exhausted tears.

As they pulled into the Drake property, the tenuous daylight that February begrudgingly allowed them to have, had been traded for darkness. The motion lights on the main house came on and illuminated the driveway and entrance for them. This was a good sign. This meant that the generator hadn’t been stolen and had been charging the house batteries all day. This also implied that there had been no visitors while they were gone. Further evidence to this fact could be gleaned by examining the tracks in the driveway.

A small part of Leslie experienced a certain disappointment that he hadn’t plowed Mr. Drake’s driveway this morning. He knew this was a silly thought to have, but he had it none the less. He had been quite busy today, and plowing would have made deducing evidence of trespassers more difficult.

Their small party departed the comfort of the Delica and made their way into the house. Showering seemed to be the first order of business, but it was agreed that Ray would get first crack at it. Ray took to the bathroom as Leslie kindled the fire.
Stephanie took up residence on the couch. Without any conscious thought she gathered every pillow within reach and completely mummified herself in the various blankets and throws around the Drake residence. From her nest, she watched Leslie go about the ritual of starting the fire.

“Why did you come and get me?” She finally asked.

“I like you,” Leslie answered without turning to face her, “and that kid might be ours.”

“Maybe,” she mused, rubbing her belly under the cocoon of blankets, “there’s a good chance it’s Magnus’.”

“Well,” he added a small log to the fire, “I reckon it doesn’t really matter. I’ll help raise it, if you’ll have me.”

Stephanie took a second and examined Leslie tending to the fire.

“I don’t really know you Leslie,” she admitted, “what we had was a lot of fun, don’t get me wrong, but you’re basically a stranger to me. I was deep into the shades and I thought you were Odin walking the earth. I mean, I knew you actually were just some guy with one eye, deep down. The experience was irresistible. I mean, being fucked by a god? Can you blame me? I was fucking the Allfather, the poet, the traveller, the stranger.”

“I was just kind of there,” Leslie sat down on his butt before the fire, watching it, “a convenient vessel for your delusion. Do we really know anyone though?”

“What do you mean?” She said after a few seconds. The silence was filled by Ray singing in the bathroom, they had gone into a passable rendition of All That She Wants by the band Ace of Bass.

“It’s like we have an idea of somebody in our head, like a mental model. When we hooked up, you were under the impression that I was Odin. Now, there isn’t all that much I can do to change what goes on between your ears, but your mental model of me was pretty different from the actual real me. My model of you, differed from the actual you too, just not to such a severe degree. I see you as a crazy Viking chick, a shady trustfunder who, by the way, I find to be pretty easy on the eyes. There is a version of you that lives in my head, this is based on the sensory inputs that I observe when we interact. I update this model to try to keep it accurate, and the more we interact the closer to the real you it becomes. In my case, your sensory inputs were mitigated by a piece of technology that had its own motivations, whatever they were. That model of me was highly inaccurate.”

Stephanie was busy updating her mental model of Leslie. She had never heard him speak like this. Their previous interactions had been bar banter, sweet nothings, and post coital ephemera. Her previous model of him had shown him to be concerned with plowing driveways, and frequently, plowing her, now it seemed that he had some things going on under his hat that she hadn’t considered.

“I think you’re right Leslie,” she said, after her update, “we can’t truly know one another. We can try though. One thing I desperately want to know about is dinner, though. I could eat Thor’s fucking balls.”

Leslie chuckled at this ribaldry, and made to stand up. While he had been building the fire, he had noticed something that he had not mentioned to Stephanie. Behind the stove, earlier this morning when he had been speaking with the sword that contained Mr. Drake, he had noticed a chanterelle growing in the refractory brick. He took this as evidence of the Allmother’s presence. She seemed to inhabit all things mushroom related. She smelled of them and when he took her hand, it was like grasping a portabella cap. Now, the chanterelles seemed to have taken quite a foothold behind the stove.

This was Strephanie’s first time here, so she hadn’t noticed anything strange about the area behind the stove. For all she knew, Mr. Drake was a mushroom enthusiast who had installed an art piece behind his fireplace to gaze at while he cozily turned wood to ash. The wall behind the wood stove was nothing but mushrooms now, every species that he knew and quite a number that he didn’t.

Countless pileus, stipe, and lamalle, reached out from the brick and cocked toward the ceiling, in a fungal mat that was clearly a message from the divine. To Leslie, the message was received loud and clear, he just needed some alone time to commune with the Allmother. Given his current company and the state of the world, the Allmother would have to wait a bit. She struck him at the patient sort though, so that was okay.

Ray had taken a good forty five minutes in the shower, which was understandable given the state of their hygiene. Somewhere along the way, they had found a pair of clippers and seen fit to lose the dreadlocks that they had sported. Ray emerged from the bathroom in a robe that was a couple of orders of magnitude too large for them. Between that and the new haircut, they seemed very small, like a baby bird fallen from its nest. Doomed to die among the leaves of the forest floor, covered in ants. The fact was not lost on Leslie that a mere couple of hours ago, this wisp of a person was willing to put a bullet between a Viking’s eyes to save his life.

“Whew!” Ray exclaimed, “fuckin’ needed that, man.”

“Like the new do,” Leslie observed lightly, “there’s probably some clothes upstairs in Mr. Drake’s room if you want. I don’t think he’ll be using them anytime soon”

Stephanie took this cue to head into the bathroom and do some scrubbing of her own.

“Robe’s good for now,” they said, sidling over to the woodstove to get some direct heat, “Mr. Drake into mushrooms or what? This is a pretty impressive piece to myoculture.”

Ray had more than a passing familiarity with the cultivation and care of mushrooms. Granted, they kept their endeavors to a couple of pretty specific species, but their expertise was undeniable.

Leslie hesitated and began to spin up a lie in his head, he decided against it. Contrary to his performance as Odin earlier in the day, Leslie was a terrible liar. Ray knew him reasonably well, and he didn’t think he could be believably evasive around them.

“Mr. Drake has a lot of hobbies,” this wasn’t technically a lie on his part.

“What’s his substrate?” Ray mused, not actually looking for an answer, “they’re growing right out of the brick. I mean, a lot of fungi can do that, but definitely not chanterelles. He must be some kind of sneaky genius.”

“Hard to tell,” Leslie continued to fill the air with vagaries.

“Whoa! There’s my little buddy,” Ray said, reaching for a specific cap, “you’re gonna be in my belly.”

“I don’t think we should get twisted right now,” Leslie suggested, “it might seem comfy and safe right now, but I think we are still in a bit of danger. I would appreciate it if you were sharp.”

Ray hesitated.

“Yeah, I guess you’re on to something there,” they capitulated, “what kind of danger do you think we could be facing?”

“Hard to tell,” Leslie speculated, “but…”

From down in the mudroom, they heard a knock at the front door. They both froze and looked at each other.