Wolf Who Rules

In the movie the yellow brick road started when Dorothy crashed the house into Oz - bringing a stain of sepia on a world of lush color. The discontinuity appeared as a stain of blue. Tinker's nightmares had gotten out of hand the same day that the Ghostlands formed - even if the first one with Esme and Black came two days later. The first dream had been Alice in Wonderland, the second Wizard of Oz, and the last was Esme going through the hyperphase gate; little girls crashing into other worlds.

Tinker sprawled in the enclave garden, watching the sun shift through the tree branches. As usual, she had a full Hand standing around, doing nothing but watch her think. They shifted to full alert as someone came through the gate into this private area. Lemonseed carried in a tray of tea and cookies - midmorning snack. Tinker started to sit up but Lemonseed tsked at her and crouched beside her to layout a mini-picnic. Exquisite china bowls of pale tea. Little perfect cookies. A platter of rich rosewood. A small square of printed silk.

Esme wasn't the only girl that fell into another world.

"Can you have lunch packed?" Tinker knew that the enclave's staff most likely had the meal half-finished. "We're going out."

"Yes, domi." Lemonseed bowed and left to make it so.

"Where are we going?" Stormsong asked.

We? How did it get to this point that she was so comfortable with having all these people in her life? No, she guessed she wasn't really that at ease - but the edges of her discomfort were wearing away. Like the fact that she could strip in front of Pony without thinking. That it took Lemonseed's arrival to remind her that an entire staff of nearly a hundred people were poised around her - waiting for her to do something. Anything. Be the domi. Save the world again.

"The scrap yard," she told Stormsong but thought 'Home.'

She drained the tea to be polite, gathered up the cookies and went to change.

***

Two newspapers, still neatly folded and bagged, lay in the driveway of the scrap yard. She picked them up on their way in, wonder why Oilcan hadn't brought them in. Tinker expected to find her cousin at work and was both relieved and disappointed that he wasn't. She didn't know how he would take Nathan's death. Too her, it was a dark well of guilt and grief with a crumbling edge. She was trying to keep her distance just so she could keep functioning. Ironically, she was fairly sure she could deal with Oilcan being angry at her more than she could help him with his grief.

"You know - I just don't get it." Stormsong said as Tinker was puttering around her workshop off of the junkyard's offices, trying to get back into being herself.

"Get what?" Tinker asked.

"This place, you, and Windwolf - it just doesn't-doesn't make sense."

"Yeah, I've never understood why he fell in love with someone like me."

"I do. You can go toe to toe with him. It's this place that doesn't make sense. You two are too big for something like this."

"Big?"

"With your abilities - why did you limit yourself to this tiny corner of the world?"

That sounded like Lain - who had always pushed for her to go to college, leave Pittsburgh, do something more with her life. She thought her plans were big enough, but it suddenly dawned on her that they were plans she laid when she was thirteen. They seemed huge when she was a child - even though they were larger than what other people planned - but yes, she'd grown to fit, and then the limits were starting to chafe. Had Lain seen a truth that she herself was blind to?

She veered from that line of thinking. She distracted herself by poking at her insecurities. "I think it's fairly obvious what attracted Windwolf to me - I look like Jewel Tears. She's his prefect woman. And I can't measure up to that - elegance."

"No. You only think that because you've never met Otter Dance."

"Pony's mother?"

"Ever notice that Pony is the shortest of the sekasha? Otter Dance is half Stone Clan sekasha."

Tinker turned to look at Pony standing beside Cloudwalker; he was a half a head shorter yet wider in the shoulders and deeper in the chest than Cloudwalker. Pony was the most compact elf she'd ever met until the Stone Clan arrived. Now that she looked at him, she could see points of similarity. His eyes were brown where everyone else was blue. The shape of his face was different.

"You mean we - Jewel Tears and I - look like Otter Dance?"

"To know Otter Dance is to love her. Personality wise, you're much more like Otter Dance than Jewel Tears could ever pretend to be - and she did try."

Tinker wasn't sure how to feel about that. She cleared her iboard. She needed a project - something big and complex - to keep from thinking about Nathan and all the messy bits of her life. Something that would help keep Pittsburgh safe from the elves, the oni-and the dragon. Oh gods, in all the chaos she forgotten about the dragon. There was a worthwhile project, especially since she hadn't collected enough data on the Ghostlands yet.