Growing Lilies

The ranch gate opened onto a large courtyard in front of a very nice looking house. Lily made a note that if she ever needed a ranch base to come back here. Forty five minutes was a bit of a drive, but it was worth it for the right location. Plus, maybe given enough time she could expedite it. Speed limits were more of a suggestion now after all.

The courtyard was divided up into three segments, with the road leading to a roundabout in front of the house. In one segment was the home, in another was a large garage and workspace, and in the last was… animal pens! A whole lot of them from the looks of it. In the front were horses, which were decidedly not what Lily was looking for. She thought she could see sheep from here too... Not that she needed wool. The animals all seemed to be doing more or less fine. Lily suspected that they had a surplus of food and water, and were just living as if humans had decided to leave them alone for a while.

Lily got out of her car and let the dog out too. If it wandered away, she’d know to come back here or the other spot to find it. But she suspected it was set on following her, so she didn’t worry too much. Instead, she was focused on the task at hand. She wanted chickens! And a cow. Eggs and milk! Staples!

Although, if she was already here she might consider finding all the food and water stations for the various animals and filling them up too. She couldn’t fathom needing wool, or a horse, or killing and butchering a pig, but that didn’t mean she wanted to forever close the doors that would lead to those options.

With that in mind, she continued forward. She glanced down at the puppy, who was toddling after her, tail wagging merrily.

“So, I don’t know how to be a farm girl. Were you a farm dog?”

Of course, there was no reply. If this dog ever started talking to Lily, she’d know that she finally lost it for real. Although… She glanced up at the sky. The blue sky looked perfectly normal for the daytime. But she knew that past that lay… nothing. She wasn’t quite sure if that was all in her head. Afterall, if everything else in the universe vanished wouldn’t gravity and physics have completely fallen apart? So, doesn’t that mean it’s all in her head? Not to mention all of the ‘magic’.

The dog bit at her pant leg and pulled her forward a step. Lily realized she had stopped walking and had been standing there with her hands clenched for.. some time. She shook her head and snapped out of it.

“Thanks little, uh, boy? Girl? Hmm. Well, I’m sure we’ll find out later.”

Lily shrugged and took a better look around. She did see what looked like a large chicken coop from here. Assuming she knew what she was looking at, of course. Otherwise there was a pen with pigs, and another with goats she hadn’t seen before. Along with all of that, there was a pond and… a dog kennel. Lily froze.

But, her puppy friend didn’t seem to be reacting at all. Maybe… it was empty? She stared. It was just one of those old igloo style dog houses. Lily crept forward to see if she could spot a dog. A long neck suddenly looked around the side. A hideous face with a beak!

“What the hell kind of dog is tha– oh.”

A duck stepped out of the igloo.

“Huh. Okay, that’s not what I expected.”

Another duck stepped through. There were six in all, but it took Lily getting close and looking inside to see them all. It seemed they lived in the little igloo next to the pond. That was pretty cute. Wouldn’t ducks like, fly away though? What had happened to the dog? Lily had so many questions.

The puppy bounded forward and barked. The ducks, startled, let out a squall and scrambled back into the igloo. Then the cheeky little thing had the gall to look up at her smugly, as if waiting for praise.

“Look, I need you to not try to impress me so much. We have a business relationship. Let’s keep things professional, okay? You’re here to be inspected for magical anomalies. When I’m sure I can’t learn anything more from you, I’m releasing you into the wild, got it?”

The puppy continued to stare, tail wagging hopefully.

“Okay, but that was pretty cool. Help me wrangle some chickens and we’ll talk.”

Lily turned to what she thought was a coop, leaving her canine cohort behind. The puppy was circling the dog igloo, making a game of corralling the birds. Maybe it was part shepherd? Either way, it was running around like crazy. Just watching it was making her tired. She couldn't remember a time she had had that much energy.

The good news was, her hunch was right: this outbuilding did seem to be a chicken coop. The bad news was there were a lot of chickens inside. A large red chicken house complete with a little ramp to get in and what appeared to be an electric door housed a lot of chickens. How many? Conservatively, Lily estimated it was a shit load. At least thirty. The entire area was fenced in, which was good because there was a very, very large mean looking rooster sitting right in the middle of the chicken run.

“Listen up hound. This is the plan. I’m gonna open the gate, and just try to snag three birds. Just three! The rest, we can figure out how to feed and water but they can stay here, okay? Because if we need more, we can just come here, right?”

The puppy didn’t respond, but it looked like it understood at least that Lily was about to do… something.

She flung open the door to the pen and stepped inside. Instantly, there was chaos. Well, that’s how it felt to Lily. Chickens were EVERYWHERE. She stepped forward and tried to grab one, but the little jerk ran! She always thought of chickens as being docile and slow! So, she took a few steps forward and went for another, but now they were all milling about. There were a lot of them. On top of that, the disturbance had been noticed by the rooster and–

Krr-KAWWWWW

A loud piercing shriek came out of the rooster’s mouth. The chickens all began to run. Two thirds into the coop, and the rest dashing madly around the pen. But what was worse, the rooster ran at Lily. She screamed. That thing was a freakin’ dinosaur! It was charging her!

In the last couple steps it flapped its mighty wings and brandished its spurs. Lily thought for sure she wasn’t getting away from here without some bloodshed. But then, the dog jumped in! It tackled the bird from the side just before it could reach Lily, and started barking wildly. The rooster turned to focus on the little puppy. The terrifying bird was not much smaller than the puppy, and had knives on its feet! Well, not literally, but those spurs were crazy looking!

The dog seemed to realize too, and was keeping its distance but barking fiercely. The rooster readied itself, and charged the dog, flapping into the air a little again with its spurs brandished. But this time, Lily wasn’t paralyzed with fear. With a battle cry of her own, she ran forward and kicked it as hard as she could!

“RUN!” she ran for the door. The puppy did too, seeming to understand her intention even if it was just through seeing her trajectory. Lily and the little puppy made it through the door, and Lily slammed it shut behind her. Then she noticed the second problem.

In the commotion, some chickens had gotten loose. Five of them were outside the pen, already finding places to scratch around that they’d likely stared covetously at for years from their enclosure.

Once again, her new companion wasted no time. The puppy ran forward, barking, and in less than ten seconds had corralled them all into a small group. Then, it sat and stared at her, wagging its tail and clearly waiting for praise. This time, Lily couldn’t bear to remain aloof.

She reached down and pet the puppy’s head.

“Good… good whatever you are. You saved me back there. I guess you’re not so bad, fur ball. Hmph.”

The puppy looked way too pleased with itself. Lily turned her attention to the chickens. She was shaking a little. So, she took a deep breath and steadied herself. Then she reached for the nearest bird. It started to move, but the puppy circled around the other side and gave it a bark. Lily smiled.

“Smart little thing.”

This time when she reached, she successfully grabbed a chicken! Which led to her next problem: She was now holding a chicken. She didn’t know how to hold a chicken. The bird was crowing and flapping its wings, flailing in her grasp. She (barely) managed to keep a grip on it, awkwardly holding it far away from her body as she headed over to her car. It was a struggle to get the back open, but there was an area behind the back seat and she shoved the chicken there.

The whole ordeal was a process, but soon she had five chickens in her car. It was more than she’d thought to get, but she didn’t want to leave any outside the fence and she definitely was not opening it back up. Not without sleeping gas or something for that stupid rooster. Did sleeping gas actually exist, or was that a TV thing?

Then, Lily had another problem to face. How was she supposed to transport a cow? She had seen where cows were at this point, and it was nice and easy to get to. But, how did she make one move? How did she get it into a vehicle? Did she need a pickup truck? She didn’t want to switch cars…

Lily went to look around the ranch. She found what she thought must be horse trailers in a barn looking building. That might work, but she had no idea how to attach it to her vehicle. Or even if she could. Could her mom-mobile actually pull something like that? What if the answer was yes, but only for a little while and then she broke down in the middle of nowhere?

On top of that, even if she did it successfully, being on an actual ranch was making her rethink the plan of having a cow in her front yard. Even if she found a way to make it not wander off, she didn’t have any of this fancy equipment and collecting it was going to be… a lot. But they were already penned in here. Maybe she should just come back and learn how to occasionally take care of them here?

“What do you think puppy? Do we leave the cows for now?”

The little dog gave her a confused look. Lily sighed.

“Well, I can’t expect you to always understand me. Come on, let’s go learn how to feed and water the animals. Then we can go home.”

Feeding and watering the animals was surprisingly easy. Google said that almost all of them just ate the grass. That would explain the lack of obvious food troughs, and the fact that the fields seemed much too large for each group of animals at first blush. Things had to grow faster than they ate. Watering was similarly simple. The property had a huge water storage container on it. Lily figured it must be fed through a well or something, but resolved to double check it in a few days to see if it was depleting at all.

But, pipes ran from that all over the property and automatically filled the animals’ water. Lily had been right to try and find a rich ranch. Even if they had the world’s biggest meanest rooster. Really, the only complication she had run into was that she hadn’t known what an electric fence looked like. Lily now knew what an electric fence looked like. She also knew what one felt like.

So, with the animals taken care of as best as she could understand, she loaded her companion into the car and started the long drive home.

---

The ride home was turbulent. The chickens did not stay in the back, so Lily got jumpscared a few times. Thankfully, after the third, the puppy started making a game of keeping them in the back seat. The little thing was smart as a whip! Was this normal for a puppy? Lily had never owned one. She didn’t know how old it was either. It was clearly not a newborn, but definitely not an adult yet either. It still had that puppy type shape.

“I really should think of something to call you. Just ‘puppy’ or ‘dog’ feels pretty weird. But I don’t know if you’re a boy or a girl either. I guess it doesn’t matter. Humanity is gone, so gender norms are out the window too.”

She hesitated. That still felt a little weird. Well, the weirdest part was really that Lily was getting used to it. That was uncomfortable in and of itself. But, she shrugged it off for now. She was still riding the high of a mission mostly successful.

“What about Napoleon Bone-apart? Huh?”

Lily glanced at the puppy. She could swear it rolled its eyes at her. She looked at Bay in the rearview mirror. He had a chicken on his head, and was looking unimpressed with her joke.

“Oh fine. You’re no fun. I could call you Wrangler. ‘Cause you did so well with the chickens. Or Rocky! ‘Cause you fought off that chicken. We could do a training montage to Eye of the Tiger together! Or maybe just you. I’m not convinced my body will ever recover from all this new exercise as it is.”

Lily sighed loudly. She was pretty tired again. Despite that, she was determined not to fall asleep again today. Not until night time.

“Fine. Not Rocky. Maybe I could name you after something I miss, or will miss? Ice Cream isn’t a great name. Softserve! Soft for short? Ehh. No. Do you have any input?”

WOOF!

“Thank you thank you, but I’m not calling you that. Give me a chosen name in English and we’ll talk about it.”

Lily laughed. She felt like she was onto something though. But she hadn’t quite figured it out yet.

“If only I could get you to tell me whether you saw half the crazy stuff I did too. I think you see the everburning flame. I’ll have to see if you notice other magic. Hey, could you tell me if the stars are out?”

Lily’s mood had gone sour. But, she glanced at the dog anyway. It was staring up at her with interest, and she suddenly knew what she should call it.

“Hah, it’s so obvious. I’ll call you Star. You’ve got that stupid looking mark on your forehead, and it’s meaningful enough to me. I might not see another star ever again, so I might as well have a Star, right? Yeah. That sounds right. What do you think, Star?”

Star panted happily in reply.

---

 

When they finally pulled into the garage, Lily was beyond ready to be home for the day. It was only about 5 PM, but it felt like she’d been gone for a week. She closed the garage behind her, and then started grabbing chickens. She wasn’t psyched about walking them through the house, but the backyard was fenced and that would have to do for now. She should have gotten some kind of coop, but she didn’t think of that before now. So, it was a job for the next couple days. She wanted to mess with some magic and relax.

She was thankfully able to get the chickens through the house and into the backyard without them pooping in her house. The car however was not so lucky. She’d have to clean that real good. But that was an issue for tomorrow Lily. Star was running in front of her trying to guess where she was going to go next. It was cute, but she almost tripped a few times. On her last trip out to grab Bay though, she noticed something.

Bay had an egg on his head. Lily burst out laughing. It looked so stupid. The poor little guy had been a nest for that chicken earlier! She grabbed it and started to head in when she heard a whine. Star looked up at her hungrily. She looked down at the dog.

“Hmm. Can you even have just a raw egg?”

She googled it. Thank goodness that was still working. It seemed like the answer was yes. Shell and all, even.

“I see. Gross, but I guess why not? You deserve some food. You worked hard for today.”

She handed Star the egg. She thought the dog would just chew the egg up, but Star shook it back and forth a few times. Then, the dog dropped it on the kitchen floor with a loud crack. Lily was about to get mad, but then she heard the slurp slurp slurp sound of Star licking it up and got grossed out instead.

“Ugh, you’re nasty you know that? Well, I hope you enjoy it. I’ll figure out getting you kibble or something tomorrow. If you get hungry again tonight we’ll search the fridge for something you can eat. Pretty sure there’s raw meat and some dog friendly vegetables. Dunno which ones those are, but we’ll figure it out okay?”

Star was too busy slurping an egg off the floor greedily to pay her any mind. So, Lily checked to make sure things were still downloading and then went to search for a pen and paper. It wasn’t too hard to find them. There was a little study type room near the master bedrooms, and there were plenty of supplies in there.

So, she sat down in front of the TV, turned on something at random for background noise and got to work. She took out the everburning flame, holding it in her hand, and tried to visualize the circle as she’d seen earlier.

To her shock, it was much much easier now that she knew what it was supposed to look like. She could feel the mana moving around it in just the shape she expected. So, she got to work copying down the various glyphs she found.

In the smaller circle, there were three. She marked them down on her paper as glyph 1-3. She noted that a few of them had design elements in common with each other. Glyph #1 had these little star shapes that were common in other glyphs, and its node had a diamond around it..

Glyph #2 was just one of those stars, but the node it was recessed in looked a little different than the others anywhere in the circle. Glyph #3 was just a spiral with an arrow on the end of it.

In the main circle, the larger outer one there were four more glyphs. Glyph #4 was shaped a little like a flame with lines coming off it. Glyph #5 looked like that same flame but with the stars. Glyph #6 was just the stars, and finally Glyph #7 looked like the inverse of Glyph #1.

Lily had written them down dutifully, so now she could look at them clearly without having to focus so hard. She supposed the next thing to do would be to try them out, right? First individually, and then to see if she could replicate the circle she saw.

So, out came a bunch of fresh sheets of paper. She drew a circle that should only have one node, unsure if she was just doodling or if something would really happen. She drew in Glyph #1. Nothing happened.

Lily sighed, but decided not to give up. She varied the circle a bit each time, thinking maybe she hadn’t quite gotten it right for what one with only one node would look like. Glyph #2 also did nothing. Star wandered in and laid next to her, seemingly content having devoured an egg. Lily continued drawing. Glyph #3 did nothing. So did #4, #5, and– wait a second.

She was half way through drawing #6 when something caught her eye. A little flicker. Something moving in the air. She looked at Glyph #5. Sure enough, there was a very slight disturbance forming above it. Staring for a few moments, she got a sense for it. Mana was gathering. Just in a small ball above the sheet of paper. It was very slight. Not even as much as was normally around the everburning flame. But it was there. She could see it! It was growing very slowly.

Lily shook Star to get the dog’s attention, and pointed at the little sphere of mana.

“See? See? Can you see it? I’m not crazy, right? It’s there, right? You can totally see it!”

Star sniffed the air, and started to whine.

“Oh. Do you not like it? Don’t worry, this one should be safe. It’s made of paper, and it’s not on fire.”

The dog whined louder.

“It’s fine! See?”

Lily put her hand into the sphere. It felt a little tickly, but that was it.

“No danger at all.”

Star whined more urgently, and stood up, walking in a small circle near Lily. Lily sighed.

“Look, you don’t have to support me doing this, but just don’t be a pain about it alright?”

Star peed on the floor.