NOTE: This is derived from the "Swept Away" RP continuity which started in 2007 and has continued in various forms and spinoffs ever since, first on the old Hillbilly Hell forum and presently in Wingnut City. I'm sure it's not the first or only "Humans in the Carsverse" thing that ever came up, but boy, has it had staying power. By the in-RP timeline, the events of Planes 2 would be taking place perhaps 6 years after the humans' arrival.

WINDLIFTER:

After we did our show at the Corn Festival, we still had some time to kill before going home. This year's festival, I understand, was a bit different - the humans had a bigger presence, setting up a display in a field just beyond the limits of the town. They had brought more of their animals in - their horses, goats and cattle, their feathered birds, some dogs and cats, all for us to see. I already knew their closest local associate, a Skyraider of the Raven tribe by the name of Kathleen - from years back - but we had not had time to visit until now.

Never before had my nose scented such things, and I'm told I have one of the best. Dusty, however, already knows a few of them, and he was eager to introduce us. Whatever, it gave him an excuse to fend off Dipper for a while, though the baby animals in their pens were also a welcome distraction for her to coo over. And I don't think I've seen our chief so wide-eyed as when that little human toddler girl came and looked up at him with eyes that seemed just as huge, and then patted his nose. Dusty's friend Sparky was right there with his camera, capturing that moment for posterity before the child's mother, all embarrassed and apologetic, finally caught up with her. Blade took it all in good humor, as gentle with the little girl as one of the humans' own great horses. It was something different to see him so relaxed, as if a great burden had finally been lifted off of him.

But it had been only weeks before that he might never have seen this day. And Dusty might never have lived to see the day of his SEAT certification. The cave where they'd taken cover that day, it would give them a measure of protection, but if the fire had burned any longer, they would surely have suffocated. With so much fuel around, that fire could have taken so much longer to burn over than it did. Under those conditions, it should have.

Why not?

Next to the humans' camp, there was a great paddock. They were doing demonstrations there, riding their horses, which still seem a bit unreal to me. There were several distinct groups, and how they'd all come here was a long and complicated story that Kathleen had tried to relate as simply as possible.

There were the original few hundred of Ash Mountain, another couple of hundred rescued later from their world's version of NORAD, and a group from their Austria, army people and others who'd brought more horses with them - the small golden ones, the big drafts, and the prancing grays whose movements seem to be as close to flight as a horse can get. When that stallion leaped into the air, I knew that at some point he must come down again, but damn, he was striving for it!

Then, there was another group, who were very different in their ways, and came from another place. Others call them "Nomads". Their horses are also different, with manes that stand up instead of falling down. These people are archers as well as riders, and they can hit a target while facing almost backwards at full gallop. Every Nomad, man or woman, can ride a horse and shoot a bow. They are introduced to both almost before they can walk.

The Nomads' demonstration consisted of hitting a series of targets at a full run. Even their courtship is like this, I'm told. If a man seeks the hand of a woman, he must be at least able to match her shot for shot. It would take a hell of a man to equal the speed and accuracy of the maidens who displayed their skills for us! For the final runs, they used whistling fire arrows, all hitting home as precisely as the ones before.

Then, it felt to me like the last piece of a puzzle had snapped into place.

A backfire denies fuel to the main fire. It can bring an end to a blaze much sooner.

But it doesn't just start itself, and it's not business for amatuers.

So, who? I can't say right now, I'm just a working-class chopper with a particularly good nose.

MII'AUWW:

Years ago, my people lived on the steppes of our own world. We lived in our tents and yurts and followed our herds from high pastures to low and back again, with the seasons. Our warriors were a match for all comers... until a new army came that we had not ever seen before. It lit up our steppes like a wildfire, and we could only run before it, until there were only a few of the People with the remnants of their herds and their backs against the sheer, impassable mountains of the east. I saw my father ride off with the other men who would make a last stand, and he never returned. It was then that we saw a new group of riders, led by a gold-haired woman who forced the attackers into a temporary retreat - and then offered us a pathway out, even though we couldn't see any. All we had to do was... follow her... meaning, exactly, literally that.

It was almost too much to believe, but we were out of options. We packed up everything, gathered our herds, and rode after Elena of Amber, and around us, the whole world shifted, again and again, but as long as we were in line of sight, we were taken along with her. In several weeks, we arrived in a place that the Chaos could not touch, that was always stable, because everything in it was "Pattern-Born" as Elena put it. But it was a world we almost had no words to describe! Machines, some large, some small, all moving and speaking and living as we do. It was so much to take in when the most complicated "machine" we'd ever seen before was a simple windmill or a water screw, and they certainly didn't move on their own.

There were other humans there too, not many, but they had also been displaced from their home. But they explained the machines to us, and that the machines here were also people. We found a stretch of land to camp on, and as long as we didn't think about what was over the horizon, it was almost like home some days. But we could not go on not thinking about the rest of the world, our elders said that we would have to deal with it, and it would be easier for us children. So we went to some of the classes that the other children went to, learned their main language, learned to use guns and power tools and radios and phones and computers when they were needful, but we still kept our culture in our own dwelling places. Maybe someday we will once again ride across our own steppes... but not today.

Perhaps not this lifetime.

On the second morning of her time of Passage, Mii'auww once again woke to the pinpoint light skirling and looping over her face. It alighted briefly on her nose tip before resuming its antics. Sighing, the girl flung her bedroll aside and sat up, reaching for the small bag that contained her comb, bodkins and fillet.

"All right, all right." Mii'auww combed out her hair in abrupt, choppy strokes, sectioned off the front with one of the bodkins, and then positioned the wool-felt structural fillet behind the part. All of the sectioned hair, except for the center bangs, was pulled back over the fillet, then secured with a woven, beaded headband before she finished with a herringbone braid and tuck in the back. She looked in her little mirror to make sure that the fillet's center section of stamped leather and beads was properly centered, as the center bangs hung down her forehead and exposed it. Mii'auww pulled on her bloomers, then wrapped her overtunic over her linen shift, finishing with the folded sash. After that, socks and boots. Then her pouch and dagger, in the sash's folds.

Pushing aside the flaps of the packbeast-hair tent, Mii'auww emerged into the nippy blue predawn, almost feeling the dew through her thin bootsoles. The herds were visible as shadowy masses that occasionally attenuated and separated into individual animals before again coalescing in their search for grass. She looked back to check on Taki, who she had staked by the tent. The gelding was nibbling what he could through his grazing muzzle, but turned an ear towards Mii'auww as he noted her attention.

In the distance, an indignant squeal broke the morning silence. Mii'auww knew the source without even having to look. Their family's dominant mare, N'sheki - "Toe Biter"- was chasing one of the lower-ranking horses, ears pinned and teeth bared. What had that poor soul done to incur her wrath? With N'sheki, it didn't take much, just getting a little too much into her bubble would suffice. The mare's teeth raked the rump of the dun-coated offender, who reacted with another squeal and an ineffectual kick before the final retreat.

N'sheki, a smokey-black sabino with high whites and a spot on the belly, rolled her honey-toned eyes and snorted. "Toe biter" was a name she had justly earned among the tribe; if any rider sat a little wrong in the saddle or was too hard and too long with rein pressure, she'd reach right around and bite their boot tip. Once N'sheki had succeeded in pulling someone right out of the saddle that way, and she hadn't forgotten, oh no. For this reason, among others, the mare had hardly been handled in months. People had far bigger things to deal with than a single rank mare. Now, she trotted back to the herd, with what Mii'auww perceived roughly as smug vindication. N'sheki had no foal this year; she was one of those "every other year" mares who MIGHT concieve if the wind and stars and omens were nothing short of exactly right, and the stallion hadn't offended her in some way.

Finally, Mii'auww turned, stretched and yawned. She went over to Taki and looked him over. The gelding was eighteen summers old, and the years were starting to tell on his little sorrel frame. Of late, over the past year, Taki had started to have trouble with his feet. Mii'auww hoped this founder wouldn't be of the chronic kind, but the past ten years had been rough on him and founder would be no surprise. As she checked the gelding's forefeet, he put his head down and blew softly into her hair. Mii'auww straightened up again, took a few bits of dried applecane from her sash pouch and held them out to Taki, who eagerly lipped them up. The dancing light was not so visible in daytime, more like a midge now. It hovered around at arm's length, sometimes flitting in close around Taki and getting a snap or a kick for its troubles.

"Stop teasing him. Please." Mii'auww muttered. The light-point drew back momentarily, but it would be back. Be polite, and the spirits will be reasonable, her grandmother had counseled. It had appeared not long after the start of her Passage, while she was doing her throat singing exercises, coming perilously close to her mouth as her lips, tongue and teeth created the resonance for the base tone to separate into separate components. It seemed that only she, Grandmother and the animals could see this tiny, glowing pinpoint, which was said to be a spirit's manifestation in the material world. To truly see who it was and have full two-way communication... well, it took a full-fledged shaman to do that.

Mother, of course, was oblivious as she kept pressing Mii'auww to practice her overtone techniques, expecting her to take on the tradition of the family women. Mii'auww was the second of four children, but the only daughter, which raised the very real possibility that if she didn't take up the skill, another part of the tribe's heritage could face oblivion, and it was quite difficult to argue that point when the tribe had already lost two-thirds of its fighting men and one-fifth of everyone else.

The pressure had weighed heavily on her in the past year, as her hours of schooling at the mountain complex were reduced and her voice practice time went up. The girl had always been ambivalent about her lessons at Ash Mountain; on one hand she was learning to speak, read and write English and do math, and use any technology that could prove genuinely useful and relevant to her life here. On the other hand, Mii'auww had never ceased hearing giggles behind her back from other children who thought that the sound of her name came more than a bit close to the noise that a cat makes. After being around housecats for a while, she had to admit they had a point.

She still didn't like it very much, and her Passage had given her a lot more time to dwell on it.

NICK:

He saw her as a human woman, except that her eyes glowed with colors - sometimes opal, sometimes jade, sometimes coral or something he couldn't guess at. That was why her nomad votaries referred to her as "The Jewel-Eyed One." She wore a gown of scarlet and emerald, her headress was like a wreath of gold leaves, her blue-black hair was in braids sparkling with pinpoints of light, and she sat on a cream-colored horse with hooves of jade, that wore neither saddle nor bridle, for what goddess had need of those? Behind her, half a league distant, was a great host of mounted warriors with standards rippling in the wind. They were so many as to frustrate all attempts at the estimation of their numbers.

He and she stood at the edge of a clear montane lake, with a view of green steppes far below, the land of Ever Summer. It was a bit awkward, essentially being a visitor to another people's afterlife. But the Jewel-Eyed one had known his want, and he had reckoned to bargain with her, though at times he found the sight of her a bit too much to take in and found himself staring at his own reflection in that lake's surface - a helicopter of the universe known to some as "Terra Machina" or just "Machina". He was on the small side, with skids; those with the knowledge would see in him many characteristics of an MD-500, with some Eurocopter and Robinson features here and there. It was true that he had been a crossbreed, the offspring of love-matched parents who had opted to "birth" to themselves rather than "build" in a factory matrix, with standardized parts to be added at maturity . He had grown up bold, if not always wise, and had parlayed his natural charm and stunting prowess into a TV acting career. The show was a hit, and he and his co-stars were at the top of the world...

Until, one day, the stunts and a freak crosswind got the best of him, and his spirit rose from his smoldering remains, to a place his dearest friend could never reach, as long as they were on opposite sides of the mortal veil. To him, afterlife seemed almost a curse, as he looked from above, to see his acting partner fall apart, and then, slowly, painfully, remake his life into something else. Seeing his friend achieve that goal had brought him a measure of satisfaction and closure, but there was a part of his friend's heart that had never moved on from the tragedy, and that, the departed one, the one who had lived as Nicolas Emilio Lopez, still had cause to regret. What he wanted now, more than anything, was to talk to his old co-star one more time.

One last time.

"Nicolas." the voice - Her voice - reached like soft, feathered fingers into his mind. "The people who follow me may never regain their first home for many generations. They now pitch their tents and graze their herds in other places, including the realm of your people. They will need to know who the wholesome spirits are in that place, and be friends with them. You have a need, and we have a need. We can help each other." To Nick, the language she was using seemed to be almost like that used to a two-year-old, but he realized that there were some things here that were still, presently, beyond his grasp. "Look down again."

Nick's eyes returned to the surface of the lake, which had become as still as glass. At first it seemed that it only reflected the clouds above, but he saw land below them... high meadows, somewhere in the mountain states. Animals new to this world, with round-barrelled bodies that seemed to be on jointed stilts, from which necks and tails sprouted. Some were small, with shorter necks and small tails, and there seemed to be nothing they couldn't climb. Some were larger, and had longer tails and short necks and legs, and they lowed and bellowed like tractors. Others had long legs, long tails and long necks, and their keepers - the two-legged humans - could ride them. Those last were horses, like the mount of the Jewel-Eyed one and her company, and their neighing was something he'd never heard before, though their whickering and blowing-out sounds were a little bit like the noises airplanes occasionally made, when clearing their noses.

Crouching lower on his skids, Nick squinted to see the details. The view seemed to get closer to the ground, showing the scope of the displaced humans' settlement - the transplanted mountain/cavern complex, the surrounding fields and new support structures, and the later arrivals from other parts of that world, and the tribe group from a different continuum. All in all, there were perhaps 1500 souls there, exceeding the bare-minimum viable population level by the margin of a few hundred. Whether there were still humans left alive in the places they'd left, and how many, were still uknown.

"The core group have been here five summers now, going on six." the goddess stated, "The remnants of the tribe came with Elena, at the height of the first summer." she pointed out a youngish-looking woman with long, blonde hair. "She is of an ancient line that can walk or ride between worlds just as my children would migrate between pastures, but there is great dissension in her family, and she would have none of it, hence her distance from them." The view shifted again, to the resident vehicles, many of them aircraft or pitties, and a few cars. "They have allied with one of the local tribes, who in turn are users of magic. There are also humans who have the ability to take advantage of the higher levels of magic here, and commune with the world of spirits. Among my own children, there is a line of shamans, though the ravages of the chaos war have left that line in peril. It is harder for me to speak to them directly, now. The last daughter of the line of shamans must open her spirit eyes to keep the link between us. It must happen soon, before other forces determine the course of her life."

Nick lifted his eyes again, turning back to the Jewel-Eyed One. "And that's where... I come in?"

"Yes." the goddess gestured again, and the scene on the lake's surface changed another time. There was a girl, perhaps thirteen years of age, riding a sorrel pony across the scrubs of southwestern Colorado. "This is her, whose name is Mii'auww." Nick manfully suppressed his reaction to the sound of the name - almost like "Meow". "Like all of the tribe when they reach that age, she is going on her Passage, a season living apart from all others, to fend for herself during that time. When she returns, she will be no longer a child, but a woman in the tribe's eyes, and from there the rest of her life will begin. From her father's side, she has the shamanic gift. From her mother's side, she has the gift of song. Mii'auww's mother desires that she follow as a singer, but she also feels the pull of her father's line. To them, it is one or the other, and that may have been possible on the home steppes, before the chaos war, but in this new age, we cannot leave any gift untouched."

Up until now, the helicopter-spirit had been content to leave most of the talking to the Jewel-Eyed one, but he finally spoke up further. "Still, she's kinda young. It's a long way between the Four Corners and Piston Peak. I don't see Blade going anywhere far from his post right now, not in fire season, and that smarmy bastard superintendent - 'scuse my French, ma'am - is giving him and everybody else at the park a slingload of grief. How am I going to pull this off?"

"No one else will be seeing or speaking to Mii'auww during her Passage." the goddess replied. "She will not be missed for a while." the view in the lake pulled back, details disappearing until just the outline of national and state boundaries remained. A bright trail traced its way from southwestern Colorado to the park site, a distance of several hundred miles. "There is an unbroken trail, for those who can travel without paved roads. She will have to ride across open country to reach the trailhead, and then travel only when the darkness veils her, but it is possible. But... the horse she has ridden from the time she could first walk, that one is no longer sound enough for the journey. He would founder before the third day. Mii'auww must choose another mount, and anything you can do to persuade her, would be helpful."

Nick's mouth pursed awkwardly. "Horses aren't something I'd know anything about."

The map vanished from the lake view, and once again, the countryside appeared. There was Mii'auww's small tent, her staked gelding, and a herd of nomad-stock horses grazing not far from there. They were not large beasts, but had a strong build and substantial bone, though their most distinctive characteristic was the mane that stood upright like the bristles of a brush, in contrast to the horses of the main human settlement whose manes draped their necks like women's hair. The Jewel-Eyed one pointed, and Nick's eyes followed her finger. "That mare, the black one with the four white feet, the blaze and the light eyes. She has a temper, but she also has stamina, and hooves like iron. She will make the journey."

Nick stifled a snicker as he watched the mare chase a lower-ranking horse around the herd, "I still don't know horses, but it looks like she really, REALLY wants a piece outta that other one."

"She is the head mare." the goddess seemed to shrug, if divine entities actually did that. "Her absence will lead to some fights in the herd until a new order is achieved, but it cannot be helped." The lake was restored to a view of water and the sky it reflected. "You will have to do what you can to influence Mii'auww. Until her spirit-eyes are opened, she will see you only as a point of light, and hear none of your words. Movement will be your speech."

"Well, I can definitely move." the helicopter finally dared a grin. "That's why they called me "Loop'n Lopez."

"It's time, Nicolas." the goddess lifted her hand. "Go with my blessing, different as we are." The helicopter's form condensed, into a tiny, intense pinprick of bluish-white light, and it hovered for a beat or two before finally zipping up into the sky.

But, not before looping a few times.

Blade, we never had a chance to say goodbye, but it isn't just that. Not all of you is in the here and now. You're still on that damn cliff, every damn night while your team watches our TV glory days behind your back - gotta love fangirls, right? But if you're gonna survive what's coming, you need to move on. Not forget, keep the good stuff, the good times we had. But let the hole inside you fill up with something else. Something... healthy. I can't reach you alone. I hate to get the kid involved, but I need her help. But I'll do my best to guide her and help her make the best decision, promise.

I promise...

You wouldn't forgive me if I led her astray.

Mii'auww looked down to her feet, noting how far down they now hung from Taki's sides. She'd had to punch another hole in the stirrup leathers to accommodate her growth spurt. The point at which she would outgrow her old pony was now "sooner" rather than "later". The stream and its small falls beckoned to them as they followed the herd to the pool that formed in the hollow below. The lead mare, of course, was always first, quick to pin her ears and ready with her teeth and hooves to show any interloper that there was only one alpha and it wasn't them.

Mii'auww halted Taki as the last of the stragglers put their heads down to drink, and dismounted with her toiletries and towel. She allowed her gelding a good drink before tethering him to a tree at the water's edge. Then, she stripped down to her shift, filled a collapsible bucket, and began her morning ablutions.

Interestingly, she found that this was one time where the lightpoint didn't follow her, instead meandering among the horses like a bright fly. It looped deftly through a series of snaps, kicks, tail swipes and irritable equine attitudes to circle over the lead mare, she of the smokey-black coat, amber eyes and lots of what the other people at Ash Mountain referred to as "chrome". N'Sheki shook her stiff, bristly mane, snapped her tail, and eyed the interloper with a haughty disdain before wading a little further into the pool and pawing at the surface of the water. She wasn't going to be bullied about by any obnoxious little light-mite!

Mii'auww sat on a rock beneath the tree where she'd tied Taki, going over her legs with a washcloth. She paid attention to the goings-on in a corner-of-the-eye way, rolling those eyes when the dot started pestering N'Sheki. "What are you bothering her for? Just stop, you're making her mad. She's difficult enough as it is."

Abrubtly, the spark left N'sheki's flank. It came to a point about three feet from where Mii'auww was sitting and alighted on another rock. "Well, at least you're respecting MY space," the girl continued scrubbing away at her shin, "Are you one of the Little Ones from the old land, or are you one of the locals?"

The spark lifted slightly, paused and then moved in a rapid downstroke, then out from that at a right angle. It repeated that twice - a letter "L" from the Roman alphabet that formed the basis of written English. Mii'auww and the other Nomad children had been going to classes part-time at Ash Mountain ever since their arrival. They had learned to speak and write English, calculate in Arabic numerals and use radios, computers and cell phones whenever those proved genuinely useful. In fact, Mii'auww had an FRS radio and a hand-held scanner back at the tent, though she hadn't had cause to use either on Passage.

"All right, I get it." she raised her hand as the spark progressed to an "O" and a "C". "You're from around here, then. Why are you hanging around? Can't you go to my grandmother, or the ladies at the Mountain? I can't be much help to you, I'm doing my Passage." There was at least one human there who could wield the local forces, summon them as magic, and two aircraft women who could do the same. But perhaps their talents were not the same as a shaman's, and the spark's answer was a vigorous side-to-side movement that Mii'auww interpreted as a "NO." It then looped and spelled out more letters in the air. "JUST YOU AND ME AND DERA - KISET"

Mii'auww sat upright, clutching the washcloth so tightly that water ran from between her fingers. "You know the fourth name of the Lady?" The Jewel-Eyed one had four names, one for each season. But "Dera-Kiset", Her "Winter name" was never shared with outsiders, for it took on the added significance of the aspect of Her that was guardian of the dead, and of the tribe's most secret inner places.

"SHE TOLD ME." the light spelled back. "HARD 4 HER ... 2 TALK... 2 U HERE ... BUT I CAN. U R THE LAST IN SHAMAN LINE... U HAVE 2 OPEN EYES."

"Spirit eyes, you mean?" Mii'auww leaned forward. "Grandmother says that once that happens, there is no other path but the Moon Path. And Mother would have a calf, because her heart's set on me taking her place as a singer. It would be like one of those... oh, those "grenade" things going off in the middle of the family."

"I KNOW." the light looped again, its figures becoming smoother and more cursive. "GODDESS SAYS THIS IS DIFFERENT TIME. U CAN DO BOTH THINGS, BUT U RLY NEED 2 OPEN EYES SOON."

"But that means... a vision-journey." Mii'auww stood up. "A long one, by horse. How is that possible in your world?" As if on cue, a jet roared overhead, on the approach path for the municipal airport in Cortez, the nearest population center to Ash Mountain. The aircraft, a well turned-out Cessna Citation male in livery of teal, burgundy and white, was at a point in his descent that Mii'auww could easily make out the color of his eyes beneath his visor; the contrail he left behind stood out starkly in the sky for a few minutes before starting to dissipate. "Beyond this little patch of land, they're all your people. No way any human would get about unnoticed."

The spark danced madly. "YES THERE IS A WAY. I SHOW YOU OK? "