Alexa's dreams were a jumbled mess for the most part; there was a voice humming Humpty Dumpty, Melody literally clucking like a mother hen, and several unkempt teddy bears that shoved bits of honeyed ham into her mouth, but mostly she dreamt of caves.
The cave with the wicked voice was a frequent visitor in her nightmares, but so was another cave, a cave with large fuzzy things, a woman who she could barely make out, and a thin man with a slightly hooked nose and a bowl cut.
The vision she remembered the most was a machine shop, and her father half buried in the innards of a bronze bull. He pulled himself out, smeared some grease on his pockmarked, dented forehead and gazed at her critically.
"I know children like to emulate their parents, but grommets and pistons, girl! You don't have to take it that far!" He huffed.
"Am...am I dead?" Alexa asked "The last thing I remember…"
"You crashed." Hephaestus confirmed. "Going over that mountain in Seattle. But no, girl. Not dead yet. Afraid I can't tell you what happened, I'm only here to offer encouragement."
Alexa waited...and waited…
"You're not very good at this, are you?" She asked dryly. Her father gave her a sheepish smile.
"Regrettably, no." He admitted "I'm not very good at saying these things. So...hmph...maybe...get out there? Give one hundred and ten percent? Go team?"
Alexa sighed and shook her head.
"Love you too, dad." She muttered as the dream began to fade to black.
"Atta girl!" Said the Lord of the Forge, with a bit more enthusiasm than his previous attempts to encourage her. "Just don't feel too down! She's still-" The dream cut off with a sharp snap to black.
When her eyes snapped open, she was in a cave...a pretty well furnished cave. Although the walls were stone and stalagmites and stalactites were all over the place there was also a few electric lamps set up, a nice looking persian rug covered the floor, there was a set of armchairs near the massive bed she was laying in, and a fire merrily crackling in a fireplace set into the wall.
Alexa groaned and tried to sit up, but she was immediately met with pain. She felt like she had been worked over with a meat tenderizer. Her whole body was sore, but it was mostly her chest and hips that hurt the worst.
"Careful!" Said a voice from one side of the room. Alexa turned to find a man, tall and thin, hurrying into the room with a tray of food. He set it down on a table next to her bedside. The man placed a hand behind her back and helped her to sit up. He was somewhere in his fifties, with a perfectly smooth face, a slightly hooked nose, olive skin, and an unmistakable bowl cut hairdo. When he looked down at her, his eyes were kind and full of concern. He wore a simple purple shirt and cargo shorts as if they had stumbled upon each other while he was hiking.
"You're still on the mend!" He chided a little more gently. "Four broken ribs, a half crushed pelvis, shattered tibia, split femur...those don't exactly heal overnight you know!"
"Where…?" Alexa started to ask, but the man shushed her. He brought out a small jar that, when opened, appeared to have some sort of green baby food like paste in it. He grabbed one of the spoons off his tray and scooped up a dollop of the mush, and offered it to her.
Reluctantly Alexa allowed him to feed it to her. She almost immediately started gagging; it was like the unholy love child of napalm and liquid nitrogen! Burning heat and biting cold! She choked it down as her host replaced the lid of the jar. The strange hot and cold sensation seemed to spread from her stomach out to her limbs, fading away to nothing as it reached her fingers and toes
"Not very pleasant, I know, but it helps the bones fuse back together. To answer your question, you're in my home, in Mount Ellinor." He took a moment to put the jar away in his pocket. "And to cut off your next question at the pass, you've been here eight days. It was a bit touch and go for the first two, but after the forty hour mark you started to improve. You're a remarkably lucky young lady, you know that?"
Alexa let out a soft groan. She didn't feel lucky, she felt like roadkill! How had Luna…
"Luna! Where's-"
"Enough of that!" The man said sharply, he really had an air of authority. "You keep working yourself up like that and you'll cause yourself more problems. We collected your automaton for you. It's still...well...it needs repairs, and we didn't think it was wise to mess with it. My wife and I can't really consider ourselves mechanics. We didn't want to break it any worse than it already is."
As he spoke he reached out and picked up his tray and set it in Alexa's lap. On it was a bowl of some red soup, minestrone maybe, and a glass of water.
"Now, let's get some food in you, and then I can show you around a bit, hmm? Can you feed yourself?" He asked gently. Alexa tested arms. Her right was a bit painful, but not unusable. She nodded and slowly began to eat.
"So what do they call you?" Her host asked.
"Alexa...my name's Alexa." She said between mouthfuls of soup. It was probably pretty good, but her worry turned the stuff bland and chalky on her tongue.
"What about you?" She asked, trying to maintain her politeness.
"Call me Aug." The way he said it, it sounded like Og, like Oz's less impressive cousin. "You'd be a child of Vulcan, right?"
It took a moment for Alexa to translate.
"Oh! You mean Hephaestus. How did you know?"
"Well the custom automaton is a bit of a give away. Beyond that, I treated your hands just like I treated the rest of you." Aug explained. "People write their lives into their skin, you know. Scars tell a person's story just as surely as a biography would. Those burns on your hands, that crushed bone in your pinky finger, those scars on your palms, you're a smithy. But those calluses on your fingers. You're a fighter too."
He paused to take a sip of a drink she hadn't recalled him having when he started talking.
"Mostly one handed, with a heavy weapon, a long sword or maybe an axe. And that mark on your arm! The Path of Hercules! Been a while since I've seen one of you!"
Alexa took a moment to process all of that, finishing her soup in relative silence.
"That's...you got quite a bit from that. Pretty accurate too." She admitted. She couldn't help but think of other sets of scars she carried. He smiled at her gently as if he read her mind.
"You'd be surprised just how much you can learn about any topic, given enough time to practice and the right motivation." He set his cup down and gently took her tray from her.
He took a brief step outside the room before returning with a pair of crutches.
"It may be a bit too early for this but I know demigods get fidgety. Let's try to take it slow, okay?" He helped Alexa get the crutches under her and she found, much to her surprise, her clothing had been changed; she was dressed in loose fitting cotton pants and a long sleeved shirt, both with buttons up one side.
"Sorry." Aug muttered sheepishly "I needed to be able to tend to your wounds. Don't worry! Your clothes are washed and dry and once you're fully healed we'll get them back to you!"
Alexa just nodded her head and allowed Dr. Aug to lead her from the room. Past the arched doorway and an odd branching tunnel, was yet another cave, this one styled more like a living room; the floor had another rug on it, there were several chairs and couches arranged in a U shape around a coffee table, a large flat screen tv pressed against one wall, an old fashioned grandfather clock was squeezed between two bookshelves on another. Another fire crackled in a hearth built into a wall and above it, held to the wall with hooks, was an odd looking gold axe that was enclosed by a bundle of rods.
Aug was quick to lead her through this room and into a far more traditional cave. A cave with creatures she had never seen, but instantly recognized.
"Are those…?" Alexa began to say
"Why yes!" Aug said cheerfully. "The indigenous people called them mountain men or hairy men. I like the modern term much more. Sasquatch has such a nice ring to it, don't you think?"
The creatures arrayed in the cave were hairy humanoid creatures with faces like a chimpanzee. Each one stood at least 8 feet tall, with the largest among them closing in on 12 feet. Each one was covered in thick fur ranging from brown, to gray, to black, and each reeked to high heaven. It was something like an old rug that had been left out in the rain and covered with cheese after the mildew had set in.
There were about twenty sasquatches (sasquatchi?) in total, milling around, squeezing into other caves, or grooming one another.
"We have about thirty at any given time, but they're a nomadic species so only a few stick around. They're my friends, I feed them, take care of them, and give them a place to stay while they're in the area and they bring me things; news, scraps, demigods who fall off cliffs." As he spoke one 10 foot tall sasquatch lumbered up to the pair. Before she could protest, the hairy creature had scooped Alexa up. The sasquatch made a low hooting noise like an owl, squeezed her to it's chest with surprising gentleness and then plopped down on the stone floor to start grooming her hair.
"Emily seems to like you." Aug said with a chuckle. "She's the one who found you, you know."
Emily the sasquatch let out a soft "ook!" in way of agreement and continued combing through Alexa's hair. Despite the oddness of the situation and her worry about her dog, Alexa couldn't help but laugh.
"Well, thank you Emily."She said, still chuckling. Emily cooed in response and set her back down on her crutches. Aug led her into a connecting cave which led into...a classroom. There was no other way to describe it. There was a chalkboard, a large desk, a map of the United States, several pictures of barnyard animals, and a poster of a cyclops holding an upside down book with what Alexa could only assume was something about reading printed in fancy and not at all demigod friendly cursive.
At several desks spread around the room were little Sasquatches, each only about 3 or 4 feet tall, staring straight forward at a woman in a green blouse and slacks, her brown hair in a bob cut. The woman gave off an aura that screamed "Teacher", to such a degree that Alexa had no doubt she would've been able to see it in a crowd. She had an infectious smile, and a look of such joyful encouragement in her eyes that said "If my students get the right answers, that'd just make my day!"
"Okay class, now, who can tell me the best way to avoid trouble with mortals?" She asked her class of bigfeet. A sasquatch in the corner with red-brown fur let out a grunt and patted the table rapidly.
"Well yes, I suppose you could lumber past someone, but that's only half of the answer. Can anyone tell Charlie what the other half is?"
Another sasquatch child let out a low, hesitant sound. The teacher's smile blazed like the sun.
"Good job Claire! That's exactly right." She reached into her desk and put a small piece of candy onto the desk of the sasquatch. "You see, class, it's not just enough to walk past mortals, you have to trick them away from your whole family. As Claire said, you simply walk past a few individuals, far away from your troop. These individuals will draw attention from other mortals who will come to where you were, while you circle back to the troop and continue on!"
The teacher looked past the little bigfoot at the two newcomers to her class room. "Alright everyone, that's enough for today. Back to your troop, I bet some of the foragers have returned by now!"
The sasquatches all got up and hurried past Alexa and Aug, chartering happily and rough housing just like any number of human children. The teacher smiled after them before approaching Alexa and Aug. She grabbed Aug in an embrace. They shared a kiss, a long and deep one that, given their age, made Alexa feel deeply uncomfortable. It felt like watching her parents smooching or something!
Her eyes were drawn to Aug's right arm, the sleeve had been pushed up slightly to reveal a tattoo on the inside of his forearm. There on his arm was a black lyre, set above the letter SPQR, which itself was set above the letters MMXXXVIII. Alexa was about to ask about it, but right at that moment the pair pulled apart and the tattoo was covered by Aug's sleeve again.
"Well you must be Alexa! My sister told me you'd be stopping by at some point!" Said the teacher. "Glad you made it...mostly intact."
"Your… sister? Who's…?" Alexa began to ask.
"Rhea can be so imprecise sometimes. Honestly I blame Woodstock for that. But because she can be a bit off the mark we didn't really know when you were going to arrive. Last time she told me to expect a guest I was left waiting for a century." She smiled and gave a small shake of the head, as if Rhea, the Titan Queen, was little more than her scatterbrained little sister. The woman extended a hand. "I'm Mnemosyne, but my students call me Mrs. M. Wonderful to meet you."
"Mrs. M…?" She turned to look at Aug while she shook the titaness' hand. "You married the goddess of memory?"
"Of course! Who else would leave such a lasting impression on anyone who saw us together?" Mnemosyne blushed slightly at Aug's praise and light flirting.
"Oh hush!" She hissed back through her grin. "You used that line fifty times this century!"
"Doesn't stop it from being true!" Aug answered with a wink. Alexa cleared her throat slightly.
"Right!" Aug half laughed. "My dear, Alexa was eager to find her friend."
"Shop room then!" Mnemosyne led both Aug and Alexa to another room that resembled a workshop, but except for one corner the place was coated in a fine layer of dust.
"I found out pretty quickly that sasquatches are all thumbs...you would not believe the kind of accidents we've had here. I still have nightmares about the band saw incident…"
But Alexa wasn't listening. Her eyes were drawn to the only non-dusty table. She began to hobble as fast as the crutches would allow. There, in pieces, was Luna. Only two of her legs were attached, her left main wing bent nearly ninety degrees out of alignment. Her muzzle had been flattened like a crushed soda can, and one of her eyes was missing entirely. Alexa almost sobbed.
"Luna…" she whimpered, tears stinging at the edge of her vision. A hand fell on her shoulder.
"I had Sasquatches comb the entire mountain with metal detectors." Aug said gently. "We think we found everything, but if not…"
"If not…" Alexa said, determination replacing her guilt and despair. "Then I can build new parts...she'll be alright."
She turned back to her faithful canine, and looked into her one good, dim eye.
"She has to be." She added under her breath.
Author's Note: To quote a titan with a battle broom 'There's always at least one good one'. On a different note, I'm not sure if I'll get the next chapter done before the end of the year, so if I don't, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Winter Solstice, Festive Krampus Nacht, whatever you celebrate, have a good one, and a Happy New year to all of ya! See you all in 2022