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: Fire and Rescue would be taking place perhaps 6 years after the humans' arrival.
Disclaimer: Don't own no canon characters. They belong to Disney. Weesa be makin' no money offa dis!
NOTE: Okay, might as well officially call this a crossover now, with all the Chronicles of Amber elements in it.
Elena was on the radio, speaking to Shayla over a tightly encrypted channel. The Harrier woman had found herself a small local airport that was out of the fire zone and got herself a meal, a rest and a fuel-up. Shayla was also ready to go back to Ash Mountain to pick up anything else that might be needed. The topic of "what is going on now?" was carefully avoided; Elena did not want Shayla too closely involved right then. Shayla's brand of magic was a whole different animal from Nomad shamanry and could lead to conflicts of the different sorts of energies that would have to be contained in a very small zone. Better it was for her to apply her talents to "logistics" for the time being.
After concluding the transmission, Elena looked back to the old shamaness, who was still closely monitoring her granddaughter. Mii was breathing regularly, but what Nick and Wally had told them about a fall and concussion concerned them. Among other things on the "shopping list" Elena had given Shayla was anything in the way of field-portable medical equipment that they could spare. Mii had already received a saline drip and some painkillers by injection, and the ghosts had reported some vomiting, but no serious dizziness or seizures in the hours immediately after. The helmet and the structural fillet in the girl's hair had (praise the physics gods) taken the brunt of the impact. Neither could be found, but that was the least of anyone's concerns at present.
"Shen'a?" ("Granddaughter?") the shamaness bent over further as Mii stirred. "Mo'da keigri?" "Do you hear me?"
Mii blinked, finally, and inhaled deeply. "Me'li? Besh'ni kadna wei?" ("Grandmother, how did you get here?")
"Mol'nei Elena." ("With Elena.")
"Mii?" Elena knelt down beside her. "How do you feel right now? Any head or neck pain? Blurred vision? Tingling or numbness?"
Mii turned her face towards the Amberite. "Bit of a headache, but I see you just fine." Her face took on a frown. "If you know, Mother knows. She must be having a foal."
"Which is why we didn't have her along." Mii's grandmother shifted back to her thickly accented English. "Well, you have come back from your first "night journey", you're a woman now, and on the starlight path. What did you see?"
"We saw the Jewel-Eyed one, Me'li." Mii attempted to sit up, only to find that hadn't been such a great idea so soon. "At a distance, but that's so much more than we had."
The shamaness straightened up and tilted her head back, eyes shut. "She is in the air. Here. Here I was, thinking She had lost us!"
"It was so many years." Mii winced as Elena did some pinch-tests on her legs and arms.
"A few." her grandmother replied. "But She didn't give up on us." Her attention turned to Nick, who had settled with Wally again. "I know that she gave the task of guiding her to you, but, to say like the Mountain people do, it could have been handled better. A LOT better!" She motioned towards the horses, and N'Sheki in particular. "That demon of a mare alone could have killed her." As if to underscore the point, N'Sheki pinned her ears and squealed as she tried to steal Moonstone's share of sweet feed. The tall war-horse wasn't having it, and snapped back at her; N'sheki answered by turning her hindquarters to the cremello, offering to kick. The shamaness' pack pony, ever the opportunist, moved in on the rest of the sweet feed while the others were distracted with the spat.
Elena rose to her feet. "Knock it off, you two!" Before she could act, however, Wally moved in with just enough force to shoulder the horses apart. They then danced at the ends of their tethers, snorting and pinny. The Amberite, muttering, took up the mare's tether and re-tied her well away from the others, despite the latter's attempts to savage her arm. "It's a wonder you got anywhere with this rank little witch."
Nick smirked. "The last two weeks have been a mutual hate session. But Mii's little pony just wasn't up to it."
"Never get between N'Sheki and food." Mii heaved herself to a sitting position. "Too bad Father didn't have her to ride in his last battle. He might've had more of a chance."
"Not so fast, young lady." her grandmother, who had been rummaging in the packs, lunged back over. She popped open a bottle of homebrew applecane cider. "Elena poured a whole bag of that salt-water into your thirsty veins, but drink something anyway."
"And take some codeine with it." Elena came back to the first-aid pack. The scanner was becoming talkative again. Mii'auww grabbed it. Her brain was still a little foggy, still struggling to manage the information that had been dumped into her. So much that was... personal, and still raw, balanced with the contents of rule books, radio protocols, weather and wind data, and endless acres of maps and terrain. Mii suddenly had this mad desire for thick, black coffee of all things, but caffeine was the last thing she needed. The cider was fizzy and heavily laced with ginger, and at least it worked for her current sugar-hunger.
On the scanner, there was an urgent conversation, between the Air Attack base and Blade. Mii looked up. "The chief is up again. He's heading in this direction. Dusty is already here." There was a drone of a fixed-wing engine somewhere in the smoking, red-tinged dark below the falls.
Elena turned, eyes squinting as she looked down-valley "Just HOW MUCH of a jolt did you give to the air boss?"
"Enough to lay her out flat from oh, early evening to just about now." Wally started to rise above the trees. "Nick, what did the two of you do at the base?"
"Just left him a message on the circuit that was left after what she did with the hair." Nick dared an uneasy glance towards Mii's grandmother. "She got a bit of... an info-dump."
The shamaness shot another glare back at Nick. "THAT is why we don't normally do that kind of thing without VERY experienced help nearby. Mii gave him energy, she brought him back from the jaws of death's wolves, but she didn't have the know-how or the safety measures to keep the channel shut the other way, and who knows how much of his personal life and knowledge was flooded into her? Knowledge of the intimate life of another can be a heavy burden." She rose. "It's done, you can't unspill milk, but it may take years to process and manage it all, and keep it safe. And he will HAVE to know, eventually, what happened."
Nick winced, but his eyes did not waver. "Normally, ma'am, things like this shouldn't happen, but this... situation... was never "normal" to begin with. I had no frickin' idea that the Maker of this world had scheduled a damn forest fire for this week's festivities, and I wouldn't know if your Lady knew or not. But we are now a whole lot closer to the point where you can ask her yourself."
Mii swallowed the last of the cider a little hard, and wiped her mouth. "While I was... out, there was something else I saw..."
Her grandmother raised an eyebrow. "And this was?"
"I saw everyone fleeing the big lodge." Mii explained, "But in the middle of that, a woman appeared. She looked human, but was tall in the way that Elena is, though she was wearing fancy Mountain-people clothes. Her hair was long and brown. She spoke to me and told me to tell... Elena... that she was here."
"Elena, did you hear that?" the shamaness called out. Elena looked back with wide eyes, then bolted back. She asked for a repeat of the general description, and sat for a moment with clouded eyes before reaching to the bottom of her own carry-bag and extracting a bejewelled box and opening it. What was inside the box looked like...
Tarot cards.
"I don't think it could be anything else, the way you describe it." Elena spread out the cards. They appeared to be elaborately painted miniature portraits of people in beautiful clothes and settings, but each with a distinct color scheme. "Does she look like any one of these people?"
Mii studied them. After several minutes, she came to a portrait of a tall, pale woman with medium-brown hair, and a gown with the colors of rich, dark coffee and off-white cream. Her brow furrowed and studied the features, and she nodded.
"That one."
"Thank you, Mii." Elena said nothing else, at first. She carefully gathered up the cards in order and replaced them in their little casket, and put it away with equal care. Mii had already sort-of done the math, and inquired no further. But as Elena stood up again, she heard something escape the woman's lips.
It sounded like "Sand."
"She said one other thing." Mii turned her gaze directly ahead, beyond the falls. "That fully opening the path to our summer place would take a warrior's sacrifice. A willing one, from someone of this world."
Both Elena and the shamaness froze, then one glanced to the other. The scanner's static was broken once again.
"Patch, do you copy? I've located Dusty, and the two campers. Looks bad. I'm going in."
"That was Blade." Mii pursed her lips.
Elena didn't answer. She turned and started running, to the trail she'd spotted earlier that lead to the gorge. She called out to Nick and Wally. "Come on, both of you!"
"Lady are you abso-f***inglutely nuts? That's a damn hellscape down there!" Wally exclaimed, but he barreled along after her nonetheless.
Mii tried to rise, but her head had other ideas, sending her a wave of pain and nausea that almost lost her the cider she'd just had, and she collapsed to her hands and knees, gasping.
"Granddaughter, you can do no more right now." her grandmother laid her back on the bedroll they'd set her on. "You already know Elena, no earthly fire stops her. You, on the other hand, need to rest so that we can finish what was started here, and this time, whatever we have to do, we do properly."
Mii'auww laid back. "Yes, grandmother."