Chapter 13

The food was very good and the assembled diners quickly plowed through much of it, while Roger, George, Brad Henderson and Phillip supped at their glasses of ale after every bite.

The adult ladies enjoyed a gently chilled wine assortment to go with the meats being offered, while the kids had various soft drinks.

When most of the food was gone, George brought out the dessert, an upside down pineapple cake baked in a very large cast iron skillet and soon, everyone was quietly nibbling at the dessert 'like grandma used to make' quipped George.

Roger chuckled and retorted, "You never knew your grandma and neither did I know mine!"

George merely shrugged and retorted, "I got the recipe off the internet and the skillet at a thrift store, so sue me!"

Mia, without missing a beat said, " You boys play nice now! Don't make me intervene."

Roger grinned at her and said cheerfully, "Yes ma'am!"

George simply smiled at his wife's implied threat.

Moments after that, Roger once again, felt a slight tugging on his sleeve.

Not bothering to even look, he reached down and lifted the baby lamia into his lap for an after dinner nap.

Mia sipped at her coffee, smiled and murmured, "She really likes you, our girls are usually fairly shy around relative strangers and you, they barely know. Yet there they are, taking turns coiling up in your lap to sleep."

"I just have that effect on kids, I bore them so much they fall asleep on me!" he said with his crooked grin in place.

Mia grinned at him and remarked drily, "Hopefully, they'll let Freya have you back again!"

Freya glanced over at the mention of her name and Roger quickly said, "Mia's just being a tease, her babies have taken a liking to me and she's implying they'll take posession of me." for emphasis, he pointed at the tiny lamia coiled up in his lap.

Freya smiled slightly and went back to talking with Natalie and Zenobia, her attention focused on the subject of discussion.

Roger muttered to Mia, "Nice try, lady!"

She merely smiled and hefted one of her babies to her waiting breast to suckle. The other baby smiled in her sleep and coiled a little bit tighter.

Phillip and Ayesha rose from their places, with Ayesha saying softly, "We are going to retire for the evening. Phillip has a long day planned for tomorrow and wants to get his rest."

Phillip grinned at Roger and said, "We'll be leaving early, so don't be up too late."

Roger smiled back and replied, "Gotcha!"

As they left, Mia called out merrily, "Now you two behave yourselves!"

Ayesha merely smiled back and sinuated slowly alongside her husband of many years, her hips swaying suggestively as she held her husband's hand, like always.

Shortly after that Roger excused himself and said, "I'm turning in, I have a feeling Phillip's going to try and wear me out tomorrow!"

Freya made a motion to rise herself and Roger said cheerfully, "You don't have to leave just yet, stay up as long as you like!"

Freya smiled at him and resumed talking to her new friends.

The alarm jangling woke him from a sound sleep and Roger rose to shut it off before it woke Freya.

Pulling on his clothes and tying his boots, Roger entered the restroom, relieved himself and washed up for breakfast.

Entering the kitchen, Roger saw Phillip already there with a cup of coffee sitting before him.

Mia was coiled up across from her father and they were simply enjoying a quiet morning together.

She smiled at Roger and said pleasantly, "Would you like a little breakfast before you go?" Roger smiled at his charming hostess and while pouring himself a cup of coffee said, "Just a bagel and cream cheese will be enough, thank you."

Mia raised one eyebrow and said skeptically, "You sure that's going to be enough? Dad's a pretty energetic hiker."

Roger shrugged and replied, "Okay, how about frying an egg and adding a slice of cheese to that bagel and we'll call it good."

Mia smiled and turned on the burner just as Freya came into the kitchen still sleepy eyed, she blinked a few times and mumbled, "Guid morrow an' coods ye mak' me one ay those too, please?"

Roger grinned at his tall companion and wordlessly filled a cup of coffee for her too.

Sitting down at the breakfast table, Freya dosed up her coffee with cream and sugar then took a large sup.

Setting her now nearly empty cup back down, she sighed and said, "Ahhhh! Ye mak' verra guid coffee, Ah thank ye."

Mia grinned at her and replied, "You're very welcome dear, your bagel and egg will be ready very shortly."

She grinned at Roger and her father and said, "I haven't forgotten you two, your food is almost ready!"

Roger refilled his, Phillip's, and Freya's coffee cups while Mia was finishing up and soon, the three of them were noshing on their fried egg and cheese on a bagel sandwiches from Mia's kitchen.

Between bites, Roger asked Freya, "What are you up to today? I figured you'd be conked out for a while longer."

Freya hastily swallowed her bite of sandwich and replied, "Ah thooght Ah'd come alang, Natalie tauld me it woods be fun."

Phillip grinned and remarked, "I've found a couple of really good gemstone and fossil localities, and once I've figured out where they fit into the stratigraphic column around here, I'll write up a report on them."

Roger chuckled and remarked, "Still a field geologist eh?"

"Yep, not quite ready to hang up the rock pick just yet." replied Phillip with a grin.

Finishing off their food, the trio spent a few minutes assembling their day packs and in Freya's case, applying sunscreen quite liberally.

Shortly after leaving the house Phillip said, "This ranch has about ten thousand acres of land, that's over fifteen square miles, and I have only explored about a quarter of it."

He pointed out a distinct feature in the distant horizon to the north, "That's the Mogollon Rim, it's the edge of a great plateau that stretches across most of Arizona. What you're seeing is the pine forests that grow on top of it and it does snow up there during the winter. We can see it because much of it is above seven thousand feet in altitude. While we're at around seventeen to eighteen hundred feet."

He grinned at Freya and said playfully, "It may even get cold enough for you up there, Freya."

She merely shrugged and replied, "It is cold when th' trees crack their trunks frae th' sap freezin' inside them."

She grinned and said, "It doesnae get nearly cold enaw doon haur."

Phillip glanced at Roger and raised an eyebrow, Roger smiled back and remarked, "Freya typically wears the lightest clothing of all her friends, even in the dead of winter she'll wear only a long sleeve shirt while everyone else is looking like little Eskimos in their big parkas."

Phillip chuckled and remarked, "Down here we get the hot summers, which lamias thrive in with their love of the heat."

He grinned and said, "The girls would go almost naked if I didn't insist on a degree of modesty."

They came to a jumbled rock outcropping and Phillip declared, "This is a good deposit of chalcedony that is quite colorful and would make good lapidary projects."

He grinned and said, "Being in the middle of a nature preserve means this stuff is mostly untouched, rockhounds would have otherwise dug a lot of this up already."

Freya stooped to pick up a loose chunk of the colorful stone and examined it, turning the stone over in her hands, she remarked quietly, "It's sae smooth, it's loch wax, thaur's nae grain tae it loch th' rocks back haem."

Phillip smiled and replied, "It has a microcystalline structure and can be broken along the grain line to make stone tools, flint is a form of this rock that was used to make stone tools."

Phillip pointed at a nearby scattering of chalcedony chips and remarked, "The Indians used to come here and gather chunks of this to make tools, those chips you see are where they were checking it for quality."

"Indians?" asked Freya.

"An old term for the Native Americans, Phillip's just showing his age." answered Roger with a wink and a grin.

"Och, aye, we called them th' wee red men, they who shared thes lain wi' us." remarked Freya.

Phillip smiled and commented, "I really gotta see your people Freya, the photos Roger showed me are not really showing just how big they are."

He smiled and said, "It's remarkable how you've remained hidden for so long in Canada, a fairly well developed country. My family stayed hidden because much of Algeria is barren desert and it's easy to get lost in the Sahara desert."

Phillip led them up a rocky cleft to show them a cave he had found, in it were ancient artifacts left behind by their makers.

Standing in the cool entrance, they looked inside as Phillip said, "I've left this just as I found it, I've contacted an archaeologist over at the nature preserve and they're coming to see it next week."

"What're they gang tae dae wi' it?" asked Freya.

"Probably the same thing I did, take a bunch of photos and notes, then leave it be." replied Phillip with a smile.

He pointed at some stone chips lying outside near the entrance, "I think these chips are from the same chalcedony out cropping I showed you earlier. Though without doing a mass spectrometer analysis, I can't be certain."

Roger commented, "I wouldn't be surprised, they are fairly close to each other."

Phillip grinned and replied, "It is a safe assumption, however some of the obsidian chips came from as far away as California, a place called the Coso Obsidian fields. That site was worked for some twelve thousand years by the paleoindians. I haven't seen it, but I've heard it is quite impressive in its extent."

Lunch was eaten in the shade of a large boulder sitting at the head of a small spring trickling out of the hillside behind the boulder.

The spring fed a pond that had tiny fish swimming in it to Freya's delight and she sat eating her sandwich and occasionally dropping a bit of bread into the water to watch the little fish swarm around it, greedily eating it.

She looked up from her fish watching and asked, "Hoo did th' wee feshies get haur, ay all places?"

Phillip took a sip of his water and replied, "The climate was a lot wetter and cooler about fifteen thousand years ago, there was a whole complex of lakes and streams in this entire area and these 'wee fishies' as you put it, are some of the survivors."

"Only these wee fishies?" remarked Freya with consternation in her voice.

Phillip smiled and replied, "There are many other small lakes and ponds in the area that have fish populations, so these are not the only ones here."

He smiled and remarked, "There is a couple of caves in the area that have blind fish living in them, because being in total darkness, why have eyes when there is no light?"

"Can we go see them?" asked Freya.

Phillip replied, "Sorry, we can't, not today, we don't have any flashlights or climbing gear and all of us are a little big to go crawling around in a cave."

Phillip leaned back and sighed, "This ranch was surrounded by the nature preserve when it was established and before that, the former owners really protected it from trespassers. So it's this pristine wilderness area, with all kinds of archaeological and paleontological sites that haven't been disturbed. It's like a giant treasure chest and I get to explore it!"

Roger chuckled and commented, "It must be nice having such a big playground!"

Phillip laughed and retorted, "The Sahara was my playground and once I met Ayesha and we began having kids, we had figured on staying there. Then you and George came into our lives...Now we are here in Arizona and our former home has been overrun by religious extremists. But, on the flip side, we have grand kids now and our other daughters have a better chance at finding husbands. So it's all good now!"

Roger grinned and remarked, "I think you'll have more grand kids before too much longer, ol' Georgie can't keep his hands off of Mia and vice versa from what I've seen."

Phillip smiled and replied, "We expect them to have more children, with our survival assured, those two can have as many kids as they want. Ayesha is already thinking about a lamia village, of which she will be the matron."

Roger commented, "Rachel has said to me that there is a rumored lamia village somewhere in Egypt and she is thinking of sending George and myself to make contact."

Phillip smiled and remarked, "Ayesha has said something similar to me about Rachel asking her for information regarding other lamias. It would be nice if we did find more lamias, I'd hate to think they came so close to extinction."

The two men gazed at Freya sitting on the rocks, her long legs dangling over the water and her attention focused on the tiny fish still swimming about the bit of bread she had dropped into the water. Phillip asked quietly, "What about her people? How many are there?"

Roger thought for a few moments and replied, "Not sure exactly, her people are scattered all across Canada, especially in the more remote areas. They've only recently abandoned their practice of disguising themselves as bears while traveling, too many of them were getting shot by hunters shooting from a long distance with scope sighted rifles."

"Damn, that's a hell of a way to go. Shot by a hunter." muttered Phillip.

"Yes, I've met a couple of widows who weren't too happy to see me because of that. At first, they thought of me as being a 'Scandi'." remarked Roger.

"Scandi?"

"A Jotun term for the ancestors of the Scandinavians who came up from the south as the ice sheet melted back after the end of the last ice age." replied Roger.

"Freya's grandmother has quite a library of Jotun literature and lore and really ancient maps. It's all written in their language and I speak almost none of it."

He grinned at Freya who was now listening to them and remarked, "Freya here can read and write in her language and will write notes to herself in her language, it's kind of hilarious to see her friends reactions when she automatically writes something down in runes, instead of English."

"Kind of hilarious?"

"Yeah, I think so, though I'm not going to laugh out loud, y'know that pesky 'adults setting an example' sort of thing." replied Roger with a grin.

Phillip chuckled and replied, "Yes, there is that to consider."

"Where to next?" asked Roger after they had straightened up again. Phillip grinned and replied, "We will be making our way back to the house and my grand kids and a well earned cold beer!"

"Lead on, Mac Duff!" replied Roger with a slight bow and a sweeping of his hand gesture. Phillip set out with a mile eating stride and Roger took Freya's hand and they fell in behind him as he led them over a series of well worn trails.

He called over his shoulder, "This is my family's 'jogging track' if you will. They time each other over this course and the loser has to do chores."

Roger laughed and commented, "Exercise and work avoidance, all in one go. Makes perfect sense!"

Phillip grinned and retorted, "Don't tell them that, you'll ruin everything!"

Roger grinned and made a zip across his lips and tossing the key motion .