It took another two days of magical healing for Alexa to get off the crutches. Aug and Mnemosyne were wonderful hosts. Aug worked as her nurse while she tended to Luna, alternating between fussing over her wounds and handing her tools. Mnemosyne kept her company when Aug and Emily the sasquatch eventually forced her to give up on working for a while and take a nap, eat lunch or allow fingers to run through her hair in search of ticks or lice. (Emily and Aug had competing agendas.)
Stories were a constant during her time with Mnemosyne. The titan goddess had perfect recall, and thrilled in sharing tales of the universe's early days; she still remembered the exact moment she met Aug in what is today southern Germany, every word of the songs Zeus sang when he infiltrated the Titan stronghold for the first time, the way an ill timed sneeze had forever altered the shape of a letter or two in the Greek alphabet, and how cute baby Kronos's little toes were.
"Oh yes." Mnemosyne said when Alexa looked incredulous. "It's a fact of nature, drawn up at the moment Mother Gaea sprang from Chaos; when a sociopath is born, they always come with the cutest, chubbiest, little baby feet."
Alexa reciprocated by telling her hosts about her quest, her hunt for the Gargareans, and her previous attempts at catching the Hind.
"They're not the worst neighbors I've ever had." Aug had mused "They're very private, keep to themselves. But they'll let you know if a sasquatch walks across their lawn. We try to keep the troop away from their neck of the woods. You'll find them at the foothills of The Brothers, on the far western side."
Alexa paused, screwdriver in hand, Luna's left front leg suspended in a clamp in front of her.
"Seriously? The all male tribe, out of all the peeks they could've chosen, decided to live on a mountain called 'The Brothers'?" Alexa had asked flatly.
"They considered it a sign from the gods." Aug explained.
"Or a sign from George Davidson." Mnemosyne commented as she entered with Emily, the class of little sasquatches letting out behind her.
"Same thing in this case." Aug pointed out. Alexa simply rolled her eyes and continued working on Luna.
Alexa had been extremely lucky during the crash. Not only had she managed to walk away with only a few scars for her trouble, but everything broken on Luna was something that could be repaired or replaced. That wasn't to say it was easy. She spent almost a week just fixing the poor pup's muzzle.
As the weeks inched on Alexa found herself opening up to Aug and Mnemosyne more and more. She told them about Jazz and her family, about Thalia and what had sent her on this quest, she even told them about Morgan... Most of all she talked about what she wanted to achieve with this quest.
"I don't want to be famous or anything like that. I just want to know I did something for them, you know?" Alexa explained at dinner one night.
Aug nodded thoughtfully but Mnemosyne offered her a huge smile and gave her husband a knowing look.
"Sounds like someone else I know." She teased. Aug just rolled his eyes. Alexa raised an eyebrow at him over their evening meatloaf. Aug sighed heavily.
"I became immortal by accident. Just sort of woke up again after I died. After I realized what had happened I started a journey towards Olympus for advice from Jup- um...from Zeus and the other Olympians. But I got side tracked in Germania, a little Celtic tribe had an issue with an outbreak of measles and I had some healing training. After that...well it was a steady chain of good deeds and charity. By the time I knew what had happened I was a happy medical practitioner and two millenia had passed me by. I never did get to Olympus for that counseling session, though I have made the pilgrimage for other reasons in the centuries since."
Alexa blinked owlishly at Aug.
"How do you accidentally become immortal?" She couldn't help but ask.
"With an Ancient Roman particle accelerator, a few rubber bands and a liquid lunch." Mnemosyne said with a little giggle and a smile hidden behind her fork.
"I'm afraid that'll have to be my secret." Aug said with a smile of his own. Alexa shrugged and returned to her meal.
A few days later, Alexa was nearly done with the repair work. She found herself hesitant to make those final repairs. Repairs meant moving on and the cave was so comfortable, and Aug and Mnemosyne were so nice! Ultimately, however, she couldn't bring herself to do that to Luna.
"Philips screw driver." She said, holding her hand out. Emily, who was the one on helper duty that day, grunted and handed Alexa the requested tool. Alexa slowly tightened the screw set behind Luna's jaw.
"Duct tape" she says, holding out the screwdriver. Emily took it back and handed Alexa the slightly hairy roll of silver tape. Ignoring the hair, Alexa ripped a section free with her teeth and used it to hold Luna's eye in place while she finished tightening the fitting.
"Okay...think I got it…" Alexa muttered, stepping back. She glanced at Emily then gently tapped Luna's nose. The dog's eyes flickered to life, then her jaw fell open. With a wheezing, grinding sound like a shop vac with pneumonia her pup spewed out a cloud of thick black smoke.
"Metrokoites!" Alexa swore, slapping a hand down on Luna's nose to deactivate her. Before she could get much further than that Emily shrieked, hooted, and shoved a piece of steel wool in Alexa's mouth. When Alexa looked, Emily was staring at her with a flat expression, save for a set of flared nostrils. Over her weeks at Chateau de Squatch she had learned that nostril flaring was a way of showing irritation. Apparently Emily understood Greek curses. Who knew?
"Everything okay in here?" Mnemosyne asked from the doorway.
"Yeah! Engine malfunction!" Alexa explained, removing the steel wool. She gave Emily a quick apologetic look, which Emily considered before running her finger through Alexa's hair.
As the damage had all been done to Luna's limbs and head, Alexa had had no real reason to open up her engine compartment until now...but looking back she did remember something going wrong mid flight before the crash. She could be somewhat forgiven for forgetting, she had taken quite a few blows to the dome in the minutes after the event. Reaching into a little alcove in Luna's neck, Alexa flipped a series of switches that unlatched her chest cavity. She pulled it downwards to reveal the turbine engine.
The outer housing of the engine looked well enough, nothing obviously warped or out of place, however a small amount of discoloration and soot around the fuel intake did seem to hint towards the core problem. The inside was a different story. As she began to take apart the turbine, she found several cracked gears, some stripped down so badly that they were little better than wheels, others simply broken in half from the force. She opened the engine's main turbine chamber and found the issue wedged into the blades.
A large lump of some sort of soot blackened metal had lodged itself into the turbine. Frowning and flaring her own nostrils, Alexa held out a hand to Emily.
"Small putty knife." She ordered. She took the knife and wedged it between the metal lump and the nearest blade. With a few chips not only did she manage to extract it, she worked out what it was and what had happened to her poor Luna. The metal was lead. Somehow Luna had eaten a piece of lead.
The automaton's engine burned at nearly 500°F when she was flying, not enough to melt the lead down to a liquid, but enough to give it an almost molten consistency. That metal marshmallow was then churned by the turbine, too thick to pass through the vent that led to the secondary heating system. It gunked up the works, soot building up and further worsening the problem. Luna's crankshaft would've kept attempting to turn, despite the clogging, which wore down the gears. When one of them finally broke...well...Alexa knew exactly what the results of a failure like that would be during flight.
Alexa cleaned the lead from the system, replaced the broken gears, put away the scrap and replaced the engine in Luna's chest. She reached out to tap Luna's nose again, Emily backing away with a furry arm over her nose.
The metal dog's eyes blinked on, the turbine motor hummed to life, and she shook herself. Luna gave Alexa a joyful bark and Alexa felt a knot of worry dissolve under a wave of relief. She hugged Luna tightly around the neck.
"You have no idea how worried I was! Are you okay? Can you do a self check?" Alexa asked. As Luna clacked and barked out a status report, Emily approached the pair. At first Luna and Emily seemed wary of each other, Luna's nose madly twitching in the sasquatch's direction. After reassuring both sides, Luna allowed Emily to touch her. Within seconds Emily had adopted Luna just as she had adopted Alexa. She had the metal canine seated in front of her while she picked through her metallic fur. It was clear from the thumping of Luna's tail and the twitching of her leg that the pitbull wasn't exactly against the attention.
Alexa chuckled and led the bonding pair out to Mnemosyne's classroom.
"And that, class, is why you should be wary when going through the everglades. Be aware, not only of where you step but the amount of moisture in your coat. Remember, no one wants to be a skunkape!" The titaness noticed the trio and quietly dismissed the class. "And this little one must be Luna! Glad to see you're finally up and at 'em."
Luna woofed in response and received yet another petting from divine hands. Mnemosyne smiled sadly at Alexa. "I suppose that means you'll be leaving soon." Said the goddess of memory.
"I guess...I should probably leave first thing in the morning." Alexa responded reluctantly. Mnemosyne smiled that sad smile and gave a jerk of her head.
"Come on...Aug is putting the finishing touches on your going away present." She took Alexa back to the living room with the odd ax on the wall. Aug stood up from the couch as Luna trotted in.
"What a marvelous invention." He breathed, taking a moment to cup Luna's face in his hands and to scratch behind her ear. "I had a dog when I was a little boy, you know. A Molossus, named him Crispus. He was such a good boy. Dumb as a post, but a real nanny dog. He'd try to defend me from my own shadow, and I mean that literally." He chuckled and shook his head before turning his attention back to Alexa.
"I'm just glad your good girl is better...even if it means you have to go." He gave her the same sad smile as his wife.
"Aug…" Alexa tried to say, but her host cut her off.
"It's alright. They all leave sooner or later. But we can at least help you when you go." Seemingly from out of nowhere, Aug pulled a set of saddlebags.
"We got you a month's worth of provisions, all sealed in Tupperware." Aug said cheerfully. Mnemosyne approached and held out a small bobble. It looked like a little snow globe on a necklace, minus the snow and plastic gingerbread house.
"This one's from me, dear. It's a bit of water from my spring in the underworld." As Alexa took it, she was suddenly struck by a memory. She was nine years old and Chiron was asking a group of demigods about the major landmarks of the underworld.
"I...think I remember." Alexa said softly. "You give this water to people who get into Elysium more than once so that they can remember their past lives, right?"
Mnemosyne smiled and nodded. "It's a powerful memory restorer. So strong that little bit would be quite dangerous if you actually drank it. You'd be stuck in a flashback loop, stuck in a coma, experiencing your life in perfect clarity, all the way up until the moment you took that dose, then restarting again, over and over until your body eventually gives out. But as it is, it's a good little memory charm."
"So don't try to drink it unless you're already dead." Aug confirms, approaching with an equally small gift. "I know your travels won't always be in out of the way places...so...I thought you might make some use of this."
He passed her a debit card. A company logo on it read 'P.R. Pharmaceuticals'
"That should cover any mortal expenses you could possibly have, and it works in a few select stores on Olympus." He ensured her.
"You really trust me with a company credit card?" She asked hesitantly. This got a laugh from Aug.
"My dear, you could buy a mansion in every state, keep them all fully stocked and staffed year round for the rest of your life, and produce a yearly short film about the pros and cons of each and you still wouldn't make a dent in that account! It'll be fine!" His smile softened as he took her by the arms. "I've never done the Labors of Hercules myself, but I've known two men who had attempted it in my mortal lifetime...and you, my dear, are far more likely to accomplish the feat. You are strong, smart, and your purpose is right...the fates will bless you, I'm sure."
"But no pressure." Alexa said with a slight wince.
"No pressure." Mnemosyne agreed. "And when you complete your labors, you'll come back and see us. We'll have cake waiting for you!"
Later, Alexa would wonder what Mnemosyne's teaching style had to say about positive reinforcement.