Moira #9: Low Profile

Moira hadn’t expected the farmers' market to be this crowded, and it isn’t. There’s something else happening.

This isn’t the park Rhiannon had her misadventures in a few days ago. It’s in a neighboring city, and the park’s a huge field between the waterfront and a big, palatial museum that’s what passes for old in this country. The farmers' market brought Rhiannon out here; wanting to keep an eye on Rhiannon brought Moira out here. Diana’s off with Hazel… somewhere, hopefully not attracting too much attention for once. But when it comes to attracting less attention, Moira knows she needs to start setting a better example.

The market isn’t what’s brought out most of this crowd, though. The stage at the far end of the field, near the museum, looks like it’s set up for a rock concert with all those lights, but the wolf striding around the stage with a wireless mike in hand looks like a cross between a time-share salesman and a preacher. She recognizes the type; some hung around her temples back in the day. They’d all claimed to be awfully surprised by her disapproval in their last few moments.

“Huh.” Rhiannon has her smartphone out. “Joel Lindsay Hill. A self-help guru who runs the Beacon Forum. Seems to be real popular with corporations for middle management seminars, but they also do…” She waves a hand at the crowd as they approach. “These.”

“Revival meetings,” Moira says dryly. “That vixen off to the side of the stage looks familiar, too.”

Rhiannon looks. “That’s the mayor.”

“And maybe,” Hill’s saying, looking out earnestly across the audience, “you’re searching for a key, a map, the answer to a riddle. More of you have given up looking. And the riddle is this: how do you find what most brings you happiness? How do you even know what most brings you happiness? Is it love? Is it health? Is it helping others? Is it a good job? Is it wealth?”

Moira sighs. “Shouldn’t we be, you know.” She gestures at the market.

“Yes.” The squirrel doesn’t move, other than her twitching tail.

“But is that even the right question? The right riddle? The right map? What you want is meaning. And meaning…” Hill seems to meet everyone’s eyes in turn. “Meaning is finding your right place. If you find your right place, everything else follows.

“Start with wealth. Now, I hear you already. ‘Whoa, Joel. Isn’t wealth the problem? Aren’t rich people the problem?’ Let me tell you: that attitude, right there—” He points, again in a way that makes everyone feel like he’s pointing at them, individually, specifically. “—that’s your problem. Your jealousy. Some men have wealth you don’t. They don’t deserve to be rich. They were just lucky. They were dishonest. They cheated. Their wealth should be your wealth.”

Hill sighs melodramatically, tail drooping, looking down at the stage, then lifts his head and his tail and fixes the audience with his best unblinking wolf stare. “But no. They weren’t lucky. They weren’t dishonest. What they were was… in their right place.” He points. “And when you are, too, you will have the happiness, the love, the health, and yes, the wealth that you deserve.”

Rhiannon rubs her face. “Okay, can I stomp—”

“No.”

“Just a little?”

“Low. Profile.”

“Fine.” The squirrel sighs and waves her hands melodramatically. “I’ll be back with the best peaches you’ve ever tasted.”

“I’ve had peaches from the actual land of the gods.”

Rhiannon snorts and heads off toward the market stalls. Moira watches, but she doesn’t think the squirrel’s likely to go rogue on her now.

Shoving her hands in her pockets, Moira sighs. She’s never understood how mortals decided that “markets” were some intrinsic part of nature rather than their own creation. About seventy years ago a famous economist of the day tried to explain the miracles of capitalism to her over drinks, but after an hour of her asking what she thought were perfectly reasonable questions, he called her a stupid girl and she ate him.

But while she’s heard everyone can get rich flimflam before, Hill’s reframed that as everyone can get as rich as their place allows them to, and that sounds uncomfortably like obey the natural order. Frowning, she mills around the edge of the crowd.

“You say: ‘Joel, what’s wrong with charity?’ When it’s directed, correctly targeted, limited, it can be helpful, just like a crutch.” Hill holds up a hand.

“But most of the time, charity isn’t a crutch, it’s a ball and chain. It’s a cage. It traps people away from where they need to be. And that leads us to the problems Mayor Penuchel alluded to in her introduction.” He gestures at the vixen. “People start expecting more… and they get angry.” Now he’s doing that looking-at-everyone-at-once trick again. “They get destructive. It starts with something innocent, someone turning their house into a soup kitchen, but it goes from charity to entitlement all too quickly. The neighborhood gets overrun. Stores get smashed. Office buildings get attacked.”

Moira narrows her eyes. Those are awfully specific examples for him to have plucked out at random, and his gaze is just a little too sharp for him not to be looking right at her. This joker is mortal, she’s sure of it, but he’s been talking to… someone.

“And when you see that, that destruction, that anarchy, you can’t let pretty faces and promises fool you. We’re entering a dark time, friends. We have to fight the chaos, hold it back. And what holds back chaos?”

“Order,” someone shouts.

“Come on, all of you. What holds back chaos?”

“Order!” the crowd shouts as one.

“Order,” Hill echoes. “And what brings order? Finding your right place. I know some of you,” and he’s looking right at Moira again, “think fighting against your right place, is noble, uplifting, righteous. I get it. I was young once.”

Not quite a lecture Daranu might have given her, but all too close. Maybe she should have let Rhiannon stomp him after all. “You’re still young,” Moira mutters under her breath.

“What was that, miss?”

Hill’s still looking right at her. The crowd turns toward her, too. There’s no way he should have been able to hear her, but he’s waving her up toward the stage. “Come on.”

This feels like some kind of trap. But if there’s anyone immortal here, or even with discernible power, they’re keeping an even lower profile than she is. Was. Stifling a sigh, she walks forward.

“Now, I’m betting,” Hill says, “this is a woman who’s more comfortable fighting the natural order than flowing with it. A rabbit who’s almost taller than I am.”

She stops at the foot of the stage in front of him. “I’m a hare,” she says. “We’re bigger.”

“Sorry.” He grins. “Pardon me for singling you out, but I saw the way you’ve been watching me, I saw your skepticism. And let me tell you, Miss Hare, I know you. You’d turn the world upside down if you could, wouldn’t you?”

Her voice is flat, matter-of-fact. “Better than just cementing this all in place.”

“Is it?” He looks exaggeratedly quizzical. “Destruction is better than building? That’s not what you said, but it’s what would happen, isn’t it. Did you stop to consider the cost?” He leans down toward her. “I think,” Hill says with pitch perfect sincerity, “that you paid more than you expected, Miss Hare.”

She finds her voice unexpectedly tight. “Yes.” Dammit. She expected to just be irritated. But something else is welling up inside her, something she hasn’t felt in a very long time and she’s not sure how to hold it back.

“A cost not just to you, but to others. Your family. Your loved ones. Your friends.” He straightens, looks out over the crowd, speaking to them now. “Your town. Your nation. As I said, we’re entering a dark time. A raging fire lights up the darkness, but are you willing to pay its price? Are you willing to make others pay it?”

Moira takes a deep breath, clenching her fists, and—changes. She’s still her, but now, in this moment, she’s Her.

The reports in the paper tomorrow, the news tonight, the social media feeds in minutes won’t agree on many details. Some say she’s eight feet tall, some twelve, some twenty. Some say she’s winged, that she literally glows, that her paws don’t touch the earth. She’s identified as an angel or a demon or an alien, and by a few as a god—and by a smaller few, the ones who still know myth and legends, as Moira, the beautiful, terrible goddess of love and war. The only thing they all agree on is her beauty. In this moment, she isn’t just a hot hare woman with a slightly surly look. She’s the sum of all movie stars and princesses, classical statues and pinup models.

She steps up onto the stage, towering over the wolf. He drops his microphone, tail tucked between his legs as she crouches down. Her voice is soft. “And do you think you’re in your right place, Joel Lindsay Hill? You’ve been more than willing to make others pay its price.”

“I don’t… I…” He falls to his knees, visibly crying. “You aren’t… what I was told.”

She sighs, tilting his head up toward her with a finger. “We’re all looking for a right place, Joel, and I don’t know if anyone ever truly finds theirs. But I do know that when you turn ‘be satisfied with what you have’ into ‘be satisfied with what we let you have,’ you turn it into a prison. And it’s easy to believe you’ve found your right place when you’re fortunate enough to be so very, very high over others.”

Letting Hill go, she stands, then hops back to the ground, landing with a thump that rattles the whole stage. The audience is transfixed, the air electric, hot. It’s her energy—her aspect—holding them, infusing them. If she doesn’t lower the temperature, Hill’s prim and proper rally is going to explode.

Moira raises her voice. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re limited by what you are. Where you live. Who you know. Who you love. Right now, your place is here, and my love, my anger, my power… is with you.” She tilts her head to the sky, closing her eyes, stretching out her hands. Light pours off her across the crowd like a searing wind.

The rally explodes.

Clothes rip off. Fights break out. Size differences magnify. Predator and prey reverse. Mice kiss cats into submission. As the vixen mayor’s scooped up by a strapping rabbit buck she’s barely hip high to, her blush says this is as much her fantasy as his.

And Hill—Hill lies on the ground by Moira’s paw, sobbing. She picks him up, and he fits in her hand with room to spare. “Who gave you the power you had, little one? The power to see me?”

He whines. “I get—get reports and training. From Third Eye Security. They said you were one of the most dangerous people on the planet.”

“They weren’t lying.” She blows him a kiss, and he starts shrinking. It takes him a second to realize what’s happening; then he runs around in her palm shrieking, begging for mercy, until his run becomes a desperate climb over the mountain of her paw pad and, finally, a fall into the deep crevasse of a nearly imperceptible ridge.

When she looks up, she sees Rhiannon making her way through the crowd, carrying a shopping bag. The squirrel looks back and forth, expression studiously blank, as she takes in the sights. Over there, a deer woman effortlessly curb-stomping a gang of wolves now knee-high to her. Over there, a mouse being pleased by a half-dozen enthusiastic foxes of various genders, all much smaller than him. Over there, a red panda with an otter pinned under her paw, both of them moaning appreciation of his predicament. Over there, a thirty-foot-high rat girl holding a squirming, wailing cat in one hand, another fluffy cat tail disappearing between her lips.

The squirrel reaches Moira. “I got the peaches.” She holds out the bag.

The hare clears her throat and takes it. “Great.”

The squirrel moves to stand by the hare and laces her hands behind her back. “So. Keeping that low profile.”

Moira crosses her arms and sighs.