Moira #8: Training

“All right.” Rhiannon raises her arms over her head. “Let’s practice.”

They’re standing near the top of a hill—if a rise of just a hundred feet earns the name—at the center of a municipal park. It’s a crowded day, but nobody’s any closer than the hill’s base. Moira remembers hearing somewhere that it’s one of the bigger such parks in the country, bigger than more well-known ones, but its chief virtue is being a few blocks from Hazel’s place.

“There’s nothing to practice.” Diana looks exasperated. “We keep telling you that. It’s just… just thinking.”

“If I could do anything I wanted by just thinking, I’d—”

“Push my wheelchair hundreds of feet up a grassy incline without even breathing hard?” Hazel says.

“What?” Rhiannon looks down the hill, then back at the pika. “So what?”

“Yesterday you’d have petered out halfway up the hill.”

“I’ve literally seen you be a hundred feet tall and heard stories about your rabbit friend shrinking an entire police department with the clap of a hand, but me pushing you up a hill without getting winded is a miracle? Come on.”

“If you couldn’t do it before,” Diana says, “then—”

Rhiannon starts talking over her. So does Hazel.

Moira rubs her face, then stomps her foot once. She doesn’t change size, doesn’t make a big show out of it. She just puts a little power in the stomp. Not even a three on the earthquake magnitude scale, but the sidewalk at the base of the rise cracks. The air fills with the sounds of car alarms, loose branches falling, frightened birds taking flight, and a thousand people whipping out their phones and texting one another QUAKE? messages.

Diana and Rhiannon both stumble, the squirrel falling on her pretty rump with a squeak. Hazel’s chair wobbles and starts to roll until the pika recovers, “grabbing” it with a wave of her hand that jerks it to a halt.

“Yes,” Moira snaps, “call it a miracle. The world bends to your will the way air moves in and out of your lungs, which is what I’ve been saying for the last hour and it’s about time you started listening instead of trying to analyze your way out of it.”

“You don’t think I’ve been listening? How’s this? You admit none of us asked to be turned into whatever we are now, but you still don’t think that’s a consent issue. You can’t even say why you picked us, because you didn’t pick us. You just ran into us. But somehow you’re sure that it’s not random because you’re doing, quote, ‘goddess shit.’” Rhiannon clambers to her paws. “How’s that? Was I listening?”

Moira clenches her fists, taking a deep breath. “Inner peace,” she mutters under her breath. “Inner peace.”

Before she composes her thoughts, Hazel cuts in. “We could have rejected it. You felt it, didn’t you? Just like I did. When she said ‘goddess’ and you figured she was being metaphorical or joking or something, but then there was this… this…” She waves her hands.

“Presence,” Diana supplies. “I felt it, too, but it wasn’t real until people started dropping to their knees in the grocery store.” She shakes her head. “I could have pushed it away then. The spell, the whatever, it’d have lifted, and we’d all have just gone about as usual. But…”

“But you didn’t.” Moira sighs, gesturing at Hazel. “And you didn’t.” She gestures at Rhiannon. “And you didn’t, either.”

“And could I? Could I just snap my fingers and walk away? Right now?”

“No. But it’s not me that won’t let you, and you know it.”

Rhiannon twists a hand in her hair, looking like she’s on the verge of tears, but doesn’t say anything.

Diana clears her throat. “Just what are the limits to our powers? I’ve changed size, changed the size of others, and pulled off that never-ending potluck trick, but I can’t just go…” She lifts her arms, palms up, and says in a commanding voice, “And now, world peace!” She drops her arms. “Can I?”

Moira shakes her head. “You can put ‘visualize world peace’ on a bumper sticker, but you can’t actually do it.”

Hazel hmms. “While changing size is easy because it’s so easy to visualize a skyscraper at my knee height.”

“Right.”

Diana’s eyes widen. “You haven’t been that big, have you?”

“Not yet.” Hazel grins. “But what are the limits on that? What if I visualize myself big enough to eat the planet like an apple?”

“Don’t,” Moira says tiredly. She eyes Rhiannon, who’s pacing back and forth, fists balled up. The squirrel’s real cute when she’s furious, but it’s probably best not to point that out.

“Because I couldn’t, or because I could?” Hazel looks excited.

“Because you can’t begin to visualize how hard I will kick your ass if you try.”

Hazel deflates. “Check.”

Rhiannon turns, and her tail twitches behind her like a storm warning. “I’m visualizing being big enough to pound this hill into a sand trap, but I’m still the same size as ever.”

“Then you’re not,” Moira says.

The squirrel glares. “I am!”

“Nope.”

“Goddammit, I am! I’m seeing myself—the hill—”

“If you’re seeing yourself, you’re visualizing what someone else would see.” Diana spreads her hands. “How does it all look like to you when you’re that big?”

Rhiannon holds her hands out in front of her, fingers curled. “It looks like this!” she shrieks. “It looks like—”

The sonic boom of displaced air is almost enough to distract Moira from the fact that three hundred or so feet of Rhiannon is suddenly falling toward them. The hare doesn’t give Diana and Hazel time to stop gaping up; she grabs them, the sheep by the hand and the pika by the chair, and bolts backward.

But goddesses have to put effort into being immune to physics. The sheer force of ten thousand tons of angry, startled boho squirrel hitting the ground sends all three tumbling down the hillside: Diana bleating, Moira cursing, and Hazel wailing as she fights to keep her wheelchair upright while it does a credible F1 imitation.

Rhiannon pushes herself up, clumps of grass, several trees, and one park bench falling away from her hips, shoulders and chest. “Like… this.” Despite its new force, her voice trembles.

Moira gets to her paws, swearing under her breath.

But the squirrel’s staggering to her full height, too, shaking off her hands, taking an unsteady step away from them, then a steadier one, watching the effects her paw has on the ground as it sinks in. “Oh my god oh my god,” she mutters. She takes another step. Then she starts walking away, toward the crowd, toward the city.

“Where’s she going?” Diana runs a hand through her hair.

Hazel’s recovered from her wild ride, but she’s still breathing hard, staring after her roommate with a haggard expression. “I don’t think she’s handling this well.”

“I picked up on that.” Moira scowls, striding after the squirrel, then breaking into a run. Getting giant herself would be obvious, but two monster movie size women will be damn hard on the city if Rhiannon steps out of the park. Hopefully she—

Rhiannon steps out of the park.

“Shit.” Well, at least the squirrel didn’t step on traffic, but she’s already in traffic, and while she seems to be trying to set her paws carefully, she’s already caused one accident—make that two—just by being there. Wait. Three? Three. Moira slows down, waiting for the other two.

“Can we just, uh, visualize her small again?” Diana says.

“I tried it.” Hazel shakes her head. “But you could, Lady Moira.”

“Probably.” Moira purses her lips, watching the squirrel. “But she said she wants practice.”

“She just stepped on a gas station!” Diana bleats, pointing.

“She looks sorry about it.” The hare shrugs. “And the first thing you did was step on a guy. The first thing Hazel did was eat somebody.”

Diana looks defensive. “He was a jerk.”

Hazel looks deadpan. “He was delicious.” She looks back to Moira. “I guess Diana and I haven’t made too much of a mess of things, but…” She clears her throat. “At risk of sounding like my roommate, how do you know that isn’t dumb luck?”

“She’s a goddess,” Diana says. “She doesn’t have dumb luck.”

Hazel gives her a doleful look. “Hello, I’m a goddess and I accidentally rolled over an ice cream truck.”

“You’re both kind of right.” Moira starts walking toward the megasquirrel, who’s stopped to self-consciously look at her own reflection in a glass-walled skyscraper. The other two follow. “On the one hand, I haven’t uplifted anyone since the days of mythology books. As spur-of-the-moment as it was, it felt right in a way that it hadn’t since my rebellion. On the other hand, that rebellion hardly went the way I planned, so I’m not gonna claim I’m omniscient.”

“So you don’t know that Rhiannon isn’t about to start kicking over skyscrapers.” Diana winces, hurrying ahead of the hare as they cross a wide street. She doesn’t wait for traffic to stop, instead just holding her hands out to either side. Cars screech to a halt, drivers gaping in awe rather than honking. A few get out of their cars to drop to their knees.

“Man, she is good at whatever the hell she’s doing,” Hazel says, rolling next to Moira along the path Diana’s temporarily cleared. More people get out of their cars. Hazel glances from side to side, then over at the hare. “Why can we just melt into the crowd sometimes and other times get this?”

“Most of the time we’re not calling attention to our divine aspects.”

“So it’s when we do magic?”

“Accent on we, not magic. If we granted a follower the power to do miracles, nobody’d feel supernaturally drawn to worship them.”

“This is complicated.” They walk and roll onto the sidewalk. Rhiannon is moving on now. While mostly the crowd’s still fleeing, there’s a growing contingent which trails after her. “So maybe she just wanted to take a walk as a giantess? I’ll be honest, I’d probably kick over a skyscraper or two if I could.”

Moira glances down at the pika. “You know you could.”

Hazel folds her hands in her lap, letting the wheelchair roll by itself. “I know.” She’s silent for a second. “It just feels important to show people that being in my chair doesn’t make me any less of what I am.”

Moira flashes a grin. “See, giving you immense power wasn’t dumb luck.”

Rhiannon has stopped in front of a shorter, squatter office building, about five stories high. Her fists clench, and she looks down at the building with undisguised loathing. The crowd that’s been trailing her seems more agitated, like they’re picking up on her anger.

Diana’s stopped, staring up, looking distraught. Hazel and Moira catch up to her. As they do, she whirls. “What’s she looking at? Why’s she stopped?”

“That’s the HQ of the software company she used to work at,” Hazel says. “It became so miserable after she filed a harassment complaint that she quit a half a year ago, and she thinks they’re making it hard for her to get another job.”

The squirrel raises a paw and puts it on top of the building, taking another deep breath. Her toes curl; as the claws hit the roof, cracking sounds echo across the street. Some of the crowd disperses, but a lot keep watching.

“Shouldn’t we stop her?” Diana still looks distraught, but much less certain now. The question’s genuine.

“I didn’t stop you from having loathsome coworker salad.” Moira waves a hand. “Give her space.”

The goddesses navigate through the crowd, this time letting Hazel lead. The pika doesn’t have the same let me through, my lovely worshippers panache as the sheep, but they’re still backing away respectfully. Moira hasn’t done it herself in centuries. If you’d asked her before she’d lost her divine mind and uplifted this crew, she’d have said she didn’t miss it at all, but now she’s not sure that’s true. She might miss it a little.

Rhiannon hasn’t moved much, past breathing hard and swishing her zeppelin-sized tail back and forth. She tenses up, relaxes, tenses again, then takes her paw off the building and sets it down—firmly—in the street.

As the three get closer, walking past a “safe distance” line the crowd of gawkers and worshippers seems to have settled on, the squirrel crouches slowly, eyes on them. Mostly on Moira. “I did it,” she murmurs, eyes fierce. “I kept myself from smashing it just because I could.”

Moira puts her hands on her hips. “Feel better?”

“I don’t know.” Her softly booming voice is matter-of-fact. “I still want to, and I’m not sure they don’t deserve it. But if I’m going to help keep you in line, I need to be able to keep myself in line.”

Diana looks up at her, brows lifting. “With all respect, I don’t think Lady Moira intended to appoint you group conscience.”

“Yeah, but I see the value of testing. And this is a difficult one.” Hazel glances up at Rhiannon. “I remember how furious you were after you’d gone to HR about your coworker and the lady just went on about how maybe the real problem was you not keeping your ‘trans ideology’ to yourself.”

Rhiannon frowns, looking down at Hazel, back at the building, back at Hazel. “Yes, I do, too,” she says curtly. She straightens, looks up at the sky a moment, takes a deep, slow breath, then starts walking away.

And, after three steps, she whirls around and slams her paw down on the building. “Fuck you, Joanne from HR,” she snarls. She steps back, over the other three, and slams her other foot down, too. “Fuck you, Bob.” Crash! “Fuck you, Agatha.” Stomp!

The crowd collectively decides “safe distance” is now a block or two away. In short order, only Moira, Diana and Hazel are left in the deserted street as the squirrel keeps smashing, harder and harder, shouting a former coworker’s name with each stomp. Walls and floors keep collapsing. By the time she’s on the tenth or eleventh name, the office building’s little more than rubble.

Rhiannon stops, breathing very hard, and brushes her long hair away from her face. “And sometimes I may need to do that,” she mutters.

“Feel better?” Moira repeats, crossing her arms.

Rhiannon takes a deep breath and smooths down her skirt. “Yes. Yes, I do.”