Moira #3: Parking Permit

Moira doesn’t have great luck with parking spaces. She’s expecting downtown parking to be its usual bitch and she’s heading for a garage a few blocks away in, so she almost drives right past an open spot. The curb right behind it is painted blue, marking a permit-only disabled parking space; she hadn’t noticed the blue paint ended a car-length before that SUV. Well, almost a car-length, because the SUV isn’t parked well, because they never are, but never mind.

The hare brakes and puts on her turn signal as she pulls up with the SUV, reverses, turns, backs in—

HONK!

She slams on her roadster’s brakes as a BMW sedan, blasting its horn, screeches through the permit-only space right into the space she’s pulling into.

“Hey!” Her car’s still at an angle, nose out in traffic, but she can’t back in any farther. She rolls down a window and waves angrily.

The driver gets out of the BMW. A too-fashionable feline business bro, casual blazer over a designer T-shirt, denim jeans that probably cost half a grand. As far as she can tell, he doesn’t even look in her direction. Since he doesn’t take off his mirror sunglasses, she can’t be sure, but he’s just walking away from the car.

Gritting her teeth, she flips on her hazard lights and gets out of her car. “Hey!” she bellows.

That makes him stop for a moment and turn around. “What?” he snaps, moving his glasses to the top of his head.

She marches up after him. His ears fold back just a fraction. Her car is small, a low two-seater, but she’s not. He’s an inch or two under six feet; she’s several inches over it, and while she’s pretty and amply curved, she looks like she could probably benchpress him. From the way his tail’s suddenly lashing, it just occurred to him she might be about to. A few passersby glance over, some amused, some disinterested. A young pika woman in a wheelchair watches with an eager expression, like she’s hoping Moira’s going to kick the cat’s ass. She’s stocky, a little butch, cute even by pika standards.

“What do you mean, ‘what?’” She gestures back at his car angrily. “You stole my parking space!”

“Oh, ‘your’ parking space.” He makes air quotes. “I must have missed the name.”

“You’re just gonna leave your car there.” She points again. “Blocking both parking spaces.”

“Hey, rabbit girl, you’re the one in the middle of the road.”

She narrows her eyes. “Final warning.”

He rolls his eyes. “Ooh, I’m scared. All right, fine.” He makes a point of checking his watch—she doesn’t know enough about watches to tell what it is, beyond ostentatiously expensive—and hops back in his car. The engine roars to life, and he guns it in reverse, lurching through the disabled parking space, coming to a stop taking up not only most of it but most of the blocked-off ramp access behind it. He gets out and strides around his car. “Satisfied?”

For mortals' sake. She spreads her hands in exasperation. “Seriously?”

He steps up onto the sidewalk, turning around with an exaggeratedly exasperated look, still walking backward. “What the hell do you want, lady? I’m already late!”

“That’s a disabled parking space,” the pika woman says. Getting angry just makes her look cuter. A hazard of the species, maybe.

“So I’ll get another ticket. Gotta go, ladies.” He turns and strides away.

“I have a van pickup here in less than ten minutes!” The pika raises her voice, pointing at the cut in the curb, which his car’s right wheel blocks. “I can’t even get my chair past your stupid Beemer!” When he doesn’t even turn, she groans. “Goddamned entitled carnivores.”

“Not my problem, goddamn whiny herbivores, blah blah blah,” he calls, still not turning around.

Moira steps back—into oncoming traffic—and abruptly she’s much, much taller. She’s not as big as the twelve-story office building she’s standing in front of, but she’s close.

That much hare appearing all at once creates a rush of displaced air, but the thunderclap gets lost amidst a cacophony of squealing tires, horns, and crashes as drivers try not to hit her suddenly road-filling paws. Pedestrians point up and scream and run. Mostly run.

And that makes the cat turn around. He stares, tilts his head up, up even more, staggers backwards.

Moira scowls. “This,” she says, putting her right paw on his BMW and leaning over, “is definitely your fucking problem.”

She steps down. Not too fast, not too slow, not drawing it out tortuously. She just gives the luxury sedan enough time to have each luxury tire blow out and each luxury window shatter as the luxury roof meets the luxury seats, and the whole luxury cabin becomes one with the luxury floorboards.

“No!” the cat screams. “What the hell—you can’t—oh my God!”

“Goddess,” the pika says.

The cat lets out a frantic, wordless scream. Moira lifts a brow, looking down at the pika.

“You are, right?” The pika is staring up, but she isn’t screaming. She’s wide-eyed, but doesn’t look either overly frightened or too worshipful.

“Well…” A truck trying to inch past her left paw leans on its horn. She gives it a cross look and kicks it. It barrels ahead, wobbling dangerously on its wheels until it falls on its side in the middle of an intersection.

“She’s a crazy giant rabbit!” the cat howls. “Come on—”

She leans over, glaring. “I’m not a rabbit, I’m a hare.”

“Hares are bigger.” The pika tilts her head. “I was a classics student. There were old, old stories about the goddess of love who went to war with—”

Moira scowls, cutting her off. “What about me remotely makes you think of that story?”

“Wildly disproportionate force when someone pisses you off.”

“This is so, so disproportionate!” the cat wails, gesturing at his car again.

“If I was giant I’d eat you,” the pika says, giving the cat a glare. His ears fold back.

“See? I’m the nice one,” Moira tells the cat. She looks back at the pika. “And nobody’s been in a temple praying to me in a thousand years. I’m retired. Just taking it easy. Laying low.”

“Laying low? You’re a hundred fucking feet tall!” the cat screams, gesturing at Moira wildly.

The pika spreads her hands. “He does have a point.”

Moira straightens up, looks around. Traffic’s backed up for more than a block on several streets, and crowds are gathering at what they think is a safe distance. There are a lot of phones out. There are also way too many folks she can pick out who’ve dropped to their knees.

“Okay, fine.” She crouches, focusing on the pika. “What’s your name?”

“Hazel.”

“Anything I can do for you while I’m here, Hazel?”

Hazel blinks slowly, brushing her hair back. “Maybe move what’s left of that guy’s car out of the space.”

“Sure.” She picks up the flattened BMW and rolls it up like a toothpaste tube, eliciting another round of outraged howls from the cat. She drops the cylinder on the sidewalk by him. “I meant more… goddess things?”

“I know.” Hazel looks down at her chair, then back up. “But just meeting you is enough.”

Moira hmms, then straightens—and abruptly returns to her normal size, with another thunderclap. The sudden inrush of air knocks the cat over on his face, buffets a dozen nearby cars, elicits a round of screaming, but doesn’t so much as ruffle Hazel’s fur. The hare walks up to her. “Tell you what. If there’s anything godlike you want to do, just do it on your own.”

“What?” Hazel furrows her brow. “How could I… wait. Are you… am I…?”

“Hey, you said you know the myths.” Moira grins, giving her a finger-wave, and starts walking away.

“My car!” the cat howls again. “For god’s—goddess—come on!” When Moira doesn’t turn around, he starts in on Hazel. “Rodent girl! Tell your crazy rabbit monster friend I’m sorry, whatever it takes…”

She rounds the corner, and the two are out of sight. The crowds are moving in close to the scene; she ducks to the shadows, gathering a few extra around herself to misdirect.

It’s less than ten seconds before she hears another thunderclap, another round of squealing tires and horns. Well. Okay, shit, she has to look. She darts back around the corner, looks back down the sidewalk. And up. And up.

Hazel’s still sitting in her wheelchair, but the wheels are about thirty feet in diameter, and they block a lot of the street. She’s rolled over a few cars. And a bench, a trashcan, a fire hydrant. Moira looks up at the pika’s still cute but towering face just in time to see her tilt her head back and swallow hard, her throat fur rippling as a visibly wriggling lump goes down it.

“Well, she did warn him,” she says aloud.

Hazel rolls her chair back a couple dozen feet, over more cars and sidewalk and right into a corner store, watching the damage this causes with undisguised glee. Then she stops, looking down at the crowd in confusion. More than a few are on their knees, clearly looking up adoringly at her.

Moira strokes her chin, then heads back around the corner again without drawing more attention. Hopefully her roadster won’t get flattened, but if it does, she’ll deal. It takes a while for new gods to get the hang of things.