16. Forest Excursion
Monday mornings always sucked. This one was no different, at least as much as waking up with two women you love wrapped in your arms in a comfortable bed in an apartment that was financed on your behalf until you no longer required it could suck. As comfortable as I was in the moment, I still had to get up to go to the gym, where Zoey would invariably kick my ass, followed by a quick return here to shower, and then Sam and I would navigate a lesson from Antonin. I wasn't sure what the evening held for me, but I wouldn't bet on it being lying in bed with my girlfriends. Hah, girlfriends.
Beth and Sam got up as I did, honoring their self-imposed commitment to exercise as long as I was. Cynthia was out already; a note left on the bar counter let us know that she would be out of town to handle something that came up as a part of her real job. Sam shrugged at us as she made herself a cup of coffee, having no more information than what was in the note. She told us that these unplanned, indefinite trips were rare, but this wasn't the first time she had woken up to a missing mother.
At the gym, Zoey did put me through my paces. Monday turned into a back day -- heavy deadlifts into volume sets of weighted pullups, facepulls, and pendlay rows with nearly as much weight as I used to deadlift. Even as a dragon, back days were physically exhausting, and I was absolutely dogging it through the end of workout cardio cycling. The one upside was that Zoey was friendly and upbeat during the entire workout, and she fell into flashing me bedroom eyes when she thought I wasn't looking, a burning intensity I hadn't expected to be possible in her grey eyes. I only caught her the first time while watching myself in the mirror during a rep. I had to give Zoey credit -- if her wolf was sending impulses anything like my dragon was capable of, that she hadn't dragged me to the showers for some team bonding was impressive.
It was fortuitous that at the end of the workout, she asked if I was available for a first date tonight. I agreed, with the condition that she help me find a place for Beth's. I asked her if something reminiscent of one of the museums in our hometown existed here, but for magic. The place I was thinking of was a grade-school to early teenager oriented educational but enjoyable science and technology museum -- more "science communication for kids struggling with the material in classes" than a typical museum, with hands-on activities, demos, games, movies, and presentations. If something like that existed for the magical world, it would kill two birds with one stone, giving Beth and me a place to interact with each other with little stress or expectations and provide a different foundational experience than Antonin's lessons. Not to disparage the old elf, but his bedside manner left something to be desired, and Beth very clearly didn't respond well to his dry lectures. Luckily, Zoey told me she had something in mind and would have more information for me tomorrow morning. When she'd kick my ass again, with chest and pressing arm movements.
Back at the apartment, I found Sam and Beth, covered in sweat, spread out on the two couches. My two exhausted girlfriends joined me in a three-person rinse-off. Despite having no real struggle with it during her first time, Sam was surprisingly bashful about undressing in front of Beth and me for the shower. Her nudity was a source of great pleasure for Beth and me, but she remained insistent that something was wrong with her body. Once we finally got her out of her head and into the warm water, Sam's worries quickly flowed down the drain. Beth and I took turns washing her, swapping which one of us was genuinely cleaning our voluptuous bedmate and which one was simply enjoying her form.
She had much more hair than Beth did, thicker and fuller even besides the length, so I spent a long time working over her scalp, caressing her skull with the shampoo they had decided on and then drawing her conditioner through her fiery mane, while Beth washed Sam's face, neck, and shoulders. The shower was large, undeniably so, but with three of us, it was at its capacity, and Beth and I barely interacted, except where our hands brushed against each other while comforting Sam.
Getting dressed was a straightforward affair, although we heard the door open and shut and Evgenia announce that she was home for the day as she passed by in the hallway. I told Sam and Beth that I would be out with Zoey for the evening but that I wasn't sure if that included dinner or not. Beth suggested she would talk to Ev about making something in the vampire's wheelhouse, get groceries if needed while Sam and I learned with Antonin, and then put a portion aside when she made it tonight. Zoey had told me to wear clothes for a jog in the park, so that's what I did. Lighter athletic shorts, a tank top, and a hoodie just to wear to wherever we were going.
Conveniently, the relaxed fit worked just fine for sitting through a lecture. Antonin gave us a more in-depth look at enchanting by having Sam and me examine different enchanted objects, getting a feel for how the magic flowed through them and modified them. We didn't actually create anything ourselves, instead simply identifying and deconstructing the different established patterns used in the basics of real enchanting. It was enlightening to finally understand how the self-cleaning, self-repairing fabrics worked -- and how my bed always seemed perfectly fresh, even the morning after I had been intimate with one of my mates.
No longer burdened with insecurity over her minuscule mana pool or stressing about proving her worth to me magically, Sam showed how astute she actually was. She took to the enchanting lessons like a duck to water, quickly picking up intricacies I could barely discern even after they had been pointed out. It made some sense that she was more skilled at detecting the very precise minutiae, as that scale was where all of her magical experience lay, but it was great to see her thriving in a task. Throughout the entire lesson, and lingering even as I kissed her goodbye, Sam gleamed with satisfaction, and I could feel how fulfilled she felt.
Watching Sam practically bounce down the sidewalk as she returned to the apartment, I texted Zoey that I was ready to go and where I was. When a sparklingly polished black Corvette coupe pulled up to the curb and flicked its hazards on, I was momentarily taken aback before recognizing Zoey in the driver's seat. I was surprised to notice that the car had federal plates on it. Zoey explained that, due to the permanently on-call nature of her previous position and the necessity for occasionally interfacing with mundane police while traveling in a personal vehicle, it was easier to have it licensed to the agency. Fewer questions were asked when someone appearing from an OGA (Other Government Agency, a catchall for an operative of an unclear federal agent Zoey explained when I questioned the unfamiliar term) showed up with obvious credentials than when someone in a flashy personal vehicle showed up. Especially when they showed up at an in-progress crime scene with inexplicable forensics data and claimed jurisdiction over the entire investigation.
She was taking me to a state park outside Philadelphia with a mythic reserve -- a place for the more physically inclined shifters to break free and run for a while or the more nature-inclined spirits to set up a personal grove and get away from the city every weekend. She wanted to be around me as a wolf again, to see how our other halves reacted to being around each other in a less constrained setting. It was an hour away from downtown Philly, mostly by highway. Zoey drove faster than I thought I'd be comfortable with, yet somehow made me forget that I was in a luxury sportscar going faster than the speed limit on public highways. Even carrying on a conversation with me, she never seemed to react to any of the other drivers, consistently already predicting what their moves would be, taking preemptive actions to ensure the ride was smooth and always in her control. It was almost eerie, reminding me of feeling like I was in a vehicle section of a first-person shooter campaign mode, just along for the ride as the AI moved me along the rails as I was distracted by all the set-piece explosions before me.
The entranceway to the reserve reminded me of every other state park I had been to before, with a small faux-woodsy cabin and security gate at the entrance. I was caught off guard by the fee not being cash only, as Zoey paid for our parking and day pass by tapping her phone against a wireless device the attendant held out to her. Only the most touristy state parks I had been to even accepted cards in my experience, which this one didn't seem to be. The parking lot was a little shy of half full, unsurprising for a weekday afternoon, and we were unaccosted as Zoey parked and led me to one of the trailheads.
"We're going to walk this loop of the lake as humans, and then I want to go off to the less mundane section and run as a wolf, alright?"
"Works with me."
She turned and eyed me sharply with her grey eyes, her sneakers grinding on the asphalt surface, saying, "You're allowed to have your own opinions, you know? I expected your dragon to be more demanding and assertive. You're unlike all the warning fairy tales I listened to as a child."
