A Visit to the Lake

         She smiled cheerfully as she waved to her co-workers and headed out the door. Some smiled back, others scowled knowing they still faced hours of calls before their shifts were over. The last few weeks at the call center had been back-to-back calls, one customer getting off the line being only the start of another call. It wasn’t a physically demanding job but the emotional and mental drain had resulted in thousands of people quitting or requiring medical leave for stress reasons. As she passed through the card-locked doors into the foyer she pulled her long red hair out of its ponytail. It was almost a symbolic gesture, letting her hair down and leaving the stress behind the closing doors.
         “You off now?” the security guard asked.
         “Yeah,” she replied, laughing, “it’s my weekend starting now.”
         “Any plans?”
         “Not really,” she grinned, “just going to relax and unwind.”
         “Well have a good weekend!”
         “Thanks, see you later,” she waved and pushed open the doors leading outside. Like the rest of the glass that looked into the outside world it was heavily tinted, turning a bright sunny day into an overcast one. At least while inside the building. She squinted green eyes in the bright sunlight. It was June, and just starting to warm up. She stood for a moment in the sun and let the warmth further relax her.
         “Have a good weekend, Mara.”  The young woman crossing from the smoking area to enter the building called as she made her way towards the parking lot across the street. She was wearing blue jeans and a green, short-sleeve, button-down shirt and her hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail. She was only about five feet tall and curvy rather than skinny. Her bright blue eyes and cheerful smile made it easy to like her.
         “Thanks, Sarah. I’ll see you on Sunday!” Sarah smiled and disappeared behind the mirrored glass. Mara continued on her way to her car.
         People called her beautiful and she accepted their opinions without any ego at all. It was a carefully maintained thing, from her long hair that was red without being too coppery to her almond-shaped green eyes lined with thick lashes. Her lips were full but not too much and quirked as easily into a wry and sarcastic smile as a genuine one. Her nose was straight with a slight upturn at the end and her cheekbones were high and well-defined while her chin was delicately pointed. She was taller than Sarah at five feet and five inches and she was slender besides. She’d been told many times she was like a doll, almost too pretty to be real. Except for the small scar that ran through her eyebrow on the left side. It was not a big scar, perhaps only three-quarters of an inch long, but it broke up the perfect arch of her eyebrows.  She was a friendly and outgoing person but savored her private time as well.
         Private time that she was determined to take full advantage on her ‘weekend’. She had two days off in a row and like her co-workers those two days were her weekend. If they happened to be Friday and Saturday she had off it did not matter. Her five-day work week was over. And at three o’clock in the afternoon on a Thursday in June she knew exactly where she wanted to be. She hurried across the parking lot, her silver ballet flats making hardly any noise on the pavement and her black skirt dancing on the breeze. Her black blouse was unbuttoned at the neck, letting the breeze lift the hair at the back of her neck a little.
         Her car was near the front of the parking lot, a benefit of starting her shift at seven in the morning, and she pulled her keys out of her purse as she approached. Her car was a little white four-door Honda Civic. She came around the front end, and stopped. Seated on the ground, leaning his back against her driver’s side rear door, was a man she had not seen in years. He was wearing blue jeans and a gray button-down shirt with black loafers. His blond hair fell into his face and she paused to take in the strong line of his jaw, the chiseled cheekbones. He still had a mustache and goatee that made him look striking rather than pretentious or old. His eyes were closed but she knew they’d be as blue as the summer sky. Standing he’d be nearly six feet two inches tall,
         “Seth?” her voice was surprised. His mouth quirked into a smile and his eyes opened. He looked at her and spoke.
         “I told you I’d come back,” he said simply. As if it explained everything. Maybe it did. She smiled.
         “I remember.” She unlocked her door. “Why are you here?”
         “You’re here,” he said simply. It held all the sentiment in the world.
         “I was going to go out to the lake,” she told him. “You can come if you like.”
         “Of course.” He rose and she wondered where his pitchfork was.
         “It’s long gone,” he said, as though he could read her thoughts. She quirked an eyebrow at him askance. “My pitchfork. You were looking over my shoulder, where I used to carry it.”
         “Ah.” It almost irritated her that she could be so easily read. She got into her car and unlocked the passenger side door for him. He climbed in and buckled up.
         “How have you been?”
         “Good,” she said, unsure how to further answer that question. She opted for starting the car instead.
         “I see.” The awkwardness rolled off him in waves. “Look, this isn’t exactly how I pictured this happening.”
         “You thought you’d come back and everything would be like it was?”
         “Maybe a little,” he admitted, turning to look at her. “You haven’t forgotten?”
         “No, I haven’t forgotten.” She said simply. It had been years, too many years. She had not forgotten, could not forget. But things were different now. They had to be different.
         “I’m glad.” He said. They lapsed into silence as she pulled out of the parking lot. The lake she wanted to go to was Thetis Lake, which was closer to the other side of the southern tip of Vancouver Island from the Brentwood area they were on the edge of.  Brentwood was nearly half an hour driving from Victoria’s city center, out towards the Swartz Bay ferry terminal and just off the Pat Bay highway. To get to Thetis Lake she would need to get on the Trans Canada which went at least most of the way up to the northern tip of Vancouver Island. There were several ways to get there. She opted to follow the Pat Bay highway to McKenzie road and pulled onto the highway.
         The silence stretched between them, but it seemed he was content for the moment. They’d never been very physically affectionate in public places. Behind closed doors had been a slightly different story, of course. But that had been a long time ago. She’d been a different person then.
         
         The half hour drive out to Thetis Lake they spent in what could have passed for a comfortable silence. She was fairly certain he was studying her when he thought she was not paying attention, as though he had forgotten she would notice. Perhaps he had. She ignored it but continued to be aware of his scrutiny.
         When they finally pulled into the parking lot at the lake he broke the silence.
         “You come here a lot?”
         “Yeah, I usually hike for two or three hours a day.”
         “Is it safe to go alone?” He did not even have to ask if she hiked with someone.
         “Of course,” she said, as though the answer was obvious.
         “Of course, I apologize.” He said, smiling.
         “Thank you.” She got out of the car and he followed.
         “I missed you.”
         “Really?” She sounded anxious as she paused at the trunk.
         “Really.”
         “I missed you too.” He smiled and it warmed his eyes with an emotion she’d almost forgotten. She returned his smile as she unlocked the trunk and pulled out a backpack. Inside the pack was her hiking gear.
         “Is it alright if I come with you?”
         “It’s probably safer for you if you do,” she laughed. “You might blow up my car.”
         “I haven’t blown anything up in a long time!” He protested.
         “Which means you might start any time,” she said, heading towards the beach and the change rooms.
         “I-” he paused, and then started again, “You’re probably right.”
         “I know.” She laughed, “I don’t want to have to buy a new car. I just got used to this one.”
         “I could blow up someone else’s car. Cars blow up really well.”
         “You’ll just have to come with me.”

         Once her work clothes were stored in her backpack and she was dressed for the forest in long black shorts, a black tank top and hiking shoes she started out on the Lower Thetis Trail. It would connect with the Upper Thetis Lake Trail, which in turn connected to the Seaborn trail, that ended at the McKenzie trail. The McKenzie trail connected to another trail that led back to the Upper Thetis trail. She’d hiked it before, several times. There was a small mountain at McKenzie Lake and it was not very well-traveled compared to the upper and lower lake trails. If she took her time it was about a three hour hike. Usually she could finish it in two and a half hours. Seth was coming with her so she was supposed it would take three hours.
         Once they turned onto the Seaborn trail, they both stopped talking. The fact that Thetis lake was only some twenty minutes from the city center made people who’d never been to Victoria think that the word “forest” was used liberally.
         It was not. Thetis lake was bordered by forest on three sides. Hiking on a trail no more than two feet wide, surrounded by the thick ferns and towering evergreens of a temperate rain forest with the sound of the nearby highway nothing more than a quiet buzz it was easy to forget that the city was only half an hour away.
         “It’s beautiful here.” Seth had been silent for most of the hike, but he finally spoke as they crossed a small foot-bridge at McKenzie Creek, “it reminds me of what my father used to tell my brother and I about his childhood home.”
         “It is soothing here,” she said.
         “I can see why you come here so often.” Mara did not bother replying, turning left and stepping over a rotting fallen tree and onto the McKenzie Creek trail.
         “You know where you’re going?”
         “Of course.”
         “You never forget.”
         “Never.” They continued on in silence.
         Eventually they reached McKenzie Lake, the trail having led gradually upwards. Here the vertical incline was even greater. Mara clambered up over exposed roots and rocks with long-practiced ease. Seth followed behind her. She reached the top before him and paused, standing on the rocks and looking out through the trees. Here the sound of the highway was even quieter. Seth came to stand behind her.
         “We’ll take a short break here.” He nodded and sat down on the rocks. She put her pack down and stood back, watching him.
         It had been such a long time. So many years since she’d last seen him. So many years since he’d promised to find her no matter where she went.
         “How did you get here?” It was uncharacteristic of her, the way the words burst from her mouth. She hardly noticed. His head turned, so he could see her. He raised an eyebrow.
         “I climbed. Just like you did.” he said impishly.
         “Not here, as in now. Here. This city. This country. How did you even get to this plane?”
         “Did you forget who I am? What I am?”
         “Seth you died. You may be powerful but humans all die. You can’t come back from that.”
         “I did once.”
         “Because Bahamut took pity on you. On their own humans cannot come back.”
         “Maybe I’m undead.”
         “You aren’t. Even if you were you still could not have found me in this plane”
         “Can you really not guess how I found you?” his smile was strange, almost cold. Predatory. Mischievous. For the first time in years she felt a mind brush her own with intent. Surprised, she was unable to block. A single image, of Seth standing before five white-skinned creatures that looked much the way aliens were portrayed. Except they had no mouths. No noses at all. And their eyes were not eyes but orbs that had turned the color of burnished copper in their age. Doppelgangers. Not just any doppelgangers. He had stood before the Five, the doppelgangers that ruled their kind with an iron fist. The same creatures that had caused her to kill Seth in another plane, another time. The same creatures she’d gone to after his second death to receive a new assignment when she had been judged unfit for service.
         The creatures who had made her kill him to teach her that feeling was wrong.
         He’d gone to them. He’d been sent to her. They had sent him to her.
         :We will forgive you if you can prove you have learned your lesson: The voice of the Five echoed in her mind. She was momentarily confused. She had seen the error of her ways. She had been purged of her flaw. :You have been long among humans. We fear you have become faulty again. Pass this test:
         :And if I fail?:
         :You will be eliminated:
         :I understand:
         Once she had become flawed. She had taken into herself too much of humanity. Had damaged herself with feelings. Purging herself of that weakness had allowed her to see the error of her ways. Her punishment had been assignment to a plane where magic was believed to be nothing more than sleight of hand. She’d been purged. She had to prove her dedication to the Five. She had accepted it. She now accepted this test.
         “How did you know to ask the Five?”
         “Who else could know where you were?”
         “I understand.” She did not ask what price they had demanded from him. He would be dead soon and it would not matter after that. “I love this place.” Her voice was soft. Full of what sounded like emotion. But there was not any emotion in her. She was purged of it. Seth stood and moved to stand beside her. She smiled at him. He reached for her hand and she let him take it. He was human. There was no harm in it. A static shock leaped from his fingers to hers.
         “I’m sorry, Maru’khi.” He used her true name, a name he knew her well by. He’d known her true form from the beginning. It had not stopped him from loving her. Foolish human emotions.
         “No, there’s nothing to be sorry for.” At least she could let him believe for a little longer that she loved him as she once had. “You are here now.” He had crossed planes for her more than once. He had earned that lie.
         “You’re right. There’s nothing to be sorry for.” Her body felt tight, and she frowned. “I am not sorry at all.” His voice was cold, emotionless, and she looked up at him, suddenly aware that something was drastically wrong.
         “Seth, what do you mean?” She tried to ask, but did not get the chance. He released her hand and pushed with a single hand. She stumbled forward and over the lip of the cliff. Somehow she ended up falling looking up at him, and his head was tilted, eyes and face expressionless as he watched. She focused and shifted into a hawk.
         Or tried to. Her body did not respond. She remembered the shock she had felt at his touch and realized she’d made a mistake. It had not been a static shock. It had been magic. Magic that locked a doppelganger into whatever form it wore. The ground rushed up to meet Maru’khi. Unable to change and save its life the doppelganger stared at the face of the man who had betrayed it and understood that it still felt love.
         :there is no way to purge the vileness from you. You were infected by humans. We cannot allow your infection to spread. Human feelings are weak. The Five are strong:

         Broken, bleeding at the bottom of the cliff a doppelganger lay dying with tears falling down its cheeks.


Word count: 2783