F³ Yelp Rating

            Jack and I emerged from the inipi, unsteadily. The entire experience felt like a sauna, physically, but I could definitely feel something else, like I had been put through the wringer, been squeezed and shaken out raggedly.

            Outside, Melissa stood with Nat, Kate, and Anna-Maria. The older woman was nowhere to be seen.

            “I give this place two stars,” Jack said, shakily. “Would not do again.”

            “Reilly?” Nat asked. “How about you?”

            “I’ll let you know my Yelp rating once I throw some lightning.” I lifted my hand to do just that, then realized I had no charge flowing in me. It was gone, entirely. “Well, that explains why I’m so exhausted.”

            “What?” Nat asked.

            “Out of juice.”

            “Of course, you’ve been purified by the ceremony,” Melissa said. “Come on, it’s not over. Now we have some food. You need to build strength back up.”

            “Makes sense,” Nat said. “You need to get rid of that bad charge and fill yourself back up with the good.”

            “So, zap me,” I said. “Give me a boost.”

            “Oh, hell no! I am not risking catching what you had. If you’re that hard up, grab some jumper cables and try the Explorer over there.” She pointed in the direction of the muddied forest green Ford.

            “The hell he will, that’s my car!” Melissa protested.

            “Let’s just eat,” I said. “part of the ceremony, right?”

            Melissa nodded, then pointed to the picnic tables of food. “Since Kate said you people eat a lot, we prepared a lot.”

            “Thanks,” I said.

            “I paid for it,” Kate said.

            “I’ll give you half a star,” Jack told Kate.

            She gave him a full finger.

F³ Visions

            Storm Riders could take the cold. Something about our powers let us survive the freezing temperatures of 60,000 feet in the air. The heat was something else. The inipi was also known as a sweat lodge, and the purification ceremony meant Jack and I had spent hours in here. Sure, there were little breaks, but for the most part, we endured heat, steam, and total darkness. It was a relief that I couldn’t see Jack.

            The bigger relief was after the first session he had given up complaining and settled into a comatose state.

            I had felt that way for some of it, too, but for some reason sleep didn’t actually come to me. Instead, I felt this buzzy, drunk-feeling, something I hadn’t enjoyed ever since becoming a Storm Rider. My thoughts were slow and as deep as the universe, which was easy to appreciate the vastness of in total darkness. It was like being in space, floating free.

            The hiss of water on hot rocks broke the buzz, making me focus on something else for a change. My eyes were playing tricks on me as I could swear the steam from the water swirled into patterns.

            No, it’s the air currents. I can see air currents, duh.

            After a moment, I realized they were the same complex patterns of air currents that we had seen near Melissa, outside. The more I stared, the more the patterns resolved themselves into the shape of a woman’s face with long flowing hair that whipped around her, like a whirlwind, obscuring the rest of her body within the cyclone.

            I opened my mouth, about to utter an apology, but it came out as a grunt when the air current shifted around to look like a hand gesturing me to stop.

            “You say something, Reilly?” Jack asked, sounding bedraggled?

            “Huh?” I said, focused more on the hand than Jack.

            “Nothing,” he said, then fell into grumbling.

            The hand curled its fingers until the index finger waggled at me.

            A warning? A scolding?

            The air swirled again, this time forming a complex pattern. It formed a ring about as wide as my arm span, flowing in a single direction. The current reversed itself and coiled like a snake climbing up against the ring’s current. When complete, it reversed itself again, coiling in the opposite direction. Finally, a sphere of air formed in the center of the ring.

            Holy shit, that’s the symbol of the storm riders. What the hell is this?

            The door to the inipi opened. The twilight stabbed at my eyes, and I flinched away from it. By the time I got any kind of vision back, the wind pattern had vanished.

F³ A Warning

             “That really is the sincerest apology from Jack I’ve ever heard,” Nat said. “What about you, Anna-Maria?”

            She tapped a finger to her lips. “He does not do contrition well. More like a child saying what a parent wants to hear so he can be rewarded with a cookie.”

            “I could use a cookie,” I said.

            “You people are really strange,” Melissa said. “But, yeah, I can see his ego is wildly out of control, but that’s fine. True sincerity would have been best because apparently what you do is really important, but if you won’t restrain yourselves from blowing up the planet as you save it, well, I guess a threat will work. This is your warning. I don’t speak for her or any of the other spirits, but I can guarantee you that you pull this shit again, Whirlwind Woman will be back. Or maybe Thunderbird or someone else. And good luck convincing us to get rid of the curse again.”

            Jack opened his mouth, but Anna Maria slapped him with some wind-walking.

            “Speaking of,” I jumped in, “how is that going to happen? Are we forgiven or. . . ?”

            “Follow me,” Melissa climbed down from the rock and began walking north. After about ten minutes of ignoring Jack’s grumbling, we broke from the trees to see what looked like a hand-built dome tent, if it was ten feet across and only four feet tall. It was covered with thick cloth so that I couldn’t even see what the frame was made of, but I suspected wood.

            Outside of the dome’s door was a large firepit with wood neatly stacked, ready to light. And old woman in blue jeans sat on a log round, a walking stick resting on her knees. The long braid of dark hair going gray was pulled over her shoulder. She was looking at her phone, but put it away as we broke from the trees.

            “Welcome to the inipi,” Melissa said. “You’re going to go through a purification ceremony.”

            “You’re going to need a lot more firewood to purify Jack Dailey,” Kate said.

            “We don’t want to burn down the forest,” Nat said.

            “Har har. Hilarious,” Jack mocked. “Like the rest of you lot are fucking saints?”

            He’s got a point, there.

F³ An Authentic Jack Dailey Apology

             “Did I hear that right?” I whispered to Nat.

            “Did you hear Jack Dailey say ‘I’m sorry’?” She whispered back.

            “I did.” I used my little finger to clear out my ear.

            “No, you didn’t hear it right, and neither did I because Jack never apologizes for anything.”

            “Yeah, I know, so we’re both delusional, right now?” There was no wax on my finger.

            “Seems that way. Or maybe alternate reality.”

            “You mean the multiverse, like in that strange movie?”

            “Uh huh.”

            Melissa considered Jack, wondering if she had heard him right, too.

            At the silence, Jack lifted his head up and looked around at everyone. “That’s all you’re going to fucking get, all right? If you didn’t hear it the first time, you’re shit out of luck.”

            “Say it again, but a little louder,” Kate said, holding up her phone to record him.

            “Oh, okay,” Jack said. He brought up a middle finger. “Fuck,” he drew out the word, then lifted his second hand identical to the first. “You,” he stretched this out as well. Then he turned the fingers to point at one another. “Sideways.”

            “That is definitely a Jack Dailey apology,” I said.

F³ The Real Deal

             At the end of Jack’s rant, we didn’t know what to expect. Certainly something wrathful was the normal cliché, or nothing at all, but Melissa just laughed.

            “Well, you may be right about that, and all the spirits and gods are probably worse douchebags than you people could ever be. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re up shit creek without a paddle. If you want this whatever it is to be gone, you need to apologize and be sincere.”

            Jack opened his mouth, closed it, scowled, then opened it again.

            “Joaquin!” Anna Maria cut him off before he could go on to round two of the rant. “Your capacity for anger, arrogance, and assholery is legendary, but these are supernatural powers that are moreso in every way. They need no reason for their actions, and no power in the world can force them to play by our—or your—rules.”

            “She doesn’t even fucking care. She’s not here. Yeah, I see the patterns in the wind, but that’s not a true presence. She could at least show up in person. And why is Melissa judging the sincerity, huh? Makes no fucking sense, especially not to just ask permission.”

            “And this is where your fucking whiteness comes in,” Melissa scowled. “Thinking you know what this is actually about. Get your ass up here.”

            Jack wind-walked his way up, showing off that he could literally walk on air.

Melissa didn’t appear impressed. Instead, she pointed back the way we had come. “What do you see?”

The rock they stood on was not titanic, but there was enough of a break in the trees that anyone on top could probably see over the brush.

“I see the crater. So what?”

“So that’s what this is about. Whatever your powers, whatever your job, doesn’t give you the right to come in and destroy shit, especially when it’s not your shit. You like it when someone breaks into your house and takes a baseball bat to everything?”

For the second time in just a few minutes, Jack’s mouth worked without anything coming out of it, until, finally.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply.

F³ A Cool Band Name

             “Hey!” Jack protested.

            Oh, God, here it comes. Better settle in.

            I found a convenient rock to sit against as Jack launched into his rant.

            “I am definitely overprivileged and a douchebro, but my being white has nothing to do with that. It doesn’t even have to do with me being an asshole, which I readily admit. But I don’t see your ass or Whirlwind Lady—”

            “Woman,” Melissa corrected.

            “—Whatever—putting her ass on the line to save the world from freaking Cthulu and his acid punk bandmates from other dimensions from ripping the earth apart and consuming the souls of all humanity!”

Acid Punk from Other Dimensions would be a cool band name.

“So fucking excuse me if me and Reilly and the rest of us don’t go asking for permission like we’re polite, stiff-assed Brits calling on the fucking queen! We’ve got a job to do, and we’re going to do it because there’s too many goddamned gods, spirits, and whatever-the-fuck they want to identify as in order for us to be polite. Maybe if they lent a fucking hand once in a while we might be inclined to be nice, but if they just sit on their asses all day and get tweaked because we didn’t bend over and take it up the ass like Oliver fucking Twist asking ‘May I please have some more?’ then they can kiss my ass.”

            Nat had joined me on the rock, and just covered her eyes with her hand, groaning slightly. “It’s too late to say he’s not with us, isn’t it?”

            “Oh, yeah,” I sighed.

F³ At Least He Knows It

             I didn’t know if I was actually looking at Whirlwind Woman, whatever it—she—was. But the whorls in the air seemed . . . cohesive was the only word that came to mind, like there was an organized pattern to it I could only intuit.

            “Um, so how do I go about this?” I asked. “I am sorry if I stepped into her turf, but, you know, it’s kind of my job as a storm rider to keep the weather from ripping holes in reality and letting through the nasties.”

            The whorls shifted slightly, some elongating, others condensing, some shifting position just a touch.”

            “Are you interpreting for Whirlwind Woman?” I asked Melissa?

            She laughed. “No. Any movies where someone tries to interpret for the spirits is out of line. The spirits can speak for themselves. I’m just here to see if you’re sincere enough.”

            “Okay . . . I’m really really sorry.”

            “For what?”

            “Um, I don’t know.”

            Melissa rolled her eyes.

            “This is pretty vague,” Nat said.

            “You know, I could make those air patterns, too,” Jack said.

            I turned on Jack. “Can you ever not be a total fucking asshole? I don’t care what you do, but you’re not going to kill this for me. I want to get fixed. If the nice wind lady says I did something wrong, then I did something wrong. You say anything else, I’m going to punch you in the balls until you throw up.”

            Jack glared, then opened his mouth.

            “Joaquin!” Anna Maria cut him off. “Know when it is enough. Even you admit there are powers greater than us . . . and of worse temperament.”

            Jack folded his arms and harrumphed.

            I turned back to Melissa, but she held up a hand.

            “Okay, you’re good. Now I need him to be sorry,” she pointed at Jack.

            “Um, well, technically he didn’t do anything. He wasn’t even here. It was all me. He just caught it from me.”

            “That really doesn’t matter. He’s just an overprivileged, white douchebro.”

            We all nodded to that. Even Jack after a moment.

            At least he knows it.

F³ Wind Talking

             Melissa lifted her eyebrows at our buffet revelation, then shrugged. “Okay, no buffet for you guys. As to who you are apologizing to, that would be Whirlwind Woman. Apologizing is incomplete, too. You need to explain to her why you were messing with the weather in her lands.”

            “I will not—” Jack began.

            “Shut up, Jack!” we all yelled.

            “Sure thing,” I said. “Take us there, and we’re all good.”

            Melissa shook her head. “She’s all around us. Can’t you feel her in the breeze?”

            I opened my mouth, then closed it, concentrating on the breeze. I didn’t feel a presence, spirit, or anything like that. Despite mom hauling me to church in my early years, I never felt the warmth of the holy spirit like she said she did. But I could feel and see the breeze. I focused my vision on those air currents, and it wasn’t just an ordinary stirring of air. Like most breezes, it wasn’t just wind moving in a single direction. Instead, it whirled around in small convective currents, deflected and redirected each time it encountered an object or a stronger gust.

            This breeze didn’t behave that way, though. In addition to those deflections and redirections, the breeze had what looked like a complex pattern to it. It reminded me of looking at sheet music, in a way with whorls that had no explanation for their formation, all converging around the rock that Melissa stood on. They didn’t emanate from her, but did touch her in this complex, pattern.

            “Whoa,” I said.

“Your Keanu Reeves needs work,” Kate jabbed.

F³ Sorry He's Not Sorry

 

            At the mention of an apology, without even know to whom, Jack set off a storm of profanity. I moved into position, but he jumped to the side before I could smack him.

            “You fucking touch me, Reilly, and so help me I will kick you in the taint and zap everyone else here so we’re all equally fucked. Can’t believe you shanghaied me away from a night of carnal pleasure to come back to these God-forsaken chunks of rock. On top of it, I’m supposed to apologize to some chick I’ve never fucking met. No. Fuck off.” He pointed to each of us in turn. “Fuck you, and fuck you, and fuck you, and f—”

            He cut off as Kate’s fist of wind took him in the solar plexis, knowing him flat. On most people, that would know the wind out of them. Jack rubbed his chest and let out a slightly strained “You fucking c—”

            “Okay, I think we get it, Jack!” Nat yelled at him slamming a bar of wind in his mouth. She let it go after a moment, but Jack took the hint and settled into grumbles.

            Anna Maria squatted next to him, her tone equal parts understanding and scolding.

            “Sorry he’s not sorry,” I said to Melissa. “But, um, can you explain a little more. I’m fuzzy on who I need to apologize to.”

            Melissa looked to Jack, down to me, then over to Kate. “You sure they’re worth it?”

            “He’s definitely not, but since this thing can kind of spread to others, we need him fixed, too.”

            “Wait,” Nat stepped closer. “Kate, how much did you tell her about us?”

            “All of it,” she said, without missing a beat. “I tried holding back, at first, but wasn’t getting anywhere. Finally, I asked Matt for advice, and he told me to come clean, completely. He said something about First Nations’ people being treated poorly, and to just get it all out there. Oh, and I agreed that all of you would make a hefty donation to stop the exploitation of their land.”

            Nat looked back and forth between Melissa and Kate, not liking this news.

            “No problem,” I said. “You got a casino nearby, too? I can routinely drop some money in there, and I promise I won’t visit the all-you-can-eat buffet.”

            “Why would you avoid the buffet?” Melissa asked.

            “He eats a lot,” Kate answered. “We all do. We burn calories like you wouldn’t believe. We’ve actually driven restaurants out of business by going to the buffet.”

            A chorus of affirmatives came from everyone else.