And See Ye Not Yon Bonny Road? (Mage)

Phenex rubs his jaw, then rakes his fingers impatiently through his dreads.

"Could warn a brother, Median. You know that shit makes my teeth ache."

Median grins at him, looking not at all contrite.

"Sorry 'bout that."

"Mind filling me in? Inri might be willing to take in strays for no reason, but considering she's a sleeper and underage, I've got a suspicion there's another reason we're keeping the kid."

The other man stares out the window, his eyes briefly turning the colour of a funnel cloud.

"It's highly likely that she's going to awaken. Best guess would be sometime in the next week, give or take a couple of days. Somehow I don't think Child Services is equipped to deal with that."

"Shit. So why not tell Inri?"

"Because I'm going to do something that'll make it a virtual certainty, and I know she won't approve."

* * * * * * * *

I don't know what I was expecting. Although really, even if I'd been expecting something, it wouldn't have been what I was expecting, if that makes any sense.

Around two on the second day of driving, we turned off the main highway onto a dusty side road. For another hour, there was nothing to see except cracked, sun-baked ground and the occasional piece of bleached wood, bone, or a tumbleweed spinning along. Then I saw something glittering in the distance.

"What's that?"

"Wait."

The others were all grinning. Inri looked like she was about to start bouncing up and down like a little kid. So I squinted out the front window for the next half hour, watching the gleam ahead spread out and upwards, although the heat shimmering up from the sand still kept me from making out exactly what it was. Once, I saw a man zoom across the road on what looked like an easy chair slung between two motorcycles, trailing multicoloured streamers behind him.

Finally, I could see RVs, buses, geodesic domes, tents, antennae, and the huge skeletal steel form of a man towering above everything else. Median turned to me and grinned wildly, his spiky blond hair seemingly standing on end with excitement.

"Welcome to Burning Man."

* * * * * * * *

For the first couple of hours after we'd found a spot to park the van and set up the tents and camp beds, I just wandered around aimlessly. I made sure to note the landmarks along my route, so that I could find my way back to the others if I got lost. It was still overwhelming though. I'd never been to a place like this or seen people like these before - it kind of reminded me of pictures in old National Geographic magazines of tribespeople in Africa, except instead of bones and feathers and cowhide the people here were done up in fiber optic cable and bubble wrap and computer parts. They were all really friendly though - even more so when they found out it was the first time I'd been there. And it wasn't the skeevy sort of friendly that guys at the bar put on when they're trying to get me to go home with them either - I don't think most of the people I met had any ulterior motives besides making sure that I was having a good time.