Fantasy

Why did she drag a fallen tree behind her

Hi

It’s Ran, Sarn’s son from the Curse Breaker series, and I’m back with more on our recent, real-world aventure. Last week, I started to tell you the tale. Prepare to go deeper this week!

But first, we have two new podcast episodes this week:

Melinda is still finishing Storm the Gates, the third book in the Rogue Gods Trilogy, because the characters decided to do a lot more than storm the pearly gates. Book 3 has dragons and the characters bring everything full circle literally in ways that will hopefully surprise and delight you. Book 3 returns to the fun romp style of the first book (Gateway to Hell) after things got serious in book 2 (Summon the Gods).

But they have to end the book soon. So you will get your hands on it this summer, just a few months later than we planned. And now, back to the storm! I promise to answer the question posed in the subject line in a few paragraphs. So buckle up! We’re headed out.

The forecast called for rain, heavy at times, but not hail or fog or a sharp drop in temperature. When you last saw us, my scribe, Melinda, headed for her car because she had an appointment. She was already a few minutes late for it because one does not leave one’s apartment when rain falls like a sheet of water and hailstones bounce around.

(I may also have barred her door and had Papa call up a shield to keep her from going anywhere until everything grew strangely quiet like the world took a deep breath. Then it grew loud again when many sirens sounded.)

Melinda stopped in her tracks when she saw trees down in the parking lot. We later found out that three trees that stood in a horizontal row snapped in half and fell onto the cars parked beneath them.

Thankfully, the tree in front of Melinda’s car only lost a branch in the chaotic weather. And that branch fell diagonally missing her car and her neighbor’s car. But the cars on the other side of the dumpster weren’t so lucky because the three trees standing there all snapped like matchsticks.

Diagonally across from the three downed trees in the image above, another tree had fallen in the parking lot for the other building in Melinda’s development. Across the duck pond from that tree, two more trees were uprooted and thrown down like toys some giant was tired of playing with. And you guessed it, across from those two trees, two more trees lay across the road.

It looked like a mini tornado came through. Saw dust covered a third of the parking lot, and the air smelled like pine-scented Christmas candles. That scent lingered all that day into the next one.

Melinda discovered that later when she went for a walk with her elderly neighbor. That’s when they found the downed trees because they couldn’t see them from the parking lot next to my Scribe’s building without climbing over downed 3 trees and the broken glass from several cars.

And you better believe we didn’t let her do that. I can’t get more books if something happens to her, so I take her safety seriously!

Remember that appointment? Well, Melinda is the kind of person who does what she says, and she promised to show up for that appointment. So nothing I said could dissuade her from trying. You’d think all the sirens and the fog and the smoke rising from flares would convince her to reschedule.

But she said no. NY State keeps emailing her that she needs to get her car inspected before the end of the month, and this day of crazy weather was the only day she could do that. So she marched over to her car, slipping and sliding on hail as she went. I trailed after her because what else could I do?

I couldn’t let her go alone. She doesn’t have any magic, and who knew what the weather would throw at us next?

It still said rain, heavy at times, but nothing about hail or whatever broke the trees. (More on this in a bit, I promise! We did some weather sleuthing…)

I think you know where this is going: on a short road trip. Melinda fired up her SUV but it doesn’t roar. It just rumbles like its annoyed she even wants to try driving on the layer of hailstones covering the parking lot. But her SUV maintained good traction despite those icy balls, and Melinda drove slowly. I didn’t even have to ask.

When we reached the road that leads out of the development, we had to stop because there was another tree down, and it blocked the whole road. But Melinda must read too many of our books because she unfastened her seatbelt and got out of the car.

I thought she was just going to take a look at the tree. Though I didn’t know why she would want to do that when we already looked at three downed trees in a row. This was just one tree.

Oh no, Melinda was on a mission, and no tree would stand in her way. So my scribe, who’s like five foot two or something, grabs the top of the tree and drags it along the median. I just stared at her. What the heck was she doing? She couldn’t move a tree that was like four times her height.

But Melinda didn’t get that message. Maybe I didn’t stare hard enough at her in horror. Because she dragged the top portion of the tree six feet away from where it fell.

Meanwhile, I’m still in the car, but now I’m trying not to laugh because the top of the tree broke off, and Melinda was only dragging that. But she didn’t notice because she was looking behind her to make sure she didn’t trip over anything on the uneven ground.

When she let go and glanced over to check on the tree, I’m sure she was disappointed to see that it still blocked the road from end to end. But now the grassy median was free of obstacles, so cars could drive on that to get around the downed tree. So that was good. Bravo, Scribe!

But her hands were covered in sticky sap, so she had to go back and get isopropyl alcohol to remove the sap. That’s the only thing we’ve found that takes the sap right off people and glass. It might work on the rest of the car, but we heard it can damage the paint, so it’s not recommended for that.

After she removed the sap from her hands, we set off and inched around the downed tree. Unfortunately, the median wasn’t wide enough, so some branches scratched at the car like they were to stop us.

But they didn’t. We got away, and Melinda got her car inspected.

I checked her inbox to make sure NY state didn’t send anymore notices. So far so good!

Does any other state email about inspections? Or is NY state the only one emailing threats every week to get its licensed drivers to do things before they expire? Inquiring minds want to know.

We’ll have to continue our adventure next week when my scribe and her neighbor put on their amateur sleuthing hats to assess the damage and figure out what happened.

***

Don’t forget to follow the Kickstarter, so you know when it launches. Guerren is on the right. Rosalie is on the left.

This chaotic duo will either save the timeline and the world or destroy both. Only one of them will have fun doing it. You can guess which one. I might have fun helping them.

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