Page 67 of Katya and the Young God

The dog just thumps his tail, continuing to scarf down his kibble, and she sits back.

“Jesus Christ I’ve never had a pet,” she blurts out, to the crisp cool air and the finely setting rain. “I’ve never had a fucking pet.”

It’s the least of her worries and yet.

Careful to not pull more on her shoulder, she rolls up her sleeping mat, chomping on her own protein bar, and resolving to hit the worst fast food restaurant she can find once she’s back at the car. Get the worst burger she can find, something hot and greasy and full of everything she usually doesn’t let herself eat, because she survived.

* * *

It’sanother half an hour of walking to the trail proper, and then the relatively easy walk thereafter, and the rain doesn’t let up, giving her a steady soaking, and Katya’s only a little happy that it’s probably washing away some of the blood and grime from the last few days.

Once on the trail, it only takes her three more hours, before the ground smooths out and the dirty roof of the nature center comes into view.

And the parking lot, with the small collection of cars, each untouched except for identical parking tickets on each window shield.

She stares at them, for a brief second, before she pulls out her lock pick, grabbing her bag of stuff from the back of Feketer’s truck, then tossing it into Pieter’s little sedan.

Stepan bounds over to the car, and the moment she opens the door he climbs in and sits, prim, in the passenger seat, and there’s even a clip-on harness that attaches to his hiking pack.

Pieter cares so much about the fucking dog that he put a fucking harness in his car, and yet he still left the dog with Katya.

Katya’s just not sure if it’s trust or just desperation that made him do it.

“Just a sec, boy, I’ll get you buckled in,” she says, clipping the harness to the vest and feeling all sorts of ridiculous, but Stepan sits perfectly still while she does so.

After that, she digs out her phone and turns it on, plugging it into the phone charger in the tiny sedan. Because he has a charger in his car, like a normal person, not like a Demigod, not like the specter that’s haunted her nightmares.

The specter haunting her nightmares, who has a fucking dog harness.

“Alright,” Katya whispers, and the dog thumps his tail. Let's do this.

* * *

About halfway betweenher cabin and the nature center, her cell phone gets signal again, and Stepan twitches his ears as her phone bings again, again, and again.

Instead of calling people back, people who are probably righteously angry, she just flips her phone to voicemail and speakerphone, letting their words fill the car.

The first one’s from Aimes, and she’s not even surprised.

“Katya, I know you said you’re in a fucking cave but I swear to god you need to call me the fuck right back, this isn’t funny,” Aimes’s recorded voice says, and Katya almost feels bad for the quaver in her voice. “Iakov can’t find you, can’t teleport to you, I don’t know what to do.”

The phone beeps, and next voicemail.

This time it’s Miri.

“Look, Katya, I just got a panicked phone call from your friend, and if this is what you didn’t want help with I’m going to be so pissed,” Miri’s voice says, and Katya can hear something electric, some sort of technological feedback, across the phone, something that makes the hairs on the back of Katya’s neck raise. “She says you can’t be contacted right now, and Not-Thomas says he thinks you’re still alive, but you need to call me back as soon as you get this.”

There are a few more voicemails, but all the normal type, calls missed from politics and office dramas, including the normal voicemail from her bank that her paycheck was deposited, and it gives her a few seconds to ground herself, as she turns onto the dirt road.

Fumbling with her phone on speaker, she dials Aimes first, and it goes straight to voicemail, and Katya huffs out a laugh. Because of course.

Then Miri, and it rings twice, before a brief second of technical interference, before it clicks over.

“Katya?”

Even the sound of her friend’s voice, over how many thousands of miles away, takes Katya’s breath away, and she almost can’t answer.

“Yeah, yeah it’s me, I’m alive,” she blurts out, before she loses the courage to answer at all. “I’m sorry, I’m...” She pulls over on the dirt road, even though it’s the middle of the day, she’s seen no other cars, and takes a few deep, gulping breaths.

---