Blacklake-Book4-1 Three Cousins

Chapter 45
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“When did the council build this?” Ezra asked.

I looked around for something new. She must have meant the double lanes tracin’ for the north edge of the Range.

In the back seat, Kriz snorted.

I suggested she needs to get out of the Valley more often. “The highway was doubled and divided years ago. Was a bigger scandal than our new facility.”

“She’s—not much—with—keepin’–”

I rocked my head back and forth waitin’ for Kriz to get his thought out of his mouth. He hates when we finish his sentences for him.

“Up with—the—gossip.”

“The hens in the kitchen never shut up,” she snarled. “Doesn’t mean I have to pay attention to em.”

Yeah. I try to ignore hen cluckin’ too. But Papa pretty much repeats the stuff worth repeatin’ at dinner every night. Better than any news source. His spies have spies, who spy on the other spies. But then, most every issue of interest ends up eventually in front of the Range’s council leader.

I sighed and focused on the trees glidin’ past us. Just traipsed through the route on the southbound, original lanes a few weeks ago, but the beauty of the Range pretty much gob smacks me in the face every second. Hard to believe the races were kept out of the Range for two hundred years. Musta been an intentional punishment, like self flagellation, from the writers of the Covenant for all the nasty things the various races did durin’ centuries of war against each other.

After a flurry of clackin’ from the back seat my and David’s phone pinged. Evidently Kriz had added another possible campus for perusal. I’ve lived in the North Plain for four years, didn’t realize there was so much business expansion.

Funny. Northerners call it the South Plain. As though they have a plain between em and the ancestral land of elves, to their north.

~ Ezra ~

If Ike suggested I could manage another corner at the posted speed limit, I was gonna take advantage of the next pull out, stop, and beat the ever-lovin’ snot out of him.

I glanced across to check his eyes after he kept his trap shut for a couple minutes, to make sure his idjit brain hadn’t seized. I’d prolly already checked on him a thousand times since we left the Hamlet.

When he wasn’t complainin’ about my drivin’, bare feet slammin’ the floorboard, his body relaxed, as he studied the gloomy shadows out the window. There isn’t a bull, I don’t think, who loves the forests of the Range more than he does. Our grandpapa. Maybe. For a bull on twenty corporate boards, he spends a lot of time outdoors.

That bull could afford a hundred wranglers to replace him. At about a thousand years old, only a bit of an exaggeration, he still participates in spring and autumn cattle drives. Can throw the average athletic ogre bull through a wall.

The Birs bulls are intense. Even Kriz, special in so many ways. Wonder why he and Ike ended up on the scrawny side, for ogres. Papa ain’t so big either. Pretty laid back, too. Nothing like his bull sibling, Uncle Bliar. That bull can burn paint off a fender with a glare.

Ike tensed up. A seizure? No. A big ole brown bear with three cubs lumbered along fifty feet from the highway shoulder.

Last elk troupe we passed, Ike’s hands clenched, like he readied a bow. The only physical activity I’ve ever seen Kriz get excited about, is huntin’ with our cousin Ike. Those bulls are otherwise black and white. Excludin’ their love of tech.

Why do they connect as seamlessly as they do, stay so close through the years? Makes no sense. Especially since Kriz can annoy the paint off a bumper. I’ve come close to killin’ him a hundred times. Only thing that’s ever saved him, he’s clueless to his—meanness. That, and usually Ike stands between us. His fairy godmother. Funny. I love that human trope. In ogre literature, it’s always a freeloadin’, hairy, pryin’ god with buck tusks.

Sigh. Kriz is so inconsiderate and narcissistic. Yet I still adore him. Maybe only ’cause he loves me—in his own way. Maybe. He might not remember my birthday, but he texts me a goodnight every night. Don’t care if it’s just part of his autistic routine.

~