A LONG (UNEVENTFUL) RIDE

It was a good thing our bikers were in the trucks… The rain was so heavy, we had to slow down to a crawl. So this was what it felt like to be in a typhoon. I squinted out at the curtain of rain, barely able to see past a three-foot radius.

This was the kind of weather that really messed with our wolf vision, and hearing, and if we were outside, I felt sure that the smells would be mucked up in the same way.

"Should've covered the bikes better." Ben muttered.

Yeah. I guess?

I was surprised at the slow traffic at Gate City… not the slowness, but that there was still traffic. I don't know, I guess I thought everyone would just hunker down, but the streets still had regular cars and trucks, the buses and trams were still running, their lights fogged by the rain. There were motorbikes and their bikers stranded under the bridges and anywhere a shelter extended out to the road.

Every now and then, there were also pedestrians in raincoats and umbrellas. I watched a lady get splashed (not by us - it was the truck in front.)

"Oh." I said. My hand raised subconsciously towards her, but our car moved on. Ben did turn around at my audible, "Oh."

"What?" He demanded, but let's auto-translate that to the proper beta's, "Is anything the matter, Alpha?"

"Nothing." I shook my head.

The center of the town had more covered walkways and pedestrians looked wet and harried. We passed a warrior patrol in Morning Light's Tan-Olive jackets, a stark reminder that things were different in this timeline. Here, only Night Leaf warriors had changed their warrior uniforms to the navy blue upgrades.

I didn't recognize any of their faces either - not that I knew everyone in Night Leaf, much less Morning Light, but in our Original Timeline, I knew every Night Leaf wolf by sight, and Morning Light were also usually vaguely familiar faces.

These few warriors on wet weather patrol, not at all. Perhaps they wouldn't even be alive if we were back in the original timeline. I wondered if this made it an overall better timeline?

We left Gate City, and the typhoon followed us to the borders, hesistated, and then completely stopped. By the time we were on the express way, the sky was completely clear above us.

"Warlock weather." Ben muttered at the sudden bright spring day.

"But the warlock is dead." I answered automatically.

Ben shrugged, "It's just an expression Sam."

"I knew that." I said… I wasn't a preschool pup who believed that the Warlock was really messing with our weather. But I did always wonder why our Green Packlands always suffered the most extreme weather changes in the continent. We weren't the coldest, the Greylands further up suffered far more, but we were where all the large snowstorms and typhoons liked to end their continental tours at. Wind direction wouldn't even be able to explain it! Like we took in storms from every direction. Did we have a magnet for storms?

"Why do you think all the storms come to us?" I wondered aloud.

"Dunno." Ben shrugged, but auto-translated, he meant, "It's too complicated for me to explain to you, Alpha."

To his credit, he did give me an explanation (a very condensed and typical Ben one), "Geologist say it's a lot of factors, land formation, wind directions, and whatnot."

"Oh." I said again. Now that Ben mentioned it, I remembered reading something to this in my geography textbook. It was such a phenomenon that the Green Packlands was actually used as a case study. Because of the Colored Mountains, and the large lakes between them, and the open sea on the other side… our forested Green Packlands and our connected warlock lands was where storms came to die.

So my ability to explain things were only a notch better than Ben's.

We made a pit stop at our original Underground Army Base at the Red Packlands. It was a short detour on our way to Night Forest, and we had to switch to the second expressway to connect to the White Packlands anyway. Since it was no longer raining, Ki wanted to take the opportunity to "straighten out our convoy" so that the goddess (that's me) would be able to present herself to Night Leaf in a "befitting manner."

Harvey was worried about the trucks and bikes, {It would be good to stop and check them before we continue.}

Ben didn't want to stop. I could see it on his face as he made a long audible sigh, {Yeah, whatever.}

This conversation was done over the beta mindlink from their three different vehicles. I was accidentally hearing them again. I looked out of the window and left it to my betas to sort out among themselves.

The ride felt like it was taking longer than it should… granted that the storm slowed us down eariler, Grandpa Alpha and Grandma Luna's place had never been a straightforward route. We had to take the expressway because it was all the way across from us… okay, so every other colored packland was "all the way across from us." But we had the expressways imbued with magic stone tech so our continent never got into the domesticated flight thing.

Most wolves didn't like air travel anyway.

But the single expressway from the Green Packlands connected to the Black Packlands, and from there, the Gold Packlands, or the Red Packlands. From the Red, we could connect to the White where Night Forest was.

Our train lines ran quite differently, with multiple stops in the Gold Packlands before the Central Covens, then parts of the Grey Packlands before the Gate City Station, and a few more Grey Packlands stops further up. Straight after Gate City though, the stations were much further apart from each other.

The only other packland further from the rest of the continent was probably the Blue Packland on the other side from us (aka Alpha Gunter and River's Snow Moon Pack.) It was connected to the White Packlands by a lone expressway. The train line didn't even run through. Many travel brochures described the Blue Packlands as so remote a land that it was running on a separate timeline altogether.

It was a place where horse-drawn carriages were still a thing. "Like stepping into a fairytale or medieval world where wars are won by the sword and magic is revered." This was the same travel writer who wrote that the Green Packlands beyond Gate City was a wild barbaric frontier, but we were talking about the Blue Packlands. 

The Blue Packlands had always been considered backward by those who owned guns or called the magic stones that power our expressways, "energy cores." Because our expressways were a miracle of science, not magic.

I think… no, actually I was pretty sure Wolfgang knew how to use a gun. Actually, I was pretty sure Alpha Gunter's army had all the access to modern weaponry and technology. So what if they preferred to power their streetlights with magic stones and old-fashioned oil lamps instead of electricity?

Oh well, I suppose if Snow Moon could pretend to be a magical white castle town (and ignore the fact that the wolves there had cell phones in their pockets and internet access,) the Green Packlands could pretend to be a modern city (and ignore the fact that there were gyaraa and veins of magic and tygers running rampant beyond the First Road.)

I wondered if that was what Ki meant when he said, "People only see what they want to." That felt like a long time ago… was it only this year? This year… it felt like three lifetimes had passed, was it only 3 months?

"What?" Ben asked.

"What, what?" I asked back.

"You sighed." Ben accused, "Like an old woman."

Did I? Well, he didn't have to respond to every oh and sigh that escaped my lips! Was that part of a beta thing?

"I was just thinking that this year feels really long." I answered.

Ben smirked, "Yah? I wonder why."

But he was just being sarcastic. He knew very well why.

He shrugged and turned back front, "You know what's taking too long? This damn ride."

Hahaha, Ben had never had the patience for long rides... or long anythings for that matter. Not in any timeline or alternative. It was nice how some things never changed.