Mom and I decide to go hiking up on Mt. Hood, as it is a hot summer day and the rocks look very inviting.
Up on the viewpoint, I find two beautiful crystals wedged into the path, and eagerly bend down, trying to pull them out. An old man walking by warns me: "If'ens ya want phenomenuh like time travel and magic tuh last, ya better leave 'em there. Pull out the foundation, and all else'll crumble away, sure 'nuff." Sighing, I leave them there, but mention to mom how hard it is to find nice rocks these days that come with no spatio-temporal strings attatched.
I turn to leave when I notice mum is no longer beside me. Instead, she is scrambling up the side of the embankment to the right of the path. "Mum, what are you doing?" I cry, fearing for her already unsteady ankle. "Get down from there!"
"I just want to look for agates," she replies cheerfully, paying me no heed. She stumbles a bit.
"It's okay mom, we don't need any more rocks, just come down," I urge, as a man in an orange-striped coat walks up next to me. I'm starting to feel embarrassed of the spectacle, but mom, in that life-or-death stubbornness inherent in our family tree, struggles onward even more fiercely.
"No. I'm doing this for you! You can make art projects with them!" I have a momentary flash of Belle's father picking the flower from the beast's garden. There are going to be repercussions from this, I am sure. The man next to me decides at that moment to take from his bag a small clipboard. He asks me questions about mom, her age and how many dependents she has and stuff that sounds very FAFSA-esque, and finally tears off a small piece of paper and hands it to me.
"What is it?" I ask.
"A ticket. It's illegal to climb up the embankment. It's said to be possessed of evil spirits."
"Great," I sigh, shlumping against the post that tells of the site's historical and legendary past. "Okay, mom, you really need to come down now," I call.
"I'm trying!" she returns frantically, throwing down her fistfuls of little rocks in order to yank at her legs. She glances mournfully down at me. "My feet are stuck." I snort.
"Yeah, right, like that's not just a ploy to stay up there longer and collect more rocks. Come on."
"No, really, I mean it, my feet are stuck! I think something's got ahold of them..."
That makes me sick to my stomach. There could be anything lurking in the rock fields...I fly up to her, disregarding the stares from other visitors, and pluck my mother from the rocks as fast as I can without risking damage of her sensitive ankle. I vaporize the man's clipboard on the way over, for good measure. Don't want mum worrying about fines when she could be cursed or have a parasite infiltrating her system or goodness knows what. We fly home and I fix some tea.
Together we watch Perry Mason with granny, happy and blissfully ignorant of the fact that mum transmitted a bacteria on her shoes that is even now destroying the last of the magic crystals...
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