2020-10-02 Disney Cattle Mutilation Princess Adventure
Disney Cattle Mutilation Princess Adventure
Location: Golden Oak Rank
Date and Time: October 2, 2020 Late Night
Summary: Cattle weirdness
Mood Music: SHAED "Running Through the Fields"
“Oooh, oooh, UFO!”
Reaching over, Luu snatches the binoculars from Jinny, pulling her slightly by the strap. Rotating the lenses, she begins to examine the distant lights. There’s a few moments of precision instrumenting, before she hands the binoculars back to Jinny. “It’s just another car,” she declares with a slight pout, as the high beams of a Mercedes crest a distant hill.
Closer by a cow lets out a slow and mournful moo. In seeming acknowledgment a few other cows let out shorter moos. “Well they certainly sound happy,” Luu declares, her voice tinged with disappointment bordering on acceptance.
The full moon above might be tempting to Hathor, but so far they’ve seen no celestial phenomenon, originating from Earth or other planets or dimensions.
Laying in the grass on her stomach and beneath a tree, Luu’s dark clothing blends in the shadows, camouflaging her without being camouflage. Beneath her eyes is dark eye shadow in imitation of eye black, but not at all effective other than being a ‘look.’
“I’m pretty sure this is the place,” Luu says as her eyes trace over Golden Oak Ranch. According to some friends of Luu’s, there was a high probability of cattle mutilation activity tonight at this spot. A field trip was suggested -- nee, insisted upon -- by Luu, and that brought the two Chantrymates out here tonight.
The spot Luu chose is a little bit past the edge of the city, but not so far as to have any risk of the City getting mad at Jinny for stepping beyond the borders and leaving it behind. Her Datsun easily devoured the miles leading to the northern part of the city, two lane, twisty roads making the short thirty minute drive a lot more exciting than one might think, her headlights illuminating signs leading to ranches, farms, and other out-of-the-way spots.
On the way up, the conversation ranged from topic to topic but, a little bit before arriving, Jinny did voice her concern regarding the chances of this trip being successful. Actually catching an abduction? Probably minimal chances of that happening at the absolute best, but she did get a chance to spend time with Luu, alone, and that’s always a nice thing. “I haven’t heard too much about this place, Luu. I mean…about all I can say is that Disney uses it to shoot scenes for their western movies, and they rent it out from time to time for other movie studios to use it, but cattle? I mean….are there even cows out here?”
Reality decides to answer the question when she turns the last corner and the lights from her Datsun illuminate a small herd of Black and White holstein cows against a white wooden fence. Her argument is instantly made moot. Pleasantly surprised that she was corrected and that this trip wasn’t entirely for nothing - after all, without cows there cannot be an abduction of said cows - they park beneath one of the several trees surrounding the pasture and kill the lights on the Datsun. The blanket borrowed from the chantry is laid out on the tall grass and, in the moonlight, the pair sit, passing the binoculars back and forth, listening to the sound of cows mooing in the background.
Dressed in her ‘street’ clothes - the ones she wears as camouflage when she’s painting - Jinny sits quietly on her stomach on the blanket, her phone in the car along with a cooler packed with goodies because if they’re going to be out here, they’re not going to be hungry or cold. Thankfully the weather’s supposed to be clear tonight, so aside from maybe needing to cuddle close to stay warm, the pair are fairly well situated with comfort this time around. She did forgo the eyeblack, though, instead counting on her hooded sweatshirt to provide all the camo she needed.
“Urk!” she gasps as the binoculars are snatched, dragging her a little closer. That’ll teach her to put the strap around her neck! She laughs and ducks her head, letting them go to the observant Luu, kicking her sneaker-covered feet in the quiet of the night.
As the focus of the binoculars pulls from distant hills to nearby fields, Luu’s attention falls on a number of gathered cows. For awhile, she studies them in silence, learning their behaviors and patterns; and perhaps giving some of the backstories, as appropriate. After a few minutes spent in an udderly meditative state Luu ‘hmmms’ lightly, the slight sound of suspicion and mystery in her voice, as if perhaps she might be uncovering some secret knowledge of the bovine persuasion.
Offering the binoculars back to Jinny, Luu wrinkles her nose lightly, considering the question that is on her mind. “Does that -- “ Luu begins to ask, before pausing to ‘hmmm’ once more. There’s a few more moments of debate, before she finally comes to the decision to try asking again. “Does that cow look suspicious to you?” Luu wonders, as she stretches out a hand to point at one of the less active cows. Upon asking this, Luu looks back to Jinny, once more wrinkling her nose as if she’s trying to ascertain if she actually should have asked that question.
The spot they chose was near the fence, clear of any deposits and well-hidden from the road, giving them a perfect view of the open field without the danger of a cow meandering over and stepping on them. While Jinny has heard that cows don’t deliberately step on people, she is delicate and thinks that a 1500 pound beast putting weight on any part of her body would be a fairly bad thing, as well as the stuff coming out of them. Thankfully the cows are tending to stay away from them, keeping to the middle of the field in a tight knot to keep an eye out for things like Mages, Coyotes, and potential abductions. All except for that one over there, though.
“What is that? An ostracized cow? A sacrificial offering, maybe?” Jinny ponders aloud. That must be the one that drew the short straw and had to stand out to distract anything that might want to eat or abduct a cow. Jinny makes a soft ‘mmm’ sound, lifting the binoculars to her eyes, the lack of light not helping her pick out details in the least. “They may know more than they’re letting on….” She looks over to Luu, then to the cow. “Want to go check it out?”
“Let’s go check it out,” Luu responds, interested in bringing some action to their steak out. Getting into ‘character’ Luu begins to crawl forward on her belly as if she was some sort of special commando on a secret mission. This doesn’t last long. Just a few feet ahead of her, Luu begins to get close to a cow ‘patty’ in the pasture. Her eyes go slightly wide, as she decides, “Ok, back to walking.” Rising from the ground, Luu gives a sheepish grin to Jinny as she dusts herself off. Her attention going to the cow, which unlike the others hasn’t moved much more than blinking, chewing its cud, and a little tail action, Luu declares, “Very suspicious.”
Stepping around the ‘land mine,’ Luu begins to sneak through the pasture on her way towards the odd duck of a cow. As she moves, her attention goes every which way. There’s plenty of potential things to see on the ground and in the sky, not to mention all around them. “What do you think it’s deal is?” she wonders rhetorically, having more imagination when facts when it comes to dairy shenanigans. Stopping just a few feet from the cow, Luu notes, “The fact that we’re not spooking it is kinda spooking me.”
Dun dun dun da dun dun dun da! It calls for a dramatic song to play along with the stalking and Jinny playfully adds a soundtrack with puckered lips imitating a trumpet - kind of - as Luu commando-crawls along the ground, stepping aside when Luu stops and stands. Jinny giggles and puts her hands behind her back, trying to look innocent as they both step around the land mine, her flashlight at the ready to shine the way but, right now, the moon and the grass are enough.
From a distance, the cow just looks like that, with a tail moving in time with the wind, its head moving up and down to graze, and turning to face away from the approaching Luu and Jinny but otherwise standing stock still. The sound of the breeze can be heard, too, along with a mechanical whirring that corresponds with the cow’s head moving up and down, like a servo, or a VCR spinning tape. Down, to the side, up. Down, to the side, up. Over and over again, like it’s on a loop.
“Hello…moo-moo…” Jinny says, standing close to Luu. “What in the world? Is it a cybercow?” She clicks on her light and swings it up to reveal….
Hands on her hips, Luu eyes the cow in the moonlight of the pasture. Leaning in she begins to carefully examine, daring to get a little closer each time. “It looks like a cow,” she says as she considers the bovine before them. “I can’t tell, though, if I’m smelling cow or cows,” she notes, as she brings a hand up to her chin, and taps her index finger against her cheek.
“Perhaps -- “ Luu begins to say right as the light hits the cow and it responds in kind with an animatronic head-tilt and a cyber moo. Startled by this revelation, Luu jumps back from their spotted acquaintance, and right into Jinny.
With the light on it for a moment before she encounters a wild Luu in the tall grass, the cow seems to be a somewhat okay replica of a cow, if one were to take a picture of a cow and then build a flat version as cheaply as one possibly could but, at the moment that the head tilts up and the robotic-sounding moo comes from somewhere around the cow’s chest, she’s having to deal with a flying woman with hair the same color as a fresh lime. She backs into Jinny and the light goes tumbling into the grass, Jinny doing her best to keep the pair from falling over and, for a moment, nearly preventing it. However, momentum does have a way of making things happen and Luu’s wiggling (as delightful as it is in her arms) does finally tip the balance to falling and, somehow gracefully, Jinny topples to the ground with Luu straddling her hips after a twist, leaving her gazing up into the other woman’s eyes, the veil of hair surrounding her, blotting out the world. Thankfully, they miss any sort of deposits left by the cows - the live ones seem to be avoiding this one pretty much judging from the ring of grass around it that hasn’t been stomped down or eaten, but right now? Right now it’s the furthest thing from her mind.
And then suddenly, after a few moments, Jinny finds herself rummaging in the grass for the flashlight, the past few seconds almost a blank. Finding it, she hefts it up and illuminates….that. “What in the heck?” she asks, sweeping the light over the thing, looking around Luu’s back to see what the thing is from her vantage point. From what she can tell, polyester cloth, or maybe a cow hide - it was hard to tell from where she was - was fitted over a plywood skeleton. On the back is something dark and glass-like which, if examined, would probably be a solar panel for the batteries to run the motor that they can hear grinding from where they sit. It seems to be attached to servos leading to the tail and head, making it move and moo at a pre-determined time.
“A dummy cow?” Her nose wrinkles briefly as she thinks, wetting her upper lip with the tip of her tongue. “So…like…a movie cow? Or something?”
“Whoah,” Luu responds as she stumbles back into Jinny, her feet stepping wildly backwards as she tries to get a good grip on the Earth below, but ends up falling down instead. With her cap knocked off to the side, Luu ends up landing atop her Chantrymate. Hair dangling down forms into curtains on either side of Jinny’s head, momentarily sealing the two of them off from the rest of the world. Face-to-face, Luu gazes into Jinny’s eyes, not moving for a few moments of eternity.
“Sorry,” she says softly, and yet for all her apologies, she still hasn’t thought of getting off of Jinny as something she should probably be doing. Just the two of them pressed closed to each other in some newly discovered private Eden.
A mournful moo brings Luu back to reality, her eyes momentarily going wide, as she says, “right,” and then rolls to the side and off of Jinny. Grabbing her cap, she raises up from the ground, using it to dust off her legs before crowning her disheveled hair.
“I guess this is a Disney ranch,” Luu notes, working to quickly change the topic away from their awkward moment. Perhaps, though, it was simply a moment. “They do have like totally real cows, though,” Luu says as she points out the flesh-and-blood herd. “Right?” she asks in a subconscious echo of their roll in the grass, seeming to be a little unsure of her things she momentarily knew to be the basis of her reality. Luu offers Jinny her hand.
Looking back in time for the few seconds that went blank, Jinny gazes into Luu’s light blue-green eyes, the sound of the world outside, the sound of the wind, of the cows, of everything overwhelmed by the faint sound of their breathing in the cocoon of lime green curls. And then, almost as soon as it started, it was over, a murmured apology from the other woman and a bit of ground in dirt on the seat of Jinny’s pants, the only evidence that it even occurred. She watches Luu rise gracefully, twisting her hair in artful little ways once she’s standing so it hangs in just the right way, making the effort put into looking good look effortless before the cap is perched jauntily on Luu’s head. She blinks, the moment fleeting, barely a flicker in her synapses now, and finds herself gazing at the other woman’s hand owlishly.
“Thanks.” Jinny says, taking it carefully, shifting her grip and getting her feet underneath her, using the other woman as leverage to get to her feet. “I guess it must be something like that. They must use these in the background or something for static shots and this one just wasn’t put away? Or something?” Figuring out Hollywood and what they do with their vast, vast resources is difficult to fathom, with most people giving up. The few who do know how it works either go insane or get extremely, extremely wealthy by putting themselves in the path, moving money to the right spots and taking their cut as a finder’s fee. Something like this probably cost a few thousand dollars, and here it sits, in a field, entertaining the livestock.
Jinny is still holding Luu’s hand.
“Yeah.” Jinny finally says. “They do have real cows. This one just…isn’t.” It gets a flick of the light over it.
In the distance a low, labored moo can be heard. A cow circles around something small in the grass, licking it, the rest of the herd leaving her alone. Apparently one of the cows has had a very, very late calf.
About to say something on the cyber cow, Luu’s head flashes to the side as she hears some odd pastoral sounds. “Did we miss it?” Luu asks in a slightly worried tone. Not waiting for an answer, she begins to rush over, perhaps not even thinking that she’s still holding Jinny’s hand and yanking her along with her on the cattle excursion.
“I thought it would look different,” Luu says as she comes to a stop near the baby calf. “Don’t they usually take the inside and leave the rest?” she asks with uncertainty as she examines what she looks over what she seems to think is post-cattle mutilation leftovers laying in the grass.
Looking upwards, Luu scans the heavens for potential UFOs that might still be out there. The exact situation they’re in obviously hasn’t registered for Luu, but it wasn’t one she was expecting. For her, cows stop being cows when there’s potential cattle mutilation afoot, the mysteries of life replaced by the mysteries of the universe.
“I don’t think we did.” Jinny says as she’s pulled along towards the miracle of birth, trotting along, taken by the hand. It’s not something a city girl would normally see, and a part of her is curious to see a baby cow right out of the package. And at first glance, it’s a completely normal-looking baby cow. A little slick from its trip through the birth canal, sure, but it’s been cleaned as best that it can be, laying in comfort on the fresh grass, but as it looks over towards the sound of the approaching Luu and Jinny, two sets of eyes and one set of ears flick towards them, focusing in the darkness towards the movement.
Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
autumn evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.
-Laura Giplin
“Luu?” Jinny asks softly. “That doesn’t look like a regular cow.” “An hour ago at Golden Oak Ranch, a two-headed calf was born. Could you tell us a little bit about this discovery?”
As the reporter’s microphone is shoved in front of her, Luu momentarily freezes up. The lights the Television station use make the autumn evening surprisingly warm, and Luu feels a bead of sweat roll down the side of her face. Still, poise is important, and Luu manages to put on her excited face as he begins to explain.
“We came out here because my friends said that there was a good potential of seeing some UFO-based cattle mutilations. There was something suspicious about one of those cows, but it turned out to be a cybercow, and while we were looking at that, we thought we heard an abduction happening. At first I thought one of the aliens had turned a cow inside out, but then we noticed it was actually a baby calf, and then we noticed it had two heads! I guess you could see it was kind of a Disney Cattle Mutilation Princess Adventure.” A beat as she realizes what she said, and tries to explain, “I’m not crazy.” Now it’s the news reporters turn to freeze, as she begins to enter a staring contest with Luu. It’s not clear who blinked first, but once that happens, the reporter is gone, but Luu hears shouting in the distance.
“The farmers!” Luu whisper-shouts to Jinny, explaining, “We gotta hide.” Still holding Jinny’s hand, Luu begins to run for cover under nearby trees and bushes.
“Luu?” Jinny asks quietly, looking from the cow to the woman standing there with an excited face as a scenario of some kind runs through her head, blinking. “Luu?” She considers giving the other woman a gentle shake, but that might interrupt something important. Letting scenarios play out are fairly important, so Jinny just goes quiet, letting Luu have whatever moment she’s having and standing there quietly hand in hand, gazing at the bizarrely cute calf gazing up at the star-strewn sky. To be fair, Luu going into her own little world is kind of a thing that Jinny has come to expect more often than not, and it’s kind of a thing for both of them. Trances do happen in her art quite a bit, with the portrait or mural being unfinished in one moment and then, in the next, a splash of art that she hadn’t even considered yet, there it was. A bit of her muse taking hold, or the city guiding her. Whatever the case? She knows what Luu’s going through. After all, she’s been there.
Standing quietly, Jinny watches the mother cow circle them warily, more accepting of the pair since they haven’t moved to do anything to her baby. And the calf with its doubled set of eyes, looking in two directions at once, the two ears floppy as it turns its head…or their head? She’ll wonder that for ages, certainly. Whatever the case, as the calf’s head turns back and forth, taking in the wonder of the world around them, she stands quietly, just listening, watching, and letting the world speak to her in whatever way it wants.
Suddenly, she’s shaken, Luu bringing her back to the world. “The farmers? What?” There’s barely any time to respond before they’re running for the bushes, her car off somewhere that it’s not going to easily be found. And poor Jinny? She steps /right/ in a fresh cow pie as they scamper past. This evening just got /awesome/!
A narrow stone bridge crumbles behind Luu as she runs across with leaden legs. The pieces plunge off to a further abyss, for long enough that they cannot be heard to make a noise. Guarding an iron gate, the three headed Cowberus lets out two terrifying moos and a growl, as flames shoot from its mouth and are narrowly dodged by Luu.
With the next dodge, she isn’t so lucky, and losing her footing begins to plummet over the edge. Eyes wide, she grasps at nothingness, but a fall never comes. Multi colored laser light circles come down from above and pass around her body. Twisting themselves up into higher dimensions, they catch Luu in their pillowy soft embrace, abducting her towards realms of sidereal light. In a bed-boat, Luu drifts through the clouds. A much more friendly looking cow waves in the distance, beckoning Luu closer.
The sun breaks through the trees and kisses Luu’s cheek as she lays in the grass. Still in the world of dreams, she splays out, bonking Jinny lightly in the face as she wraps around her with one leg and one arm like a space hogging koala. “She sure does have a lot of spots, Jinny,” Luu says in a soft and dreamy voice as she happily smacks her lips in her sleep. “Help me count them.”
What Luu sees, Jinny does not, but as they run through the grass, towards a small copse of trees near the edge of the field where the fence runs through, the pounding of her feet against the ground and the quickness of her breath in her lungs, Jinny can’t help but feel a sense of exhilaration and joy at being here, at seeing what she saw, with Luu. How many people can say that the thing they witnessed was witnessed by anyone else, anywhere else in the world? When they tumble into the bushes to hide from the workers, it’s all Jinny can do to keep from giggling, clasping her hands over her mouth to keep the sound from escaping.
And then, silence. Quiet. Watching and listening to the workers moving around, the cows responding in the ways cows nearly often do, and then, lulled to complacency by those sounds, falling asleep in the bushes, hidden and safe. The morning will come, certainly, along with the memory of an evening they might never have experienced were it not for Luu, Luu’s predilection to seeking out the esoteric and strange, and Luu’s friend who pointed them in this direction.
She’s dreaming of a play. Of sitting at a theater on Broadway - a place she’s never been - watching the curtain slowly rise on a play that promised to reveal great truths of the past, all the while being entertained by well-written song and dance and a Greek chorus populated by Muppets. As the curtain rises and the actors (and their respective Muppet consciousnesses) take their places, Jinny looks over to Luu, squeezing the other woman’s hand and then, much to her amazement, is bonked to near wakefulness. Through the half-awake haze, Luu’s murmured missive comes through. “It’s because it’s a Cheetah, Luu.” Jinny responds sleepily, squeezing her eyes shut as she shuffles her shoulders closer to Luu. “You’re looking at the side that’s got the most spots. The outside.” She stretches, her feet still in her boots, not minding being entangled at all, but very much minding the blinding ray of light making its way through the canopy of branches. Her jacket and Luu’s had been made an impromptu pillow so she was a little underdressed for the weather but, having a Luu-shaped heater clinging so closely made her nice and toasty warm.
And there they stayed until the farmers left, luxuriating in the quiet of the countryside and the closeness of their friendship until they could emerge from the bushes undiscovered. Quickly, the pair made their way to Jinny’s car, and Jinny, with her soiled boot, did end up removing it (and her pants and sock too!) to keep from getting anything on the rug that she didn’t want to clean out. Starting the car, she slowly and carefully pulled on to the road and started driving home, following the speed limit to the letter.
After all, the last thing she wanted to do was explain to an officer why she was out speeding without any pants on!
