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1. Elementary
Poppea's uncle took her on a tour of the dairy plant when she was eighteen, as a birthday present. It was a strange present, but he was a strange person. She had been studying magic for her entrance exams, and she took the chance for a break from all the work she'd been doing.
The place was enormous. High ceilings, but they loomed because of how far away the walls were, if there even were any walls. She certainly didn't see any. Rows of refrigerated storage units, where milk and cheese were kept until it was needed to sell or use, were interspersed with the production units where milk was pasteurized.
"Uncle," Poppea asked, "Where do you keep the cows?"
He paused, turned to look directly at her. His face was comically quizzical. "What cows?"
Poppea blinked. "Isn't the milk you process here milk from cows? Or," she paused in consideration, "Is it goats' milk instead?"
Her uncle burst out laughing.
Poppea watched in consternation as he laughed, tried to speak but the laughter turned it into sputtering, and laughed even harder.
Finally his gales of humor subsided. "No, no, nothing like that. No animal sources," her uncle said.
Poppea's brow furrowed. "But milk comes from animals. Mammals, yes? Cows, goats, sheep - even rabbits or cats, although for human consumption," she stopped. There was also almond milk, she remembered, and oat milk, and soy milk. "But there are also plant based, is that what..."
"No plant sources either," her uncle said, grinning, but not bursting into laughter again. "This is a magical dairy plant, my dear Poppea. We have the true milk, not cows' milk or soy milk or any such subcategory. It is Platonic milk, elemental milk! Milk qua milk, milk alone and nothing else."
Poppea's jaw dropped. Her mouth hung open in sheer dramatic shock and disbelief. She had been studying magic, and there were magic elements like fire, earth, air and water, sometimes even void or wood or metal, but milk? Really?
Was he even serious?
"Let me show you our milking machines." He unlocked a gate she had not noticed in one of the barriers, and stepped into a room full of machinery. The noise was deafening. Large white shapeless forms were attached to clanking metal pumps, filling drum after enormous drum full of splashing creamy liquid.
"Milk elementals," she breathed.
An even louder crash made her spin around. Just outside the barrier, a crowd of some sort had formed and seemed to be trying to knock it down bodily. Poppea heard growls and roars and the sound of flesh against metal and plexiglass, both seeming nearly ready to break down in the process.
"I had better get you out of here before they get inside," her uncle said, hurrying Poppea to the secret exit. She heard screams and howls of glee and agony only briefly as he slammed the heavy door behind them. "Someday, all that will be yours," he promised.
Or, she considered, perhaps it was more of a threat.
2. Scythe and Barrel
The next time Poppea visited the Cursed Dairy Plant, it was to retrieve some Elemental Milk (now that she knew such a thing existed) to form the basis of the Lionhead Banishing Potion she was attempting to create. Lionheads had infested the university's library, as they often did in magical libraries of all sorts, and if she created this potion, it might raise her grade point average enough to avoid being expelled.
She was only there for a few minutes, avoiding any moving beings she spotted and looking for an unguarded milk spigot, when she saw the enormous robed figure carrying a scythe. It noticed her, too, almost simultaneously, and chased her for what seemed like ages, across an endless series of tiled floors.
Then she reached a segment of the plant where barrels of milk were carried in large carts down short railways to their destinations, where they would be cooked and cured into cheeses or pasteurized and packaged into cartons. Just as the horrible figure would have reached her and perhaps, she feared, ended her life, she stepped over one of these railways—
rrrrrrrrrrrCRUNCHrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
—and the scythe-bearer was mowed down by the barrel-cart, falling under its irresistible wheels and menacing her no more. Poppea quickly spotted a spigot at this distant location to which the creepy creature had chased her. She filled her milk-vessel, then got out of there while she still could.
3. Meeting Minnah
The next time Poppea came to the Dairy Plant, she was chasing tales of werewolves. Not chasing the tails of werewolves; also not chasing werewolf tail; merely following up on stories of the appearances of wolf-women that coincided, coincidentally or not, with the disappearances of enormous wheels of cheese.
Could the cheese be turning into werewolves, Poppea wondered, or were the werewolves eating the cheese? Stealing it to sell for profit? Was there a particular magic potion to cure werewolves, or make them more powerful, that required a lot of cheese as its main ingredient? She knew her theories were far-fetched, but she was convinced there was some core piece of lupolactic wisdom to be found if she only looked in the right place.
Following a trail of cheese-rinds, Poppea jumped backward when a figure loomed directly in front of her.
"Wait," a contralto voice said, "don't—"
Poppea had her werewolf charm ready, and used it to freeze the threat in place.
Only when she had safely stowed the werewolf in a spellbound storage container did she release the charm.
"By this action, you have sealed your doom." The werewolf's voice was so lovely Poppea almost enjoyed hearing herself ill-omened. Almost.
"I don't see how," Poppea replied. "I took care of your cheese-stealing ways pretty neatly, if I do say so myself."
"Doom," the low feminine voice with its growly undertone repeated. "Doom."
"Bye now!" Poppea left feeling triumphant, though she did carry an inkling of doubt. What if there was something to this doom thing?
4. She Owns Everything
Poppea was running away from a shadow that gave her a horrible feeling about her life and her choices. She ducked into a swirling gateway and found herself back in the Cursed Dairy Plant.
She had been avoiding returning to this place, because of the warning she'd been given by that werewolf with the sexy voice the last time she visited. The cheese thefts had stopped, so she hadn't really had a reason she needed to visit, and her uncle had not sent her any invitations or anything, so it had been easy enough to simply stay away.
And now here she was. Being chased by she had no idea who or what, except that she was more afraid of it than she was of milk elementals or werewolf curses.
She wasn't sure exactly where in the place she'd arrived; it was so large and repetitive in its layout that it was difficult to be sure, but she made her way across railed areas and refrigerated storage and milking areas and cheese aging cabinets and pasteurization vats until she thought she knew where she was, then headed toward the exit she'd used the last time.
When Poppea expected to be almost to the exit, she saw a box big enough to hold a person lying down, nearly chest height, and covered in glowing runes. Was it a coffin? Was a vampire in it, she wondered. Shadows gathered around it, seemingly evoked in an oval by the runes, and a woman appeared in a flash of light. Ebony-skinned, gold-crowned, and with flowing dark hair, her blue robe fluttered in a nonexistent breeze.
Poppea's eyes widened in fright. She froze in fear, then found she could not move. But she could still feel. It was both excruciatingly painful and oddly sensual when the woman's mouth pressed into the soft flesh at the join of her neck to her shoulder.
Soon after, the shadows bore her into the box and lay her on her back. The woman folded Poppea's arms over Poppea's chest and closed the lid. Just before the lid snapped into place, "Tell whoever wakens you," the dark woman's loud and grating voice bade her, "their vampire is in another coffin."