I like this scene.
“Guys?” Rex said, pointing at something. Emily looked at the something.
At first, she couldn’t really understand what she was looking at. It was like one of those Magic Eye posters. She saw the grass median strip between the gas station and the road, and it was just a grass median strip. But then, something three-dimensional materialized, made out of the negative space, shadows, and somehow, out of the grass itself. It looked humanoid, but stretched, distorted, too tall, with long, spindly fingers. It was a shadow made of light, a figure made of nothing, but it began to walk toward them.
Friend or foe? Emily thought.
“What are you guys looking at?” Henry asked, squinting.
Emily had no idea how to explain to Henry how to see the thing she was looking at, because was it even there? She gestured at it. Henry squinted some more.
“Oh,” Henry said after a minute. He backed away from the entity. Emily took his lead and did the same. Rex abandoned the jerry cans, dropping the gas nozzle, and joined them.
“State your intentions,” Emily warbled at it, trying to sound brave and probably failing.
A grin appeared on what must have been the creature’s face, a series of shapes that only resolved into a face if looked at from a certain angle.
A voice crept into Emily’s mind, a voice made of starlight and whispers, sounds made of other sounds, only becoming words when Emily clearly focused on them.
The figure began to sing.
Hear me now, oh thou bleak and unbearable world, thou art base and debauched as can be.
As she focused on the figure, Emily’s eyes and mind resolved more of its features. The suit of armor. The sword. The Spanish accent.
And a knight with his banners all bravely unfurled now hurls down his gauntlet to thee.
“Don fucking Quixote?” Henry yelped from behind Emily.
I am I, Don Quixote, the lord of La Mancha! My destiny calls and I go. And the wild winds of fortune will carry me onward, withersoever they blow.
“Not just any Don Quixote,” Henry added. “The one from the opera.”
“Ok,” Emily said, “I mean, of course you’re Don Quixote. Why wouldn’t you be? But the important question is – are you friend or foe?”
The figure resolved into a solid form, no longer made of shadows and light and abstract shapes. Before them stood a tall, lanky knight with an epic mustache, wearing tarnished, ill-fitting armor, riding a malnourished horse, and carrying a rusty sword.
“The fuck is a Donkey Hotay?” Rex asked.
Emily stared at Rex, and then realized this was perfectly in character for him.
“There are way too many things you don’t know about, Rex,” Emily noted.
“Ok,” Rex said, shrugging.
Don Quixote dismounted his horse (which Emily knew was named Rocinante - not just from Cervantes, but also from a sci-fi show she liked) and looked at them with sharp, intelligent blue eyes. Then he looked at the gas pumps, especially the one with the dangling hose and nozzle that Rex had abandoned.
“Monsters!” he cried, and drew his sword, running toward the hose. Emily stood in front of him, like an idiot.
“They’re not monsters!” Emily called, putting her hands out to stop him. “They’re just tools. They’re not alive.”
“But they might be,” noted Quixote, and tried to push past her. She stood firm, even as the eccentric man began to point his sword at her.
“Stand aside, woman, and I shall dispense with these monsters once and for all!”
Emily started to protest, but she realized, as many in Cervantes’ novel had realized, that she couldn’t prove to Don Quixote that anything he thought was true wasn’t true.
“Knock yourself out,” Emily sighed. “Just let me get my guys and my stuff out of the way first, ok?”
This seemed to pacify Quixote, who scabbarded his sword and stood with his arms folded, waiting.
“I warn you not to get too close to these monsters,” Quixote said. “They appear to have snakes for hands. Perhaps some form of gorgon.”
Emily marshaled Rex and Henry, and together, they got their stuff situated, mounted their scooters, and rode away from the pumps. At a safe distance, Emily turned back around to watch Quixote fight the “monsters.”
The eccentric knight sliced the dangling gas pump hose in half with his sword, and gasoline poured out of the half still connected to the pump.
“Poison!” he cried, his voice and the smell of gasoline carrying farther than it should. He backed away from the spewing gasoline and stabbed at another of the pumps, embedding his sword into the display. Emily saw his body jerk and writhe with electricity, and then everything went up in a giant fireball as a spark met spilled gasoline. Emily felt the heat on her face, even from this distance.
“That’s a wrap on Don Quixote,” she muttered.
