Naked Came the Vampire (Hypernaturals 1)

Nightwing

Hippie Hollow starts up on a bluff overlooking the lake, and is basically a path from the top of the bluff down to a sort of cove on the lake, with cutouts, switchbacks and open spaces similar to where Jessica and I just left.

The Hollow is unfortunately much more developed now than the good old days when it really was just a path. Now it has a parking lot, a marked off swimming area, and all sorts of junk. It is like Austin in a microcosm, in that it is now sort of commercialized weirdness rather than just being Austin odd. That's what happens when a city gets ten times bigger than when its institutions were set up.

My parents preferred the Hollow in its original form and I agree.

Jessica and I descended in twists and turns towards the shore. The 'beach' we ultimately stopped at not much more than a tiny rock outcropping with a bit of sand on the lakeshore, surrounded by tumbledown rocks and long-legged grass growing in clumps. We arrived at the lakeside and I did not fall, trip, or stumble due to my distraction.

Jessica stepped to the edge of the water and pointed at a large squared off white boat that floated at anchor offshore a short distance. It rode the water on stainless steel pontoons, like a standard party boat, but as Jessica said it is a different scale. The open deck next to the cabin has more square footage than any pontoon boat I have ever seen on this lake. I could see a Bimini cover on folded struts that could be extended to cover the deck area or at least part of it.

The cabin part of the boat looked easily as big as any good-sized class A RV, though more rectangular. I did mental guesstimates: If the cabin is twenty feet by twenty feet, which it looked like it could easily be, then the indoor area is four hundred square feet! It couldn't be that big... could it? I could not really judge how wide it is since it is side-on to us. Still. It is big. Probably too big to be on that HGTV show about living in tiny houses.

Even though Jessica's boat is the largest pontoon boat I have ever seen, it wasn't on the scale of the houseboats in the movie 'Sleepless in Seattle'. Being a pontoon boat it also would not have much draw. Less a houseboat and more Lake RV it seems. Jessica could take it almost anywhere in the lake and not worry about getting grounded, even during drought. She'd have to be careful around 'Sometimes Island' in low water. Called that because it appears during drought, but disappears when the lake is full. I am sure Jessica knows exactly where it is though. It is not very far from where we are in fact.

Jessica looked over at me as I thoughtfully looked at the boat and she smiled a happy smile. "There she is. We'll have to swim out to her. I just assumed you can swim. I hope you can?"

It is the end of summer, the heat of the day slowly passing, the water cooler at the shore and would get colder the deeper it became, but the lake could have been filled with ice cubes. I am swimming to that boat! Maybe that would help even.

As I looked over the rocky shore before us to try and see the best way down into the water. I assured her: "No problem. I'm Red Cross certified and all that."

I used my towel as a wrap as we walked down the path because I did not wish to continue to be overt, but no one was around here. I flipped the big terrycloth towel up onto my shoulder, thinking about how to keep it dry on the crossing. Decided I could care less if it got wet. I'm a good swimmer but I can't levitate.

Jessica stepped away a few feet, bent and reached around behind some nearby rocks. She pulled out a fairly good-sized plastic cooler. There were yellow nylon ropes on both handles with integrated floats. "Here: Put your towel and hat and stuff in here. This will keep them dry on the way out." She dropped her folded beach blanket, hat, glasses, and sandals into the cooler.

With Jessica in full and well-lit view, I briefly pondered her genetics. Her melanin did not have the blue-ish cast of continental Indians, which is a separate evolutionary response to UV light than some other ethnic groups. She is Brown, but that could be from almost anywhere equatorial. Glossy straight hair like black corn silk. Whatever her genetic mix is, the end result is old-world beauty. By modern standards she is probably too curved, her natural brows too heavy, and her nose too large. Modern standards are full of it.