This is what I wrote today. I fixed the narrative POV from my posting it on the UXG page, by the by. The Crookback Mountains were two day’s ride behind me. Further still were the Eastern woodlands I had visited for the first time since childhood, pockets of sylvan beauty surrounded by scores of miles of marsh and muddy grasslands. I had watched frogs play in the water of old, secret pools, happy that precious thing had not yet been trampled and destroyed by the machines of Industry. Sad because I knew it would inevitably fall as nature always fell to the progress of man. Knowing the wild would someday reclaim it all over again did little to assuage my mounting disappointment. The inexorable cycles of the universe would not save my frogs. I sat atop Boot Hill roasting chicken on the fire, drinking pear cider from a white clay jar. I could hear an infant crying from somewhere below me, somewhere in the settlement. I tore the cooked chicken into strips, added them to a bowl of wild rice and buckwheat. Licking my fingers clean, I contemplated the crest painted on the wood above the front gate of the fort below, a dull red kite shield with an eye painted in gold at its center, a crown of red brighter than the background outlined in black below it – the insignia recognized by every aspiring soldier in New Rome as Her Majesty’s Watch. The colors were wrong, though. The crown should be royal blue, the eye a pure bright white, and the background red. It was all supposed to be very symbolic and raise the levels of patriotism to that unthinking fervor pitch so desired by the masters of these men-of-war. What was going on down in Settlement Seventeen? A tiny lizard scuttled across my boot as I lifted my looking glass to my line of sight. I could clearly see, through the smoke from the fortress braziers, a large wood platform taking up center stage within the walls of the fort. I counted seven ropes, all presently unoccupied. I pulled the glass from my eye and cracked an egg into a small iron pan. Waiting for the egg to cook, I sighed and looked to the stars. I found the Wolf Head Nebula and followed the stars around the Earth’s curve until I spotted the Boomerang constellation and smiled my private hello to the Eris star, thinking briefly of my sister and her dervish whirls. A movement in the scrub to my right was only a curious rabbit. As it awkwardly hops back from whence it came, however, a woman appeared from the shadows beyond my fire’s light, carrying a shovel and a claw hammer. “Rodent”, she said, though to me or the rabbit I’m not sure. She was a fey-looking sort, tiny and bone under dirty cloth and leather and everything ragged and tattered. A recent companion, I had hired her following a particularly nasty cat-house brawl in Wheel-town, where she had proven to have a slippery reputation and a formidable right hook. When the atmosphere took a decidedly torches and pitchforks turn a few nights later, I made a strategic retreat and Lavender followed. “Was the walking stick there?” I asked. “No. There was knotted rope around his coffin and his hands were tied in front of him but there stick wasn’t there.” “I figured.” I said and offer her the meal I’d prepared, purposely ignoring the strange details of the burial. “You think the mortician kept it for himself?” Lavender asked, taking the plate and crouching down against a nearby boulder. “Of course he did.” “Or she,” she corrected me. “Well, unlikely in this day and age but, okay, sure. Or she.” “We’re getting it back, right?” Lavender asked between bites. The stars were fast melting into dark violet sky. Dawn would soon be upon the camp. “I made a promise, didn’t I?” “I’ve heard a few of your promises in the last few weeks, Coy. By the way, you owe me a dollar for my grave-robber bit.” I pulled some coins from my jacket and handed them to her. “Orson did me a number of favors some time back.” I explained. “Back before this whole stupid war of watching and waiting started, probably before you were born. He was a good man and a better blackjack player. I watched him win that walking stick with the silver bat topper off of Mister Jaguar himself! I owe it to him to see that blasted thing accompany him into the lands of the dead. Call me sentimental. You can tag along if you want, help out when I want. I’ll pay when I can. Else, you can run along and find your own way. I’ve seen you swindle and I’ve seen you fight. I don’t think I have to worry none about your well-being and such.” Her plate empty, Lavender said so quiet I almost couldn’t hear, “I’ll stay for now.” Past the fortress of Her Majesty’s Watch, the sun was peeking over the horizon, bathing the stark landscape of the Tamarisk Plains in scarlet and gold. Lavender overtook me in a long embrace. “You’re a good man, Coyote.” I frowned and hoped against hope Lavender would never get to see how good of a man I really was.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 23:35:08 +0000
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