Chapters 2-10

TWO

We wake with the rising Day’s Star …

Dark Blue is pushed by blood-Purple from the edge of existence reaching to the highest parts of the sky.  The Purple ribbon on the horizon hangs for an eternity.  It defines what is heaven and what is firma through its presence and separation.  In turn; so too sky and ground are formed in being by this existence.  Purple in turn gives way to the brilliant Oranges and Yellows of morning screaming its way into being.  And then the ribbon of twilight is no more. 

The Ambres of the world drive back the darkness. 

There is a chill, but the giant glow of morning begins to warm the land in its embrace.  Rosy fingers of dawn I think …

          My companion stirs, wakes, pisses again.  I want to ask him his name.  To ask what is happening … Why, I cannot remember.  Yet I have an overwhelming sense of the need for caution. Trust must be meted out carefully, with none given too soon.  This is a dangerous place full of dangerous things?

          He says something about needing a bigger fire at our next camp.  I ask if that is safe�"I am not sure why I ask�"and he replies it is safer than freezing to death.  We agree and prepare a breakfast of coffee and warmed dried meats and breads over our petite fire.  It provides nourishment but does not satisfy. 

          The coffee tastes of burned bark.

          We do not speak.  I try to read him. He does not seem to want to talk.  Perhaps he also is being cautious.  We break camp, repack the horses and return to our journey.  He takes the lead in a direction that, according to the Day’s Star, I believe to be West.  I trail.  We each ride one horse and lead the other.  There is ample gear.  A long gun with each horse.  He is strapped with a holster on his leg.  He favors his left.  I my right.

          The Day’s Star warms our backs while the air blows cold in our face as we chase the moon’s recent retreat.  There is no defined trail.I want to ask where we are going, but am not ready to tip my hand of ignorance.  The Day’s Star is high when we break for lunch.  We cross a small creek and are able to rest and refresh the horses and refill our canteens.  We still have not spoken. 

          The trail, as it is, goes on, and so do we.

          The Day’s Star is no longer high and has started a slow descent, marking late afternoon.  “You look better,” he says.  No further explanation.  Better than what I think?

          I say nothing, but my heart and mind are racing anon.  I feel the urge to go for my gun or to drop the lead to my pack horse and flee.

          I must have made a face for he commented again.

“Your color.  It’s back.”  He said nothing more for the next hour.  The silence added to my wondering, as his voice brought with it the portend of answers.  He too seemed to be thinking.  But it is I at the disadvantage.  At any moment he might turn in his saddle, draw down; ending all without a single answer to even the most mundane of questions.

          “It was the same for me for about a week.  When I woke … fever … the pain … At least you were unconscious for the first few days.  Thought I would die … thought about taking care of it with mine-own hand.  You were much the same way when I found you.”

          The horses ambled on of their own accord.  I hung on each word.  The sky was turning dark, the Ambres receding, giving way to the Purples.  The grass again high and brown, and field of yellow-topped heather swayed in the same direction, but in syncopation with the grass.  Waves of brown undulating in non-same rhythm to waves of yellow.  Rafts of horses and men forging between the two currents. 

 

 

 

 

 

                THREE

  The vanquished Day’s Star had surrendered and was being marched-off by the Champion Night. 

          Camp was made silently:   a fire, two men, four horses.  There was not talk of taking watches or sleeping in shifts.  It went unspoken that danger abounded. Neither one of us, nor both of us in tandem, could stave off danger if it decided to creep upon us in the silence, at this place, on this night.  Death is fickle and man is vain. 

          We ate.  Then we talked.  He offered much, yet I still hesitated with my information, not able to take the step to revealing the intimacy of my situation.  He had counted 7 days passing since his fever broke and he began to regain his strength.  Darkness also surrounded him when he first woke.  There was no memory to dwell upon and he was as lost as I believed I was presently.  His place, and short journey starting from and being in a worse place.  Trapped.  Cold and wet everywhere.  Hard and inescapable.  Blind.  Dying in pain and fever. 

          I awoke in a cave.  Naked. I clawed about, seeking anything, but darkness surrounded.  I know not how long I crawled …  I could not walk, I saw the glimmer of not-darkness and made my way.  The lightness became light and lead to the mouth of the cave.  I lay there until the pain and the shaking ceased. Just outside the cave I found provisions, two horses, guns. 

This moment was not the first time he had thought of killing himself … there was something terrible in the cave with him.  He could feel it’s energy all around him, and was never able to move from it’s reaches.  It was Terror lurching beyond reach while still breathing upon him.  He mentioned these things briefly, and did not return to the matter, leaving much unsaid. 

          Everything he found fit, the kit with the horses.  He felt the things had belonged to him.  So he questioned self, perhaps, that he had chosen to go in, perhaps in search of the Terror?  Was it the cave or the Terror that had taken his mind, he wondered aloud, believing before he has been whole and after; less. He said not memory, but mind.  That seemed right.  It was more than just remembrance gone.  A forgotten memory leaves traces of having once been known.  Our condition was more severe, all was left empty.  Absent.  Not just furniture missing from a room, but the room.  The house.  Everything.  Only a great impenetrable vacuum defined not by what was absent in part, but by absence itself. 

          Instinctively he had taken the gun, and thought about going back in, to confront the Terror in the darkness … after he again thought of death at own-hand.  But found he could not.  He did not say he was afraid, but there it was, in between them.  The Terror.  Instead dressed, and finding these things in order outside of the cave; he came to find he did not want to enter again, in search of what might have been lost in balance against what else there might be to lose. He could not return inside.

          I appeared two days later.  Not in a cave, but to the side of the path he was forging.  Naked, shaking.  He recognized my condition from his own just days before.  And so too, there were two horses and a kit nearby,  just as he had found for himself.

          Perhaps, he continued, it was not the cave that was part of the emptiness, because while the conditions were repeated, there was variation.  He pressed on without me, only to double back.  He hoped to find  answers in the new man who had appeared.  He decided to help,and so cleaned me up, tied me to the horse to continue on the trail for a few more days until my awaking.   

          “I had hoped you might have answers.  I thought it worth possible risk …” And such the situation hung before us … if I took his tale as truth, he was barely less lost than I. 

          I replied that I did not have answers.  I took the chance, feeling somewhat safe, and explained the fog in my mind.  He nodded along, understanding.  No answers were found.  And we ate and slept and there ended the second day.

          We resolved to keep moving in the same direction.  It was random and imprecise and there was no greater reason to move West�"we called it “West,” and agreed on what West was, and thus affirmed the etymology.  West was created and in creating West, so to we created North, South and East with ideas creating pictures, and the pictures being assigned words. It was a choice we, rather he, made, and once made we saw it through. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

  FOUR

Days only count when they matter to those counting.

We did not mark the days as they passed, but it must have been about a handful.  Nothing of report occurred.  We woke, we ate, we travelled, we killed some wildlife for fresh meat, we slept.  We talked some, but had nothing on which to dwell.  We focused on the fog trying to pull clarity, tried to find things we could point to as memory or recollection.  All fruitless, and in the despair that came with fruitless pursuits, we became quiet, morose.  I chanced not to trust too greatly, to fastly. 

          I remarked our ages were roughly the same.  There was a commensurate amount of gray in our face hairs.  He agreed, but did not really know what age that might be … two weeks old?  A hundred years?

          With no foundation, there can be no perspective.  Somehow we had found elements of trust.  But it was a weary trust earned in single small deeds.  Neither of us every fully tightened the straps around our handguns.  I could draw mine in a flash.  He probably could do the same.  I believe we each were ready to do that should the other turn out to be something other than advertised.  I have given him trust but did not trust in him.  He gave signs of similar demeanor toward me �" and I found no fault.  I had been the hope of memories regained (if story proved truth), and my herald was hollow.  No new beings appeared at the side of makeshift trails.  We steered near no gaves.

          We were on a high promontory with trees but no grass when distant smells of fire wafted into our nostrils.  Unnatural fire, made by hands not by gods.  It was a time for extreme caution.  Other than a few small beasts we had seen no other walking life.  Most animals would hide among the trees when a strange creature approached�"it only made sense that we would not see them�"but there was no trace of sentient kind anywhere along our path. 

This could be the first.    

          We dismounted and drew the long guns from the saddles.  Each had a tube on the top with a series of lenses that amplified objects in the distance.  With the horses tethered to a tree, we moved slowly forward, through a series of rocky protrusions that could and did provide an expanse of cover and concealment. 

          The trees grew higher as they descended from the prominence, and then gave way to a valley below.  A town, sizeable, was laid out to our fore.  The word was town … we discussed and knew not what a town was, but said it was not a village and not a city; even though we lacked reference for those words’ meanings as well.  This became a town, and it was lain-out in a grid-like around a main road in a series of blocks.  Toward its periphery the system quickly fell apart, and spread out into chaos in the reaches.  Among the town were structures of many different forms.  Domestic.  Commercial. Those suited for other purposes, and all of many different styles and sharps.  A few residences were seen in the far distance.  Smoke rose from structures, all of them wooden.  The cold had come for a season.  Trees’ leaves were browning from their summer greens.  They had been always in the Day’s Star, and had not noticed the changed until among the shades.

          A few paths came into and departed out of the city; muddy and busy.  Forms of creatures moved and bustled about.  Many seemed humanoid, but a few other species of creature intermixed.  I used the lenses to look for those of similar kind to the Other and myself. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIVE

Fear grew with anticipation of good.

We could each feel it.  Contact with life.  It was the excitement of potential answers.  Reason.  Return of mind.  I searched what memories I had to create an image of what I felt, but there was nothing to draw from.  He said that for the first time during the ride, we each were smiling.  It was happiness.  Such an odd feeling in such a short world.  No one was laying naked without recourse to thoughts.

          My long gun was unwieldy for survey; so I removed the tube with the lenses from the base and began a more strict reconnoiter.  I counted the number of blocks that ran from North to South along what I called the “main” roaf.   There were maybe 20 or so roads or alleys that shot off of the main.  I say “or-so” because it mattered to the count what one would add to the count.  I counted all offshoots, and there were 19 on my first, but then I added two breaks between large buildings on the second, for a total of 21.  Another large street bisected the main, it lead to what seemed to be a small place for selling assorted wares, so the bisection I thought of as a market street.  They formed a prominent crossing, in my mind just became the “X,” in the dead-center of the town.   

          I started a count of beings moving about, but this was fruitless.  Instead I estimated.  “Have to be a couple of thousand.”  He agreed and reiterated what we had seen at first, mostly humanoid, at least three of every four was pink-blue-yellow-or-greenish skinned and all walked on two legs.  Clothed for the weather.  We could not call to count the second most numerous or third, or so on.  I did not recognize the many other types.  There were large Grey beasts, as tall as a human plus half.  Heavily muscled and barely clothed.  Some form of insect-like creature that walked on four ridiculously thin legs and with their remaining two always seemed to clutch to the side of a building or other upright structure.  When there was nothing to clutch to, all six legs went into the ground.  The ‘Sects, at random intervals would thrust their head into the dirt.  When this happened, all others in the area would move away hastily.  Hairy creatures were numerous, of several types, as some were bipedal and some quadripedal, even if all were covered with fur.  Blue-skinned creatures with some humanoid-like features of visage, and clothed as men, scurried diagonally on three legs, in odd trousers that seemed too short.  Countless other types.   

          Hours passed, and the Day’s Star grew high ready to surrender another day’s passing and to crept down, beaten again.  We were tired from our excitement and that is when caution overtook anxiousness.  Desire made one want to bolt into the chaos of others being.  Instinct held us fast.

          We sat for a long while, and my mind wandered.  I doubted him, the man at my side.  Perhaps his route was not so random.  Perhaps the entirety of this journey’s purpose was a rouse to draw me to this place.  What awaited?  What was within this town?  It could be his town.  Or mine. 

          Again my lack of knowing had me at the disadvantage.  If I had been to arrive first, I would be the keeper of knowledge; instead I was the keeper of unknowing and forced to tend this awareness daily.  The other would remain my master by one week of being and the trust I had so easily given.  But on the opposite end of trust is aloneness, and my gut told me, what ever was out there in this place, this greater place I had been placed, it was better to go forward with at least minimal trust than going forward alone. 

          He suggested we wait until morning before venturing into town.  I agreed so we returned to our mounts and made our way into an area of deep green conifers that surrounded the area around our vantage point.  We cowered in camp without a fire, our guns across our laps.  The cold came heavy that evening, I drew my blanket close, covering both guns and body.

          He sat across from me.  The distance between us was equal to what it would have been if there had were a fire.  The moon was defiant and rose mightily casting glowing blue tones on everything.  Nightstars yielded to its light and did not to come forth.  I could see the whites of his eyes.  In day they were an odd hazel color, light to the interior, and deep, dark at the edges.  Tonight they were cast in the eerie blue of moonlight, and looked spectral.  Tonight they showed fear. 

          My gaze returned the same fear.  And the trust deepened.  There it was between us, the acknowledgement of fear, carnal fear.   Deadening fear of what could befall us at any second.  Men of power and resource, unaccompanied to such a feeling, had been emasculated in the erasure of mind.  Scared children. 

          Sleep did not come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SIX

Morning came and went without noticing our decision to head into the Town. 

We took a small satchel each along with the long guns.  Each of us remained strapped on the leg.  Our survey revealed most in the town were armed with a mix of guns; so too we.  Most looked to be fashioned in a rustic manner, whereas ours had a fine, machined quality to them.  Advantage.

          Before leaving, we fed and tied the horses at our makeshift camp, and then picked out a trail that descended easily, but that also somewhat hide our approach into the town’s edge.  We approached and sounds and smells grew more distinct.  A hammer taming a nail.  Manure.  Lots of manure.  The smell of trampled grass and cut wood.  More smoke from breakfast fires.  I was very hungry and remarked my greatest hope was for food.  He laughed at the remark.  I had not meant it to be funny. 

          The sounds of industry, not mechanical but things being done, and sweat-across-the-brow labor became an undulating cacophony of life.  It was the most noise I had heard in my entire week or so of life, it added to the jitteriness of my approach.  It was chaos unleashed.  Accustomed to silence, the noise disturbed.  Sentient life seemed the antithesis of the life of undisturbed nature.

          Tall trees were heavy from our starting altitude, but dwindled into smaller trees, and rocks, and scrub.  Soon enough there was no cover and we had descended most of what was left to descend from, and the town that existed in three dimensions became two, length and width, no depth, before us.  At its outskirts were inhabited tents.  Workers, working on something I did not know of, going about their business.  All humanoid, although of different humanoid species and races.  Most were shorter on average by a head than he and I, but much more broad and muscled, like they had been reared for the purpose of hard labor. 

          None paid us mind, and we continued to head toward the central mass of the town. 

          Dirt was still under our feet, but empty air was replaced with manifestations of mostly wood, although there was some brick, mostly as foundations for wood a-top.  It was early and few were about in the town.  Those that were did not call attention to the newly awoken ignorant pair.

          We broke from one of the long alleyways, we had decided to approach through one of the narrows rather than the thoroughfares, into the main street.  Immediately there was a group of humanoid men with one of the giant Grey creatures.  Its skin was leathery and its smile displayed a large number of massive yellowing teeth.  It was bipedal, but hunched.  Its demeanor was calm enough and it smelled heavily of musk and filthy dirt, an unwashed animal.  Big son-of-a-b***h.  We had seen such a creature from afar, but to be in its presence was more disturbing. 

          One of the humanoids nodded as we approached, we tipped our hats and passed.  Just two regular guys, walking through town.  Nothin’ to see here. The street was dirt, turned mud by the morning’s dew.  We went up to the clapboard walk that ran across most of the buildings on the main street.  We scrapped dirt from our boots on one of the steps.  He said he thought we might smell worse than the Grey beast, and it was possible.  I had been wet once or twice as we forded, but not clean since I first woke. 

          Not knowing what else to do we followed the sent of wood, fire and food.  Our noses decided the fate of the body, and I hoped would not lead us astray.  So we continued down the walk in search of sensations.

          “See anyone you recognize?” 

          I laughed. 

          I had an acute sense of smell, and was pretty sure there was something like cooked meat coming from a three-story affair ahead.  It was one of the larger buildings held up by a brick foundation, wood everything else.  It had been painted once, which is more than could be said for 9-out-of-10 of the buildings in the town, but paint had faded and chipped, and had not been deemed worthy of replacement. 

There were varied pictographs scrawled on the exterior of most buildings, but few could I interpolate.  This place was different, a faded and unreadable sign pronounced a name associated with the building. It seemed to offer food, libation and a roll for sleeping.

Fates lead us to enter.

          The menagerie we had seen from our high perch and on the low street was represented in the interior of this saloon. The establishment was many things, but saloon more than any other word seemed to capture the feel.  Cantina might have worked, but with the rough lot of creatures, in my mind it was a saloon.  No one in particular heeded our entrance with anything resembling concern.  He started whistling as we entered through the front swinging doors; the tune seemed familiar and I asked about it.  How the hell should I know was the response.  The tune seemed like the right thing for this place and this time.  We continued inside; there was a large bar on the back wall, and many tables scattered about.  Everyone was eating; it was too early for the drinking crowd.  Two stairways lead to a second level, presumably there was a way to get to a third. 

          Most of those at the tables were male, or what I presumed were males of the species I did not know.  A humanoid woman approached and asked us if we wanted to eat. We did wish food, and she said we would have to eat at the bar, since there were no tables.  We did.  There were other females in the room, working the tables.  Serving.  There were other females too, serving in a different manner, the type for sale.  Humanoid most, of different sorts.  Curvy.  Not completely clean.  One or two held that certain beauty for the beholder that comes from need paired with willingness and availability. 

I paused for a moment, but he steered me away.  One called me “Sugar” as we walked by and said if women were not my thing, there were options available. There were youths in the room too, and I hoped the young ones were not to what she had been referring.  I cleared mind to avoid the answer.    

          At the bar we waited for the a working male to approach.  We both stood so that we could see the entire room, rejecting the odd stool or two for seating.  Nothing really to see, but I noticed we were now being noticed.  The new guys in town.  My guts said the other noticed too.  There did not seem to be much he did not see or much that he reacted too.  He seemed even. Balanced. Ready. 

The humanoid bartender, light green skin … odd ears, not that they were organically odd, but as if something had occurred to them during life that made them so, approached and asked in a strange accent what we wanted to drink.  After asking we discovered he had coffee, and that seemed like enough.

          “What ya got-so?”

Neither knew what he meant, and he rubbed two fingers together.  “What ya got-so.”

“What you take?”  He shrugged.  Mumbled some words that might have been what he used to discuss payments.  We shrugged and searched and came up with some lugs of metal, placing them on the bar.  The man took one of the fuller pieces, weighed it on a scale behind the bar, and in barely audible language told us coffee and food.

The barter seemed fair.

He emphasized no women.  He was still bartering, I thought to try and get more.  Instinct?

No woman?

Nah woomeen. 

Eat all day.

Nah.

Si.  All day.  Eat.  No women.

He agreed, with a bobbing, circular motion of his head.  The other looked at me and asked how I knew to do this back-and-forth that had just occurred; he seemed suspicious of my apparent knowledge of the system.  I did not know, just a feeling, I said.  Something about the way he did not lock eyes told me he was able to deal with the explanation.  A move I would not have risked and would have given me renewed cause to depart company.

          Coffee showed; being poured from a tin pot.  It was hot and smelled terrible, but was a luxury compared to what we had been living on for the last week.        “You’k’in gits foods’ah dah brar.”  A statement, not a question. We thanked him regardless, and agreed to having our food at the bar … since we were already there and the waitress had said the same.  I took note that the ‘keep had given attitude with his declaration and its indication we  lacked the status for a table.   Food came, we ate, and then more food came and we ate.  The ‘keep looked amazed at our appetites.  He was a scrawny fellow, I could lift him with one arm, toss him to the other side of the room; especially now that I was eating.  I was taller than most of the humanoid men I had seen in the town.  Strong-built in comparison.  The Other was not as tall, but carried himself well.  Wide shouldered.  A ratio of height and breadth that foretold internal strength.  Despite the fear I had seen in his eyes the night fore, here amidst the town he was calm, steady.  He conveyed a sense of sure-ness that said he was not a threat but should not be threatened.  I discovered that I was glad he was there with me, it gave me confidence in opposition to all the unknowing.

          We finished all put before us until he stopped bringing at last.  I felt sated but sluggish.  Some more of the metal lugs were exchanged for smaller metal lugs, and we departed to walk-off the food.  My stomach felt to burst.  And we commented that if more food had appeared, so too we would have continued to eat. 

          Once at the street’s level, the town became smaller in perspective, and we lapped it twice in a short passing.  I stopped once and paid a fee of one of the smallest lugs in order to relieve myself at a place that specialized in such affairs.  It was a private room, and there was even a sponge on a stick, sitting in a bucket of mostly clean water.  It was nice not to do such business among the bushes and varmine.

          There was no reason to go the second a-round the town.

          But we did.

          And there was the same lack of answers upon its passing as the passing of the one that came before.  He offered we should amble our way back up the hillside, to our mounts, and sleep in the woods.  I agreed.  It was the right thing, the smart thing to do, but it seemed so wrong, with all of the clean and warm that could be found in the places that lined the dirt streets.  Much of the day remained, but newness prompted caution. 

Cleanliness and dirtiness, one natural and the other vulgar.

          The horses and kit remained were they were left.  We sat, covered in blankets, and sated from the ingest. The Day’s Star had surrendered quickly, and hung by its fingertips at the furthest-most point of perception, no longer giving a hint to its previous glory. 

It hung. 

It hung.

It fell. And night was upon us again.  But not sleep.

          We remarked it seemed we had ample commodity for commerce in our kit.  Ample everything.  We talked for a few moments on what that might mean, but found little grounds for answers.  “Something bigger may be at play than we realize.”

          “Easy since I don’t realize much.”

          We had been walking, riding.  Not much of a plan.

          Figure the plan is to keep moving ... ‘till there is reason to stop.  Is this place reason enough?  We discussed that it could be, but for the now, the promise of continued meal on the morrow was enough reason to stay.

          And what if at the end of that meal, we walk the town again, and at the end of that walk, we walk around it again, and still there are no answers? 

          I doubt we will find answers while looking for answers without asking questions.  Let us see what the morrow brings.  And among that bringing, take what answers come.

          Suspicion of other was absence our conversation.  There was pause and a look, and from the look shared, trust emerged.  A great thing surmounted, we took stock of what tomorrow could bring and what it held.  He confessed he was concerned in general but did not fear for his safety.  I held the same feeling and remarked upon it:  the previous nights fear was of the unknown, but with seeing what was, fear gave way to curiosity.

          “But we must remain cautious,” I finished, “for we have known one another a lifetime, and all others stranger!”  We shared the laugh.

          “I do not want to cross one of those big Grey b******s.”  And I agreed.  They seemed a rough lot.  They would be avoided.

          We agreed on many things over the short conversation.  Most were unsaid. 

          The next day we would head back into town, but wait until later in the day.  Find a livery, maybe take a room.  Eat again.  Perhaps a day’s passing and a night’s being might unlock the mysteries that played in our minds.  And the morrow’s Day Star would set, and perhaps another, maybe a third, but after that, we would continue on if this place held no promise. 

 

 

 

 

SEVEN

The food had sated hunger but did not bring satisfaction to our emptiness. 

But we finished.  Were full.  Sat in silence … just being.  Watching.  Forming new thoughts about new things.  Filling the empty parts of our minds.  Thoughts became ideas, ideas became words.

          The day had passed as we said it would.

          And now. 

The saloon. 

We sat alone, two chairs at a table at the far end of the room, the rest of the universe playing before us with our backs to the wall.  We had not discussed how we would sit, but when the table became open, we each sat as such.  Was this how men sit?  Was there always trepidation about what lurked behind, or danger in the unseen approach?  If it were, we were the only men, for most sat looking at their opposites.  In contrast we just were, and watched all others.  Our vantage was a good vantage.  We each were strapped, but the long guns were now in a space we had exchanged for metal lugs.  A cube with a mat of straw.  A door to the cube was fitted with a hatch someone called a lock, but would barely serve to keep a thing within or things with-out.   

          Sitting there, I became aware of the tenseness that had been in my sinews since my waking and unknowing.  I forced myself to relax somewhat and was overtaken by a giant feeling of fatigue.  I felt safe now, I believed, and the pressure of the stress was overwhelming.  My god … I needed sleep.  A bed.  It was so close, and I would collapse and perhaps never wake, or if I did, would it all be new again, and I be an infant once more.

          The saloon was full. 

Those eating. 

Drinking. 

Gambling. 

Whoring�"prostitution was second only to the consumption of bad drink as attraction.  Not all of the females in the saloon were w****s, but most were.  It seems that when w****s are around, they dirty a place like spit in water, all females in the same place are seen as w****s.  It is not a just concept, but it is how things are … things of existence … in a bit, I could not longer tell who was waitress and who w***e, save for the occasion flash of tit exchanged for pittance. Those were the waitresses getting tips where tips come.  I did not pay my waitress to see her tits, but tipped her well regardless.  She looked to show, but neither set of eyes made their way expectantly toward bosom, and her posture changed.  She had vanilla skin, and it blanched with a yellow glow at the notion of not having to show her body.

          We had eaten again, and now sipped the same swill all others sipped.  It was yellow and bitter, but warmed the gullet deeply.  It was not good, but would get one drunk.  He drank too. 

          All the creatures we had seen throughout the town seemed to be represented this night.  Some might have been women too, but I have no idea if a ‘sect has teats or if one of those Grey monsters were women, or what ...  Some of the other species might have been women … or female, or whatever, but I did not have a good enough comprehension of the science of such things to make any calls.  Humanoid w****s, now they always look the same.  You can see it in the dead eyes, a certain vacancy and absence of self.  There is no soul in the eyes of a w***e.  Something has either killed the soul, or she keeps her soul elsewhere.  Detached.  Light of a soul may dance in her eyes for the flash of a moment, perhaps during a genuine laugh, but it fades quicker than it came. 

          The rhythm of life dictated one of the w****s would eventually come to our table.  They were collectively cautious piranha, who wanted to measure the new men in town, to see what we would be drawn toward.  Settle our desires with their stores.  We stayed back and watched.  They circled.  We were coin for life, which brought food and shelter and whatever it was they might want. Just exchange.  They preyed upon one or two of the regular customers.  Stalked one or two more who after drink would be easy prey. 

          They sat in laps.  We sat close in to the table.  They struck up conversations; we did not make eye contact, but observed the room from the corner of our eyes, and in reflections.  It struck me that I knew the other was not interested in the w****s by his manner, but also that he and I were aping each other in our response to the crowd.  Tense observation of everything.  Caution. 

          I remarked I was tired and he agreed. 

          We decided to go. 

This is the moment when the w***e approached.  And we gave no indication of interest.  She said something benign.  And our remarks of non-interest became stronger.  A firm NO. Her approach changed, but its direction stayed the same.  She continued with discussing some vulgar act for which she was especially well known.  I was familiar with the specific act, but her mouth dirtied it like mud on linen.

          The other firmly declined her services again, and we made to leave. In a polite, what we thought was, gentlemanly fashion.

          The w***e did not relent.  I could not imagine every single man she had ever approach had yielded to the offers of her cooz; but to he and I, she took offense.  She took to him, perhaps because I had given a look and he had given words. 

          Smallness. 

          Inability. 

          Tendency. 

          She assailed him on all fronts, and as we continued to leave, her verbal assault grew in dissonance and boorishness.   

          This was unnecessary.  And extremely loud.

          It should not have set us off.  He stood.  And said, “W***e.”  And then commented on her nasty, diseased deathtrap of a snatch.  He repeated the denial of service, and told her to f*****g go away. 

          To this point, he was a study in calm.  What was it about us that she should act so, and same her thrust and his parry?

          She left.

          “Too much?” He asked me.  I said that he had come on strong, but the w***e should have just left when told.  The exchange was loud, and of the type given to watching.  Rough Hands and W****s.  There was a strange anticipation in the room, that everyone but we understood.  We felt the crackle of its energy, but did not heed.  Our worst problem was attraction of the crowd combined with our base ignorance.

We had been on our way out, but were drawn back to the succor of another last drink and called for one.  Life returned and so did our silence as we sat and watched.  Did the crowd forget about us, did the electricity die of its own accord?

          A waitress brought the drinks. 

          She commented unless we were looking to fight, we should pay up and leave … fast.  He joked about the waitress having no call to fight us, but she seriously countered that the w***e probably was going to get her mate.

Mate.

Not Man.

Not boyfriend or husband.

What was a mate to a w***e?

Could a w***e’s mate ever portend good news?

          We exchanged a look, and I asked if he was worried, and he was not.  Neither was I, and I found myself feeling oddly confident given my much afore mentioned state of ignorance.  Odd because I did not know myself other than what had occurred in a few days passing.

The sluggishness of post-meal succor passed with the issuance of a threat and I now felt full of light-blue alacrity at the gloom intended from all watching to fall upon us.

          We drank.  We each had a grin. 

          The w***e came back into the room.  She defiantly descended the stairs with a shadow of death incarnate in follow. A large Grey, perhaps two and a half meters tall.

The Mate.

A giant, muscled, angry mate. 

The bull of the heard no doubt. 

The Alpha.  Two Greys, that had been the total this night, in this place, became Omegas when it entered.

The mate?

F**k.

Double F**k. How’s she … ? I don’t want to know. 

F**k.          

F**k.

          The w***e shot her finger at us like a weapon and spoke to the beast. 

          Her intent was obvious.  We were the ones.

          “I didn’t say s**t.”  I offered.  We each still sat.  What happened to We?

          The Grey was big enough to block out most of the Day’s-Star … on a really bright day.  He lurked over the rest of the room, with giant arms … giant everything. He wore simple animal skins over his body, but even the parts that were covered rippled from the muscles underneath.  He smelled of earth.  Dirty, trash-filled earth that had been covered with hair, set on fire, s**t upon and then turned over.  Boney scales pock-marked its body in random spots and numbers, but were most prominent around his brows and cheeks.

          I stood and said we were not looking for trouble.

          The bar keeper agreed, not wanting any “troobvill” and suggesting we should all go “Ohrt seedz.” No one ever listens to a bartender who says to take things outside.  They are just a silly character in the play of life. 

          It, the Grey, stood and breathed angrily.  Its small eyes stared at us.  Its muscles flexed at the ready. 

          I asked the Grey if all of this was necessary?

          “I can take him on my own.” 

          “I don’t think that is really up to us.” 

In fluid motion, the Gray crashed his fists into one another.  Snarled.  Came up to the table were we still sat and put his fists into its wood. 

Drinks flew into the air.  Wasted. 

Wood splinters exploded from what was once table, dangerous; pointed missiles.   

          The other was on his feet as the table exploded into its thousand pieces. 

Action.

Flailed wood hung in the air.  Normal-speed-life stopped and played itself, a hundredth, nay thousandth, its pace.  Each detail etched as its own moment in time; still-life.  A thought from long ago drifted at the edge of my awareness, glittered with light on a fleck of steal, and escaped.

He, the other, moved quicker than I, at the Gray, and leapt into the air with a kick for its head.  The Grey caught him in midair by the leg, spun and tossed him about 10 meters in the opposite direction. The flung-body smashed into a far-off table, and up against some of the other patrons.  Their pudgy flesh had softened the impact.  But mostly he crashed against wood and lay still. 

          There was a brief second when I could have, should have, drawn my weapon and gotten off a quick shot to the head.  The affair would have ended there.  Maybe three shots.  I did not drawdown but stayed in a chair as a giant tree of an arm rounded toward my head.  The world was near-frozen, but my mind was steps ahead of the action it saw portrayed. The beast swung, and I was able to study the arm: Its muscles moving and veins pumping rivulets of whatever these beasts had for blood.  The hairs waved with the wind created by movement.  Its smell was intense and burning my nostrils.  My heart was slow, but adrenaline pushed itself to my extremities. 

          The arm was inches from contacting my head�"with the intent of removing it from my neck�"when I shifted by weight backwards and kicked my heels against the floor.  The chair, with me in it, toppled backwards, the rock of a fist missing my face by centimeters.

          I rolled and was on my feet. 

The Grey had not punched like a fighter�"with the power coming from the hips, through the core, into the shoulders and then directly from shoulder to fist in a quick, precise motion.

He spun his punches in wide arcs, with the power coming just from the upper torso and not grounded through the hips. He punched like one who relied on his size to cause the fear and intimidation.  He moved quickly on the whole, but punched slowly, covering a great deal of ground, with the arc of the punch was exaggerated by the size of the beast.

A weakness. 

He swung in several wide arcs, and I was able to step around each, unharmed.  He was quick, but had to cover too much area to make contact.  I learned I was not slow. 

          Another swing flew out, as this one passed, I grabbed the arm and used his own momentum to swing and kip-up onto its back.  Its body was naturally hunched, with a giant mass of back from shoulder to shoulder.  His head was low on this hump with very little neck, like a giant jackal.  The base of the skull therefore was higher than on a humanoid, and there was a small gap there that was not bone or heavy muscle.  Before he could reach me and turn me into a flying toy, I hit him in this small spot with two quick blows.

          His arms dropped and legs began to wobble.  There was a sound … not so much a groan, but maybe a dull whimper, and he dropped to his knees.  A third shot to the same area, and he fell to his face with me taking the ride down. 

          He did not move, but still took in breath.

          The w***e screamed that I had killed him, and ran off, up the stairs to I-don’t-f*****g-care-where. 

          The saloon was silent.  The crowd was expectant of the fight when they saw the big Grey.  I doubted many humanoids, or any other creature, had ever stood up to their ilk and done well.  Let alone drop one so quickly. 

Stunned. 

          I climbed off of the Grey and pulled the Other to his feet.  He was wobbly.  “You killed the bad guy?”

          Not really.  The Grey moaned on cue.  It still was alive.  I took the other one to the bar so he could lean against something that was not me.  There were full drinks left on the bar by people left staring.  We drank their drinks without asking.  We had done the impossible and were now feared.

He was whole, if not altogether. I saw no blood or protruding bones, bruising was there but would fade within days; nothing permanent.  My right hand�"my punching hand�"was dark red and swelling.  Nothing felt broken but it was going to hurt for a while. 

          The Waitress was there, and vocalized what others were thinking about how unbelievable a thing it was for a humanoid to take out a Grey in the manner I had just done.  I shrugged.  Maybe it was a big deal, maybe it wasn’t. “Amazing … you should see me dance …” 

No one laughed.

She droned on, not so much a chickadees chirp but a dull buzz.   I was coming down off the adrenaline peak, and my body had gone from the rush of the electric to a slow plod through the universe. 

          We were given wide berth at the bar and had run out of the first two available drinks.  I leaned over to someone else’s already-poured liquor and made a gesture that said, “Do you mind if I drink that item you have already exchanged your metal for?  And if you do mind, do you mind shutting-the-f**k-up and letting me drink anyway, because let’s face it, I dropped that big hulking mo-fo; so I can pretty much do anything I want to a limp dick like you.” 

He let me drink.  And I was polite enough to pretend to thank him.

          Waitress asked if we wanted another drink.  Maybe?  No, it was a bad idea…

          The waitress pestered us for our names.

He called me Chance. 

I called him Risk. 

We were asked about drinks again.  In a moment everyone was there.  Everyone.  A crowd.  There was no air.

          Chance and Risk. 

Risk and Chance.  She told all our names.  I had meant it as a joke … one that should have been lost on all but he and I, the only two that mattered, but the intended joke had turned on its maker and become our naming. 

          She asked again. About the drinks. The buzz that was more questions.

          “I think ...”

          “… We will be leaving.” 

Yes.  Leaving.  I carried him out the door. 

“I don’t feel so good.”  

I huffed a bit.  No you do not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EIGHT

Valor may be described in the manner in which one departs.

We left.  It was dignified.  It was time.  But mostly we did not want to be there when Myron woke.

          We had learned the Grey was called Myron. 

          Why not?

          We stumbled noisily down the clapboard to the building that was a large square, comprised of many small cubes one could purchase, one of which had become our own place for placing our things and being, when we were not being somewhere else. 

          In our cube, I put Risk on one of the things that passed for a bed, while I stood at a window.  The saloon we had come from had returned to what it was before we were.  Perhaps Myron, the biggest of the Greys was awake, and doing whatever it was he did when not turning tables to kindling.  I figured his w***e was c**k-deep in whoring. 

          I reflected:  Next time, a shot between the eyes.  Not a word spoken.  Not another action taken.  Bang.  Crash. 

          The streets were quiet, with the whispers of dying activity at their corners.

          I.  Chance, stared from a window at the same stars I had slept beneath my entire life.  I counted them again, numbering one, two, three, and sleep overcame me.  I woke later, with a still-heavy night, and climbed onto my what made for a bed.  As with all men who woke to stare at the stars in the sky, I contemplated on their infinite greatness made all the more great by my infinite smallness.   I knew so little of myself and was unable to put my actions of the day into any great significance in the larger scope of my being.  Chance.  I have taken a name, been given a name, or have I been named?  What is it that is what one is called?

          He.  The Other.  Risk �" the name, the words, associated with the image of the man �" that made me laugh.  He continued in sleep.  And probably in pain.  Bruises covered his body … he was a humanoid being given to fly, by accident. 

          Landing had not become him well. 

Trials played in each line of his worn face.  Experience and life lived.  He had been tossed across a room before.  Felt life pass.  Made mistakes.  Been happy.  Seen lands neither he nor I could now describe.  No we were not alive for only days, perhaps now weeks.  There was life on our faces. And in him I decided to place more trust than I need grant.  I needed to trust someone.  It had to be him more than any other.  Perhaps that had been his plan all along, a way to gain my trust?  But why would he desire such a thing from a man who knew not what he was, and in so doing, even without ill will he held power over me.

I could kill or trust.

The gun was there and it could serve either.  I asked, why attack first?  He had charged a beast ready for the charge.  A senseless attack without motivation other than the lust of violence?  Risk is your name now.  And in you I place my trust.  I holstered the gun. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NINE

Life comes whether you engage or wait.

          We waited.  Until the Day’s Star was at its highest, brightest point.  He slept.  Stirred.  Slept more.  When he was awake, he would start conversation, and then it would end when the pain of the wounds overtook him again.  It was not beyond my wits to recognize in his condition: a condition, similar to mine own two handfuls of days' passing’s fore.  The universe had returned us to a place where positions were reversed.  He was the weaker and I in the position of strength.  But I had decided to trust … not as he had, for the promise of insight, but because I had decided.  Made my choice as he had made his … or so he claimed … to turn back and aid the fallen man at the side of his path.  And trust again built.

          He lay, and remained sore.   His body, and at self.  He talked of his folly during lucid and not-so-lucid moments.  “It’s a f*****g animal … a beast … you shoot a beast, you don’t charge.”

          Most would be dead.  As the Day Star’s passing continued beyond the first and then second day, he would talk more.  Ask for water.  We talked of actions taken and not taken.  I said again, if we were to venture into similar circumstance in hours, days, years to come, the evolving situation would incur different input, as first action would be to draw and shoot.  One action, quickly made, at the cusp of the decision to do so. He said he agreed and then discussed the error of his engagement ... he had assumed, he said, the large beast would be slow.  Fierce, but slow, and in an instant had decided to attack rather than be attacked, with the following counter to be believed too slow. 

          He then claimed knowledge saying large predators are not used to being the focus of assault but rather of fear in other beasts of the land, and often, even in their natural settings, react slowly as such to offense, meaning the attacker has a brief moment whereby to seize control of all following moves.  The initiative could be taken by the lesser against the greater.  But then he changed again, to his original line of shooting rather than charging a beast.

          "How do you know such a thing?"  I do not ... And yet I do ... I am aware the state I have described is the natural order.  We discussed this at length, as there was little to do as he rested from the encounter and the encounter's results etched into his body.  In our present encumbered state of unknowing, there was still some knowledge.  Of skills, language, functions.  We both knew words, and could place them together into ideas.  But not all the ideas were there, and some ideas were?  Such as his thoughts on large beasts, or my knowledge of barter at the bar.  Eat, sleep, s**t, piss.  They were all there.  Words that describe shared perceptions of acts and needs.  Heat, cold.  Stimulus. These things were not victims to the fog, but our names?  Those we gave to self.  Others were called by naming and by function.

I think of the waitress, called little more than Waitress.  She had stated another word by which she is known, and called, but I cared not.  Such is her name.  Waitress.  The man who kept a bar was Bar Keep, or The ‘Keep.  As if function might provide idea enough for naming. Surely there are those who know of Waitress beyond function and have placed a title to idea, to the picture of her existence beyond simply, Waitress.  This yet does not make her anymore her name, whatever it may lay, or any less a waitress. A name, a function, a purpose.

A purpose to what purpose?  She provides something that if she were not; the purpose would be filled by another.  So in her life, and in her name what is she?  Why should she exist, or have been given duties that in their doing resulted in the name?  Not the one unknown, but the known, the Waitress.

          But I am not called Walker, nor the Other Flier ... or better yet, Flung.  We are called by other and are also nothing more or less other than what is stated for there is nothing known of us to conjure words that might give lips to naming.

 

 

TEN

 I was held in silence and peace, nay unstirred by the breathe of the word ... Wake.

          And I did. 

          And yet did not, but was aware of the place between waking and sleeping, where my mind could drift around dreams, obstacles and see the truth that is the firmament below the celestial.

          And in that moment I held to truth and knowledge but understanding remained impeded.  I looked for the voice.

          Wake.

          I could not!  Understanding was there … in the between ... In the cool waters.  North.  The waters north.

          Wake.

          North.  The sea.

          Wake.

          No ... The sea....

          Wake.

          No ....

          And it was gone.