“The goddess was bathing, and so she carved a sandalwood boy to stand guard,” mutters Reaching the West Reaches. The cave is dark, and his broken sword will not light the way. “But he was curious, and looked upon his mother in the bath; and her husband arrived home to find them–”
See Me leaps out, sword whole and gleaming. Reaching the West Reaches parries and feints, strikes, strikes again.
See Me’s head rolls to a stop. His own lacquer eyes look up from it.
“So the god cursed the boy,” he pants, “with an elephant’s head, too heavy to bear…”
The thing nobody thinks about is that it’s difficult to hold things, without fingerprints. Dollar bills, telephones, pub darts and pens: they just disappear when Tegan2‘s applying what should be the right amount of pressure. She’s broken more glasses that way.
It’s one of the minor side effects of clonehood–forced growth means skipping the details–but it occupies a frustrating amount of Tegan2‘s attention. Her friends joke that she should become a burglar, as if every scrap of her DNA isn’t owned.
Marlo’s learned to be quick at catching. Tegan2 keeps meaning to look up t-ball leagues.
“You’re aware of why you’re doing this, right?” Amy waves at the screen. “Working, throwing it all out there, panting over every inbound link? It’s such a transparent cry for affection–”
“Like you?”
“Like me.”
“But free distribution of digitizable content is the only model that even makes sense anymore!” Jake protests.
She smirks. “Coincidence. You only download music to get back at the RIAA too, right?”
“So what, I should put it behind a subscription wall? Print stories on t-shirts?”
“Well,” she says, “you could resell it in hardcopy.”
Jake winces. “Do I have to call it a ‘blook?'”
You have to be able to fly to get into Truce. There have been complaints about this over the years, but the response from management is always the same: piggyback.
Once inside, the dampers come on and you change out of your costume at the coat check: heroes at one door, “persons of enlightened self-interest” at the other. And you can get a decent drink, and there’s no one clamoring for a picture, calling you Lasergirl. You can be Jenna. Just Jenna.
And if he asks you to dance, well, mistakes you make at Truce maybe won’t get anyone killed.
Sometimes he’ll just amble the trade roads for weeks, watching peasants die. Pus bubbling on their necks and genitals, the backs of their hands, their heads: it’s marking their sins for convenience in later sorting.
He helps desperate men tear down and burn plague houses, and they value him, because he’ll walk into fire to make sure the walls collapse properly inward. Actually, all he wants is a last chance to see the bodies blister and burst to black.
Longinus lost the capacity for sickness so long ago; now he’s exultant. Finally, finally, the old bastard’s getting around to ending the world.
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars are coming on.
Casi had these on her ceiling, too, when she was a teenager, but she didn’t have this many, or this solid an understanding of the sky. The former occupant of this room pasted stars trickling down closet molding and peeking out from behind the mirror; Orion winks at her from above the TV.
Does a room remember the childhoods it’s seen? Is childhood–like a room, like a constellation–anything but a construct formed of negative space? If these walls could talk, they’d recite Greek poetry. Casi’s would have mumbled Dashboard lyrics.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Windel’s head is beating like the protest drums of the stupid hill tribes–which issue they probably won’t even get to, today. It’s hard to conquer a continent when the ruling council stinks.
“Lords,” Windel says, “we must have your decision on the prohibition of alcohol in the newly conquered lands! What are your votes?”
But as always, they’re deadlocked: three wet, three dry.
Leaving the chamber, Windel kicks his agenda in frustration, and his aide scrambles to scoop up the scattered papers. “I’m this close to instigating a coup,” Windel growls.
“What,” his aide says hesitantly, “like a regime change?”
The endless war between Divine and Infernal drives the spin of every atom in our universe, and in terms of sheer fury involved, it has nothing on the current community annexing debate in Higley, Arizona.
“Third through Eighth must go to Mesa,” snaps the council chairman. “The county line stops at Main!”
“No, they will go to Gilbert,” says Davea. “We’re not joining your myopic tax bloc!”
“The line must hold!”
“Fellow merchants!” cries Davea. “Take up the cry!”
Bertram quivers, knowing his vote will decide it.
Above, the six thousand swords of the seraphs have paused to watch him choose.