Hoof only notices because he’s been doing it for three days. It’s not impossible: you could try on a well-fueled humbug, or a trike, if the ground were flatter here. But no one’s ever kept up with her on foot this long.
So she makes camp and waits until he walks up and plops down next to her fire, smiling shyly. He puts his sword down without a glance at the gun in her lap.
“What kind of robber are you?” says Hoof, in some bewilderment.
“I’m Found Dog!” he says cheerfully. “Found Dog is a good person to be!”
Friday, February 29, 2008
“Like we’re being watched,” grates Reaching the West Reaches, spinning with his broken sword out.
“Away put your weapon!” cowers a dwarf. “I mean you no harm!”
He grunts and lowers it. “I’m looking for someone.”
“Found someone, you have! Help you I can, yes, mmm.”
“I don’t think so,” sneers Reaching the West Reaches, and leans on his sword like a stick. “I’m looking for a great warrior.”
“Warrior? Stumble Jade. You seek Stumble Jade!”
Reaching the West Reaches shares a startled glance with The Plum Of; but she just watches, always behind him, flickering blue as an ocean mirage.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
The door’s in the back of Baldr’s messy cabin, padlocked, with a masking-tape tag labeling it “TACKLE.”
“And this leads to the place where they’ve taken him?” asks Miss Chamuel.
“It leads to Niflheim,” says Baldr.
“But all such afterlives suspended are one; doesn’t one find throughout human history the echoes of life-without-life, and isn’t the only difference among them perspective?”
“It leads to Niflheim,” says Baldr patiently.
“And you’ll let us back out when I knock,” says Miss Chamuel firmly.
Baldr nods.
When they’ve gone through, he padlocks the door again, then sets the boat on fire.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
“How come they gave you a… a lady voice?” says Kincaid, five drinks later.
“Because I’m female, you sot.” Hoof’s tail flicks irritably, but Kincaid doesn’t know that sign. She watches his eyes move over her hard, glossy pectorals to her flat abs and anticipates the question.
“I was engineered as a brood mare,” she sighs.
“Then how… y’know, feeding?” Kincaid watches her drink; it’s weird to see her big hands tossing shots into her long equine mouth.
“The lab never intended me,” says Hoof grimly, “to nurse my offspring.”
Kincaid feels so bad about humanity that he has to barf.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Should you happen, on your journey through the desert, to find an oasis that is not merely a pool but a ring, it is important that you do not drink from it; nor should you step in its water, or inside the border it describes. Such places are sacred and dangerous. They are the rings of the caliphae.
These people come from a time before memory, inasmuch as they abide by human time at all. Those they favor stumble drunk from paradise, centuries gone; those they hate never stumble out at all.
They are not winged. But their tiny carpets fly.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Holly lives, altogether, with five and a half sets of foster parents. The Kreuks count as half because they split her assistance check and lie to the caseworker, and for eight glorious months she is Rowan’s daughter.
Rowan can’t adopt Holly because she’s poor, with a history of suicidal depression and (not coincidentally) breast cancer. Holly doesn’t learn this until she goes looking. She gets extra-nice for a while, and Rowan figures it out, and they fight.
I’m not going to tell you they never get a chance to make up. They do. They make up in plenty of time.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
The thing about being around for over two thousand years is that you just get so sick of sandwiches. It seems like any time he washes up on the shore of a strange and wondrous rising civilization, they’re just in the throes of discovering that hey–mash up some of that grain there, heat it, shit, put a little meat between two halves and whoop de doo! WONDER FOOD. Pita, gyro, taco, sushi, y’know, fucking loaves and fishes. It’s all the same.
It makes him want to stab somebody, which is of course what got him here in the first place.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
She reenters the main wing as if she still has a lookout, like every other night; which of course she doesn’t.
“Miss Macnair.”
Flat of foot and red of hand, Proserpina considers her tactical options. She can probably outrun Miss Havisham: this is at best a stall. She can open with a jab to “thanks to an eyewitness” plexus, followed shortly “all hours of the night” and a right hook, which should finish things up “explain your behavior?”
Frowning in thought, Proserpina suddenly realizes she’s expected to answer.
“Oh,” she says, “no, but I do have the other thing. Er, blackmail?”
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Morley’s truck is powered by pissed-off cowboy, which makes it hard to start on cold mornings, even with a poking stick.
“Poke poke!” says Morley.
“Reckon ‘m sleep,” grunts his cowboy.
“Root them toot them!” says Morley encouragingly. “Time to ride and rope, partner!”
“Don’ wanna.”
“Look! Apache on the hill! Time for cowboys and Indians!”
“That offensive stereotype derives from a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the Cow-boy in factual Western history.”
“I’m already late!”
“Hngh.”
“Remember,” says Morley slyly, “how Wyatt Earp wins in all the movies?”
Morley and his truck squeal yeehaws down the road.
Monday, February 18, 2008