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Friday, August 04, 2006
17:14 
Coyote Drift
 "You do get yourself into the sort of pickles I'd be proud to see in one of my own, dontcha kiddo?"
The man smiles at her, brown face crinkling. Predatory eyes drift from hard blue to piercing yellow. He is wearing a brown leather jacket that has worn through to sepia on the shoulders and elbows, a pair of sun-faded jeans and cowboy boots. He is covered in dust. He takes off his hat — a battered old fedora — and uses it to brush the dust off himself before squatting down beside the woman where she sits on the ground with her legs stuck straight out in front of her, leaning back on her hands.
For a moment the woman ignores him, staring at the fire while trying very hard to think about nothing else except the sugary feeling of sand under her palms. But he is her favourite uncle. He is her godfather.
She flings her arms around him, burying her face against his shoulder. He smells of whisky and strong tobacco and animal musk and the dust that still clings grittily to his tangled hair. The leather of his jacket feels cool and slightly rough under the skin of her arms.
He returns the embrace, holding her quietly, not saying anything, waiting until the first rush of relief wears off and she remembers that he does not represent safety either. He may well be her godfather but that does not mean she can trust him. Somewhere amongst all the smells of dust and desert and leather and stale bars there is a hint of something artificially chemical and feminine, some cheap perfume that has been transferred in the press of flesh against flesh. The taint of the bordello. That is enough to remind her of what he is.
She draws back, sniffing slightly. Her face is wet.
"I wasn't sure you'd come."
He produces a bottle from out of thin air and uncaps it. He drinks, setting his lips against the glass and tilting his head back so that the bottle is silhouetted against the night sky. He wipes his lips on his sleeve and passes the bottle to her.
"Well now. Given that I could hear your snivellin' from all the way over there —" he gestures vaguely with one arm, indicating a place that could be a hundred yards or a billion light years away "— I had to come so's I could get me some peace."
She tips a mouthful of the fiery whisky into her mouth and swallows it, grimacing. She hands the bottle back to her uncle, coughing a little. "I wasn't snivelling," she grumbles, affecting hurt.
"Yeah, kiddo. Y' were. Snivellin' like a little girl with a skinned knee." The corner of his mouth twitches, as if he is trying to be stern but is finding it impossible. "So out with it, honeypie. Tell yer favourite uncle what's the problem."
He pulls up a log that had not been there a moment before, dragging it through the sand with ease. He sits himself down on it, stretching his feet out to warm them by the fire. It gets cold in the desert at night.
After a moment he produces a cigarette from somewhere about his person and leans over to light it from the flickering flames.
"You don't know?" She stares at him, eyes suddenly bright with tears.
He blows out a plume of smoke, grey clouds jetting from his nostrils, takes another large swallow of whisky then makes a fanciful gesture with the hand holding his cigarette while passing the woman the bottle.
"Well now that depends, it surely does," he tells her. His eyes are blue again. "I know all sorts of things. But that don't mean I know what you know, little darlin'. What you think you know, anyways." He pauses while she takes another drink, her face contorting. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, giving the bottle back as if it were the nastiest thing in the world and she wants no more to do with it. He takes the cigarette from between his lips and hands it to her before lighting another for himself. "An' it depends on what part of this particular pickle y' consider to be the problem."
They both exhale smoke. The two plumes run into one another, swirl and dance to form two Japanese sumo wrestlers who face off and begin to fight.
The woman waves her arm through the cloud, dispersing the smoke. Her uncle raises his eyebrows, more surprised than angry.
"I'm not four any more," she whispers, her voice etched with the acid of longing. She is many years older than that, but right now she wishes she were four years old again. Four years old, when both her uncles would come and tell her stories, hiding under the bed and whispering to her in the darkness. Or even less than that, back in the little house she had shared with Father and Grandfather, when she didn't have to think about anything except doing what she was told. Before the Wyrmtime. Before biology.
"No, ye're not. If ye were I wouldn't be sharin' this with you." He hands her the bottle again. She takes it with a look of repelled disgust but she does take it and she does drink.
"If I knew what the problem was I'd know how to fix it," she says moodily, as if her very ability to fix things is the source of some anger.
"Would you now?" Yellow eyes burn brightly in the light of the fire. "My, ain't you precocious?"
"That's how they made me, remember? You were there for that part. You were there." She fixes him with a stare. "What was the Need?"
Her eyes are the black of deep, empty space. They give the impression of being holes into vast, infinite nothingness, prevented from sucking everything inside them only by a thin layer of delicate, glistening glass.
Coyote's own eyes narrow, yellow taking on a hint of orange.
"You've come a long way to be tryin' that on me, girl," he tells her. He is not angry, merely thoughtful. "I weren't there. I just stopped by now an' then to make sure the Old Man weren't beatin' on you too hard. I'm yer godfather, girl. That were my choice. I look out for you because I like you. Don't you go takin' advantage of ma indulgence."
"You're lying," she says without any trace of anger or bitterness or blame.
"I weren't there. You know that. I weren't there when the Prime put their heads together and decided to come up with you. I ain't one of the Prime, thank Charlie."
"Sometimes you are," she says, momentarily dreamy. She comes back to herself with a slight frown. "But I know you're not lying about that. You're lying about why you're my godfather. You made that choice before you could get to know me so you can't be my godfather because you like me."
"Never said I was," he corrects her peaceably. She still has the bottle. Abruptly she seems to realise this and eyes the quantity of liquid remaining. Enough to last all night, if need be, however long that might be.
"Why?" she asks him.
"Why what?"
"Just... why?"
He holds out his arm, inviting her to him. She shuffles over in the sand to sit by him, leaning against him with his arm around her as they both watch the fire. Overhead the sky is lit up by the bright streaks of shooting stars.
He takes the bottle from her. She can smell the whisky as he takes a slug. Without being asked he offers her another cigarette.
"There are two things you need, girl," he says, breath warm against her head and full of alcoholic vapour. Coyote is an affectionate drunk. "Friends and alone time. Your sort ain't meant to be alone, it don't suit 'em; but you can't expect to get yer head sorted when ye've got other folks' thoughts crowdin' in there, speshly when they ain't Family. Ye can't rightly worry 'bout yerself when ye're worryin' 'bout everyone else."
"I don't want to worry about myself," she tells him. "I just want to get on. I want to get out of here." She looks around at the blasted plain and shivers. "I want to understand." She turns to him, plaintive, her eyes bright and beady. She reminds him of her Old Man and he smiles softly with affection. That old bastard has a tendency towards maudlin under the influence as well. "I want to know what I'm for. I want to know what to do next. I want to know why I can't do the things they say I'm supposed to be able to do."
"Don't want much, do ya?" He sighs, squeezing her and planting a kiss on her head. "I ain't here for that, kiddo. That ain't ma gig."
"Then why are you here?" she asks.
"Because you wanted me to come an' I like you an' you needed someone to share a drink with. That's what godfathers are for, girl. The little things. I can't tell ya anythin' ya don't already know."
"You're lying again," she says without rancour.
"Can’t and won't ain't necessarily different things," he tells her gently.
She grabs the bottle from him and takes two deep slugs before giving it back and resting her head against him so she can breathe his scent and indulge in the comfort of his presence. Her eyes reflect the red and orange glow of the fire, now burnt down to a pile of embers that nevertheless gives off an intense heat, until the alcohol catches up with her and she drifts off to sleep.
Carefully, Coyote eases himself out from underneath her and settles her down on the ground, arranging her so that she won't be too uncomfortable.
"Sweet dreams, kiddo," he tells her, setting his hat on his head.
He strolls off into the darkness, leaving no footprints. The only signs he was there at all are the log on which he was sitting and an almost-empty whisky bottle, left propped up in the sand with just enough inside it for a hair of the dog.
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Thursday, August 03, 2006
17:47
Shit shit fuck fuck arsewipes cheesemonkeys
 I have a bindrune on my back.
It is etched in black beneath my skin, the colour of the Void injected between my outermost shell and the stuff of my insides. It is the third of my tattoos; my imprintings. It tells any who knows how to read it why I was built. For what I was designed. My purpose. The reason they brought me into being.
Who were my parents?
Need and Service.
They had a Need.
I was made to Service it.
That, in essence, is what I am. That is why I am the Gimpiest Gimp ever to walk out of the Gimp factory with 'Gimp' stamped onto her flesh.
Gimp really is stamped into my flesh. Well. Inked, anyway.
I was built to specification. That's what makes me valuable. I'm not a useful mammal like some people. I didn't become valuable despite myself. I was built this way. Custom-rigged and bespoke-engineered. As far as most folks Elsewhere are concerned I don't count as People.
That's a riot. Still. At least being called a blasphemy or, better yet, abomination loses its sting pretty quickly.
No. I'm not valuable because my human characteristics added up to something useful, something that was pounced on and pinned down and developed to make something even more useful. I'm not an emergent property of a line of breeding cherished and nourished. I was put together from a selection of parts. Raven's First Bran Tub.
My human characteristics have as much tendency to interfere with what I am as add to it. Only mine are learned and they're trying to get rid of them.
Need and Service. They clasp together like a Chinese puzzle, drawing the gaze inside. They act like a lobster pot. You can get in, crawling through the opening to the inside, but you can't get out. Once you're inside there you remain, trapped in service, penned in a tiny space where there is just about enough room to breathe if you adopt the right position and stay like that.
Ironically my brand can be mistaken for another two runes, in which case the opening through which you enter this labyrinth is the Voice of God.
Oh they had a laugh over this one, I'm sure.
I keep thinking that there's some sort of Clue in my tattoos. But then, maybe it's just that whole black goo/Void thing and I'm conflating 'black' with 'relevant'.
Fuck.
I still don't know what that Need was.
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