“Shimmer. Dude. You’re gross. You’re fucking gross,” Ellie fumed, scrubbing her backpack. “This is the grossest shit you’ve ever done.”
Shimmer, a chestnut mare with a splotch of white splashed down her nose, gazed balefully at Ellie. A horse’s big eyes, so full of depth and expression, always had a sad look in her opinion but it seemed like Shimmer’s were extra sad, and good, fucking good. Kneeling over the bank of the river, her backpack’s contents emptied onto the ground beside her, covered in dirt, muck, and horseshit, the bent-backed entirety of her scrubbed the waxed canvas of her bag with a shoulder-aching amount of muscle.
“You shit on my backpack,” she said, brow knotted, sweat trickling down her face. “Everything I own, I keep in here, and you shit on it. Do you know what that feels like?”
Shimmer gave a whickering snort.
“Yeah,” agreed Ellie. “Pretty fucking bad. How would you like it if I just shat on everything you loved? Probably wouldn’t like that now would you? If I just shat in your feed bag or something.”
Obviously she wouldn’t do that, but, pissed off as she was, it helped to vent about it. Since Shimmer was her only traveling companion, she’d have to bear the brunt of her fury, which consisted largely of veiled threats and intricate revenge plots that she’d never exact on her own horse, because backpack covered in shit or not she loved her horse and her horse loved her, that was true, nobody could deny it. She didn’t have anybody else, either, for better or for worse so it was the two of them do or die and sometimes it had been a little closer to the latter than the former. If she didn’t have Shimmer, it might have just been ‘die’ in those scenarios, so even in moments like this, Ellie was glad to have her, because she preferred ‘do’. Yeah, when they arrows got to flying, it was sometimes a little of column A and a little of column B, but with a faithful horse beneath her there were a lot more options in a pinch like that.
Canvas scoured adequately, Ellie hung her rucksack by its handle on a tree branch’s offshoot to dry. They wouldn’t make any more progress today, she knew not until the canvas had dried enough for her to put all of her belongings back into, so it was time to rub Shimmer down, feed her the evening’s grain (shit-free, though be damned if she didn’t want to…no, better not), water the beast of burden, and then set about to making camp. Dinner that night? A can of beans, she figured, and for a treat maybe she’d cook up the last two rashers of bacon to spice that bitch up, because one could only eat so many cans of beans before things got a little dull.
She produced a spark onto the gathered tinder, rewarded with a thin coil of smoke for her efforts, then worked a tiny blossom of flame into an actual fire that bloomed up in the darkening air with a natural grandiosity that she’d never stop admiring.
“...not bad,” Ellie mumbled aloud, and Shimmer agreed with a gentle whinney. “Not bad, Ellie. Faster than usual.”
And it had been, which was good, because even though she had almost nothing better to do there was something about the tedium of doing the same tasks every night, night after night, that started to wear away at the fringes of the mind. Some folks found the opposite: that a steady routine of the same fucking task night in and night out provided peace of mind. She’d met a couple of wanna-be cowboys and gun-slinging badasses that fancied themselves something special because they were men of the world who found a simple joy in the down-home act of making a fire. That wasn’t her, though, man. It just wasn’t her.
Ellie was a different kind of gun-toting badass who endured the bullshit for the big payoff at the end, the adrenaline rush of a big score, or the satisfaction of skating through danger by the skin of her teeth. That was the tits, the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas, and she set herself to laughing when she imagined flip-flopping those two phrases for the bee’s pajamas or the cat’s knees.
“The cat’s knees!” she told Shimmer, snickering like an idiot. Ellie shook her head. “The bee’s fucking pajamas.”
She cooked the last rashers of bacon first, snagging the little portable cast-iron she usually kept in her pack that had been relegated to sitting on a smattering of rocks that kept it off of the true filth of the ground. Once a suitable layer of bacon grease had been teased out of the meat she dumped the can of beans right in there without draining the pan because that’s how she rolled. Fuck counting calories, especially when you lived hard and rough the way she did. Every drop of bacon fat might be the difference between an extra surge of energy that could pull you up a cliff ledge or the flagging lack of strength that could spell a girl’s death at the end of a long day. She ate slowly, savoring the beans, while Shimmer ate her shit-free grain.
While she was finishing her last few spoonfuls, something strange happened.
A pigeon, an Arbiter-be-fucked pigeon, actually lowered itself flapping through the canopy of leaves and branches overhead to land on her backpack. Ellie blinked stupidly, actually rubbed her eyes to make sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing, then walked over to inspect the bird. Slate grey, a little different from the pigeons you’d found in the settlements, it was a little bit sleeker and prettier. It lacked the dull plump one usually found in that kind of bird, and instead looked adequately bodied from travel.
And on one of it’s legs there was a piece of paper, rolled tight, then tied in place by twine at the top and bottom.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Ellie remarked to nobody in particular. “What have you got for me, little guy?”
She worked the twine loose with calloused fingers, and the bird let her. It seemed used to this kind of treatment, which Ellie found downright fascinating because she’d never seen a trained bird before, and in fact had only seen a very small smattering of domesticated birds altogether. They were not a sight often seen amongst the lower rungs of Kraw society. When she’d worked the note loose the pigeon tilted its head expectantly at her, and bobbed its beak up and down. It…wanted something?
Uncertain about what to do, she plucked a stray bacon bit from her cast-iron and offered it to the bird. To her surprise, the bird took it, and ate it quickly. Note in hand she watched it light from her pack with a couple of pumps from its wings, then disappear back up into the canopy and then it was like the bird had never been there except for the piece of paper she clutched in stunned silence.
“...did you see that shit?” asked Ellie, smiling at Shimmer. “That’s crazy. …let’s get a look at who…”
She unfurled the note, and found it scrawled in a tight spidery web of ink, so fine in its calligraphy that she had to actually lean in and squint at the paper and put an effort forth to decipher it.
“Fucking snobs and their lame-ass handwriting,” Ellie remarked aloud, as she was want to do for a lack of other voices to fill the lapse of silence. “Let’s see who you are, then.”
And she set about to reading the note proper.
Shimmer, a chestnut mare with a splotch of white splashed down her nose, gazed balefully at Ellie. A horse’s big eyes, so full of depth and expression, always had a sad look in her opinion but it seemed like Shimmer’s were extra sad, and good, fucking good. Kneeling over the bank of the river, her backpack’s contents emptied onto the ground beside her, covered in dirt, muck, and horseshit, the bent-backed entirety of her scrubbed the waxed canvas of her bag with a shoulder-aching amount of muscle.
“You shit on my backpack,” she said, brow knotted, sweat trickling down her face. “Everything I own, I keep in here, and you shit on it. Do you know what that feels like?”
Shimmer gave a whickering snort.
“Yeah,” agreed Ellie. “Pretty fucking bad. How would you like it if I just shat on everything you loved? Probably wouldn’t like that now would you? If I just shat in your feed bag or something.”
Obviously she wouldn’t do that, but, pissed off as she was, it helped to vent about it. Since Shimmer was her only traveling companion, she’d have to bear the brunt of her fury, which consisted largely of veiled threats and intricate revenge plots that she’d never exact on her own horse, because backpack covered in shit or not she loved her horse and her horse loved her, that was true, nobody could deny it. She didn’t have anybody else, either, for better or for worse so it was the two of them do or die and sometimes it had been a little closer to the latter than the former. If she didn’t have Shimmer, it might have just been ‘die’ in those scenarios, so even in moments like this, Ellie was glad to have her, because she preferred ‘do’. Yeah, when they arrows got to flying, it was sometimes a little of column A and a little of column B, but with a faithful horse beneath her there were a lot more options in a pinch like that.
Canvas scoured adequately, Ellie hung her rucksack by its handle on a tree branch’s offshoot to dry. They wouldn’t make any more progress today, she knew not until the canvas had dried enough for her to put all of her belongings back into, so it was time to rub Shimmer down, feed her the evening’s grain (shit-free, though be damned if she didn’t want to…no, better not), water the beast of burden, and then set about to making camp. Dinner that night? A can of beans, she figured, and for a treat maybe she’d cook up the last two rashers of bacon to spice that bitch up, because one could only eat so many cans of beans before things got a little dull.
She produced a spark onto the gathered tinder, rewarded with a thin coil of smoke for her efforts, then worked a tiny blossom of flame into an actual fire that bloomed up in the darkening air with a natural grandiosity that she’d never stop admiring.
“...not bad,” Ellie mumbled aloud, and Shimmer agreed with a gentle whinney. “Not bad, Ellie. Faster than usual.”
And it had been, which was good, because even though she had almost nothing better to do there was something about the tedium of doing the same tasks every night, night after night, that started to wear away at the fringes of the mind. Some folks found the opposite: that a steady routine of the same fucking task night in and night out provided peace of mind. She’d met a couple of wanna-be cowboys and gun-slinging badasses that fancied themselves something special because they were men of the world who found a simple joy in the down-home act of making a fire. That wasn’t her, though, man. It just wasn’t her.
Ellie was a different kind of gun-toting badass who endured the bullshit for the big payoff at the end, the adrenaline rush of a big score, or the satisfaction of skating through danger by the skin of her teeth. That was the tits, the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas, and she set herself to laughing when she imagined flip-flopping those two phrases for the bee’s pajamas or the cat’s knees.
“The cat’s knees!” she told Shimmer, snickering like an idiot. Ellie shook her head. “The bee’s fucking pajamas.”
She cooked the last rashers of bacon first, snagging the little portable cast-iron she usually kept in her pack that had been relegated to sitting on a smattering of rocks that kept it off of the true filth of the ground. Once a suitable layer of bacon grease had been teased out of the meat she dumped the can of beans right in there without draining the pan because that’s how she rolled. Fuck counting calories, especially when you lived hard and rough the way she did. Every drop of bacon fat might be the difference between an extra surge of energy that could pull you up a cliff ledge or the flagging lack of strength that could spell a girl’s death at the end of a long day. She ate slowly, savoring the beans, while Shimmer ate her shit-free grain.
While she was finishing her last few spoonfuls, something strange happened.
A pigeon, an Arbiter-be-fucked pigeon, actually lowered itself flapping through the canopy of leaves and branches overhead to land on her backpack. Ellie blinked stupidly, actually rubbed her eyes to make sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing, then walked over to inspect the bird. Slate grey, a little different from the pigeons you’d found in the settlements, it was a little bit sleeker and prettier. It lacked the dull plump one usually found in that kind of bird, and instead looked adequately bodied from travel.
And on one of it’s legs there was a piece of paper, rolled tight, then tied in place by twine at the top and bottom.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Ellie remarked to nobody in particular. “What have you got for me, little guy?”
She worked the twine loose with calloused fingers, and the bird let her. It seemed used to this kind of treatment, which Ellie found downright fascinating because she’d never seen a trained bird before, and in fact had only seen a very small smattering of domesticated birds altogether. They were not a sight often seen amongst the lower rungs of Kraw society. When she’d worked the note loose the pigeon tilted its head expectantly at her, and bobbed its beak up and down. It…wanted something?
Uncertain about what to do, she plucked a stray bacon bit from her cast-iron and offered it to the bird. To her surprise, the bird took it, and ate it quickly. Note in hand she watched it light from her pack with a couple of pumps from its wings, then disappear back up into the canopy and then it was like the bird had never been there except for the piece of paper she clutched in stunned silence.
“...did you see that shit?” asked Ellie, smiling at Shimmer. “That’s crazy. …let’s get a look at who…”
She unfurled the note, and found it scrawled in a tight spidery web of ink, so fine in its calligraphy that she had to actually lean in and squint at the paper and put an effort forth to decipher it.
“Fucking snobs and their lame-ass handwriting,” Ellie remarked aloud, as she was want to do for a lack of other voices to fill the lapse of silence. “Let’s see who you are, then.”
And she set about to reading the note proper.
Rathian Rising
WC: 1301/20000