The sun crested the hills and the grass turned to a golden sea to the horizon and back. The sunlight was warm. It would share the warmth and the love and the ever-present slick oil thought of space with the world it had the fortune to plant roots in. The field was a little dry, however. Many, many weeks since a good rain, but that just meant it was due for a change. The winds shifted, picking up and turning violent. Some of the blades would no doubt fall to the wind and the rain, swept away by the cruel planet, but the whole would survive. It would be alright.
The world sighed with the warming dawn. Early, it was much too early for anything important to happen. The night things have gone to bed. The day things were still asleep. Something not quite either stretched and yawned and did a wonderful job of scaring the nesting birds on its head. The birds did not care for it. Their young needed their sleep and they could not do so when their lumbering perch decided that it was time to move. The tiny mouths announced to the world that they were alive and they were hungry. They should not suffer. They were innocent and pure and simply the greatest thing the world has ever known and now they had to live with the fact that they were not fed. The parents ruffled their plumes and took to the air. They had to get food. Otherwise, the world might end.
The beast shook its head once more and opened its tusked maw, shaking the caked earth from its lips. With a heave, it was on all of its feet and the great wandering could begin again. It caught the scent of grass. It caught the scent of rain. It caught the scent of a herd forming off to the east and mulled over the urge to join it. There would be mates there and that would be something worthwhile. But the birds on its head might abandon the duty of keeping its back clean. Better to stay alone until the nest was empty. Food tended to get scarce when a herd formed anyway. So, the maw of tusks and leathered lips decided that it was time for grass.
And it was good grass. Fresh and still covered with the dew of the morning. It didn't have to go to the lake and drink its fill there. It just had acres and acres and acres of grass to feast on. And the scent, the scent filled its mind with the fresh clean aura of new growth and life. It filled itself in every way from the heavenly grass, the blades breaching past its ankles. The land was turned over, the soil churned into black loam.
Despite the complete absence of new grass, the scent still lingered in the morning chill, weaving through the air and stands of gusting breeze. The herd, the mighty herd of its kin rocked the earth closer and closer, carrying the scent of grass as well. Odd. They shouldn't smell like grass. They should smell like the herd, a mass of musky bodies and matted furs and worn tusks. Not grass. And the thundering heavy steps were coming too quickly for the lumbering of a migration. A stampede, a new occurrence that could not happen. They were all too big for the threat of anything to cause such panic.
The thundering steps stopped for a moment and the wind whistled a sharp whine of razor blades. Nothing. It was simply nothing. The earth had to wake as well, it seemed, and it did not want to. Fine, simply fine. Nothing to worry about. The beast was still thirsty anyway. The lake was to the west and it could drink there.
The whistle grew louder and louder until a spike drove itself into its neck.
The beast couldn't breathe as the thundering steps of what was and what wasn't a herd came closer and closer. Too smooth, too rhythmic, too graceful to be its kin. The steps stopped right by its head and the spike slipped out like warm oil. Cold, it was so cold as the spike came away. All the blood it flowed into the earth, the fresh turned feeding grounds already sprouting with something new to gorge on. It would never get to taste them.
A hand, a paw, something smooth and cold found its side and gave a loving caress. It saw the white and the shiny grass green of what might be a head, or something close to it, gazing from on high, mourning the passage of the beast's life, a necessary cruelty of the world and how it must come to an end. Another hand, another paw, of the same white slickness came spiraling away. The sun shone through the fingers. In a moment, the light collected and a violet blade formed from the spilling light.
As the knife cut its throat, the beast thought of the nest on its head. The parents would be unable to find the young. They would have to fend for themselves. Terrible, simply terrible.
---
Crookes sat back in the cockpit and rubbed his temples. The breath from his lungs shook through his lips and it took a moment to become steady again. It did. It always did. The body of white and luminescent hue went still under his lack of touch. It stood straight, gazing down at the slumped carcass. And now he had to carry it back home for the carving. At least he did not have to do that. He was not allowed to do that.
The lights under his hand pulsed with a heartbeat out of synch with his own. Once the skin touched the divots and handles, it finally came back aligned with his will. He told the body of the vessel to pick up the leathertusk. It did so amicably, smoothly, almost silently.
The silence let him hear the cry of the nest and the raw fear that pulled from their core. Something terrible, simply terrible had happened and everything was too small, the wings, the mouths, the bodies, to do anything about it. So, they called on something bigger than them to come and fix it. It was a sin for the small things of the world to be so cold, so scared, so hungry.
Crookes agreed wholeheartedly once the vessel showed him the nest and the birds of naked pale plumage. They were indeed small. Too small to suffer from the world at large. But he was there with a dead leathertusk on his back and he was the bad thing that had happened to them. He should not have gone out today. He should have gotten the water from the lake. The herd was getting closer and it would be better to pull from there before they came and took it all.
They only received the vessel's arm, scooping up the bundle of twigs and sticks. The arm, the wonderful pearly arm of all goodness and holy intent, gently set the nest atop the head of something equally massive, although much more slender and clean. This would work. The parents might have a hard time finding them, but they would manage. They could still follow the scent. It was there, although mixed with the scent of new grass.
Crookes sighed and started moving once again. The body he inhabited told the body he piloted how to move, so they were as one. One heartbeat shared among two. He sighed and rolled his shoulder. The little divot of discomfort was still there. It was always there when he stayed in the seat for too long.
"Klieg," he said to the open air, "You there?"
"Roger, Incandescent 1," said the smooth panels to his right, the light tickling the sound and tuning it to reverberation.
"You can just say Crookes. That's fine."
"Negative, Incandescent 1. There is a protocol to follow. And you are to refer to the control point as Prism Station. Do you copy?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"A single affirmation will suffice, Incandescent 1. Is there anything to report?"
"Took down a leathertusk near Getter Lake. Get receiving to clear a space for it when I get back. It's a big one."
The stone-cold voice of the other side of the light hummed and Crookes smiled. She was happy. She needed a new suit and now she was going to get it, once the thing was skinned and flayed and butchered.
"Roger, Incandescent 1. Receiving has been notified. Readjusting return route to link with the hydration team. Please enter through the south gate to ensure minimal disruption to the afternoon congregations."
"Yeah, yeah. Crookes out."
---
The sun reached its highest point and he was still walking. He did not think about it. The parents had come back to see to their young and it seemed as if the father didn't really appreciate the new method of transportation. The leathertusk supplied heat and parasites to feast on. The smooth panels of the new head did no such thing. It fluttered outside the main window making sure that whatever was inside knew if its disapproval.
Even worse was the chatter. The hydration team just kept talking, comparing the hauls, comparing everything, doing whatever they could to make the minutes slip by and ensure that Crookes did not have a second of peace and quiet to his mediations.
"Hey, Prescott," said Refraction 51, "Didn't you have a date with Lucy the other night?"
"I might have, Hugh," said Incandescent 7, "Are you talking about the Lantern Night or the foraging departure?"
"Algae duty. Overseer said you were sneaking out with someone."
"Lou was on algae duty," Prescott said, "I was on reconfiguration. Radiance thought that the dorms would be better suited on the north bank. He was right. Shared a bed that night and it is a much more pleasant experience getting up in the morning."
"Now," said Crookes, "I heard there was trouble with you getting it up at all."
"Keep the chatter to a minimum," said Prism Station by way of Klieg, just to him.
"Did you at least let that one get to him?"
"Negative, Incandescent 1. I don't want to deal with any more formal complaints from Induction 7 about lack of team cohesion."
"Then tell him to stop bragging about pestering poor Lucy for sex. Or mute him for me too."
"Negative Incandescent 1. I do not have the authority to block incoming comms from a Senior Harvester. Please refrain from using comms if you find that you have nothing pertinent to the current tactical situation. The south gate is open. You may proceed."
"What was that, Crookes," said Prescott, "You were saying something then you cut out."
"His ball and chain had to muzzle him," Hugh said. They all had a good laugh, but Crookes remained silent.
Crookes ignored it all. There was movement and rhythm and all things soothing. He had weight and the tasks and all the things checked and marked. No one could tell him that he didn't do anything today. It was fine. He was fine. It was all fine, despite the protests of the world from the bird and his fellow operators.
The bird at least settled down by the time the towers came into view. All was quiet and still on the head. A hand went up and the lights in the chest that was not his blinked out a pattern. The south gate blinked the same pattern. The east one was closer. So much closer. He could just step through the park and over the church and everything would be fine. But then Klieg would be mad at him for not following the correct thing she said.
The tower kept its rhythmic dance of green light, out of time with his heartbeat, but together with the collective. It pulled the lights over him and let the steady pace fall out of his control. There was just the will of the roots, the network, the lack of thought on his part to guide everything forward.
"Incandescent 1 waiting at south gate with hydration team," he said to Prism Station.
"Acknowledged," said a voice that was not Klieg. Maybe Lou or Lucy. He could never tell which one was which through the comms.
