The scent hits me first. Then it writhes down to Amaru, with Annette being spared the brunt of it for the next few hours. But it gets to her. It gets to all of us. And we still march forward. My hand is on my hammer and the other one clamors for a shield. Once again, I wish I had one. But I don't. The calculation at the start of all this said no and even now, the equation would come back with the same answer. It would make me feel better, though. It would make me feel a lot better.
I am acutely aware of Amaru and his increasingly awkward gait, Annette's attempts to hide her chest and keep her thighs from rubbing together too much. Not to mention my own little needs and hungers coming to the forefront of my mind. I grip the hammer tighter and tighter, the wood under the leather protests and threatens to shatter.
Flowers, every flower, all the petals and fresh grass, open woods and clean air and clear water, all of it pours from the grass, now waist high. The ground has taken more an artistic representation of flat. I'm sure it averages out to a straight line, but the outliers are doing their best to make the math as hard as possible. The scent, that damn worming floral scent of clean blossoms and lazy afternoons and soft drifting pipe smoke, doesn't help either. It dulls the mind and turns it to a single thought, again and again and again. I roll my shoulder and the grass sways in the wind.
Annette tries to hum a song that will take her mind away from the heat and the grass and the scent, but the notes waver and break down int whines that she shuts off. Not the noise she wanted to make and I'm not sure she wants me to pounce on her again. Not quite the best way to keep moving forward if we spend most of the day horizontal. And we wasted enough time this morning doing that. Despite the insistence of that scent and our collective instincts, there is still the task at hand. I have to see it through. I said I would do it and I will do it and Amaru needs to have a shirt, a phrase I never thought would cross my mind, or I will tackle him and ride him into a crater.
The grass sways a bit as the wind shifts direction. It just smells of dust and dry blades, nothing odd, nothing floral, nothing wooded, nothing heady and laden with lust and desire. Just a scent of a prairie in long need of a real rainstorm.
"This is going to be terrible isn't it," Annette sighs. Her voice drops, just a bit, with longing for the gone thrill in her core.
"Weren't you ever at a Treblex thing?" Amaru asks.
"Yeah, but that was just drinking and partying and drinking. Very little music, now that I think about it. Musicians don't really like to play music. They like to drink."
"That's just the musicians you know."
"No, the musicians I know also did mushrooms. Said it helped free the creative spirit. All they did was make me throw up and then feel really, really sleepy."
"Wrong mushrooms then," Amaru says, "But those look like the ones you're supposed to take. They still make you throw up, but then you start seeing things. Also depends on where you were. You need to be somewhere you feel comfortable in to have a good trip."
"How the hell do you know about all this?" I ask.
"I had a life before I met you. Remember when I talked about Midnight Carnival? They got me into it, but they also went a little too far with. Think it was either two or three gigs before Dantea. Same the Stardust Theater Company."
"Do you have any?" Annette asks.
"Hell no. That's way too expensive and I don't trust my foraging skills to not kill me."
The wind shifts again and cuts off the conversation. I was willing to try these things, if only for my own curiosity. But the wind brings back the floral bouquet of dizzying minds and twitching cores. Amaru huffs and snorts like a beast, shaking his head in an effort to bring back clear thoughts. Annette tries, she tries to keep her hands still, but they trace and wander her own body, consciousness manifesting every so often just strong enough to make them still. Amaru's back ripples with muscles and ink, outlining shapes and paths that I desperately, desperately want to take under heel again.
Clean grass hits us again when the trees start making themselves known. Thin white barked trunks and scarred leaves still reeling from a cleansing wildfire mark the path. They shelter us, finally offering the weary travelers some shade against the cruel sun. No one speaks. No one dares to speak and invite another bout of the floral scented wind. Still, it worms and writhes in our minds, the thoughts planted and seeded and nurtured by our own nature. One foot in front of the other and a hand on my hammer, that is all I need to keep the rhythm going.
The woods laugh as they form around the path. The white trunked ones turn to darker and darker brows, leaves of green and white-pink flower buds poking and dotting the sky. Spring, infinite endless spring of new growth and new life hangs heavy in the air. A noise from the left turns out to be a stag and a doe watching us pass and I can't help but think that they would be a good treat for dinner. But there is an implicit promise of a meal I do not have to make so we keep walking.
"Claire," Annette says with a bounce in her voice, "Hey, hey Claire. Look, look, look. I made a friend."
I turn and see she indeed has. Several of them as a matter of fact, crowding around her feet, pressing their forms to her ankles, and a pair nestles softly against her breast. Rabbits, a full colony, fluffy and cuddly and simply adorable.
"Put them down," I say, "You don't know where they've been."
"This one is Claire Jr. And this one is Amaru Jr. Annette Jr. is around here somewhere. She's the all black one with one ear sticking up."
I roll my eyes and keep moving forward. Birds and vines and flower buds, every inch of existence dripping with springtime revelry. And of course, that comes with the more sophisticated creatures coming out of their dens as well. The moans, the ecstatic primal moans and yells, harder, faster, slower, deeper, right there, yes, and everything else said in the heat of the moment bounce from the trees. I grit my teeth. Some of them would certainly be amenable to a third party. Or fourth, or fifth, or tenth. It wouldn't be all that odd either. And I could see what Amaru promised. That's certainly worth a sidetrack to see. I will see it. Not now, not here, but eventually. Annette snickers to the point where she might burst her sides while Amaru keeps his eyes up to a neutral point. Nothing bad can happen in the sky. He finds a pair of cardinals nuzzling in the branches. Close to the thing he is too polite to see, but not quite. And it is birds, not people.
They get more brazen, more open, more forceful as the long house comes into view. I see snatches of skin and contorted faces through the grass, the trees, the windows in vines. Over the final hill, and we are there. It's a simple thing, designed to withstand the elements and do not much else. A roof, four walls, draping vines and moss from the overhanging trees. The grounds are covered in rabbits, herds, colonies, nests of them. I like this place, the look of it at least. Simple, functional, just enough cover from the forest to be defensible. But my stomach still clenches as the front door is thrown open. A sylvo stands in the middle of the threshold, dark hair peppered with flecks of gray, cloths cut fine and tight along his frame. My heart stills as he comes into view, but the mind comes to the conclusion that I must grimace and grip my hammer. The lust wells in my chest and I chose how to express it. Violence, it will end in violence. Not now. Soon, though.
"Miss Verlaine, Mister Blackmountain and of course, Miss Biedermeier," Estlin says, arms open and smile wide, "Welcome, welcome, and welcome once more, to the illustrious Burrow's magnificent door."
---
I'm going to kill him. I am going to take my hammer and line it up with his skull and bring it down and end this pathetic life that puts the submissive anxious heart into jackrabbit paces. I stab at the tomato in front of me a little too hard and the fork scrapes against the plate. No one hears it, or no one makes a comment.
The food here is too small. There is enough of it, but everything has been made bite sized and manageable. I just have to glance to the hoard to see why. Everyone is feeding one another, lost in gazes, savoring every bite, every single act performed part of the same ritual to heighten the senses and ratchet the tension. It's not bad, not by a long shot, but I just want to eat something and be left in peace.
And there is no meat and that's a shame. Rabbits up to the knees and not a speck of flesh. I sit at the top of the dining hall, at the only real table in the place. Everything else is cushions and trays splayed over the carpet, drapes hanging from the rafters to give just enough privacy so that the rest of the congregation has to infer what is most certainly happening. The tomatoes are good, very good. Fresh, probably on the vine not even five minutes before the plate, and now they are all gone and that's a shame. Now all I'm left with is the cheese and those sweet leaves that are supposed to work in tandem with everything else. The tomatoes were good and I don't know about the cheese.
I'm going to kill Estlin because he won't stop smiling at me like I'm some amusing animal doing a trick for him. I'm going to kill him because he took my friends away from me and made me sit up here as an honored guest, Warren's champion and avatar of the people. They're not paying attention though, the writhing mass of bodies both plural and singular. They are all lost in the act with one another.
