Barboringgravvixtoner’cha’tirlishmecklestonmorrigor woke up.
It was a sudden sharp surprise to her. It only took a few weeks.
The sudden flood of returning senses was the same rush it always was – pitch blackness resolving at her pupils; tingling air on her hide; distant odours eddying through her sinuses – but it arrived without the usual easy comfort. She felt groggy. She felt heavy. She felt tired. She felt like she wasn’t done sleeping.
And then, after a discombobulated month or so, her brain realized why.
“Oh,” she said (aloud: there was no WAY she was coherent enough for thought). “I’m hungry.”
***
Her fridge was empty. The deep-cave’s ice was bare and slick, not even a bloodstain remaining. Pure cold ice, satisfying to crunch and utterly useless save to build up emergency steam in the absence of liquid water.
Damnit. Sure she’d hunted before torpor? The memories were surly and slow to arrive, begrudging with details and short-tempered when prodded: yes, she’d hunted; no, she hadn’t bothered to save leftovers; yes, she’d eaten the whole thing, claws, paws, fur and all. It had only been a young bear, she’d told herself; it wouldn’t even make for a decent midslumber snack; she’d only be angry with herself if she woke up and all she had was a half-consumed half-grown half a bear ass.
Well, here she was: half-ass-less and exactly as angry as she was worried about anyways. Maybe she could go get another one? Was it winter? Finding hibernaculums was a pain and any inhabitants she could dig out would be half-withered from their own naps. It smelt like winter. Damnit.
Her wings cramped. Her forelegs burned with the ache of comfiness turned sour with stiffness. There was an itch precisely between her hips that no amount of twisting would ever let her scratch.
“Fuck it,” she spoke, slipping into eldwords in her liminal consciousness, intent writing itself into her brain and settling just above the surface of her soul. “I’ll just make a salad.”
And lo, it was sworn.
***
The mountain stream was too fast to freeze. That, combined with its delicious traces of heavy metals, was part of what had led her to select this cavern complex in the first place. It was nice to not have to play whack-a-mole to find the least-stagnant patch of water underneath the crust and then worry about trying not to inhale too many turtles when half asleep. That big snapper had sent her into chronic coughing for the rest of the year.
Steam built up. Her heart roared into second gear, her body temperature in a few select places skyrocketed, and she creaked and hissed her way downslope; half-flying, half-pouring herself, letting gravity take the wheel. She eeled her way down to her favourite mineral field and oh! Oh! The gall! Some horrible little pests had gone and nibbled away at it while she was abed, snipping away at the exposed edges and chewing on all the richest veins! It was practically swiss cheese by now.
“Fuck,” she said aloud – again, in eldwords, and so bilious emotion slopped out of her mouth and poured across the ground, eating away the scrap rock and slag like soft dirt. But wait, but wait, there was still a smell of metal, a hint – a more-than-hint, an intoxicating whiff – of appetite. She tidied away the leavings of the pests and as she cleared the slope of stacked stones and chewed timbers (sending a few stragglers flying in the process, hideous little tetrapodal bodies flailing and squealing) there was a little exposed nest, and in that nest, wonder of wonders, of all the pleasant surprises, against all she knew and hoped, in spite of everything, was a few dozen pounds of near 24-karat gold.
“Holy shit,” she blurted out, blighting the ground around her with irrecoverable poison, which it looked to be used to. “Jackpot!” Who knew the little four-limbed bastards had it in them?
Hmm.
She looked downslope. Yes, there were more down there. They usually preferred the valleys to her peaks, and she could smell the rising cinders from their half-baked little fires, feel the fuzzy and linty edges of their small dreams.
So she lurched, slipped, and jumped and landed amongst them.
***
The big nests were the real prizes. They’d taken the gold and silver and purified it so beautifully, then frustratingly fashioned it into tiny little flat circular fecal pellets. She stuffed them into her crop as she sifted through the detritus, then alit on something even nicer: a tiny wooden husk holding something that, but for its sparkle, almost looked like diamonds. Then she sniffed and licked and bit and felt that crunch and grit and knew they WERE diamonds, only the little pests had nibbled away the edges of the gems to make them sparkle. Magpies they were. Still, even reduced they were a nice treat.
Yes, it was all coming together nicely. And oh, and oh, what was this that she smelt, that she smelt smelting? On the edge of town a fire that roared sullen-dark, almost like a very sad and tiny version of her own gut. She upended it and spilled molten goo across the ground – sad tin, dull iron, but mixed within the slag and the slurry was something that hummed JUST right.
At last. Perfect.
***
The gold lay heaped; topped with silver. The gems blazed. And threaded throughout it as dressing and binding, the small tickling buzz of a light undertone of molten radium.
Barboringgravvixtoner’cha’tirlishmecklestonmorrigor wrapped herself around it three times, coiled tightly as she could, and inhaled the rising fumes from the whole glowing glorious mess in three shuddering breathes.
Damn, she loved salad.
And so she went to bed, body aching pleasantly instead of stiffly; stomach full; soul soothed; and she slept there quite content and very happy and ready to awake late in the decade.
Then some little FUCKER rode up to her door on a horse, snuck into her bedroom, and stabbed her side.