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Gail finished Tuesday at around ten PM. This was a greater achievement than it sounded, mostly because halfway through it had turned into Thursday, then Monday.

She surveyed her apartment, considered her fridge, turned her head to the stove, then the sink full of the morning’s dishes and last night’s dishes and last morning’s dishes.

“Fuck all of this,” she mumbled, and she took an anonymous frozen lump from the freezer and was just about to feed it into the microwave when sixteen very large police piled through her door and fanned out tactically through the apartment shouting “CLEAR” and shooting her neighbour’s dog.

“You have failed to appreciate the value of food,” said the largest of the police, putting a handcuff on each of her wrists and two on their own out of sheer overexcitement. “You are hereby sentenced to snaxecution!”
“Do I get a trial?” asked Gail. Her neighbour’s dog was still barking, and therefore still being shot.

“Trials are for people that don’t need to be snaxecuted,” said the largest of the police, cuffing Gail’s microwave. “Now start perp walkin’ or get perp dragged.”
Gail walked.

***

The waiting room was mechanical and round and filled with round mechanisms. Strange acidic smells eeled through the air. Two hours in, Gail asked for water.

“No water for you,” said the largest of the police. “Only colours. You want blue, green, red, or purple?”
“Blue,” said Gail. She got a bottle with blue in it, which tasted like blue. The big metal doors on the far side of the chamber slammed open when she was trying to swallow and she inhaled blue until the largest of the police held her upside down by the ankles and shook the blue out of her. Upside down, light-headed, she saw a wretched husk of a crumpled figure being wheeled away in a gurney.

“You’re next,” said a serious man in a serious jacket with a serious mouth. He looked like someone had replaced his head with a mailbox and put NO FLYERS above his eyebrows.

“Can I finish my blue?” managed Gail eventually, after the largest of the police remembered to put her back down.

“You won’t need to,” said the serious man.

So they took her through the big metal doors and put her on a sofa and put a bowl of Cheetos in front of one hand and a bowl of chips in front of the other.

“Choose,” said the serious man.

“What flavour are the chips?” asked Gail.

“Salt and vinegar.”

Gail picked up a chip.

“Trick question!” shouted the largest of the police. “You get both!”
“Shut up,” said the serious man, seriously.

“Sorry. I get excited.”
“You get both,” said the serious man, to Gail. “It was a trick question. Now watch this.”
The serious man turned on a screen and filled it with a deeply inadequate Netflix original.
“It was cancelled on a cliffhanger due to poor viewership,” he explained. “Goodbye.”
Then he dragged the largest of the police out by their ear and left Gail alone.

There were no windows. The door was locked. There were no controls for the screen.

So Gail watched, and as she watched, she ate.

***

The serious man came back after an unbearable amount of time with more bowls and a tub of ice cream and a terrible, terrible threat.

“Would you like to watch the last five episodes of the series you just watched, OR see three made-for-tv movies recorded before 2008, determined at random?” he asked, consulting a tablet.

“Bwuh,” said Gail.

“That was a trick question,” said the serious man. “You will watch both. This bowl has party mix made of adequate cheese puffs, terrible pretzels, crappy corn chips, and excellent tortillas. This other bowl has popcorn with too much cheese powder. This ice cream isn’t a flavour that actually exists but it doesn’t taste like anything you want right now. Goodbye.”
Gail felt very strongly that she was meant to feel very strongly about this situation, but she was full of congealed sodium food colouring, and grease and it filled her throat like old dirty socks. Instead she croaked, and coughed, and watched.

***

The next visit brought two more choices: a procedurally-generated playlist of youtubers reacting to videos of youtubers reacting or a video documentary on why the earth was definitely flat; and a 24-pack of expiration-discounted store-brand half-stale cinnamon buns or a previously-opened plastic vegetable tray with half-eaten ranch dip that had a soft carrot lodged in it.

“These are both trick questions and you will receive both of them,” explained the serious man. “In addition, you will also experience an internet outage sometime in the next hour. It will last between twenty and twenty thousand minutes. Have this pack of mint gum.”

“No,” managed Gail. The serious man ignored her.

***

“Now you will watch this livestream of a room full of puppies. The puppies are all asleep and one of them knocked the camera around to face the wall. There are six people in the chat and none of them like each other. There is no moderator. Here is a full Halloween-sized bag of gummi worms.”

***

“This Korean drama is subtitled until the last two episodes. Take this bag of stale mini marshmallows.”

***

“This is a recording of someone’s wedding. There are six more after this. None of them are edited. Here’s a store-brand cake that someone ate half of, asymmetrically, without using a knife.”

***

“This is just TikTok. And here’s something that’s legally not a box full of pizza pockets. They are still frozen.”

***

“Can I leave?” managed Gail. It had taken her several trillion years to make this thought, and it arrived frail and flat and already-defeated.

“Anytime you want,” said the serious man. “Let me unlock the door for you.”

Gail stood up and felt like she could never do that or walk or move or think ever again.

“Really?” she asked, because she wanted to be disappointed.

“Really,” said the serious man. “But just do you know, you’re not done.”
“What?”
“This will happen to you once or twice a weekish for the entire rest of your foreseeable life,” said the serious man. “Snaxecution is not a procedure. It is a practice. And once you’re checked in, you can never check out.”

***

Gail went home.

She surveyed her apartment, whose door was still hanging on a thread from a boot, whose neighbour’s dog was still yapping angrily about having been shot, whose fridge was still judgemental, whose microwave still tempted, whose sink was still full of dishes.

She had no idea what day of the week it was and wasn’t sure if any of them could possibly be told apart.

There was just one question left. One thing to consider. One obstacle between her and bed.

Dinner.

“I’m ordering pizza,” she said.

Because of course that had always been a trick question.

It’s too damned hot. Should’ve worn a t-shirt. Oh well, let’s get to work.

There’s a lot of early flowering plants here, and we have absolutely no idea about the potential pharmaceutical benefits. Get the pollen, get the nectar – hell, get the smaller ones entirely intact and we can talk limited-scale experimental farming back home. Very limited. Don’t want the prices to drop. Shit, look at the water run off those ferns – we’ve got ferns for days, cycads for weeks, conifers for decades. The flowers yeah yeah yeah they’re photogenic but we can’t forget this stuff. Even if any or all of this is no good for medicine we can make them prestige ornaments, especially if they’re fragile enough. Maybe they’ll need specific soil nutrients, maybe they’ll die without good clean air.

Smell that air. That’s good, fresh air -no pollution, no smokestacks, no exhaust. We can bottle that, sell it as a cure-all. Prehistoric Pure? PureHistoric? We can let marketing figure out the brand name later. What do you mean, ‘historically high levels of volcanism?’ We can put that in the fine print c’mon what did I just say, leave that shit to marketing. We’re here for the big picture.

Like that skyline – yeah, that’s a big picture. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. You read those articles about how the sky used to be a different colour? We can sell prints of this shit. ‘The sky you used to have.’ Nice, real nice. Hey maybe we can get special editions using pigment from real Mesozoic organisms, get some premium product out there. Sunsets are different colours too nowadays, right? Chemical composition of the atmoblah blah, we can do a sunrise and sunset run too. That’s money. Pocket money, but it builds the brand.

Listen to the sounds – hear that? Those are animals nobody’s ever heard before, making noises in ways we’ve never been able to know. That’s entire fields of ASMR audio never before imagined, let alone explored. Fuck making a niche, we can make a whole genre. And sound effects – decades, for DECADES we can kill off the very notion of paying someone to make a fake monster noise or an imaginary bird call. Almost everything on this planet doesn’t just have a value attached to it, it produces value simply by moving around and being listenable. Now THAT’S a freebie.

There’s another smell in the air. That’s salt. We’re near the sea, aren’t we? You know what sucks? Fishing. Fishing sucks. There’s no more goddamned fish and we can’t fish any more of them or we run out entirely. I bet we can get some good work in here with that. Bring in some trawlers – hell, build a port – and the expense’ll pay for itself so fast we’ll have people bankrupting themselves to get in line for a construction bid. And that’s to say nothing of the prestige meats. People pay good money for tuna steak, what do you think they’ll fork over for a filet of mosasaur? Everyone loves sea serpents!

And of course, we can’t forget the landbound economy. Look at that triceratops family there – we’re talking animals the size of HOW many cows? All over the place? And the environment already suits them pretty well? Fuck, it’s a planet that’s an open-range farm. All we need to do is find out which ones taste better and try to encourage them along. And you know what, if the most readily-available stuff tastes like shit we can always turn it into hot dogs – sufficient sodium solves all flavours. ‘Dino dogs,’ c’mon, look, we don’t even NEED marketing for some of this stuff.

Beyond the meat, there’s the hide. Let’s bring back hats. Remember beaver fur hats? Remember how that single item of clothing coming from one specific animal drove a corporation to exploit half of north American for massive profits for two hundred years? Imagine that but every animal in our eyesight and beyond is a beaver-in-waiting. Fuck hats, we can make anything from these motherfuckers and we can and we will and there’ll be an entire new GENRE of substances you make leather out of. ‘Cow’ will be for very old and very poor people.

Can’t forget the soil, of course (all those farms that have tired earth and need to chug fertilizer by the bucketful to grow one more field of corn). And the rock (quarries sitting right at the surface, unharvested). And the stuff underneath (do I need to spell it out?). All we have to do is find out where the deposits we already HAVE grabbed are and we can take open season on the rest. Oil. Coal. Ore. Anything that’s eroded away or subducted into the mantle or buried under a craton or just plain GONE by the present? In this here and now, that’s free real estate. Nobody has more money than fossil fuel companies, nobody. And we’re holding the keys to making their wildest dreams come true.

Speaking of free real estate, since we’re going to be spending some time here setting up operations, we’re also going to be setting up some housing. And once we’ve done that for the workers, why not also do it for the people with actual money? Find a nice little isolated lagoon on an island in Europe or along the coast of the American interior seaway and put up some fences and maybe a SAM battery and hey, the world’s most prestigious mansion – and one generously outside of most legal jurisdictions. Can you even BEGIN to imagine how many billionaires would happily feed people to sea monsters right this second if they could film it and tell everyone without getting arrested? What about if the sea monsters were fifty feet long?

Or shit, what if they weren’t even sea monsters? The biggest thing you can kill someone with these days is a grizzly or some shit, maybe an elephant if you want to train it to. What about having a pet t-rex? Bet that’d make all those fuckos who brag about their tigers or horses or yachts shut up, huh? And it’s not like that’s the only available option here; we’ve got worldwide megafaunal ecosystems, untouched. So many choices, so many options. You could have pit fights that make dogfights look like ant wrestling.

And of course there’s the benefits to spectacle in general. Film crew needs a pristine wilderness? A fantasy forest? A reef that ISN’T dying of climate change and may or may not be made largely of weird prehistoric clams? Why spend money on burning a CGI studio or three to the ground when you can just pay some meatheads ten bucks a day to lug the cameras over here? Why ask an artist to imagine an exotic bird when you can pull four of them out of that bush over there? Why ask an artist to imagine a BUSH when you’ve got that bush over there? Imagination costs money, and we’ve got a fresh new world to use instead of working that particular mental muscle.

The clouds are getting heavier. That’s water, that’s good clean fresh water. No microplastics, no heavy metals, no acid rain, no ‘toxins,’ no phosphates no lead all-natural organic AND fresh. Every single word I just said in that sentence was an extra 10% price hike per bottle. Multiplicative.

Now let’s go back before that cloud breaks. I don’t care how much the water costs, I’m not squeezing it out of these pants.


***

Charge paleontologists for trips? I thought we were looking for ways to make money.

Gary was so little he could barely walk and he hated being wet and cold and he hated being dry and hot and he hated being on the beach and he was expressing all of this very loudly when his feet encountered the worst thing yet, so horrible that he swallowed his screaming with a sharp HUHP, like a stray bug.

“What’s that?” asked his father, a tiny bit of relief seeping in when he didn’t see blood. He was holding Gary upright in the water with his giant hairy hands, and his head must have been ringing by then. “Oh I see – no, that’s okay little guy. That’s just seaweed. It’s harmless.”
Gary shrank backwards from the harmlessness. The squishy soft wet sand of the lakebed was the one soothing texture he had, but now it was gone and being replaced by plants that looked like spiders. A floating strand – snapped free by his father’s giant stomping feet – drifted by in front of his stomach and almost touched him, making him hiccup in horror.

“It’s not gonna hurt you,” said his father, and to Gary’s horror he proved it, he picked him up and proved it by moving him forwards into the deeper water, up to Gary’s armpits and with the seaweed around him and underfoot and everywhere.

“See?” his father said, as he stood there in the water, scratchy scrapy slimy weedy tendrils brushing against his feet. “It’s not so bad, not so bad, not so bad at all.”

“Okay,” said Gary. He tried to wiggle his toes, then tried to never do that again. “Okay.”

***

Gary had too many pimples and not enough money and no clue whatsoever, and the deep fryer had taken offense at his deep frying fries and had spat upon him very vigorously. He swore and wailed all at once and dropped things and waved his arms around and didn’t know where to put his face.

“What was that?” asked the manager, who’d been doing something involving an unpleasant device and the plumbing, and then “oh fuck me, that’s a bad one. Christ kid, what’d you DO never mind, never mind, come with me right now.” She grabbed Gary in one hand and the kitchen sink’s taps in the other and pulled them together despite everything he could do and she turned them both into position.

“There, see?” the manager said as the cold, cold water poured over his crispy arm hair and turned to liquid nitrogen over the burn welts. “That’s not so bad. Probably won’t even scar.”
“Okay,” said Gary. He watched skin turn red and white and white and red and blotch in and out, like a heartbeat. “Okay.”

***

Gary had no time left and an endless amount of questions and he was sitting at a table in his parent’s old house looking at the schools, at the brochures and the websites and the brochures and the websites and the brochures and the websites and inside his head was nothing and he was screaming at the nothing but invisibly, because if he made a real noise it would come out very horribly.

“Just pick something,” someone had told him – everyone was awfully smeared together right now, it was difficult to sort out which someone this had been or who it was or if it had been himself. “It’s okay as long as you pick something.”

He’d been picking something for years. And now it was finishing.

So Gary picked one and felt terrible, and then put it back. And then he picked one and felt terrible, and he put it back. And he did that for two hours until he picked one up and felt a sort of exhausted relief and he didn’t put it back.

“Okay,” said Gary. And he meant it, maybe? It felt alright. “Okay.”

***

Gary was finished.

He hadn’t failed. He’d taken too long and hadn’t felt the passion, but he’d had a little fun and he hadn’t failed and his teachers had encouraged him and told him he had a future and he’d worn a stupid hat and gotten a stupid paper and he’d said something stupid to the person who shook his hand and now he was going to a restaurant with the pieces of his family that lived near him and they were happy, and he was happy, and he started the right turn off the overpass just as there was a ten-year-old in front of him and he slammed on the brakes like they were red-hot-scorpions underneath steeltoed shoes.

The kid stared and then scampered, frightened.

Gary waited a long half-moment before he finished the turn, too filled with icy terror to even be nervous about making the people behind him wait.

“Okay,” he said to himself, dry and squeaky through his throat. He swallowed and tasted everything. He hadn’t hit anyone. He had NEARLY hit someone, but he hadn’t. And that wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. Everything was fine. Nothing had been ruined.

“Okay.”

***

Gary was still moving, but he was standing still. Maybe everything else was moving.

He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten his job, but he worked at it. He wasn’t sure if his schooling helped with it, but he didn’t think about it. He wasn’t sure if he knew how to do it, but he did it. He wasn’t sure if it was enough, but he didn’t look because the idea of an answer was frightening. He wasn’t sure if there was something else he’d missed and it was too late or if he was being nervous. He didn’t like being nervous or unsure, and that meant he didn’t like a lot of things and mostly those things were pieces of himself which he was suspecting might actually be the foundations of his entire being.

So he worked, and then he went home and didn’t move. He put words in front of himself on screens and papers and when those ran out he used videos and when those ran out he looked for more and then he went to bed and did them all over again and it was fine. It was acceptable and sustainable.

The days off were harder because he wasn’t still moving on those days and he spent more of it painstakingly aware of his immobility. He should try things, probably. He should’ve tried things already, maybe. He knew he’d regret it if he didn’t. But he regretted the things he’d done as much as the things he hadn’t done, and if he was very very careful not to do anything in the correct way maybe he wouldn’t think about any of that and would simply feel fine instead. Which would be alright.

“Okay,” he said to himself. A lot of the things he said he had to say to himself. “Okay.”

***

Gary was much older than he thought he’d be, and not nearly as old as he’d hoped he’d be, and exactly as old as he’d always feared. Everything surrounding him was years out of date but still terribly, terribly, terribly expensive and delicate, and he had no idea how he’d replace any of it if he sneezed or coughed or curled up in a tiny ball the wrong way, so he lay recumbent not just because he couldn’t do anything else but because he was very frightened of making something happen.

His cousin, who was somewhat younger than Gary (the last person Gary knew, but not all that well), was there with him. This was a relief.

“It’s okay, Gary,” said his cousin. “It’s okay.”
At this, Gary’s brain and eyes blinked three times very quickly. He opened his mouth.

He was sure there was something he’d just realized, something else that he was sure he should’ve been doing, something that wasn’t quite what he’d always had, but he was just a little bit la

Hey there!

I’m Jim-Bob, and this is my orb! This little ominous round ball floats around six inches behind my right ear, and if I begin a train of thought that leads only to despair and hopelessness, it smacks me in the head. It works great! C’mon, I’ll show you!

I need to go get groceries anyways. I’ve been putting it off a bit because I’m at the computer and distracting myself– ow!

See, it works like that.

So let’s get going. Wallet, keys, mask (don’t want to catch it twice! The first time led to all – ouch!), grocery bag, and phone! Phone’s not finished charging, but that’s okay, better to lose a bit of battery efficiency than to sit around here longer because I’ve already wasted the OW.

Bit harsher there, but repeat offenders get smacked twice as hard and in the same spot. The sting steers you safely!

It’s nice out today, isn’t it. A bit too warm, but that’s livable with the breeze (warm breeze, ah well). And since the road’s shut, we can head through the park. See the few folks out and about on Wednesday, what with days off or some such or being part-time over the age of OW.

Let’s count those seagulls. There’s sixteen. That’s a lot of seagulls.

The other nice thing about walking like this is it gives you a chance to think about stuff. I come up with most of my story ideas while I’m walking, always have – something about the legs moving and letting the world go by in the background help. It lets you brain drift but the tricky part is when it settles on useless things or troublesome thoughts. I remember wondering if it was harder to be creative on antianxiety meds but hooooo boy let me tell you that beats the HELL out of being unable to be creative because your brain won’t stop thinking about OW OW OW.

Triple shot. Deserved, but jeez.

Anyways, it’s great to see the people in the park, especially when there’s lots of them. The background noise is comforting – I like putting streams on in the background when I’m at my desk too just for that sort of ambient humanity. The funny part is I’m far too terrified to OW.

So we’re going to walk down by the boardwalk and look at those rocks. Hey maybe I can do a story about stuff you find in the rocks! Old beer bottle, old pop can, wrappers, seaweed, ducks, ducklings, stray goose fluff, seagull-devoured crayfish… mmm. Maybe not as long a list as I’d hopped. I’d have to pad it out with childhood whimsy, which I mean I could TRY it’s not like I haven’t been walking up and down these same rocks and this same boardwalk for over thirty years, which means AH.

It’s nice seeing the families though. People using time off, taking holidays, just taking the kid down to the beach to stick their feet in the water. Some of those parents and partners are my age and they’ve been doing this sort of thing for ten years and I will never OW OW OW OW OW OW.

So it’s a bit of a pity the fry stand isn’t open this year what with the construction because damnit I could use something crispy and warm and salty. I guess I can get some potato chips. I was sort of probably going to get those anyways but now it’s more formalized.

Man, it’s way too warm once you’re away from the lake. Going to suck coming back this way, but it’s faster and the less time milk and sandwich meat is out in the sun with me the better. Let’s go into the store and do a little Purell (why the moist cloth dispenser this seems so much less efficient than the liquid), and now let’s get what we’re getting which is like two stopgap not-really-meal components like cereal, milk, sandwich meat and pita for work, and… not sure what else because I can’t make myself put effort into anything including making foo OW.

Right. Some baking potatoes, some sour cream for those baking potatoes, no lettuce because I’m sick of salads and I’ve still got enough for my sandwiches at home, maybe some baked goods? Yeah these donuts are like 30% off that’s fine I’ll take them – wait, 30% off 5.25? That’s still a bit much. I don’t need those donuts. To hell with you, donuts. Pick up some milk, go to the chip aisle, let’s get chips. All the non-store-brand-stuff is like 10$/2 deals, this is pathetic, I remember when those were two for six because time is moving and I’m frozen OW.

So. We get the store brand, because those are perfectly acceptable and like literally half the price. Which flavour?
I’m not sure I want salt and vinegar, I think I got sick of those last time.

I don’t want barbecue, they’re too sweet.

I don’t think I want cheese and onion, I think they’re always not as good as I’m certain they’ll be.

I don’t think I want those all-dressed chips because the bag is too big and I always eat too many of these chips. I always eat too many of all of the chips.

Do I even want chips? I’ve been eating them as treats since I became a somewhat functional somewhat-independent adult before I stopped being able to OW

Do I ever want chips? I just eat them until I start disliking them. Do I really enjoy this? I mean, do I really enjoy MOST of what I claim I ‘want’ or is it just distractions from OW OW OW.

We’ll get cheese and onion.

One lane open, and all the self-checkout. Self-checkout it is. Boop da doop de doop beep beep. Hey it would be REALLY stupid if I’d forgotten my wallet and just now found out after I had everything here and ready, would I have to put everything back or could I ask the till people to hold onto it for me I mean a bunch of this needs refrigeration would I even be able to talk to them or would I just freeze up and stand here OW.

I should probably use my new credit card so it registers properly but these groceries are overpriced and what if I fuck up and forget to check my credit OW.

Debit’s fine, we’ll fix whatever that was later. Now let’s aw dang the potato fell out. Get back in the bag, potato.

Yeah, the streets are hot and long and the shade is all a little off. Pity about that, but it’s the shortest way around the construction, even with the detours. Woops, wrong street ahah. You’d think I’d know better, since I was born here and I’ve lived here half my life and now I can’t leave here and I’ll die here OW OW OW OW OW OW OW
Anyways it’s fine and none of that matters because none of these problems are real and I should be able to AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH FUCK FUCK FUCK OUCH DAMNIT

JESUS.

That’s my street. That’s my stop. Indoors, nice and shady, up the stairs, food in cupboards and fridge, easy-peasy, everything breezy, maybe the five or six websites I endlessly refresh for new content will have had someone say something even though it’s a workday and all the adults are busy OW.

And we’re done!

Yes sir, I don’t know where I’d be or what I’d do or how I’d live without the orb here.

I mean, I guess I’d have a couple more molars.

***

fuck i forgot the cereal

It had been a wretched, straggling storm; a thing with rain that fell in stringy sheets all day and all night but with no force behind it beyond dogged persistence. The earth had turned to mud and then muck; the plants had gone from lush to drowned; the sky was a tired grey-blue muddle of exhausted maybe-clouds, and Lemm had gotten up early and been kicked out of the house because a full day and a night trapped indoors with a teenager was more than a reasonably loving family could bear. She accepted this and was standing by the river, which was usually a stream. Things came down it when it was like this; odd rocks from up the mountain; old coins from hill barrows; helmets from dead bandits; all sorts of stuff.

This time it was a sword, pristine despite the rotting scabbard. Excited beyond all belief, Lemm stirred it closer to shore with a stick and plucked it from the riverbed, where she realized it was attached to a few stubborn bones of some guy’s arm.

“Gross!” she said happily, and she took it home to her parents for perusal.

“It was attached to some guy’s arm,” she said proudly.

“Gross,” said her mother.

“Tricky,” said her father. “That’s probably grave goods, and grave goods mean ghosts and curses and goodness knows what. And it costs money and we aren’t meant to have swords. Give it here.”

So Lemm reluctantly gave the sword there, and Lemm’s father took it to his simple forge where he made nails and horseshoes and took his simple hammer that he used to make knives and shovels and he put in an unreasonable amount of fuel and made Lemm stay much longer at the bellows than she’d have wanted to and one zillion years later he pulled out a hoe, a good sturdy hoe, with a sliver-sharp edge.

“There,” he said. “Now it’s useful, and now it’s your turn: the field is absolutely walloped right now. Get back there and put it into recognizable shapes.”
“Ugh, FINE,” said Lemm, taking the hoe.

Sever their limbs and drink their blood, said the hoe.

“Pardon?” said Lemm.

“Scoot,” said her father. He was already working on something else.

***

So Lemm took the hoe to the back field – which was a mud flat – and she started tilling the soil. Rows were reshaped, plants retrieved, formlessness removed, order restored, and it was so drear that she wanted to die.

“This SUCKS,” she said aloud.

You are being watched, warned the hoe.

Lemm jerked her head upright, saw a small rabbit freeze among the greens she’d just cleared, and swung all in one smooth, efficient motion, immediately decapitating the animal.

Eat its heart, eat its heart, said the hoe.

“The hell? That is gross as all get out,” said Lemm. But she was sort of responsible and liked food, so she picked up the rabbit and got ready to tell mom when the hoe vibrated in her hand again and she turned and saw an inscrutable-yet-round bird at the other end of the field, picking at the soil.

This time she threw it. Very successfully.

“Oh jeez,” said Lemm, as the number of birds in the field became divisible by two. “I’m gonna run out of pockets.”

***

Lemm didn’t run out of pockets by the time she came back home, but she didn’t have many to spare either. “Here’s dinner,” she said to her mother, holding up the rabbit. “Oh and here’s breakfast. And, uh, a snack? And another dinner. It was busy out there.”
“Looks like you were busy too,” said Lemm’s mother. “But maybe not as busy at the field, from the look of it. Were you stabbing these with the hoe? That’s not what it’s built for.

Silence the doubters and mockers with their own blood, said the hoe.

“It’s a noisy and evil instrument, mom,” said Lemm. “But I did finish the field.”
“Great going, kiddo,” said Lemm’s mother. “Now go down the way and help the millers do their garden.”
“Shit.”
“Hazi’ll be there. She came back from town to help out this morning”
Lemm left with her mother laughing at her.

***

It wasn’t that Lemm liked working with Hazi, it was that she was very bad at working with Hazi for enjoyable reasons, like Hazi’s legs, eyes, lips, and everything else, and that Hazi found this funny and wouldn’t make fun of her too hard when she tripped over things, said ‘bwuh?” instead of full words, or forgot what she was holding.

So when Lemm walked into the little overstuffed garden behind the mill – which was even more rainwashed than their field had been, and frankly astounding that it hadn’t been taken by the river – and saw Hazi there in all her glory in full fury with a shovel, up to her calves in mud and saying every filthy word that had ever been dreamed of and whispered into a pillow before waking, she maybe stopped and looked a little longer than necessary until a flying weed hit her in the eyeball and made that impossible.

“Augh fuck,” articulated Lemm.

“Shit, sorry,” said Hazi.

Avenge this slight immediately, said the hoe.

“Aw no, I’m blind, I’m blind,” said Lemm. “Please, pour water into my wounded eyeball and tend to my wounds for the rest of my days, it’s only fair.”

Hazi came over and pulled the weed off Lemm’s nose and counted all her freckles twice to make sure they were there and then pushed her over into the pile of dismembered weeds she’d made instead.

“I’m blind and now I’m dead,” said Lemm.

Destroy all that she holds dear, said the hoe.

“Shore up the fence, you complete dumbass,” said Hazi with fondness.

And so Lemm did, and so the afternoon passed very agreeably with only one or two breaks where nobody got anything important or useful done, and so when the job was done and she picked up the hoe from where she’d leant it against the fence it took Lemm a moment and Hazi swearing very earnestly to notice that it had chopped the fencepost clean off from crown to base.

Vengeance is ours, cried the hoe.

“Oh COME ON,” said Lemm.

“Well, guess you owe us a new one,” said Hazi. “See you tomorrow?”
“Oh absolutely yes,” said Lemm.

***

Lemm got up and found the hoe next to her bed. She put it away. Lemm finished breakfast and found the hoe leaning on the bench next to her. She put it away. Lemm got dressed and ready to go and explained to her parents that it WAS NOT HER FAULT that she had to go and replace a fencepost and was very patient with her mother laughing in her face and slapping her back repeatedly and when she was at the threshold the hoe was there, leaning across it casually with its haft over the doorknob.

So Lemm took the hoe with her, because at least this way it wouldn’t suddenly appear under someone’s foot or someone’s head.

“My field is already tended, but thanks for the community spirit,” said Jur, the forestry man, from somewhere behind a pile of timber and hairy muscles and a very large saw.

“Aw okay,” said Lemm. “Mind if I go looking for a fencepost for the mill?”
“Only as long as you don’t beat Hazi to it,” said Jur, in a flurry of sawdust and beard. “She’s got dibs.”

So Lemm said ‘thanks’ or something else she didn’t pay attention to and went among the trees and found Hazi and they had a long, serious, productive hunt for a replacement fencepost that only veered off-topic for very important things, like checking Lemm’s biceps or trying very hard to figure out PRECISELY what shade of brown Hazi’s eyes were most like or having to stop and fix Lemm’s shoes for her because bending over would be so very hard on her back with all that she’d been working and so on and on and on until at last they had bad luck and found a tree that would make a damned nice fencepost.

“Oh well,” said Lemm. “Right, let’s get to it.” And she lined up her stroke, tensed her back, and let her fly.
“That’s not an axe,” said Hazi.
“Bwhn?” inquired Lemm.

Death to the foe, said the hoe.

‘shrip,’ went the tree’s trunk. Followed immediately by a large crash and a lot of swearing from those present.

***

“Tree fell on her,” said Hazi when Lemm was delivered home to the raised eyebrows of her parents. “But it’ll be fine. Just don’t let her run around like an idiot.”
“This will be impossible,” said Lemm’s mother, and they all laughed at her and while they were doing that Hazi kissed her so casually that nobody noticed except Lemm who was probably going to remember that for a few thousand years and then she winked and left.

“How did you manage to fell a tree on yourself?” asked Lemm’s father.

“The hoe doesn’t like me using other tools or not stabbing or cutting things or being put aside for a moment,” said Lemm. “I’m starting to think it might have been easier to leave it as a sword.”

“Nah, swords are pushy too,” said Lemm’s mother. “They always want to be used, and they’ll never shut up until they get the fight they want.”

“Oh shit,” said Lemm, “I just thought of something. Dad, can we go out to your forge?”

***

The next morning Lemm turned up bright and early to the mill with her father’s hammer and a basket of bright, shiny, fresh nails. By midday the fencepost was replaced, the entire rest of the fence was repaired and reinforced, food was ready, and there were some very serious idle conversations happening indoors.

And from the new fence, a hundred tiny battle cries rang in permanent exaltation as the foe was bitten deep and true.