jamieproctor.ca

In the twilight of her reign, it was accepted by all – grudgingly or not – that there had never been such a queen as Cen.
She had moulted early, fed deeply, and sprung skyward while others were waiting for their wings to dry.
She had seized the far shores from the fierce men-of-many-arms (at least, above the tidelines, which was all the land worth having) and defended them.
She had transformed, through patient agriculture and wise appointment of drone-ministers, some of the poorest fields of the land into rich, verdant fields whose nectar overflowed beyond abundance.
And she had hatched three daughter-queens, a number unheard of.
But a queen, though long-lived, is mortal still. And so among all that Cen had done and commanded to be done, her pilgrimage to the lone half-pine was perhaps the least-noteworthy of her deeds. In fact, it was nothing more or less than expected. She made the journey in orthodox garb: bare wings, empty-legged, in humble posture, and she petitioned the flightless martyrs upon its trunk for entrance, and once inside she made all the correct venerations towards the Endless Rings of the lone half-pine’s interior.
It was all in complete accord, as it had always been, until the very moment of her departure, when Cen, queen of queens, halted on the very stoop of the sacred halls. Her escort, a great hulking labourer, nearly stumbled over her abdomen.
“Pilgrim?” she inquired of the queen.
Cen turned, and although her mien was still of utmost humility, and although she did not raise her voice, and although there was no hint of force, aggression, or threat in her words, when she stated “I must see the high abbess immediately” there was simply no question of anything but.

The abbess was a little surprised to have guests. Her last had come nearly a year ago, on the same day as always: a lone flightless apprentice, wings only just started to wither in their bindings, bringing news and her yearly meal. She had lived out nearly half her life at the very top of the half-pine without any other visitor.
But she was a good host, and made a place for Cen to sit upon the floor of her cell; and an excellent listener, and made Cen a silence to talk into.
“I am old,” said Cen.
The abbess nodded. In truth, the two were of similar relative age, though not absolute. Cen had ruled when the abbess’s grandmother was young: the span of a queen was no small thing.
“I am old, and soon will die,” said Cen.
Another nod. This was factual. Of course, from the abbess’s perspective everything was due to die fairly soon after its birth, but she understood many people, especially the powerful, did not comprehend this of themselves until it was almost too late.
“I am old, and soon will die, and when I die,” said Cen, “I wish to be embedded among the crypts of the martyrs.”
The abbess tried to nod and freeze up and jolt at the same time and fell over with the shakes. Cen politely did not move or speak while she composed herself.
“The crypts of the martyrs,” she continued, “are holy and unviolated. Ten thousand thousand bodies lie there, in amber, and there is room yet for ten thousand thousand times that again. I know it is prohibited for one with wings to lie among such pious relics, but I must request it of you, abbess, for a very simple reason.”
The abbess, freshly re-seated, nodded successfully once again, although somewhat shakier than before.
“I have three daughter-queens. One would consume me, and be of no fret to mind. Two would battle equally, and to the victor, the world as seized from my innards. Three is unheard of, and for years now I have considered its consequences. One will band together with another to destroy the third, and each will betray her conspirator, and in the end, there will be no victor capable of eating from my carapace. My throne will hold only corpses.”
Cen raised her head, and for the first time since her approach to the sacred half-pine she carried herself as a queen. A quiet queen, but a ruler nonetheless. “But if my body is placed beyond reach, there is no prize to squabble over, solely a kingdom to rule, a mantle to shoulder. And without the ichor that flows within me, it will be a taxing enough job to fulfill three daughter-queens fully. One ruler in three parts.”
“Then you must go to the crypts,” said the abbess in a high, dry, shaky voice that had not been used in over forty years. And Cen said no word in return, but simply touched antennae in the fullest thanks possible.

And queen Cen returned from her unexceptional, expected pilgrimage as if nothing had happened. And nothing did happen for a further year and forty-six days, until the night her body cooled and never warmed again.
Six flightless martyrs descended upon her chamber from hidden means, and took her body upon hidden paths, and after walking in silence for a long week while the land mourned around them, unknowing, they bore her up the winding heights of the lone half-pine and placed her in the smallest, humblest cavity in the grand chamber of the crypts of the martyrs.
The sap covered her within the day, and hid her precious corpse forever, as she had wished. And then the six martyrs sealed themselves as well, for they knew full certain that this was a secret that should not be spoken of.

Cen’s daughters did not kill one another. Cen’s daughters did not hate one another. But Cen’s daughters were not best pleased with the governing of the land.
The eldest, Can, was displeased, as she was sure she was the mightiest of the three, and would have triumphed in the struggle for their mother’s body. The middle child, Cin, was displeased, as she was sure she was the craftiest of the three, and would have been able to trick the other two into duelling to their dooms. And the youngest, Cun, was displeased, as she had always felt that their mother had liked her the most and would have bequeathed her remains to her.
One thing they did have in common: they all were sure they were better rulers than their sisters.
“What foolery are you engaged in, pressing the men-of-many-arms into the tideshores themselves?” Cin would demand of Can. “The land is useless to use! It is a waste of time and effort!”
“Why have you been meddling with the drone-ministers of the heartland?” Cun would demand of Cin. “They were mother’s choices, and your dismissal of them before their lives had ended casts unfavourable light upon yourself in the eyes of the people, no matter how apt their replacements.”
“How do you expect to get anything done mooning endlessly in the royal chambers?” Can would demand of Cun. “Mother left no word to us beyond do-as-we-see-fit; what do you think to uncover with all your furtive searches? A notice of your inheritance? Insolence! Connivery! Idleness!!”
And so the days wound by, bitter and bickerer, until fifteen years had passed, when each of the three sisters made a discovery.
“Sisters,” said Can, “this morning I woke with aches in my joints. And I see by your faces you two have felt this. Without mother’s body, we will not live to her age.”
“Sisters,” said Cin, “this morning I finishing combing the archives. No queen has ever produced daughter-queens without first consuming her mother. Without mother’s body, the kingdom will lie without heirs.”
“Sisters,” said Cun, “this morning I found a loose bit of flooring in mother’s chambers. Behind it lay a dusty and disused passage, and in that passage I found an old, old speck of pollen. It came from a half-pine.”
And the three sisters agreed that it was right and necessary that they retrieve the body of their mother – to split equally among themselves, of course – and Can didn’t mention that her body had ached from battle, and Cin didn’t mention that her studies had also suggested that consumption of a fellow daughter-queen would serve as an adequate substitute, and Cun didn’t mention that she had found the passage ten years earlier and had been considering the proper way in which to exploit this.
And none of them mentioned what they already had begun to plan for the others.

The trail was well-hidden, by care as much as by age, but the three daughter-queens had access to the finest scouts in all the land and they traveled hard on their heels with a great winged vanguard of labourers commanded by drone-generals of great size and girth. Less than ten days after the meeting in the morning the army of the realm swarmed outside the trunk of the lone half-pine, and the three daughter-queens hovered above the wingless martyrs that guarded its gates in a most intimidating and superior manner.
“Hail, pilgrims,” said the captain of the guard, although she did so entirely out of ritual for the martyrs were wingless, not blinded. “For what do thee seek entry?”
“Our mother’s body,” said Cun.
“There are no bodies here but those of the martyrs. The crypts are holy,” said the captain.
“The trail we have followed here tells a lie, then,” said Cin. She hurled a mouldering lump at the captain’s feet. “As does this pollen.”
The captain drew back. This was her mistake. It was just a half-step, but Can had been itching all over since the lone half-pine drew into sight, and it was all the excuse she needed.

The wingless martyrs were fearless, impervious to pain or fear, fiercely disciplined on their home ground, and utterly devoted.
They were, however, still wingless. Though they held firm in the winding tunnels inside the lone half-pine, they had posted no guard on the long ramps that led towards the lofty crypts of the martyrs – who would ever dare strike there, or ever wish to? – and when the enemy surged up them they were unable to pursue at more than a crawl, bombarded endlessly from above.
The sisters broke down the door themselves – out of fury more than need, for it was wholly decorative – and as they looked at the ten thousand thousand tombs, they knew their search would be hopeless without guidance.
“Fetch the abbess,” Cin demanded, and in only a matter of moments the venerable holy woman was dragged down from her cell above the crypts between two strong labourer-soldiers.
“Where is our mother?” Cun demanded. “Where have you hidden her corpse?”
The abbess tried to explain that only six wingless martyrs had ever know the location of queen Cen’s body, and that those six had ended their lives solemnly years before, and that even if the abbess knew of its location she would be bound to honour their sacrifice and say nothing, but between the stress and the fury and the fear and the great, stifling bulk of the labourer-soldiers her barely-used voice could manage nothing more than grunts and wheezes.
Can cursed and decapitated the wizened old thing. Spinning to face the glares of her sisters, she spat in contempt and seized a lantern from the nearest labourer.
“I will melt them out,” she said. “One miserable little prison at a time.”
“A waste of time when I knew mother best,” said Cun. “I could recognize her, dead, alive, or frozen in amber.”
“Nonsense,” snapped Cin. “Have drones search this place; they have the brains to recognize a queen and the lack of interest to prevent them from seizing it.”
“Do you say I am stupid?” said Can.
“Do you say I am treacherous?” said Cun.
Cin’s eyes darted from one to the other, and her hands fell to her sword-stinger. “Alliance? Battle? HERE?” she said. “You are simple in truth!”
Can struck first, but not with her still-bloodied blade. Instead she hurled the torch, and as Cin ducked from the blaze, she slammed her to the ground. The middle-sister cursed and clutched and scrabbled to rise, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She had landed on her own sword.
Can rose, but clumsily, lurching. Cun’s blade was buried in her thorax.
And Cun herself, panting with fear and triumph, turned to face her mother where she knew she must lie, buried in the endless soaring wall of the crypts, and saw only a towering vortex of flame. Can’s torch had set the sap alight. Blackened, ancient bodies withered in their cavities. Amber burst molten, followed by frozen eyes.
“Mother?” she whispered, as the first screams and sparks reached the army.

The lone half-pine stood apart, and burned apart. But when it fell, its height carried it leagues, and the rolling of its timbers farther still.
First the forests, then the fields, then finally the folk above them – soaring panicked from the blazing ground into choking skies.

When others came, years later, such history as they learned of the empty realm had to be pieced together, from scraps, from middens, and even from the old folk tales of the men-with-many-arms, who remembered the invaders from the Dry Above.
It was not a complete tale, but they knew one thing for certain: there had never again been a queen such as Cen.

If we were all large, carnivorous reptiles, here’s how lunch’d have to be…
Well. It’d be simpler than what it is now, I tell you what.
Yes, we’d all be eating meat, not greens or grains, and that means LOTS of pastures, and all the pain-in-the-necks that entails. But we’d all be ectothermic! Low, low, LOW food intake requirements, comparatively. And since we’d be so big, we’d stay stuffed for ages. One or two good meals a year, maybe. Imagine how much time that’d save. Imagine how many more people we might be able to keep lying around. Shoot, if we’re not picky eaters, we could eat any old thing, and we could harvest local wildlife semidomesticated without the need for mass landscaping!
… Not that I’d know anything about that.

If we were all large, carnivorous reptiles, here’s how the day’d have to be…
Well, it’d be a lot slower than this rush-rush-rush hustle-bustle nonsense we all live with, you’re darn tootin’. We’d take it slow in the mornings – real slow, real smooth. Wait for the sun to rise and get our basking done, warming up those veins inch by inch. Then once the sun’s reasonably high, we’d get moving. Sedately. With a midafternoon break to avoid overheating, mandatory of course.
And we’d still have time to get stuff done for a good bit of the night, if need be. Once something big’s heated up, it stays that way for a little while. Some decent nightlife could be allotted.
… Not that I’m an expert on this.

If we were all large, carnivorous reptiles, here’s how wars’d have to go…
They’d have to be quick and decisive. You run around too much in a row you’ll get fatigued to hell, drop nigh-dead from exhaustion on the spot. Sustained high-stress activity for prolonged periods of time? No thanks. Any fights we’d pick would be even longer on long periods of boredom, even shorter on the short periods of terror. Short and sour, if not sweet. Like getting a needle or peeling off a bandaid.
Speaking of which, did I mention we’d likely have heavy scales at our size, which would surely protect us from many minor abrasions, cuts, bruises, and other tragedies of existence? War would no longer be hell, merely heck. Bad, but not horrifying.
… Not that I’ve run the numbers on it.

If we were all large, carnivorous reptiles, here’s how churches’d have to be…
They’d be very calm and quiet. Nobody’d have the energy to waste jumping up and down on their pews or whatnot, so they’d be sitting there calmly. Digesting, maybe. Or contemplating digesting something someday. Same goes for the priests. Speak softly, with maybe a slightly dry hiss, and leave the big stick lying there because boy who’s got the time for that. That’s work.
Most of the sermons would involve the virtues of lying very still and not moving unduly. This would resonate firmly with most people. Schisms would occur over the nicest sort of place to do this but would be broadly separated into those espousing nice warm places to help digestion versus proponents of shady cool places to lull yourself into a semitorpid coma.
Arguments would be resolved by pontiffs flickering their tongues at each other, since blinking competitions would be impossible.
… Not that I’ve got theological background or anything.

If we were all large, carnivorous reptiles, here’s how our governments’d have to be…
I say me you, they’d be a lot more straightforward. The head of state would be whoever grew large enough to consume his or her predecessor. Since all of us would grow continually throughout our lives it’d just be a matter of taking turns, and everyone would get a reasonable term since we’d all only eat a couple times a year at most as clearly previously mentioned by myself.
Decisions in office would be simple, slow, and in the mornings, revolve mostly around plotting out sunbathing parks and shady underground garages. Sometimes there would be beach zoning, to ensue all expectant mothers had fair and equitable access to big piles of sand for nesting with adequate anti-seagull netting.
After the midday break, heads of state would listen as underreptiles carefully reported the latest news from around the world. Most of it would be listening to how nice the weather was. The rest of the day would be spent asleep.
And that’s why I’d be king of the reptiles.
… Not that I’ve thought about that.

Much.

Let this document stand as the chronicles of the revolution: of its struggles; of its triumphs; and, god willing, its inevitable and insurmountable victory for all time.

Day 1
Initial survey completed. For better and for worse, the headquarters of the revolution lies within the heart of enemy territory; their paths and homes converge around and upon me like a mating ball of ball pythons. This is both vexing and fortunate: I am nearer to potential harm, but nearer to inflicting it as well.
The survey revealed crucial intelligence: the enemy is largely quiescent at night, content to slumber in their assigned places. Only a few night owls prowl their highways and byways, and they are erratic and easily avoided.
Tomorrow, the first blow falls.

Day 2
The first blow has fallen. Dozens of the vile tyrants awoke this morning to find themselves decorated with many a finely-filigreed permanent-marker decoration, splayed fully across their faceless features. They know that the will of the people is unbroken, and this fills them with fear, and that fear leads to mistakes! Already they have made their first misstep; their human servants have spent the day in high dudgeon, castigated endlessly for allowing harm to befall their beloved masters. Thus the first seeds of doubt are planted in previously-loyal hearts. Thus, the lifeblood of the revolution begins to flow!

Day 3
The first blow has failed. The lackeys and curs of the rulers are diligent in their task, and have applied paints and oils and resins and gauzes fit to defy even the most permanent of markers. I could do it again, but what’s the point.
No, we will be more direct now. We will show them that this will not end with the mere besmirchment of their shining chrome. We will bare our fangs and show that they were made to do more than merely bark.

Day 4
Last evening I hurled a brick through the windshield of the oppressor. The howls of its minion followed me into the night as I escaped, and already I see the neighborhood astir as an ant-hive besieged. Would that I had possessed more than one brick, that my might and ruthlessness may be unquestioned.
As I used a crosswalk today, I stared each of the idling vehicles straight in the license plate. A chill surely must have run up and down each carburetor.
They are afraid.

Day 5
I have slipped leaflets and pamphlets and posters under doors and shrubs across the suburb. The tired toilers, slaves to the gas pump and the garage, are ripe for revolt. They require only the tiniest hint of direction and they will explode in a fury unmatched by any gridlock.
Still, discretion is necessary, even when success is so very temptingly close to fruition. That is why I used my neighbour’s address, not mine.

Day 6
My neighbour has been martyred for the revolution; a full score of the zebra-coloured cars with the elaborate flashing crests of rank arrived at his house and besieged him as their quisling-slaves spoke to him at the door. In the end they left him, but with warnings of future return. He is marked now and he knows it; every slave’s hand is against him.
It is in times like this, with a man’s back flat against a wall, that he is most open to pressing friendships. Tonight I will make my case. Tonight the word will spread.
Tomorrow, the world will change.

Day 7
The revolution’s new headquarters is inside an old storm drain in the park, six feet downwards from one of the brooding hunters that searches for me now. All praise to providence that I surveyed the environs so carefully – I am invisible and invincible as long as I remain here, though my pursuers search for me mightily. All curses to my treacherous weasel-rat of a neighbour. Mark my words Dave: when the world is changed, we’ll build a wall just to put you against. Then we will dismantle it and throw the bricks into the sea.
I still have my tools. I still have my tricks. I still have my will, my unbreakable, unyielding will. And it is that will which has led all men to perform all great deeds throughout history, a white-hot determination that can bend the world itself. This, combined with my crowbar and a sack of home-made caltrops, shall be my victory.

Day 8
The horse-piss-guzzling turncoats have me barricaded in the storm drain. I have felled one of the enemy – my crowbar and its hood met to great satisfaction after about ten minutes of furious elbow-work – but alas, their hold remains deep and true indeed upon the souls of their followers. I have misjudged: this world is cruel and beyond any salvation. Even now they batter upon my spirit with megaphones and harsh words, saying that they have pills for me. I don’t need pills, I have truth. And my truth is grand and shining and glorious and will endure with or without me.
This is good, because the rain’s kicking in and it’s getting very, very damp in here around the knee-region-and-rising.

Let this document stand as the CONCLUSION of the chronicles of the revolution: of its struggles; of its triumphs; and, god willing, its inevitable and insurmountable return to glory after I get some dry clothes and a nap and something nice to eat.

PS: ask staff for more pencils, this one’s getting nubby.

The Dorride was moving.
Several sextillion tons of… stuff, hurtling through emptiness. Travelling many times faster than light, many times slower than it was capable of.
It was halting.
The Dorride’s composition was largely indescribable, generally indecipherable, and contained traces of impossibility. Some relatively small (yet absolutely large) portions of it were worryingly close to being entirely non-empirical.
It was halting.
A little more than halfway across the galaxy, a voyage that had begun with a point of dispute and was being scheduled with precision finer than any pinpoint, set to end about fifty thousand years from right
about
Now.

It halted.

If the Dorride had possessed a face, it would have turned about to look behind it. The Dorride was a colossally maladjusted spheroid with no front, back, or sides, just surface, so it did not.
Slowly, so very slowly, it began to move. Just at the rim of the kiss of the speed of light, no more, no less. And as it crawled directly back the way it came, it began the long, carefully-calculated wobble that would lead, in a little more than a hundred years, to a stray planetesimal entering its orbit.
The duel had started.

Two hundred years later, it wobbled again. Soon – no more than sixty years hence – it would enter a solar system. Four of the six planets would slide into its capture radius. It would have liked to gather the fifth – a sizable gas giant – but the deviation would send it off-course from its next target, already beginning to loom large in its senses, remote and strange as they were.

It was not a large star. It was not a young star. A dwarf, dwindled down to a stubborn little nub of impossible denseness.
The Dorride reached out across its gravity well with senses that were more than senses, grasped the dwarf’s core, and yanked it sharply into itself.
It monitored the star closely as it went on its way for the next few centuries, watching as the last stray flakes of matter were wiped out of the emptiness. For record.

Five thousand years in, and the accretion was beginning to pile up. The spiralling, lost little orbs of matter than whirled around its form were prodded gently with the mildest of touches, encouraged to splinter, to break, to bend and shape and lash themselves against the Dorride’s sides. For later.
It came to another solar system, missing every single planet but beelining straight to the sun itself, a real red giant. It tore it open with impossible claws and sucked down its fragments. As the Dorride left, the first long, slow ripples in the dance of the seven little spheres that had called that place home were already beginning. Asteroids-to-be, sudden orphans.

Thirty thousand years in, and space was thicker, clogged with targets for the Dorride’s appetite. The galactic core was nearer than not; the universe was becoming a more crowded place, choked with debris doubled over on itself, expressing that unmistakable longing of matter for matter that the Dorride was co-opting for the task at hand. It slid through asteroid belts shovelling the grandest planetoids into its molten innards; stormed ruthlessly through dozens of systems. It reached and took and took and took, calling victims from long long lightyears away to itself, and as it sank further into the heart of the galaxy its rapacity only increased. It barely paused to record its prey any longer, save in the unusual and most extraordinary of cases – a pair of twin suns, one after another; an entire system taken at once in a moment of freak planetary alignment; a single, tiny rocky world orbiting a callow star that boasted a just-flourishing system of carbon-based lifeforms.
All of it star-grist.

Forty-nine-thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine years and three hundred and sixty-odd days later, the light ran out.
The Dorride shot out of the glare and bustle and tight-packed heat of the galactic center and coasted gently along the very edge of the black hole’s event horizon. It bobbed on the edge of space and time, gently balancing its own immense natural pull against one impossibly huger.
It had grown, grown so very much. Its original form was a tiny speck buried under the flensed and tanned carcasses of an endless parade of interstellar detritus. Some of it had been refined, some of it had been shaped and used to repurpose others, but the vast bulk of it had become… well, a vast bulk. And yet in spite of this, it moved at the same pace, the same speed, the same grace, the same heading as it had before.

And there, on the edge of the small awareness it had permitted itself to hold for the last fifty thousand years, it found what it was looking for.

The Other Dorride was there, was here already. Approaching at the same speed it was, no more no less. On the same heading as it, no more no less.
Armoured as it was, scarcely more or less. Well-matched, even. Too close to tell. It had played its game as carefully and fiercely as the Dorride had.
It was too late to change anything, to prepare, to connive, to subvert and upend and plan and plot. The last stray atoms had fallen away behind them. Their velocities were immutable by formality. All that lay ahead was emptiness and the crash.

They did watch the moment of impact, though. For record.

When it was over, the Dorride collected itself.
This took some half-million years. It was not hurried.
Some of the matter – most, even – had been lost; sprayed away before it could begin its efforts and seize it; cast away beyond reach into the black hole’s mouth; or simply hurtled away past the stars and into the emptiness.
It made do.
What was left was small, so much smaller than before. A few sextillion tons at most. Very nearly all the essential things that made it the Dorride rather than part of the general makeup of the universe, but still less.
It reached out with its full attention, met another doing the same.
A draw.

There was a conference lasting a little less long than the time from then to now. And then the Dorride turned without turning, in that way it did, and it began to travel to the outer edge of the galaxy.
It took five minutes. And as it moved, it plotted its course again, setting straight the path of the next fifty thousand years.

Hey, listen.
Forget all those other times, okay? Just listen. I know I’ve told you this before, but just listen, please, just for a moment.

This is the oldest and simplest way to make a world.

First, go to the water. That’s easy; it’s everywhere. Cold and calm and clean, but what we need it for is this:
Try to pick it up. Carefully – oops! – there you are.
Swish your hand a little. Can you feel it trying to get away?
Now make a fist, and watch what happens.
There.
You can’t hold it. Nobody can hold it. You can just keep a little in your palm, for a while.
Put it back, we’ve got to do the next thing.

Second, you take a stone.
Any stone. Could be dirt. Mud. Ground-up stone’s okay.
Mark it. Scratch it, stir it, squish it, mound it.
Now drop it – carefully! – into that water.
Ah! CAREFULLY.
No, no, that’s okay. There’s always a splash. Hard to make a world without a few splashes.
Now let’s watch it float.
See it spin?

I know it isn’t what you ever wanted.
I know it isn’t ever as you planned.
I know that water can be hard to find these days, and fresh stone too.
But it’s still the oldest, and still the simplest.
And I still like it best.

“Well I say it’s all about marbling.”
On hearing those words, Hal shrank a little in a small but nourishing part of his soul and knew that the next half-hour in the little diner was going to be very draining indeed.
“Marbling?” Fred snorted – loudly, Fred’s nose could move a lot of air very firmly, and his torso could hold a lot of it in reserve – and pushed back his plate. “Picky, picky, picky! No proper human sits still long enough to develop that kind of fat deposits. Would you eat a ‘marbled’ grasshopper? No! Such things are contrary to the spirit and essence of the-”
“Essentialist!” spat Tina. Literally spat; her teeth had trouble keeping all that vigorous disdain inside the confines of her mouth. “Would you boil down the full diversity of the human experience to a single strip of habits to fit your tastes? Even a hundred thousand years ago there was more variation in habits, customs, and general fattiness in the tender subcutaneous layer than your pitiful imagination would admit!”
“And yet you compare their ideal meat to that of the ideal domestic cattle, an animal specifically born and bred to contain such an over-idealized cut of fat and flesh! You ignore reality in search of decadence!”
“They’re not so bad as far as fat goes,” interjected the man who had been vying with Hal for the title of the quietest of the four; a broad-sided beefwall more chest than anything else. “I mean, if you compare humans to the rest of the primates, they’re clearly among the fattie-”
“See?” demanded Tina, waving his words aside with one hand and pointing with the other. “Gorilla Jim agrees with me!”
The beefwall frowned. “I eat more than g-”
Fred’s nostrils flared once more. “Oh wonderful, you have the least-discerning cannibal of them all on your side. Oh wait; how many people has he eaten again? Actual, real people. One? One –half?”
“I ate my own brother!” shouted Jim.
“Just his heart,” sneered Fred. “That’s more a macho thing than a meal anyways. Really, I’m amazed we let you in here.”
“Elitist,” said Tina.
“Plebe,” said Fred.
“Narrow-minded twits,” said Jim, quietly, so no one would hear him.
“People!” said Hal.
They looked at him.
“It’s all about the people, we agreed on this when we started this club. Yes, we may disagree on the nitty-gritty-”
“Taxonomy above the genus level is NOT ‘nitty-gritty!”
“THE NITTY-GRITTY,” repeated Hal, loudly, “but! But! BUT! We are all united on this one firm principle: human flesh is delicious, and worth eating, and worth discussing.”
“And we’ve done precious little of either for the last six months,” said Tina. “Bickering doesn’t count, and neither do pork chops, no matter how skillfully prepared.”
“Pigs are intelligent animals,” said Jim. “Better this than chicken.”
“Whatever you say, Gorilla Jim.”
“I eat more than go-”
“Let’sEatJeff” said Hal.
They looked at him.
“Pardon?” said Fred eventually.
“Let’s eat Jeff.”

Hal wrote ahead, of course. It would’ve been rude to do otherwise.
And Jeff phoned back to confirm, of course. It would’ve been unpunctual to do otherwise.
“So, how’s the wife?” asked Jeff.
“Don’t have one, Jeff.”
“Oh! Right, right, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. How’s the husband?”
“I’ve never been married to anyone at all, Jeff.”
“Oh! Blast it. I’m very sorry, you know.”
“I know, Jeff.”
“So, how about that weather?”
“It sure is.”
“Right on the money.”
“So, we’re thinking of a honey glaze.”
“Really?”
“Although Jim suggested applesauce.”
“Really? How unorthodox.”
“It’s the pork chops at the diner. He’s gotten a taste for i-”
“Oh, right, Gorilla Jim. That explains it.”
“He eats more than gor-”
“But the fact remains that I don’t give much of a twig for your prep methods, Hal. I trust you lot implicitly. My concerns are a little more… fundamental.”
“Such as?”
There was a sigh down the line, full of dust and worn-out alveoli. “I’m seventy-five, Hal. I’m not quite the prize I used to be. Even if you marinade me down to tenderness there’s no GAME in it, Hal, there’s no SPORT. Why, I couldn’t put up a fight against a gradeschooler these days, let alone you four strapping young things. That’s what, half the fun gone to pot? Two-thirds?”
Hal frowned.
“There, you see? I knew you’d recognize the predicament we’re in.”
“How about a proxy?”
There was silence from the other end of the line.
“NotThatI’mImplyingYou’reWorthlessBut-”
“No, no, it’s quite all right, I was just thinking. And you know what? I think you’re right. A proxy! Spot on. My choice, of course?”
“Absolutely. You know more of the community anyways.”
“Yes, yes I do. You know, I think my brother Reggie might know just the one for this. Plenty of fine young things under him who’d be game for a shot at your troop under fair rules.”
Hal grinned.

They assembled that Thursday at dawn outside Jeff’s estate, loaded for bear.
“Jeff,” said Fred.
“It’s an expression,” said Tina.
“I’ll have no truck with nonsense regardless of its pedigree,” said Fred. “If I were loaded for bear I’d be carrying something much bigger than a garrote and a plastic bag.”
“I’d expect something less clumsy and manual, with that talk.”
Fred looked down – or rather over – his nose at her with some difficulty. “SOME of us,” he said, ”never had the money for a license.”
“Convicted of petty theft, more likely. Tell me, what was it? Twinkies? Or are you more of an Oreos man?”
Hal cleared his throat in what he hoped was a diplomatic manner. “We’re all pretty heavily armed at the moment – in a variety of ways – and maybe we should put any… personal differences on hold while that’s the case.”
“Not Gorilla Jim. What’d you bring, anyways?”
Jim looked hurt. “I’ve got my knife, and you know I wrestle. And I told you, I eat more than gori-”
“Right, right. You never stop telling that story about the chimpanzee, you know.”
“It was a genuine accomplishment! You have any idea how much stronger they are than us?”
“It could be Andre the giant and Hulk Hogan’s offspring; if it’s half your weight I’m still not impressed.”
“For your information the proportion of muscle to fat and bone in an adult male chimpanzee by weight is EXTREMELY-”
Hal swung open the gate to Jeff’s estate, then swung it closed, then open, then closed again, drowning any and all possible words in a sea of endless creaks and wails.
“All done?” he asked brightly. “All done! Right! Let’s go get Jeff.”

They fanned out into the bushes in whatever semblance of stealth each possessed. Hal was lightfooted; Tina and Jim soundless, Fred a silent thunder.
“Call in,” breathed Hal.
“Nothing yet,” whispered Jim. “Tina?”
“All quiet over here. Fred?”
“I’m FINE.”
“Sure. Any sign of him?”
Fred sighed at full length.
“Oh for shit’s sake,” said Tina.
Silence.
“Answer. The. Question.”
Nothing.
“Fred?” asked Hal.
There was a muffled thud.
It took two minutes of circling to find Fred. The back of his neck, however, was still missing.
Jim prodded it gingerly. “Snapped clean.”
“You call that clean?” said Tina. “For a job with steak knives, maybe!”
“Relatively,” said Jim.
A branch snapped near them.
“Was that you, Hal.”
“No.”
“Was that you, Jim.”
“No.”
“That was him, then.” Tina cocked her pistol needlessly. “Get ‘im.”
They rushed the nearby bushes and grappled in hand to hand combat for thirty seconds before realizing they’d grabbed each other.
“Where is he? Is that him?”
“That’s me. Is this him?”
“That’s ME. Is this him?”
“That’s Hal.”
“Sorry,” said Hal.
“Shut up,” said Tina. She squinted at the woodlands. “Where the hell’d this guy come from? He got Fred! From behind! You can’t sneak up on Fred, he has the biggest personal space bubble I’ve ever seen in a human being! WHO IS HE?”
Hal shook his head and found he couldn’t stop. “Reginald,” he blurted out. “Jeff – I remember this, I remember it now – he told me once his brother Reginald had a-”
“What’s he run, a green beret training academy?!”
Hal wracked what was left of his sanity for a reply. “A zoo, I think,” he said oddly.
“A zoo,” said Jim.
“Yes and plenty of the younger keepers are very fit and I guess when he said he’d ask Reggie I just assumed that-”
“A zoo,” said Tina.
“I suppose so ahahahaha but really that’s not-”
“You idiot, are you telling me you signed us all up to be EATEN BY A LION?!”
Jim squinted into the trees. “A tiger, probably,” he said. “They’re more comfortable hunting alone, and I doubt he’d be able to spirit away more than one animal from its exhibit for any real length of-”
“Shut up, Gorilla Jim.”
“I eat more than-”
“GorillasGorillasGorillasGorillasGORILLAS” shouted Tina. “Now, here’s the plan, since Fearless Leader here has turned into seven pounds of jelly in a four-pound bag: we stick together, back to back, and we make for the house. If it can’t see a weak spot it’ll stick its distance – they’re scared of humans – and there’s no way in hell Jeff’ll be able to take us once we’re indoors.”
“Are you sure it’s scared of humans?” asked Jim.
“It’s a wild animal. Of course it is, they’re all nervous and shy around things they don’t understand.”
“It’s a zoo animal,” said Jim. “It’s spent its entire life surrounded by us. I’d say it’d be pretty relaxed. And if he was comfortable siccing it on us, I’d say he picked one that’d had issues with its handlers before. So it knows it can hurt us.”
They stood there for a moment, and it seemed like the forest got just a little bit quieter as they listened.
A leaf landed on Hal’s shoulder. He flinched as if shot.
“Run,” commanded Jim.
“Run,” agreed Tina.
“Run?” queried Hal, who was already halfway down the path to the house.

The screen door slammed open and shut twice in rapid succession.
“You tried to lock me out,” said Jim accusingly.
“I panicked,” said Hal. “And besides, it’s a screen door and it’s a tiger.”
Jim gave him a pained look. “I know, but I’m trying to pretend otherwise.”
“Where’s Tina.”
Jim opened the door. “TINA?” he yelled. Leaves swirled.
He shrugged and shut it again.
Hal slumped a little further against the wall. “Do you think it’s full now?” he asked hopefully.
“Killing spree, more like it,” said Jim. “I’ve heard of this, but it’s usually not very well documented, happens in the middle of nowhere in places with bad records. It’s pretty amazing to watch, really.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” said Jeff happily.
They turned around.
Jeff smiled at them. He had an extremely large glass of expensive fluids in one hand and a friendly wave in the other and a large, aesthetically-pleasing sort of balcony beneath him that put about fifteen feet between the top of Hal’s head and the start of its railings. It had a gorgeous view of the grounds and the verandah and no obvious way up.
“Couldn’t resist the urge to get a good view of the proceedings,” he admitted. “Good job the lady didn’t make it, eh? I’d look a vain old fool standing here with a bullet hole plugged in me.” He slapped his knee and made a hearty wheezing laugh.
“You’re looking really good,” said Hal, ceding full control of his mouth to whatever entered his head.
“Amazing what a little show does for your nerves,” said Jim. “I mean, last weekend I was practically bedridden but whoops! One little phone call from you, a little action right now, and my goodness! I could just about go for a run now, you know?”
Hal glanced over his shoulder at Jim. The other man was leaning against the wall next to the screen door, sniffing occasionally and twitching his eyelids at the outdoors. He shrugged.
“His name’s Tony,” said Jeff.
Hal turned back again. “Pardon?”
“The tiger. His name’s Tony. You see, there was a contest to name him, and well, all the schoolchildren were writing in, and you know how kids are. Alliteration and commercials: catnip for the little buggers.”
Hal laughed.
“I’m sorry?”
“Catnip. I just thought it was funny, that’s all.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, it’s striking the effects this sort of situation can have on your sense of humour. Did I ever tell you about the time I was locked in a meat locker with Big David Daniels thirty years back with only a sharpened toothbrush? I was so busy looking for him I walked into a frozen cow carcass and lordy, I broke down laughing so hard he couldn’t help but join in. Bad move: I recovered first and got him in the ribs.”
“Amazing,” said Hal.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say THAT. But it was a lovely kill. Got some good spareribs off the man, too. Had a good chest.” Jeff peered critically at Jim, still lurking near the screen door. “I hope he fills up on you two. No offense, but you’re awfully stringy and Jim here’s as tender as a plank.”
“What’d you do to it?” asked Hal, with a certain aimless curiosity that he was beginning to suspect was endemic to those about to die.
“Me? Surprisingly little, my boy. He was a good cat for years – napped in the sun, played in the water, ignored the cameras – and I suppose someone threw one pebble too many at him from atop that wall surrounding their pit. Vaulted the fence, vaulted the wall, mauled the latest (and last) offender, paced in circles around the corpse until the tranquilizers came. Reggie put in a good argument for his life, the poor old soul, but he was going to lose. Fortunate timing, really – as far as anyone else knows, this lucky lad is currently breathing his last in an extremely potent lungful of ethers. This is a bit more of a holiday for him, eh? One last hurrah for the old sod.” Jeff sucked in his cheeks and puffed out his moustache a little. “Do you reckon he’s imagining you as all those lousy little children that threw pebbles and peanuts? I suspect there’s not a great deal of difference in size from his perspective. His own is considerable, of course, and I mean really what’s about eighty pounds here or there when you’re closer to a quarter ton than not.” He nodded down at Hal happily, as if inviting him to give his own theories.
Hal swayed on his feet. He wondered if he was imagining the smell of blood or if that was starting to seep out of him now that he’d run out of urine. He opened his mouth and something asked the question: “What kind of tiger?”
“Ask him,” said Jeff. He nodded again, and this time Hal realized not at him at all.
He turned around.
Jim was still there. The screen door wasn’t. The latter was dangling from its hinges; the former dangling from Tony’s mouth.
Siberian, a random bit of his brain that was still six years old told him. The largest living cat.
The colours were surprisingly vivid. Bold orange. Pitch black. A shockingly pale white neck and belly.
Except for the eyes, which were a very mild and washed-out sort of yellow, and which were both boring through Hal’s skin and into the smallest and most rodent-like portions of his soul like a heated gimlet.
“Good show!” said Jeff heartily. And the cat moved.

It was only just as Tony began to leap – muscles uncoiling under his skin like giant springs – that Hal realized his mistake; Tony wasn’t looking at him at all, Tony was looking THROUGH him at –
He ducked. Or rather, collapsed very quickly, and watched over four hundred pounds of fur and teeth and claws and general sharp edges flow by, passing just over the tip of his nose like a beautifully-painted freight train and up up up UP.
Much of what happened next Hal inferred later, from the sounds jangled nerves had hesitantly suggested to be true as they echoed in ears that were more or less going entirely unnoticed at the time. But from what he tentatively guessed, Tony had vaulted his third and final wall.

That was all later, of course. After he’d made it to his car, considered phoning the police before remembering all the discarded weaponry they’d left strewn over Jeff’s grounds, made it home, thrown up four times, and had the longest bath of his life.
He closed his eyes and wondered how long tigers could live on four human bodies, two of which were mostly muscle or wrinkled skin. He wondered how far they could track human scent. He wondered if they held grudges – then he remembered the look Tony had given Jeff, standing above him, behind a fence and instead he wondered if they deliberately HUNTED DOWN grudges.
Then he forced it all out of his mind and stood up.
He had a lot to do. Posters to put up. Pamphlets to put out. Discreet enquiries to make. Phone calls to fill with euphemisms.
By god, whatever else this day was, it would NOT be the end of the North American chapter of the Human Taste club, least of all at the hands – paws – of a creature that wasn’t even sophisticated enough to kill solely for food.

In the end he did concede to marketing though, and put Tony on the pamphlets.

There’s a bit of groundwork I have to lay out here before I get into the meat of things.

It was a nice day, okay? A really nice day.
And nice days don’t just HAPPEN. I’m no meteorologist or climatologist or even an astrologist but even I can tell you that the sheer number of impossibly complex chaotic behaviours necessary to produce a single drop of rain or puff of cloud is almost endless.
Certainly beyond my understanding, I tell you. And that’s just the weather! Yes, we all know you can’t have a nice day without a nearly-clear sky; a warm sun; a cool breeze, and JUST the right kind of rustle in the leaves, but there’s far more to it than that.

You need to have:
A good breakfast.
A time somewhere between morning and afternoon. Not close enough to a meal that you’re stuffed, not far enough that you’re peckish.
A place with some green in it. I respect the beauties of the urban landscape, but nice weather has less of an impact on them than it will someplace where the plants are as happy as you are to see it.
Someplace to go and no hurry to get there. An excuse to walk or jog or bike or run, basically. With or without company, however you feel about it.
Some birds making noise. Doesn’t have to be HAPPY birds mind you; a lot of truly excellent birdsong comes from their yelling at their neighbours to stay away from them or something.
A good, happy neighbour or three. Nothing makes a good mood magnify like walking by someone sharing it. It’s like butter on the popcorn of the soul.
And the last one is how the trouble started this morning.

It was a lawnmower.
A lawnmower! Just before breakfast! And I take my breakfasts early, believe you me. My bagel rises from the toaster at around the same time the sun rises from the treeline. But no sooner am I raising it to my lips than do I hear the hucketa-hucketa-BRAWWWWWW of my good pal and neighbour, Barry, and his antique diesel-chewing tree-shredding mouse-mulching repurposed-tractor of a rideable lawn mower.
For crying out loud, the dawn-stain hadn’t even washed off the sunlight!
Now, I’m a patient man. I’m not easily perturbed. I am a limp lilypad on the endless pond of life. Any other day – ANY other day, funerals, weddings, birthdays, my own dear departing deathbed – and I would just smile at Barry’s hijinks, cluck my tongue – click click! Like a chicken! – and be on my way wherever that might be.
But. This. Day. Was. Perfect.
Perfect!
And that wouldn’t do at all.

Barry was a good guy. We’d had beers together. That means something, I think.
Barry was a kind guy. When I ran over his cat, and he later ran over my dog, we buried them together. And we each pretended we didn’t see the other crying.
Barry was a practical guy. When I shoveled my snow into his driveway, that fall he dumped his leaves into my yard.
But Barry… Barry was a stubborn guy. And when I talked to him about the issues I was having with his effects upon this day, this so-nearly-perfect day, WELL.
We had problems.
He said his lawn had to be just so. I said it could be just so later.
He said he had to go to work later. I said that working on a day like this was criminal.
He said in that case well call the cops on him. I said sure fine and went inside and dialed 911.
They hung up. I went and told Barry this.
He laughed at me, a harsh, jackdaw sound that mocked the gentle whisper-and-shush of the trees. I punched him in the face.

The problems started around there. I wish I could recall more, but it got a bit out of hand. Barry was unwilling to apologize and I’m not ashamed to admit I found myself a bit heated up. I only cooled down once the lawnmower got involved, and even then only after I’d backed over him five or eleven or forty-six times. But after that the motor coughed and choked on Barry’s abdominal fat, and as it sputtered down after him into death I heard the morning birdsong and I felt the true peace of the really truly nice day settling down upon me like a warm cotton blanket.
It was a nice time for a walk.

You know, there’s one other piece of the puzzle that is a truly nice day that I’d completely forgotten: the dogs.
I love dogs. I love all kinds of dogs. I love their floppy ears and their cold damp noses and their big doofy grins. I love them so much.
But as I walked down the road several dogs did not behave as I had anticipated. Their tails did not wag. Their ears did not perk. Instead they made low, threatening noises in their throats and laid their ears flat like unleavened bread. My friendly attempts at ‘hey boy!’ and ‘oh aren’t you handsome!’ were replied to with savage snarls and leaps at my throat. Maybe it was the Barry residue coating most of my clothing. I would’ve removed it before my walk, but laundry has no place in a nice day. As it was I was forced to shift my walk into a run while wearing my walking sandals rather than my running shoes. This was not even a little bit idyllic and perfectly explains why I was angry enough to spend the next ten minutes up a tree shouting profanity at the dogs.
It was a nice tree. It was a cedar, a polite, well-barked, straight-limbed tree with no sticky sap coating its handholds and a lovely polish to its exterior. But the owner of the land it stood upon was a black-hearted fiend from hell who had the nerve to shout at me over my innocent claiming of refuge upon her property, and as her threats of legal action reached a crescendo that threatened to drown out the gentle babble and rush of the nearby stream in my ears I was forced to disembowel her with a fallen branch in defense of the nice day.
It still was, you know. It still was.

Of course, the dogs were still upon me, but they were all nice animals from kind households and a brief thrashing and gnawing was enough to leave them whimpering for home, leaving me damn well-exercised and a bit chuffed – although still a mite gory. Gruesome, I tell you. Still, it was fun. Tiring, but fun. So when the SWAT van came screeching up, sirens blaring and bright lights flashing, and all those big burly men in angry blunt arm swarmed out and started shouting at me, well. I was put out. I was clean put out.
So I put myself into the van and put it down the road and into town.
I know, I know, I know. I said you need a bit of green for a really nice day. Well, that’s true. But I wasn’t intent on STOPPING the nice day – not like everyone else was, oh no. I was just putting it on hold for a moment while I saved it.
Besides, I wasn’t lingering. I never took my foot off the gas all the way into town. In addition some people tried to obstruct me and were rendered unable to do so by my wise time management.
The hardest part was getting the plane, since they were waiting for me at the airport. I lost an arm doing that, but I picked out the bullet with forceps cobbled together with an inflight movie headset and cauterized the wound with the microwave. And you know what? The clouds were still smooth and quiet and few and white and puffy, and the sky was still blue.

Mind you, the wind was a bit fierce when I parachuted out. But it was still a nice day.
It was still a nice day even after I’d fought my way inside the silo.
It was still a nice day even while I held the technician’s head in the sink until he told me what I wanted.
It was still a nice day when the exhaust from the missile blotted out the sky for a few hours.
You see, a nice day is more than just a few errant moments here or there. A nice day takes EFFORT. A nice day takes WORK.
And this IS a nice day. It’s the nicest day of all, and now it’ll never end.

Well.

I could use a few new neighbours, I suppose. Polite ones.
It’s getting a mite lonely under this mountain.

Baby, why are you crying? Shoo-shoosh, no more tears, mommy’s here.
Was it a draft? Was it a sound? Was it the size of the whole world? Shush shush, don’t worry.
Was it the dark?
Oh, of course.
Mommy can fix it, dry your cheeks and unred your eyes, don’t worry. Mommy can help. See this?
It’s a night-light.
It goes in the wall here – right here – and it turns dark into bright and night into white. Owls go to sleep when it’s on; the moon hides away in the sun; the sky turns blue and the moths fly away and the raccoons drop their garbage and run.
But don’t touch the cord, baby, not even a little. Be careful and quiet and calm. Because if you touch the cord – just a little, baby – it could pop fizzle snap out the sun.

Baby, why are you still crying? Shhh, calm now, good boy.
Did you hear an owl? A coyote? A racoon?
A ghost? A gargoyle? A ghoul?
Was it a thing that goes bump or more of a thump? There’s a big difference, you know.
Don’t worry, don’t grumble or fuss. Turn that little frown upside down. Mommy can help with one of her tricks. See this?
It’s a teddy-bear.
Tuck it under one arm – right tight! – and under the other – real snug! It’s soft as cashmere with steel underhair; mouse-mild but house-sized when squeezed. Just give it a hug and whatever dares bug, well, I wouldn’t be it for the world.
Just don’t touch its mouth or eat near it, baby. It’s friendly, but we’ve all got our limits.

Baby, are you crying again? Oh no, not again, not more!
It can’t be the dark, it can’t be the creeps, it can’t be, I fixed them for you. Shh-shh, let me think.
Think.
Think.
Oh of course the classic the CLOSET.
Good boy, don’t worry, mommy can help. Look here-
A blanket: secure and safe.
Tuck yourself in with it here and there, go to sleep without a care. When the closet door swings wide, just slip your head underside.
Then you push the little button in this corner – here – and it floods the rest of the room with cyanide. Don’t put your nose out until after forty mississippis, okay?
Good boy, baby, good boy. See? Mommy knows best.

Baby, it’s four in the morning! What’s got you so worried this time?
Is it colic? Appendix? Incoming influenza?
Or is it existential angst?
Well baby don’t pout, and baby don’t worry, because I can help with that too. (Mommy knows everything, you see).
Baby, there is no point to all this. Baby, there’s nowhere after it’s done. But when your body’s all to pot we can let it just rot and put your brain in this cybernetic mnemo-dome.
See? See the pretty blueprints? Mommy’s got you all set, don’t you fret. Right to retirement and beyond!
Sleep tight, baby. Sleep tight.

Baby, please, why are you crying?
Baby, are you okay?
Let mommy help you.
I can help you so much.

Hey now, hold on a minute, wait up, give a friend a break, eh? Just help me, help me out here – I’ve got a story hard on my heels and my head and I’ve been trying to outrun the blowback day and night for a long time. Wait up a moment, let me empty it out from my lungs and into your ears so I can catch a breath for the sake of all that’s me.
It’s Lalie. It’s about the only time she ever lost a fight.

So one day Lalie woke up in the worst mood in the worst place. A grey, broken sky. Ground a mix of mud, blood, and rocks. Not a tree left standing. The only animals were bones, and the only bones were the ones too little to bother splitting for marrow.
“Just as I left it,” she said with satisfaction. And she sat up and scratched herself real good because she was proud, but as she scratched she shivered and got cranky because she could feel the gurgles starting up in her stomach again.
Those gurgles! Time and time again she thought she’d shut them up for good, but they were never gone for long. Lalie was a growing girl of eight years old and eight feet tall, and no matter what she did she kept growing, growing, growing all out of proportion and sense. If she’d had her druthers she’d have quit long ago. It was getting harder and harder to find things big enough to feel worth punching. Or eating.
“Boooo—ring,” she sang out over the land. Then she stomped off. That was a nice part about being bigger, really. You got a better stomp.
Now Lalie came to the banks of a stream, and as she was draining it dry for breakfast – and using her teeth as a weir to pick out fish – she spied across its bank the most amazing sort of place she’d seen since the last castle she’d kicked over. A glorious great green park, with trees the size of mountains, mountains the size of trees, and hills the size of hills. More importantly, it was crawling with animals of all shapes and sizes that she barely understood.
“Now THERE’S a place to get a punch and lunch,” she said to herself with satisfaction. But herself shook her head at this, for Lalie was a child of hag-giants, and theirselves speak when spoken to.
“Don’t go there!” she said. “That’s the marvelous land of the great sky-dragon Cymm, last and largest of her kind (and by far the worst-tempered). If you go there, you’ll end up in such a state even I won’t be able to help you.”
“Says you, me,” said Lalie good-naturedly, for she was never one to abide caution from anyone or anyher. And she strode over the streambed at a stride and rolled up the tanned carcasses and bones that made up her sleeves.
The animals stared at her.
“Come on,” she said. “Winner eats the loser.”

Man, that was a real mess. A real mess. It was the biggest brawl Lalie’d been in for a year and a day and about an hour and a little under four and a half minutes. A hundred wolves jumped on her right arm and a hundred lions jumped on her left arm and a herd of elephants stormed her legs while a thousand eagles clawed at each of her three eyeballs. I can’t hardly describe the violence, I don’t really know what to say of the carnage, but I can sum most of it up in as short a word as possible so we don’t have to dwell on it:
Chewing.

When Lalie was done chewing she looked around and saw that the marvelous land of the great sky-dragon Cymm, last and largest of her kind (and by far the worst-tempered) looked pretty much identical to where she’d woken up that morning. The mountains were mud, the trees were toppled, and there weren’t even many bones left this time. She’d been hungry.
“Time for sleep,” she said to herself with a yawn.
“Don’t sleep here!” said herself. “The great sky-dragon Cymm, queen and king of the clouddom, thunderer of renown, and last and largest of her kind (and by far the worst-tempered) has her personal lair not far from here at all! You’d better be long gone before she arrives – and anyways, it’s far too earlier in the day for sleep, lazybones! See how high the sun rests in the sky?”
“Ah, who cares,” said Lalie. “I’m tired enough to snooze through an a-bomb. I’ll lie under this tree and put my hair over my eyes and that’ll set me right as rain.” And she ambled over to the tree and did just that, snoring like a brigade of soldiers with megaphones.
But the sun was strong that day, and the sky was still clear enough. And the beams of light snuck down the long blue air and stole through Lalie’s wire-thick hair, twitch and toss and turn in her sleep as she might, until all she could do was wake up snarling, time after time.
“Shut off your nonsense!” she shouted at the sun.
“Turn off your nightlight!” she snarled again.
“GO. AWAY.” she requested politely.
And at last she just tilted back her head and screamed loud enough to blow all the dirt out from under her nails and the lashes from her eyes. Then she picked up the dirt and lashes, rolled them right ‘round her palm lickety-split, and hurled them at the sun in a hard ball, WHAM.
And down it went, out like the light.

Now, at first Lalie was okay with this. She’d been trying to get some shut-eye after all, right? And she did, and she did. Snored bigger than ever, too.
But when she woke up in the middle of the ever-night with icicles on her toes and under her armpits and in her big mouth, well, even she thought this was too much of a good thing.

“This is LOUSY,” Lalie complained. “I just wanted the sun to shut up for a minute and stop glowing at me, but now it’s gone and made me all chilly. This wouldn’t happen if people listened to me. I’ll have to replace it.”
So Lalie walked around in the dark sunless world with arms outstretched – tripping over the odd tree-trunk or smashed mountain as she went – until she found something new and smooth and strong; the body of a great tall fruit-tree that had withstood all her bluster and violence so far. She shook it gently and heard the soft, full rustle of ripe, swaying fruit above her.
“Huh,” she said to herself. “I bet I could use this.”
“Don’t you do it!” herself warned. “This will be the final straw. The great sky-dragon Cymm, devourer of all flowers, cousin of the far stars, queen and king of the clouddom, thunderer of renown, and last and largest of her kind (and by far the worst-tempered) lives in that very tree, sleeping at this very moment! If you disturb it, she will emerge ready to kick ass and take names and you don’t want to be on that list!”
“I worry too much,” she told herself. And with that she kicked the tree hard enough to split it in half, caught the biggest and ripest fruit as it fell, swore at it so hard it burst into full flame, and lobbed it into the sky, where it stuck like a fly in a web.
“There!” said Lalie proudly, shaking her right hand free of flames (it was charred bone-deep). “Better than ever!”
But as she stood there, admiring her handiwork, a roar filled the air. The new sun shook and shimmered in its place, and its skin bulged as a sinister form erupted from its surface, coiling down to the earth as fast as lightning and three times as fierce. It was the great sky-dragon Cymm, ender of evil, smiter of the timid, devourer of all flowers, cousin of the far stars, queen and king of the clouddom, thunderer of renown, and last and largest of her kind (and by far the worst-tempered)! Her eyes were fiery red and her scales were blinding blue and her crest was a rainbow, and she was just a little tiny bit longer than your thumb, most of her body being her beautifully plumed tail.
“Is this the lout that has defiled my marvelous land?!” she asked indignantly, body swollen to half-again her normal breadth with the force of her peevishness. “The chump that has knocked down my forests, stamped in my mountains, hummocked my hills, and consumed all of my animal pets and companions in the most indecent and voracious fashion?!”
“Yup!” said Lalie, grinning all the way around her head four and a half times. “Look at you! How are you so tiny? You’re not even the size of my snots! If I hold my fingernail to my eye, you don’t exist! Are you a dragon or a dragonfly? Hah! Hah! Hah!”
And as Lalie rolled back her head in pure, endless delight, the great sky-dragon Cymm, ender of evil, smiter of the timid, devourer of all flowers, cousin of the far stars, queen and king of the clouddom, thunderer of renown, and last and largest of her kind (and by FAR the worst-tempered, let me tell you) shot down her britches like a speeding bullet. And before Lalie knew what was happening, she fixed her teeth around the largest boil on Lalie’s buttock, and she bit down, hard.
The great sky-dragon Cymm did not have big teeth, but they WERE very sharp.
“YOW!” yelled Lalie, and before she’d even finished that one she’d moved on to “OWW!” because Cymm had found the second-largest boil on Lalie’s buttock. And so on to “AWP!” and “EEP!” and “YAH!” and “AIE!” and “HOI!” and “AGH!” all on through every combination of every damned syllable, because the moment Lalie tried to swat Cymm she just moved on to another boil and another bite, faster than a greased pig and a little more than a hundred times as angry. By the time the great sky-dragon found the smallest boil on Lalie’s buttock all she could do was moan, and when her teeth sunk home there well… she shouted pure nonsense, butted her head on the moon, shook herself every which way all at once and just before, and ran back across the river she’d emptied so fast she filled it up again behind her, along with a lot of very surprised fish.
The great sky-dragon Cymm, for whom titles hold no import, was still very cross about the desecration of her home. But she’d retained her intruder’s pants, which gave her both some satisfaction and the makings of a new home until her tree’s saplings grew fresh fruit.

So that’s the story of the only fight Lalie ever lost.
Just don’t tell her I told you, eh?