rsbohn
She made dough from bits of acorn flour and last fall's mud from the edge of the small pond out by the apple orchard. Whipping it into a semblance of pie crust required quail eggs and two snails, lightly smushed. When it was finished, she filled the doughy crust with everything a young woman loved at fifteen: dog fur and paperback books with pencilled prices on the inside cover, all under a dollar. Sprinkled crimped notebook paper over the top, topped with Converse shoe laces. Bake under the ferns in April, when they are barely fiddleheads. Devour.
White trails across the sky: seventeen comets. Black trails over the fence: raccoons, and more raccoons. Banking all these, a pocketful of images to eat one at a time when I am old.
Across the Zone of Avoidance lies another galaxy, slowly pulling us in. Passing through gas and debris and comet dust, we transform: a hundred million lifetimes from now, I will see you again, as through fractals, you and me split and mirrored, over and over.
She wore dignity in scraps; the single petals of daisies, the bit of ragweed that made him sneeze. The flexing branch of a golden tree, behind her head.
And still it cloaked her, so that her steps made no sound in the forest. When Summer came upon him, yet sleeping, in the place he thought no one could find...
She left her dignity behind, and cast a longing look at his fragile form.
Winter would never know.
'comes the mailman. He's tapping his tambourine today. Up the walks, under trees, playing for squirrels. If he's got a message, we'll know. We'll hear it in the way the tambourine shakes. But for now, nothing. Not a single thing the wind doesn't already know.
The coupling lasted no more than a handful of minutes; the last shooting stars of the night drowned in purple dawn. Heidi looked up, through branches bare of leaves, at the clouds and never-ending sky, and listened as he put his trousers back on.
"Breakfast?" he said, without reaching for her.
"No," she said. "I'm fine."
With a soft huff of relief, he was gone, tramping back through the woods to his house, to his wife.
Heidi turned and lay her forehead against rough bark. It strummed beneath her touch. Someday, she thought. Someday.
The coarseness of his hair surprised. I had, I suppose, expected it to be silky. Still, I ran my palm across his shoulder, down his chest. He quivered.
"Beautiful beast," I said. "Do you give yourself to me?"
He lowered his head, a noble nose touching the floor. He acquiesced. Agreed to be--
Mine.
The sunlight made everything blurry--or maybe it was the hangover. She shouldn't have gone out last night with Greg. She was an agent now, expected to make critical, mature, intelligent decisions. Such as not getting wasted with a co-worker on a Tuesday night.
It had been, however, to celebrate her promotion. Stuffing her face back into the pillow, she burrowed her hands beneath it and pricked herself.
"Ouch," she muttered, and withdrew the sharp item.
Her new badge. Silver and ornate, heavy and... hers. She was officially Agent Paulson, one of the Association. One of an elite group of werewolf-hunters. One of... the victims of the worst hangover she could ever remember.
Pit bulls huddle beneath sky rockets fallen among the pick-ups and Toyotas. Vagrants gone, food gone, puddles of oil and rain water abound. Somewhere, in an asparagus-green sky, their masters rotate in silver star-condos. A rib cage expands and contracts. Far off, in an apartment building, a girl wakes, alone, in a pile of dirty laundry. She puts on shoes and coat and goes looking for them, with scraps in her pockets and lemon-scented hair.
Werewolves playing billiards again at Sam's. I hang back, watching. They're pretty good; they'll take you for a twenty or so. They're not out for blood. Not like the kids in their hoodies, pretending to be sixteen. Now them, you need to watch out for. They'll take you for everything you've got.
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