11th Transmission:

I know there is a divine dominion within the things I cannot understand;

We are all ignorant gods, and in turn are ruled by our own.

But these are liminal times.

Axioms are willing clay.

In their grasping at preservation,

They will give me the blueprint of their obliteration.

-Coyote

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Thremp knew a bakery nearby. He said there would be plenty of firewood there.We could bring it back to Accretio to get him moving. And some food for me too. He said there was another arm of the river a ways out, where a human couple had built a mill that was powered by the rushing water. They ran a bakery out of their home and were on a busy travel route, so they needed to keep their ovens going day and night.

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He said the word “human,” in a way that distinguished both me and himself as something other than that. It’s clear now I’m a type of something, and human isn’t it. There was a light colored thick fur that covered Thremp’s rough dark hide. Matte rough horns curled about his ears. He had hooves and hands. I assumed there was a name for the type of thing he was.

“Such a pale young thing, and so haggard,” a woman named Constance looked at me but spoke to Thremp. “Start him on some bread and when he can keep that down, some of the jerky will do him well.”

Thremp had packed up several loaves of bread, a couple blocks of cheese and some dried meat in a bundle and tied off two stacks of chopped timber. He clutched a bundle in each fist, the bundle draped on his back. I’d made similar things often in the depths of Speculation City.

  In the absence of attention while Constance had been packing these things up, I took for myself a finely planed baker’s peel that rested near the flat stone within their oven. Its handle was the narrow and thicker wood that I preferred. The entire thing was constructed from a singular heft of hardwood. Its edge was chipped and scraped sharp from lengthy attentive use. I had only used metal edged types of the same thing; our ovens had always been too hot for anything else.

  Nobody noticed as I grabbed it and ran off, but Thremp quickly tracked me down with what he had attained for me and we continued to walk quietly back toward Accretio. I gave my new paddle a few cursory swings. Thremp looked at me with concern and a soft understanding half-smile.