Fourteenth Transmission

You didn’t expect me to get on the other side of your story so quickly, did you?

Did you think this was a one way kind of thing? That you could simply listen in and mimic the things you heard?

It’s listening, too.

We’re having a conversation.

-Coyote

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I think Accretio didn’t want to walk over the bony looking shards that littered the grounds behind us. They stepped at quickened pace past the pit and onto the short cliff that dropped to ocean waves. They stood there for a while, peering at the clean mirror split of ocean and sky.

  They let out what sounded like a resigned grunt. A sort of gurgling volcanic sound. The ground below us gave way, slowly and patiently, under the weight of the Hoardosphere’s stance. We slipped into the current and drifted toward a different shore, up the coast.

  Past that, a twisting city of spires and towers loomed.

“You’ve got trees starting to grow, Accretio. You might have forests of your own, soon.”

Getting them to speak helped with a kind of flexing tension that hadn’t subsided in my mind. Thremp’s death lingered and pulled taught my thoughts. The slow bass of their voice’s pitch, and the time with which they took to talk helped the images fade into reverberant shadows.

  They spoke, “The act of collection, the placement of the seeds upon my shell with design and the intent in their eventual use has helped to cultivate a new life from the chaos we wade through, Elk the Witness.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

They lilted and pitched with small corrections, letting the current take us toward shore.

  “This is the process. I am now but raw hide stretching into canvas. You are the rack, the easel and the brush.”

  I leaned back on a fine gravelly nook backed with broad flat stone that had become my resting spot. I could feel the warmth of the oven below held softly in that stone, slowing my breath along with Accretio’s words. I examined the Baker’s Peel, its wood now twisted rivulets of stark white, shadowy red and golden wood grain. It had soaked up whatever forces were at play in that massacre. It had grown denser, its flat prying surface had the weight of a weapon now and not a baking implement.

  I tested the feel of wielding it. I placed the strange disc shaped relic we had recovered onto the burden end of it. The stone slid about easily as we bobbed about in the water, but with practice I kept the Peel balanced and level, and the stone held still. I had to scramble my feet about the gravelly nook, my arms flexed at shoulder height.

  I asked, “Who’s the tanner? Or the carpenter? Or the Painter?”

We floated in silence. My endurance was spent. The Baker’s Peel clattered. The stone plate fell with a delicate shifting of the fine gravel. The tension was back and my breath still shortened. Hands on knees looking down all the worlds orbited about me.

  “So we didn’t mess up Thremp’s plan?”

Stop it.

“So I’m just a function of the whims of cosmic tradesmen and artists?”

It was just a metaphor… chill out. It’s way too early for any big revelations, this is starting to seem kind of hacky.

“It wouldn’t stop there though, would it? What dying world would my painter be witnessing themselves?”

Accretio hit the sandy shore and began his slow saunter forward.

I’ve barely even fleshed you out as a character. Just keep adventuring, this kind of wild epiphany hasn’t been earned yet.

“And who’s fault is that?” Elk and Accetio spoke in slow unison.

They walked toward the city.