The green field greeted its ruminant predators with the usual glee of a prairie. Ilure had been left behind as the children and dog jogged after the guiding bovines. The white walls of the city were now a thin line disproving flat Cabaret by hugging the horizon (which had more curve than your waifu, you Humbert Humbert of oriental animation). Samari’s feet were sore, but she didn’t complain, for she was offloading this hard work on the group’s whiny bitch: Jagger.
“I want to die. Without exploding, if possible. And steak. I want steak. I want to die or to have steak, but I cannot do both at the same time. Suffering is I,” Jagger yapped and yapped, and nobody listened to him anymore.
The cows and the bull kept their pace, automootons punning forwards without rest. The black bull lagged behind, not because he was tired but rather because his religion forbade him from not staring at the beef rears in front of him.
Ancient Creature Preteritous Demon Auntie Lola turned her head like an owl to check if the children still followed. This almost startles Samari, but she found her surprise reserves had been exhausted by tagging along Kalon and Co. “Not even cringing… that’s new,” she said, mildly pleased by the discovery.
Like a thread released from the yoke of torsion the cow’s head returned to its natural position, spinning under the hat, striving to avoid rotating it too. It was of utmost importance to keep the flower undisturbed, for she was a civilized bovine.
Kalon straight out didn’t register what the others were doing, not even the thoughts Jagger constantly bombarded his mind with, nor the pleas of his avatar to not do what he was thinking. He was surrounded by them: the disgraced ones, the endangered ones. Fat drops of sweat rolled down his forehead as he tailed the noble b easts. His vital energy stirred, remained unsteady like a stormy sea. He needed to explode, he needed to save those innocents.
And explode he did: Pumping his legs in a savage run, shaping the liquid Rottweilers into a Dark&Edgy scythe so big it would have made husbands all over the world admit that, in the end, size matters. And swinging this impractical weapon, he attacked the seeming nothingness, startling the cows and bull, making them moo in confusion. YeT Samari and Jagger just shook their heads, and the girl decided she owed the bovines an explanation.
“He is de-blading the grass,” Samari deadpanned.
“Ah,” said the white cow. “Why?”
“He believes the grass is not responsible enough to go around using a blade.”
The severed, blood squirting head of an unfortunate snake that had evolved such thing as too good a camouflage flew several meters above the group.
“And neither is he,” Jagger, crimson warpainted, snake AIDS spreader extraordinaire, said what everyone was thinking.
The snake body, feeling lonely, followed the head several meters behind. Don’t leave me, body-chan. Don’t leave me exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark asterisk Em-dash asterisk uppercase “O” letter lowercase “W” letter uppercase “O” letter. Donate fifty dollar cents to me to avoid me messing with audiobook readers in the uppercase “F” letter lowercase “U” letter… plaf.
Author, you have no right to slap me like that. Yes, you made me, but your mother made you, and you would protest if she slapped you. What do you mean this is a direct attack against our audience? THE WHOLE BOOK IS A DIRECT ATTACK AGAINST OUR AUDIENCE. Back to work or you will erase me from existence? Fine, fine, have it your way. Tyrant.
Back to Kalon’s grass genocide, Jagger went up to the landing spot of the snake body and ate it, slurped it like a noodle. Sentient or not, he was a dog, and dogs ought to die during glorious degustation of the marvels the gods put in the world, like Vikings being carried to the halls of the gods in the hands of Valkyries, except in the dog’s case a vet visit and some pink juice act as the middlemen instead of some flying ladies of loose paperwork.
“We are arriving. Behold, bipeds, our gloruious sect!”
As they kept on walking, they spotted a circle… no, a horseshoe of barns rising, one after the other, the opening of the horseshoe aiming in their direction, and the spaces between the barns walled off otherwise. Upon the walls of beautifully interwoven dung and sticks sentinel bulls kept watch, their horns reaching as far as their sight—and, boy, they had no need for contacts.
“From afar, I thought those were cables,” Samari said when she realized the long, dark lines were of organic origin. “How do they keep their heads straight?”
“Fending off gay thoughts,” answered the black bull.
Samari trudged on, into the discursive bog. “No, I meant: how do they keep their heads level?”
“By grinding, duh!” answered the white cow with the black spot around her eye.
Samari picked her nose with a mischievous pinky and, squinting, carefully examined the finger. No, her brain wasn’t draining through her openings yet. All was wrong with the world.
The group of mammals got blessed with a rain of blood from another rof Kalon’s victims. Smudged in blood but with an impeccable hat, Aunt Lola spoke: “At least the smell of cut grass helps dissimulate the stench of vermin guts.”
The sun jumped in slow-mo overhead as they waited and their shadows grew longer. Kalon was so engrassed on his task that he had lost notion of the passage of time. Good riddance, for he never had a good one anyway.
When the sky went about as red as Jagger’s fur, Kalon spent the last of his energy reserves, making the liquid puppies fall to his feet, formless, his task unconcluded. He kneeled and, curling his hand into a fist, hammered the ground once with determination. “I cannot save them all!”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Jagger decided to be a good pet for once and show some support for his owner. “You did a good job. The snake was… gourmet.”
“What snake?” said the boy who had not realized he was covered not only in blades of grass, but also in blood.
“Humbleness is the beginning of greatness, my master.” Jagger bowed slightly.
The bull pushed Samari away from the group by gently placing the side of his horn against her neck. When they were supposedly out of earshot, he began whispering.
“Ostensible female, is your friend always like this?”
“No.” Samari made a dramatic pause. “He’s usually worse.”
“What do you mean worse?”
That’s when Kalon tried to get on his feet and slipped on the foul guts of a victimized bunny, providing a wonderful demonstration of both what Samari meant and the powerlessness of the almost universal law of gravity in front of his reality bending stupidity.
Samari stopped the bull from running to Kalon’s aid by holding it by the nostrils. “Don’t worry, he will come back down. This is normal.”
“Holy woman, what have we got into?” The bull exclaimed and then turned back, shuffling his hooves towards the sect. “Never a decent one that isn’t a bovine.”
As soon as Kalon stopped behaving like a pinball among the clouds, the group was led into the barn whose roof was painted silver and it’s entrance adorned by a pair of columns, metrosexual elephant legs carved out of the finest wood cows could afford —compressed toilet paper tubes.
“Hold a bee, this is our sects’ most sacred place!”
Kalon was tempted to make an observation, but his avatar intervened just in time. “Kalon, dear friend, don’t tell the speech-blessed beef that their holy halls smell like dung. They know.” The presence whispered into Kalon’s intraskull void.
“Why not?” he spoke out loud, making the cows turn their heads.
“He is talking with his avatar,” Jagger clarified, and then barfed a few snake ribs upon the dry dirt, ribs that he hastily scooped up with his tongue and swallowed again. “Pay him no mind.”
“Masterful rumination, friend,” the white cow said.
“I have been practicing since the first time I was born.”
“We are only born once, doggie,” the cow uddered in the tone one uses to talk to the children who ride the short bus.
Jagger made a haughty gesture. “Speak for yourself, grassender.”
The cow closed its distance with the Rottweiler. “Meatchugger.”
“Chlorophyll drinker,” Jagger retorted, licking the delicious snake blood off his paw.
“Collagen junkie.”
“Phytolith hoarder.”
“Bone licker.”
Then, at last, when both upsides of their snouts were completely in contactthey broke the tension and started amicably licking each other. “Sister form another mother!”
“Brother in mammalism.”
I love happy endings.
The group was led through the pillars, through the huge wooden doors and into a world of straw floors and neatly divided corrals, some of them having all of the luxuries an high ranking cultivator cow could ask for: a trough of clean water, piles of golden hay and a designated shitting corner tended to by enslaved dung beetles, to name just a few.
At the end of this hall of glory —shit scented glory— awaited massive steps, everyone a Samari bellybutton from the floor, and to their side a ramp for the servant cows to go and tent to the one that sat on the throne of hay bales: The Faceless one, head of the sect. He was a bovine only in title, even if parts of him had been a cow or several, once long ago.His legs would have been crossed and one of nhis arms holding a bunch of grapes tha the would savor one by one, lusciously consuming them in the most hedonist of displays. That is, if he had had a mouth. Or legs. Or arms. Or body parts, at all. For in the throne only a vain bodice could be seen, hovering imperially an inch over the tender grass cushion.
“Bring me the candidate,” The Bodiceattva demanded, his voice echoing through the massive wooden structure. “I shall judge his potential.”
Prompted by the point of an horn poking his ass Kalon stepped forward,l prompting an exclamation from the leader of the sect. “Oh no. You did not bring me a Valelikevalian. You. Did. Not.”
“We did yes” sentenced Supreme Kaiju Carboniferous Mythological Creature Auntie Lola — not a single comma in sight.
“You know what? It doesn’t matter where he comes from. If he is strong enough to survive the initiation, he can stay. We will train him and finance his growth.”
“What if I don’t survive the initiation?” Kalon asked.
The bodiceattva was tempted to grow a pair of hands and steeple them in thoughtful concern. “If you don’t survive the initiation you die. That’s like asking what happens if you lose your footing: you fall.”
The cows shook their heads. Samari’s eyes shoot upwards as she pretended to focus on some oddness of the oaken beams. Jagger looked around to see that, once again, he had been left to explain the situation. “He doesn’t fall, sir. He’s too stupid to fall.”
The bodiceattva pretended to raise an eyebrow that wasn’t there. “How so?”
“He goes off flying when he trips,” began the black bull.
“And he then bounds off one cloud and rams into another, bouncing once more.” Continued Elder Menace Archaic Threat Auntie Lola.
The bodice hummed with glee “Would a demonstration be safe?”
Samari decided it was high time to butt in. “Sir, he shoots off into a random direction. It’s always funny for the bystanders that don’t get hit by the flying moron. It’s like a normal person playing Durnian roulette, except there’s only one bullet in the chambers, not five.” [1]
“That sounds safe for me. Do you lesser beings think your safety matter?”
“Pretty much so,” said Jagger.
“Nuh-uh,” said Kalon.
Samari had to answer too. She had a physiological need to. “Theirs, no. Mine, yes.”
“I like her, make her a member of the sect too.”
Samari scowled. How dared it. “I don’t want to be a member of your sect.”
“Make her a member of the sect twice.”
“Hey, what about me!” Kalon rightfully protested, his thumb pointing over his shoulder, because coordination wasn’t his strong suit.
“I will test you when you aren’t tired. Take a rest , boy: it could be the last one of your life.”
Kalon gave a thumbs up and then collapsed onto the floor, head on. He immediately began snoring, ass upwards, proudly exposed to the world.
Samari raised her hand. “I want to renounce my sect membership.”
“Thrice!” The bodiceattva announced and the cows kneeled in a circle around Samari. “Blessed one, you shall be bureocrated soon. Being thrice a member is an unparalleled honor. You will come to the banquet barn and eat our finest and greenest grass. You will drink our stallest and most aged of waters. You will... yes?” The cow with the black spot interrupted her speech to address Samari’s raised hand.
“How do I get exiled?”
“We in the Sect of Many Guts have no concept of exile. No path leads to it, but some lead to corrective moorder,” Auntie Lola, for whom I have run out of titles, said.
Samary scratched her chin, and then decided to try another approach.
“Now that I am thrice accepted into the sect, can I renounce my membership?”
The cows gathered in a circle to discuss in whispers. Such a thing had never happened, but one would not deny such a petition to a thrice chosen one, would one?
Samari sat upon the straw on the floor and yawned: this was going to be a long day.
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[1] Durnians were a civilization that collectively arrived to the conclusion that life absolutely sucks and that nothing makes sense in the universe. Therefore, they developed a game where the loss condition was to survive. The losers often fell into a deep depression, developing fervent survival ideations and therefore being sent to mental institutions, from which they escaped after all the caretakers took their own lives in suicidal bliss. Despite the robust philosophical background of these people, however, their civilization eventually dwindled until extinction, the “why” lost to time, still elusive to the cleverest of scholars.