What a tirade of cynicism! I am not like this at all, I do assure you. I have this lockbox hidden inside me, you see… do come find it, will you?
It is a sage truth that there can never be too many disappointed wives.
Her lips found mine. Have I missed something? I have not. Quick as a cat upon a mouse, a cock upon a snail, a crow upon a sliver of dead meat. And her tongue went looking for the treasure chest. She didn’t believe me, recall? They never do.
In my weakness, which I call upon in times of need, I could not resist.
Was she the most beautiful woman I ever knowingly shared fluids with? She was indeed. Shall I recount the details? I shall not. In protection of her sweet modesty, of that luscious night my lips shall remain forever sealed.
Oh, forget that. I cupped her full breasts, which is what men do for some unknown reason, except perhaps that it has something to do with the way we gauge value, upon scales as it were, replete with aesthetic appreciation, engineering terminology and so on. With a dancer’s grace (and muscle) she drew one meaty thigh up along my left hip, grinding her mound against my crotch with an undulating, circular gyration that snapped the buttons of my collar and burst seams everywhere. With nefarious insistence, that leg somehow wrapped itself to rest athwart my buttocks (buttocks, what a maddeningly absurd word), her taut calf appearing upon my right, curling round (was this even possible?) to hook over my hip. If this was not outrageous enough, the very foot at the end of that selfsame leg suddenly plunged beneath my breeches to snare the rearing tubeworm of my weakness, between big toe and the rest.
At this point, she’d already closed one hand about the bag and was rolling the marbles to and fro, whilst her other hand was driving a finger against previously unexplored areas of sexual sensitivity in that dubious crack people of all genders cannot help but possess.
And my thoughts at this stage in the proceedings? Picture, if you will, a newborn’s expression of interminable stunned witless stupidity, wide as a bright smile following wind, eyes spread to the wonder of it all when every bit of that ‘all’ is entirely beyond comprehension. If you have reared children or suffered the fate of caring for someone else’s, then you know well the look I faint describe herein. This was the state of my organ of thought. Immune to all intrusion as my clothing miraculously melted away and she mounted herself smooth as perfumed silk, only to suddenly pull free, unwind herself with serpent grace, and step back.
“You get the rest when I am redeemed.”
Women.
I am at a loss for words. Even all these decades later. At a loss. Forgive.
For all our conceits we are, in the end, helpless creatures. We grasp all that is within reach, and then yearn for all beyond that reach. In said state, how can we hope for redemption? Staggering off to my bedroll, I slept fitfully that night, and was started awake just before dawn when Steck Marynd returned on his weary horse, the trundled form of Nifty Gum straddling the beast’s rump.
Mild and fleeting my curiosity at the absence of the Entourage, until exhaustion plucked me free of the miserable world one last time before the sun rose to announce the twenty-fifth day upon Cracked Pot Trail. A Recounting of the Twenty-Fifth Day
His face bleak, Steck Marynd crouched before the ash heaped hearth, and told his tale whilst we gnawed on what was left of Calap Roud. Bludgeoning the heat with the sun barely squatting on the eastern hills. Turgid the dusted air through which crazed insects flitted. Squalid and pinched these faces on pilgrimage to expressions of ecstatic release. Unmindful the implacable mules and unhampered the innocent horses.
The host sat in fret. Tiny, Midge and Flea crouched and picked like rock-apes over the last of the unspoiled meat. Relish braided blades of grass, making small nooses. Mister Must puttered about the carriage, pausing to scratch his backside every now and then, before adding more leaves to the pot of tea, stirring and whatnot. Apto Canavalian huddled beneath his threadbare blanket, as if withering beneath the murderous glares of Brash Phluster. Purse Snippet sipped at her steaming cup and a hand and a foot was visible from the ditch where Sellup was lying.
Tulgord Vise paced, fondling his pommel as knights will do.
Arpo Relent, alas, had not moved a single twitch from his facedown deliberations, and this was ominous indeed.
As for Nifty Gum, why, from what could be seen in that bunch and fold of cloak, that haystack of once glistening gold hair now as disheveled as a hairball spat up by a dragon, he was at the very edge of gibbering unreason, as might afflict a famous person no-one wanted to know anymore. Buffeted by our disregard, he sat like an overgrown milestone, head lowered, hands hidden, his boots splashed with dark stains and churning with flies.
Steck Marynd prefaced his recount with a shudder and hands up at his face, as if in horror of memories resurrected. Then he lowered those weathered hands, revealing a visage of guttered faith, and began.
I am a man of doubts, though with eyes set upon me none would say such a thing. Is this not fair? Stalwart and firm, is Steck Marynd. Slayer of demons, hunter of necromancers, the very spine of the Nehemothanai-you will be silent, Mortal Sword, for even you must accept that this is a bloodied trail I have followed far longer than you. I am the cutter excising the cancer of evil, the surgeon setting blade to the tumour of cold malice. Such is the course of my life. I have chosen it and do not begrudge this nest of scars.
Yet, there are doubts within me, the begat of the very life I have chosen for myself. I tell you all this: when one looks into the eye of evil, one’s very soul is shaken, and trembles but one tug from uprooted and forever lost. The ground becomes uncertain underfoot. Balance tilts awry. To then strike it down, to destroy it utterly, is an act of self-preservation. In defense of one’s own soul. It is like that. Each and every time. But there are moments when it is not enough, not nearly enough.
Are we the children of gods? If so, then what god would so countenance such ignoble spawn? Why is the proper and good path so narrow, so disused, while the cruel and wanton ones proliferate in endless swarm? Why is the choice of integrity the thinnest branch within reach? While the dark wild tree is a mad web across half the sky?
Oh, yes, I know. You poets will sing to me of value gauged in the strain of the challenge, as if sheer difficulty is the meaning of worth. If righteousness was easy, you say, it would not shine like gold. And do not beggars dream of gold, just as the fallen dream of salvation, and the coward dreams of courage? But you do not understand anything. Do the gods exult in the temptations they fling before us? Why? Are they insane? Are they, in fact, eager to see us fall? Give us the clear and true path, and in the act of seeing the darkness falls away, the lures vanish, the way home beckons us all.
If you would awaken our souls, dear gods, be so good as to then sweep the shadows from the road ahead.
No, the gods have all the moral rectitude of children. They created nothing and are no different from us, knuckled to the world.
Listen! I have no faith in any of you. And naught in me either. Do none of you see how this pilgrimage has already failed? Oh, easy enough for the poets to comprehend that hoary truth- seeking fame we step into their path and cut them down, and then gnaw on their bones. And what of you, Sardic Thew? And you, Lady Snippet? And the Dantoc and her footman? You have eaten of the flesh and it was the easiest road of all, wasn’t it? And who stood tallest with armoured excuses? Why, none other than Tulgord Vise, Champion of Purity, and indeed the Well Knight Arpo Relent, paladin of virtue.