Steven Erikson - Crack’d Pot Trail

“I’ll force him to write a proxy note first. Then we can eat him.”

“I sincerely doubt he would prove palatable. No, Brash Phluster, you will receive no weapon from me.”

“I hate you.”

Off he stormed, in the manner of a golit bird hunting snakes.

“His mind has cracked.” With this observation, Purse Snippet appeared, her cloak drawn tight about her lithe form.

“Will no one sleep this night?” I asked, in some exasperation.

“Our cruel and unhappy family is in tatters.”

To this I grunted.

“Do doubts finally afflict you, Avas Didion Flicker? I intend no mercy, be certain of that.”

“The burdens are weighty indeed, Lady Snippet, but I remain confident that I shall prevail.”

She drew still closer, her eyes searching mine, as women’s eyes are in the habit of doing when close we happen to stand. What secret promise are they hoping to discover? What fey hoard of untold riches do they yearn to pry open? Could they but imagine the murky male realm lurking behind these lucid pearls, they might well shatter the night with shrieks and flee into the shelter of darkness itself. But this is the mystery of things, is it not? We bounce through guesses and hazy uncertainties, and call it rapport, bridged and stitched with smiles and engaging expressions, whilst behind both set of eyes maelstroms rage benighted in wild images of rampant sex and unlikely trysts. Or so I fancy, and why not? Such musings are easy vanquish over probable truths (that at least one of us is either bored rigid or completely mindless with all the perspicacity of a jellyfish, and oft I have caught myself in rubbery wobble, mind, or even worse: is that intensity merely prelude to picking crabs from my eyebrows? Oh yes, we stand close and behind our facades we quiver in trepid tremulosity, even as our mouths flap a league a breath).

Where were we? Ah yes, standing close, her eyes tracking mine like twin bows with arrows fixed, whilst I shivered like two hares in lantern light.

“How, then,” asked Purse Snippet (eyes tracking… tracking- I am pinned!), “do you intend to save me, noble sir? In the manner of all those others, in a tangle of warm flesh and the oblivion of sated desires? Have you any idea just how many men I have had? Not to mention women? And each time a new candidate steps forth, what do I see in those oh-so-eager eyes?” She slowly shook her head. “The conviction writ plain that this one can do what none before was capable of doing, and what must I then witness?”

“I would hazard, the pathetic collapse of such brazen arrogance?

“Yes. But here, and now, I look into your eyes and what do I see?”

“To be honest, Lady, I have no idea.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Do you see? She had crowbar in hand, the treasure chest looms (mine, not hers, we’re being figurative here. We’ll get to the literal in a moment), and the lock looks flimsy indeed. And in her eyes what do I see? Why, the conviction that she and she alone has what it takes (whatever it takes, don’t ask me), to crack loose that mysterious lockbox of fabulous revelations that is, well, the real me.

Bless her.

Do you all finally understand my angst? I mean, is this all there is? What is this anyway? I don’t know. Ask my wives. They pried me loose long ago, to their eternal disappointment, of which they continually remind me, lest I stupidly wander into some impractical daydream (such as this: Is there some woman out there who still thinks me mysterious? I must find her! That kind of daydream). As tired old philosophers say, the scent is ever sweeter over the garden wall. And my, how we do climb.

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.