So.

So, I did what any young man with too much spit, and not enough sense would do. I fixed to concoct some heroism.

“Todd,” Ashli whispered, “Todd, we gotta get back to the house, okay? We can come around the back way.”

“No. No, Ash. I’ve yet to levy mine advantage,” I drew out my book from where it was lodged beneath and between my belt and band. With dissatisfaction, I discovered I had sweat some into the cover. I extended a thumb awkwardly off my club and riffled the lace edge of the amulet in my pocket. “And you’ve been sparing of yours.”

“Todd…”

“Simons can get to Maynard.”

“Whoa, now. Hold on, now,” our man laughed uncertainly.

We ignored the hand’s protest.

“Have you tested it yet?”

I inspected the hairline crack which had extended along the length of my bludgeon. Slinging off my bag I rifled through it for a sufficient replacement. “No,” I admitted.

“You know what it does?”

“I am roughly certain,” I asserted.

“Todd!”

“Have faith. Faith in me, and in the Twelve that was.” I exhaled slowly. “And If I’m wrong, we can still run, after.”

Hand Simons’ teeth were chattering, but he kept to chopping nonetheless. Frankly, as a grown man, he was demonstrably better suited to the defense than the both of us put together. “Sounds good to me, I can see you back home in –”

“Simons!” I barked. “What you draggin’ for? Go get on to Maynard!”

My cousin glared at me, and I glared right back. Then she shook her head, begrudged of my commitment. “Ryder, he needs your help. You’ve got your snake wiggle, and we’re fine. Go.”

“My [Wicked Asp’s Lunge]?”

I threw my hands into the air. “Simons, Go. For goodness sake, go!”

Trepidatious and reluctant, Ryder Simons bounced on his heels. He wavered. He searched us for some uncertainty that he might parlay into changing his fate. Then he plunged ahead, shouting cusses of foul intensity as he hacked into a [variant: aluminum quadra-stilt sentry]. The tall poles of the thing bent crooked as it collapsed, and the man waded, swinging beyond it into the tide.

“[Wicked Asp Lunge],” Ashli spat.

“Man prayed up a miracle, and all he got was an ergonomic hop,” I derided him inequitably. “Keep them off me, Ash.”

Her complexion was caught between the influence of two oppositional forces: fright and urgency affected to whiten her like the shroud, but exertion of the body had lent her a particular redness and inflammation. Overall, she was sweaty, and blotchy of countenance, and more than either of those, she was upset.

I imagine I would not have presented better, and I understand that it is both uncivil and impolitic of me to make particular notice of a lady’s feature. I only mean to bring light to the fact that she was unhappy, and hurt, and it had been my choices which had brought her to this discomfort. If I could not realize, within this venture, a serendipitous and measurable difference of outcome to justify her hardship; well then, that would be my shame to bear.

I provided Ashli with a tincture of invigorating yaupon1 extract and magnesium-fortified bile ferment. She tipped the tiny bottle back unhesitantly: draining it with a most supreme revulsion. “I’m pulling you out if anything goes wrong,” she gagged.

Nodding, I sunk down to my elbows into my bag. Pushing aside the various ossa, I relied on my intuitions to guide me towards the most efficacious choice. There was a rib I set aside, which pricked tiny needles of intention towards my skin; but I did not want Yellow. The straight length of antler, I did not even consider, I’d chilled of Blue enough that night to eliminate it from my selection. I had made effort at the house to filter Purple from my choices, but its heavy, floral, dustiness was so commonplace, and nigh ever-present that I felt it dirtying my wrists anyway.

I should, and do, clarify that obviously, none of our goods were deep into their hue. Whether at the start, middle, or end of their life, The Lady had knelt each and all of them, and so you must understand these qualities to be echoes; or perhaps unsettled points of disagreement in a conversation which had long since passed its conclusion.

My fingers wrapped around the middle of a slender radius, sourced from the foreleg of a fawn. The hairs of my arm went slicked. The blisters on my palm cooled. I closed my eyes, and perceived an available depth which was the narrowest shade greater than sight could see. I tasted the aroma of flexibility, and a harbored potential for swift motion. These sensations were fragile. They were slight. I knew them only by my years of practiced sensitivity; of a childhood spent at the edges, and attending to the fine variations of the invisible.

Of the many hues and flavors of ’vader providence, Fire and Wet were the two we knew by names other than color. I suspect a myriad of reasons for this nomenclature, and I will have more to say on both of them, and on all the others in due time (in particular, it is my suspicion that the English tongue is clumsy over the words orange and cyan and if for no other reason we preferred the alternate terms).

But my mind remembered the salted wind of the Aegean. My skin longed for the fibrous reeds which sprouted from the banks of the black-silted Nile. This particular bone I held was correct. It was right for my purpose.

Thump! I struck the tortoise shell at my hip with the relic of a lion. The resound was deep.

“Okay, that’s freaky,” Ashli flinched. But her next swing of the vakero broke a locust with a sudden and casual ease.

The gòshëm had shuddered. I saw it spread like a ripple through their number, fading as it crossed the pond. Still, the effect had been flawed. I had allowed too much of a pollution to divert my instrument from the cause for which I’d picked it: the favonian2 taste of the nurturing, fertile breeze.

I hitched and hiked the shell, assembling its securement such that it hung fast and rested against my belly. I struck it twice with the smaller fawn shin, and the percussion was sharper, tighter, higher pitched.

Michael O’Carroll was overcome with a thoughtful expression. He adjusted the position of his feet.

Three more rolling, soft strikes. Then the thickness of caked Blue sloughed off a layer as I beat the humerus against my drum again. The noise carried further, cleaner, more precise and encompassing.

Maynard chose a different angle through which to stumble. Michael judged a more perfect length of rope, such that his sweep cleared an avenue for the other man to fall into.

I strode to the side, and Ashli moved to guard me in time with my step.

“Stop, that!” Cried Simons. The serpent had been crawling the obstructing mountain, and the surprise of open ground had unbalanced the man. “Givin’ me the heebies and the jeebies.”

The simple notation of Rudiment was laid open out in front of me. I had a little metal rack, stolen from the toilet, which served as a shelf for my book. I hooked it into the opposite side of the shell, affixed from the holes which had once accommodated its occupant.

I struck a flam, a drag, a paradiddle – a mill and a roll.

It cannot be denied that man finds strength from their individual will; that by their initiative and ambition they might thrive or excel. But it cannot be understated how we may be weakened by cross-purposes; how our heroic intentions may be confounded if allowed to lead in several directions at once.

The Lady was present with us in three voices. Suddenly, she spoke in one. The Grace of the Witch had hidden itself from the unyielding attention of her own divine cousin; there appeared between them a concord of purpose.

Minerva was the hidden water, the groundwater river. She flowed between and underneath, and mediated all of the jagged edges of resentments.

The amulet in my pocket began to slowly unfurl of its own volition.