The cold was here and it sucked but at least, on that day, the snow stopped falling. Now there was just a blanket of it covering everything, making your feet wet wherever you go with chunks of snow clinging to your fetlocks. The air itself wasn’t biting like I expected winter to be--I guess the salt in the air kissed it just enough so the mildness of the sea kept it from being so harsh--but you could tell it was gonna be muddy and awful when spring broke through.

I was looking at that snow now; at the dips and the trees and the pristine shine of it coating large swaths of land inside the World’s Edge. No shadowy hoofprints to break the even, glistening edge of the crusty snowdrifts.  And its untouched nature bothered me in a way I couldn’t place as I stalked to and fro, Chico gliding high on the chilly air since my back was too hot and fuzzy for him at the moment to perch. I scanned the land with my eyes, my ears combing for something, a voice, a shout, an anything, and it was days later before all the nothing I’d seen or heard finally compelled me to say something. 

I guess, coming to live here, I’d just assumed I’d fall in line in whatever task best suited me. I didn’t consciously think about it since, y’know, that whole crisis with this being the Moon’s land and the scruple of whether or not I was a traitor against my own ideals by calling this place home--y’know, the usual. I just...stuck around, hung out, and played grab-ass for a season and a half waiting for the call to action from someone who needed me to kick ass or at least train to do so, since that was a thing I could actually do, y’know?

But the call never came. And I didn’t think about it cuz, what, it ain’t like it’s my business, right? Except now I was standing here in a snow-covered land, and it was untouched--pristine--unbroken by any kind of patrol. It hit me with a punch I wasn’t expecting, an anxiety that was starting to steadily creep in my bones. This guy...what’s his name….Kisamomo. Kisamoa. Yeah, whatever. Kisamama’s appearance got me thinking about shit. Like. There was always gonna be something coming stalking this way, and whether or not Kisa’s intent was to do us harm didn’t matter, cuz there was gonna come a time when something who did wanna fuck it all up was gonna crawl their way over here and who was gonna be there at the border to keep them from taking it?

Who was I gonna fight beside?

Maybe I missed something, I dunno, I ain’t infallible. Maybe there had been a meeting, a call to action, and I’d just been missing the shit. Whatever, whatever, I’ll take that blame if I deserved it, but there was still something that needed to be fixed regardless. So I stopped in my tracks in the trough I’d cut in the snow with my pacing and belted out, “HEY, WHO THE FUCK FIGHTS AROUND HERE?” and waited to see who would come out the woodwork with a wagging finger.





talk