OWL FEATHERS
The feathers were starting to be a
nuisance. There was one in her
mouth, tickling the back of her
throat. She chewed at it as she
walked, grabbing it with her molars
and pulling it loose. Warm, copperpenny
blood flooded over her
tongue. There were others too,
sprouting up inside of her like a
strange cancer, worming their way
through her innards and muscle.
Before long she would be essentially
a girl-shaped, walking chicken,
constantly plucking at herself.
She reached between her lips
discreetly to take the feather out and
twist it between her fingers. The
movement wasn't subtle enough; she
caught the tilt of his head at the edge
of her vision.
"Feathers," she snapped.
"You should stop making out
with your owls."
"Shut up." Neither of them
wanted to talk about the feathers,
any more than they wanted to talk
about the way he was starting to
look thin and gaunt in places. It was
easier to ignore the afflictions than
to talk about what they meant. So
they just walked, in the same
direction that they had been walking
for three days already, under the
damned sun, in the middle of a
damned desert, looking for the last
of she who used to be called the
Mother of the Earth.
"We should stop," he said. The
distance of his voice told her he
already had.
Her legs kept moving, dark denim
hot against her knees, for another
five paces just to make a point
before she kicked at the dry sand,
flinging up dust and small stones
and probably pissing off a lizard
somewhere.
"She's here."
"How do you know?" he asked.
"I want water."
She tossed him the leather cask
without looking and listened to the
slow slosh as he drank. He threw it
back and she took a swallow, felt
another owl feather making its way
into her windpipe, a sore, fluttering
spot when the water passed over it.
The water was unpleasant too.
Lukewarm and dust flavored. She
stretched her arms and stared up into
the sun.
"It's a good thing we don't
sunburn." When they left the desert
they'd be the same shade they were
when they started, despite yards of
exposed skin. She glanced at his
jeans, his tight t-shirt, and at her own
tattooed wrists and thin black tank
top. A shadow passed overhead: a
buzzard. She snorted. "Look. He
probably thinks we're a couple of
lost rave kids. A quick meal. Won't
he be disappointed."
He turned shielded eyes to the
sky and chuckled. "Will he? I wish
we had come from a rave. Next time
you drag me to the middle of a
desert, it had better be for music and
glow sticks. Not some goddess
who's probably not even here. Give
me that disgusting water back."
"She is here. Can't you feel her?
She doesn't have the energy to
hide." She tossed the water to him
and he crouched down to rest, the
leather of water hanging loosely
down to the dirt. When he shook his
head, a cloud of dust fell out of his
close-cropped brown hair.
"I can't feel anything," he said.
"Except the blasted sun and
weariness that shouldn't be there."
She watched him. Hermes, the
god of thieves, an eternal seventeen
year old bitching like an old man. It
was almost funny. It would have
been, if they weren't both dying, and
he hadn't been so thin. The muscles
in his arms were becoming sinewy,
and his cheeks had hollows they
hadn't had before. He must've lost
five pounds just since they reached
the desert.
"You should eat something." She
knelt in the dirt beside him and took
off her pack. There was dried beef
inside and fruit.
"This is humiliating," he muttered
as she handed him the food.
"Death without glory always is.
Of course, I never thought it would
happen to us." She swallowed again,
and the pin of the feather poked her.
She took another drink of water. In
the old days, she would have been
able to wish the feather right out of
existence, to burn it up with a
thought, into nothing but a hiss and a
curl of smoke. It was still hard to
believe that this would be her end,
that it would be so quiet and slow,
her lungs filling up with feathers. It
would be like breathing through a
pillow. She wouldn't even be able to
scream.
"We should have seen it coming.
It's not as though it hasn't been
foretold and written about. The
twilight of the gods." He scraped up
a handful of dust and tossed it into
the air. He arched his brow.
"Dust in the wind. Funny."
"Everything born must die,
Athena."
"So says convention." She
pushed herself back up and squinted
into the harsh light. For as far as she
could see everything looked the
same. Cactuses cropped up in
strange little families. Tumbleweeds
rolled along on their way to
nowhere. It was flat, and barren, and
the last place she wanted to be:
dying in the middle of a desert.
She held out her hand and pulled
him up.
"Everything born must die," she
repeated. "But I sprang fully formed
from our father's head. So that
doesn't exactly count, now does it?
