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Ceramic DM Winter 07 (Final Judgment Posted)
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<blockquote data-quote="mythago" data-source="post: 3356408" data-attributes="member: 3019"><p>Sorry, guys, I know how lame this is, but I've had about two hours' sleep and I'm not likely to get much more before tomorrow. I probably should have sat this Ceramic DM out entirely. </p><p></p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p></p><p><strong>Stepchildren</strong></p><p></p><p> This is not the story of Jackal’s first marriage, where his bride trapped his skin under a boulder and left him to shrivel up in the sun; or his second marriage, when he bragged about his beautiful long tail until Crocodile bit it off and left him too ashamed of the bushy stump to come to his own wedding; or even his third marriage, where his mother-in-law put a curse on his <em>wusuu</em> so that he had to beg all the other animals until Rabbit let Jackal borrow his own <em>wusuu</em> for his wedding night. No, this is the story of his sixth marriage, after which he ended up left with nothing but a sore nose and a packet of excellent cigarettes. Jackal slunk away from the marriage-hall but left some mischief in his path, as he always does. Listen:</p><p></p><p> The Meintje Wax Museum and House of Horror accumulated a slow layer of dead flies and dust. In its heyday, its owners charged teenagers to wander through and giggle and poke the displays while they groped each other in the dim purple-and-red light. Both the owners and the museum had seen better days. It made a good place for Jackal to get drunk undisturbed, and when he was good and liquored up he wandered around the museum, dog-laughing at the garish scenes of violence and torture. He stopped at a display showing a man wincing from deep shark bites. [1] Jackal liked this one, perhaps because it made him hungry. He blew four puffs of smoke at the wax man, dropped the butt of his cigarette on the no-slip floor and loped outside into the tall grass.</p><p></p><p>#</p><p></p><p> The wax man stood up and stretched. His half-zipped pants slid down around and he snatched at them. The air smelled of dog hair and cigarettes. He noticed the wounds on his arm and side and tentatively poked at them. There was no pain, no blood. They felt smooth. He hunted around until he found a shirt, striped with long sleeves from a horror-movie display. He pulled it over his head to hide the strange wounds; he didn’t want to frighten anyone. Confused and aimless, he wandered around the dusty warehouse until he found a corrugated steel door. He pushed it open and blinked in the sunlight. Tufts of long grass pushed through stone pathways that led to and past the warehouse. He picked one at random and began to walk.</p><p></p><p>The stone paths wound through small farms and houses. Somehow the wax man knew he must stay out of the sun, and kept to shade as much as he could, darting from overhang to tree like a strange animal.</p><p></p><p>He stopped at a farmhouse when a voice called to him. He turned to see a disheveled young man perched atop an odd puppet. [2] “Come on, he won’t hurt you,” the boy said, and then he realized it was the puppet that had spoken to him first. He came closer and squatted on the lawn, in the shade of an overturned wheelbarrow.</p><p></p><p>“He’s never spoken to a stranger before,” the young man explained.</p><p></p><p>“I’ve never seen another one like me,” the puppet said. Its voice made the wax man think of whiskey and needles. “Other than you, Rik, my friend, none really worth talking to. Ah, you, the wax man, are you one of Jackal’s bastard children?”</p><p></p><p>The wax man shrugged. The word was strange, but it resonated as true. He remembered the smell of dog and the cigarette smoke, and absently mimed bringing a cigarette to his lips.</p><p></p><p>The puppet laughed. “I do not think you want fire near you, brother. Jackal gets up to things when he’s on his own for too long without a woman, and he tries to make his own children. You need to go to him and demand your birthright if you want to be free to walk the land, not a mindless puppet. You can never marry or farm or raise children until your father claims you.”</p><p></p><p>The wax man nodded. This, he knew, was so: without a mother he had only his father to give him a place, and it seemed Jackal would not come to him; therefore, he needed to corner his father and demand the blessing due to any son.</p><p></p><p>Rik gave him a parasol to keep off the sun, a pair of sturdy shoes and a warning. “Jackal is cruel and unfair. I don’t need to tell you that, but you might forget, seeing him as your father. He’s a god, after all. Mind your step.”</p><p></p><p>There was little to say after that, and the wax man left the farm and headed for the tall yellow grass.</p><p></p><p>#</p><p></p><p> He traveled by night and curled up in the shade by day. The wax man didn’t sleep, or eat, although in the heat of the day sometimes beads of moisture would appear on his skin, turning milky and flat again in the cool of the evening. He wandered through the savannah, following the strange trail of tobacco and dirty fur that he imagined rather than smelled. It looped and meandered through piles of dung and around the territory of large, fierce animals, and wherever the wax men actually met something living it seemed to be either angry or afraid. The sturdy shoes sprouted holes, then wore through until he discarded them entirely.</p><p></p><p> He met his father’s enemies face-to-face one night when he trudged through a flooded field near an abandoned farmhouse. There was a scurrying off past his field of vision and two shiny metal figures waved to him cheerfully. [3]</p><p></p><p> “Wax man!” one of them shrieked. “You smell delightful! Won’t you help us? We were out in this muddy field looking for food and we got stuck.” Something about the tin-can-and-foil person’s voice frightened the wax man, but he couldn’t think why. </p><p></p><p> “We can tell you the way to your father,” the other called. Its voice, too, alarmed the wax man, but the promise of help was too great to resist. He waded through the wet slime of the field. Then he looked at the outstretched hand and saw that it was a monkey’s paw.</p><p></p><p> Monkey and his wife saw that the wax man had seen through their disguises. They howled with simian rage and struggled after him, but his slippery feet went in and out of the mud while their broad, flat-toed feet, made for gripping and climbing, bogged them down. They tore off their tinfoil costumes and crumpled it into balls that they hurled at him as he fled. The wax man ran until the sun started to nudge up over the horizon. He curled up under the shade of a tea bush until the sun finished its trip across the sky and went to sleep for another evening.</p><p></p><p> The wax man had no way to measure time, or how long his wanderings went, but he tracked his father’s scent until the toes were worn off his feet. He was ready to lay down and let the sun take him when he saw an unusual tree, wrapped in a cloth headdress like a woman ready to pound mealie for the evening meal. The tree would make shade when the sun went down, he thought, and went to sit beneath the tree. Its cloth stirred. </p><p></p><p> The dead branches shook as if the tree were laughing. "No! I am not one of your father's by-blows," the tree said with a woman's voice. "I am too wise to let Jackal make children with me, either. I am Auntie Rooibos, a tree of the people who live across the river, and even when I had leaves I could see your father's children for what they are. You want help, hm?"</p><p> </p><p> The wax man nodded. Even in the shade, heat-tears puddled under his eyes.</p><p></p><p> "I will tell you how to find Jackal. You will never catch him on foot; he has many years of hiding from anyone who wishes to find him. Do as I say: Strip off your clothes, and step into the sun."</p><p></p><p> The wax man obeyed. The hot noonday sun beat down on him, and he moved as if to step away, but Auntie Rooibos shook her branches at him in warning. He stood, and the wax of his naked body dripped, then ran, and by the time the sun plodded off to a well-earned rest he was no more than a flat disc of wax. </p><p> </p><p> Aunt Rooibos shook her branches in satisfaction. The people of the village would come to hang garlands of mealie stalks on her trunk, and they would see the fine, clear wax, and they would use it to make candles in honor of the gods. And the wax man's spirit would find itself on the very doorstep of his father, Jackal, who would no doubt be expecting to steal the other gods' tasty gifts of food, and not to find an angry, demanding spirit sun on his doorstep.</p><p></p><p> It would be a while before the festival, though, and just at that moment Jackal was trying to escape from his <em>seventh</em> marriage, which he had been foolish enough to do in a big city where the white men's gods tried to drop their heavy machines on him, and were getting angrier when they missed. [5] </p><p></p><p>[1] <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27871" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27871</a></p><p>[2] <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27868" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27868</a></p><p>[3] <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27870" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27870</a></p><p>[4] <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27869" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27869</a></p><p>[5] <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27872" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27872</a></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="mythago, post: 3356408, member: 3019"] Sorry, guys, I know how lame this is, but I've had about two hours' sleep and I'm not likely to get much more before tomorrow. I probably should have sat this Ceramic DM out entirely. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [B]Stepchildren[/B] This is not the story of Jackal’s first marriage, where his bride trapped his skin under a boulder and left him to shrivel up in the sun; or his second marriage, when he bragged about his beautiful long tail until Crocodile bit it off and left him too ashamed of the bushy stump to come to his own wedding; or even his third marriage, where his mother-in-law put a curse on his [I]wusuu[/I] so that he had to beg all the other animals until Rabbit let Jackal borrow his own [I]wusuu[/I] for his wedding night. No, this is the story of his sixth marriage, after which he ended up left with nothing but a sore nose and a packet of excellent cigarettes. Jackal slunk away from the marriage-hall but left some mischief in his path, as he always does. Listen: The Meintje Wax Museum and House of Horror accumulated a slow layer of dead flies and dust. In its heyday, its owners charged teenagers to wander through and giggle and poke the displays while they groped each other in the dim purple-and-red light. Both the owners and the museum had seen better days. It made a good place for Jackal to get drunk undisturbed, and when he was good and liquored up he wandered around the museum, dog-laughing at the garish scenes of violence and torture. He stopped at a display showing a man wincing from deep shark bites. [1] Jackal liked this one, perhaps because it made him hungry. He blew four puffs of smoke at the wax man, dropped the butt of his cigarette on the no-slip floor and loped outside into the tall grass. # The wax man stood up and stretched. His half-zipped pants slid down around and he snatched at them. The air smelled of dog hair and cigarettes. He noticed the wounds on his arm and side and tentatively poked at them. There was no pain, no blood. They felt smooth. He hunted around until he found a shirt, striped with long sleeves from a horror-movie display. He pulled it over his head to hide the strange wounds; he didn’t want to frighten anyone. Confused and aimless, he wandered around the dusty warehouse until he found a corrugated steel door. He pushed it open and blinked in the sunlight. Tufts of long grass pushed through stone pathways that led to and past the warehouse. He picked one at random and began to walk. The stone paths wound through small farms and houses. Somehow the wax man knew he must stay out of the sun, and kept to shade as much as he could, darting from overhang to tree like a strange animal. He stopped at a farmhouse when a voice called to him. He turned to see a disheveled young man perched atop an odd puppet. [2] “Come on, he won’t hurt you,” the boy said, and then he realized it was the puppet that had spoken to him first. He came closer and squatted on the lawn, in the shade of an overturned wheelbarrow. “He’s never spoken to a stranger before,” the young man explained. “I’ve never seen another one like me,” the puppet said. Its voice made the wax man think of whiskey and needles. “Other than you, Rik, my friend, none really worth talking to. Ah, you, the wax man, are you one of Jackal’s bastard children?” The wax man shrugged. The word was strange, but it resonated as true. He remembered the smell of dog and the cigarette smoke, and absently mimed bringing a cigarette to his lips. The puppet laughed. “I do not think you want fire near you, brother. Jackal gets up to things when he’s on his own for too long without a woman, and he tries to make his own children. You need to go to him and demand your birthright if you want to be free to walk the land, not a mindless puppet. You can never marry or farm or raise children until your father claims you.” The wax man nodded. This, he knew, was so: without a mother he had only his father to give him a place, and it seemed Jackal would not come to him; therefore, he needed to corner his father and demand the blessing due to any son. Rik gave him a parasol to keep off the sun, a pair of sturdy shoes and a warning. “Jackal is cruel and unfair. I don’t need to tell you that, but you might forget, seeing him as your father. He’s a god, after all. Mind your step.” There was little to say after that, and the wax man left the farm and headed for the tall yellow grass. # He traveled by night and curled up in the shade by day. The wax man didn’t sleep, or eat, although in the heat of the day sometimes beads of moisture would appear on his skin, turning milky and flat again in the cool of the evening. He wandered through the savannah, following the strange trail of tobacco and dirty fur that he imagined rather than smelled. It looped and meandered through piles of dung and around the territory of large, fierce animals, and wherever the wax men actually met something living it seemed to be either angry or afraid. The sturdy shoes sprouted holes, then wore through until he discarded them entirely. He met his father’s enemies face-to-face one night when he trudged through a flooded field near an abandoned farmhouse. There was a scurrying off past his field of vision and two shiny metal figures waved to him cheerfully. [3] “Wax man!” one of them shrieked. “You smell delightful! Won’t you help us? We were out in this muddy field looking for food and we got stuck.” Something about the tin-can-and-foil person’s voice frightened the wax man, but he couldn’t think why. “We can tell you the way to your father,” the other called. Its voice, too, alarmed the wax man, but the promise of help was too great to resist. He waded through the wet slime of the field. Then he looked at the outstretched hand and saw that it was a monkey’s paw. Monkey and his wife saw that the wax man had seen through their disguises. They howled with simian rage and struggled after him, but his slippery feet went in and out of the mud while their broad, flat-toed feet, made for gripping and climbing, bogged them down. They tore off their tinfoil costumes and crumpled it into balls that they hurled at him as he fled. The wax man ran until the sun started to nudge up over the horizon. He curled up under the shade of a tea bush until the sun finished its trip across the sky and went to sleep for another evening. The wax man had no way to measure time, or how long his wanderings went, but he tracked his father’s scent until the toes were worn off his feet. He was ready to lay down and let the sun take him when he saw an unusual tree, wrapped in a cloth headdress like a woman ready to pound mealie for the evening meal. The tree would make shade when the sun went down, he thought, and went to sit beneath the tree. Its cloth stirred. The dead branches shook as if the tree were laughing. "No! I am not one of your father's by-blows," the tree said with a woman's voice. "I am too wise to let Jackal make children with me, either. I am Auntie Rooibos, a tree of the people who live across the river, and even when I had leaves I could see your father's children for what they are. You want help, hm?" The wax man nodded. Even in the shade, heat-tears puddled under his eyes. "I will tell you how to find Jackal. You will never catch him on foot; he has many years of hiding from anyone who wishes to find him. Do as I say: Strip off your clothes, and step into the sun." The wax man obeyed. The hot noonday sun beat down on him, and he moved as if to step away, but Auntie Rooibos shook her branches at him in warning. He stood, and the wax of his naked body dripped, then ran, and by the time the sun plodded off to a well-earned rest he was no more than a flat disc of wax. Aunt Rooibos shook her branches in satisfaction. The people of the village would come to hang garlands of mealie stalks on her trunk, and they would see the fine, clear wax, and they would use it to make candles in honor of the gods. And the wax man's spirit would find itself on the very doorstep of his father, Jackal, who would no doubt be expecting to steal the other gods' tasty gifts of food, and not to find an angry, demanding spirit sun on his doorstep. It would be a while before the festival, though, and just at that moment Jackal was trying to escape from his [i]seventh[/i] marriage, which he had been foolish enough to do in a big city where the white men's gods tried to drop their heavy machines on him, and were getting angrier when they missed. [5] [1] [url]http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27871[/url] [2] [url]http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27868[/url] [3] [url]http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27870[/url] [4] [url]http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27869[/url] [5] [url]http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27872[/url] [/QUOTE]
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