Our Mother the Mountain
A sappy little story I wrote over the night to prove that I'm still alive. I dunno, is it normal to write stories about your god yiffing someone?
An old country song was playing in his head as he stoked the fire with a stick, the stars twinkling overhead and the unfamiliar trees around them silhouetted against the spattering of stars that legend has it he put there himself many eons ago.
Coyote was wrapped up in his fur cloak, belted at his waist as he sat down and crossed his legs. He covered his paws with the corners of the cloak and breathed a sigh that he could see in the white and smokey mist. Coyote loved these cold winter nights, and he thought back on how he used to howl and serenade at that moon. Now in his age he no longer serenaded the moon, but his children did still. He learned long ago that there were two kinds of beauty; the objective and the contextual.
Contextual beauty was what Coyote saw in all things on the earth since they were made long ago, and that beauty had only strengthened in age. He knew this beauty was hardy and long-lived as a tree, who would be beautiful even if killed and kilned and used to make something else. It was the beauty in the grains of a tabletop or a tomahawk handle, or in the irony of the gun's stock. It was the beauty of a stubborn flower in alkaline soil.
These peaceful nights let him think of that sorrowful and solitary beauty, the two words that were worth keeping. Too many times recently had he been full of impotent rage. A rage almost mythical, at the world and the universe and things even a god like he had little control over. The rage that made Oedipus burn out his eyes and throw his ears to the ground.
Coyote leaned back on a little. Even in his vast years and knowledge he was rendered in wonder at the sight of the universe so far away. Those nuclear stars made of gas-fueled fusion existed in his mind alongside the stars of spirits that watched the earth from afar. He'd been out among the stars and he painted them there and he'd courted their spirits but the science of them in his mind held no contradiction to him. What spirit, for its manifestation to cause such power? Or perhaps the spirits formed from the power of the stars. It mattered not. That was far beyond even Coyote's birth.
But out here in the high foothills, where huge granite rocks made steep faced up the slopes and the tall pines replaced the sturdy oaks that were more common further down. The smoke of his popping and cackling fire smelled sweet and sappy, the world around him was dusty and natural and smelled strong like pine and berries and water and sweet grasses.
A woman came out of the woods with armfuls of firewood and Coyote felt his tail wag instantly in response. The girl was just like him; a canine on two legs, but she was wearing somewhat less traditional clothes. She was taller than Coyote and much stronger looking, with a sturdy frame and thick fur. She was a wolf he'd been traveling with, that had taken a warming to him and started following him. Only until the next town, they always told eachother, town after town.
It was funny to Coyote how the women of modern days wore pants, like the wolf-woman did. It was common in his youth for them to wear only skirts and leggings, but then the males only wore clouts and leggings, if that much. When pants came about women, for some reason, weren't allowed to wear them, or whatever. But now it was fine. Men still weren't accepted to wear skirts though, even though Coyote had worn them more than a few times.
He smiled at her, tongue lolling out a little, and she smiled and nodded back. Her yellow eyes in the night didn't shine like Coyote's, but were bright. He admired her form as she dropped the firewood nearby. The imperfections of her body made it perfect. Coyote didn't strive for perfection, he didn't even believe in it. Perfection just was, and part of perfection was imperfection. All those little things are what made things the way they are. The hardship of a flower made its bloom more precious.
Flowers. The wolf woman produced a bloom'd rose from somewhere, the thorns all cut from its stem, and gently put it to her bosom. It rested there, the bright color flickering from the flame's light contrasting her gray and cream fur. Coyote smiled at her as she moved over to him. He stood up to greet her, wrapped his cloak around her, and they sat down beside each other.
They hadn't talked a lot. They rarely did. Sometimes he just needed a quiet companion, as she often was. Her long and thick fur was only just coarser than his, her body just softer. She warmed the nights' chill away.
Soon they retreated into the lean-to, but not before a sly smile. Coyote took off his fur cloak and laid it on the ground, and she lowered him onto it, on his back, and laid atop him, and pulls her own blankets over them. It was in that way that the softest and most gracious bed was the ground with a pelt over it and over him.
Her body against his was the comfort that he craved. Even as a being of dream he could appreciate the flesh. He saw it not as a vice but a gift, a thing given for a short time and to be enjoyed. Every time he'd lain with someone he'd felt his heart swell for the idea of how meaningful it was. It was precious, more precious than gold and more precious than iron. It was the air the soul needed, it was the light for which it grew. Yes, Coyote knew that in a mortal's life, so short and violent and cruel, they needed that comfort and it ought never be denied. The followers of other gods might say otherwise, but in this world Coyote helped to usher into existence, Coyote knew its deeper and most inner workings. He knew the secrets. And he didn't let them destroy him. Unlike other beings with such strong power, he didn't distance himself from the world. The secrets of the world broke many of them. Coyote broke, too, but it didn't make the world any less amazing.
She rubbed her fur against him and he felt warmed, and he felt something rising. She grinned as her paws ran up the sides of his stomach under his shirt, her thumbs rubbing over his rows of nipples. His paws rested on her hips and she made a soft growl. He looked up into her eyes as her paws finally got to his shoulders and she pulled them back down out of his shirt, to help him strip it off. He then helped her to remove her own shirt, which was one much more modern.
There, he was just in his leggings and clout now, she just in her jeans and underwear. He smiled at their interesting dichotomy, of his traditional clothes and her modern clothes, and both of their animal bodies with human shape. It was that kind of contextual beauty. He licked at the wolf and she licked back at him, her saliva and breath so hot despite the cold. He reached up and unhooked her bra. Silly how she wore a bra even though she had two other pairs of breasts right below that had no support. She began to untie the string of his clout, as he moved his paws around her arms and unbuttoned and unzipped her dirty jeans. Her body was amazing, he loved seeing it and touching it in the dim light even as the fur of his cloak warmed his back like another lover.
He was out of his sheathe by the time she'd undone his clout and peeled it away, and he could smell her want strongly. It mixed with her sweat and her trail musk to create a natural concoction of satisfaction. He took a moment to smell it. She commented on how sentimental he was for a god. He replied that even for a god, life was too short to not enjoy.
Her pants peeled down and so did her panties, and she kicked them off so they were only bunched around one leg. She grinned at him, she rubbed against him. He pressed up into her, feeling her heart beating against his as he held her tight and her larger form worked over his. A god on his back under a larger female? It'd bother anyone but Coyote. Someone would say he's lazy. Maybe, but he loved looking up at her while she pleased herself on him, rolling her hips against his, her puffy dark lower lips kissing his pulled-back sheath around his knot.
The sounds she made were music to him like the sweetest birds' chirp and he just held her tenderly. All that life in her. All those chemicals and feelings, the chemicals that make the feelings and the feelings that make the chemicals. All that power and electricity and spirit and living meat, the blood pumping just under her fur. Those muscles that moved there, so tight to her skeleton and all so distinct and separate.
Coyote made love to a mortal woman, and that mortal woman made love to Coyote, but it was always more than that. Souls touched, their medicine, their power touched. Their hearts beat out to touch eachother and their lips touched and they shared all the life that each had taken to ensure their own and all the futile beauty of existing in spite of a cold and dead universe out there, where everything was trying to kill them. Even Coyote knew the fear of death, and that's why he so treasured life, and so got along with mortals. He knew their time was short and his was too, in its own way. So he held the wolf that night with her breasts pressed against his stomach and chest and his animal member in her, and let her heart beat against his and he wove dreams through her fur and hair, and she let him see her hopes and dreams open bare in her sleep.
The fire burned slowly and they lazily kept it stoked all night. Coyote finally let himself rest.
That night he dreamed. He was a being of the dream but was not immune to them himself. He dreamed that he was in his earthen house from his younger days, from the days when...
He jumped out of the bed in the earthwork house and looked around for his wife. The door slowly sled open and she stood there, in her leather dress, inside-out with the seams exposed. Her leggings were the same way. The coyote woman had a rose on her bosom, as she came to him, and from her neck took an immaculate necklace full of jewels and boneworks. It was a very pretty, expensive necklace, one with medicine made into it. Her mouth opened as she stared without breaking eye contact. "This is from our mother, the Mountain."
Coyote blinked. The necklace was powerful he knew, but he was much more concerned with her. With that necklace he felt he could do anything... Except bring her back. She'd died so long ago, but he'd never married again. She died and he'd brought her back. He sailed and then swam out to the West Hole in the Sky, his second journey there, and brought her back, but in the end he received only punishment. He was blamed for that, for his bringing her back was what they said allowed disease and death to rule in the waking world. But taking his wife from him was something uncalled for. It was a real loss. She'd been his everything. No one else had lost a wife before in those times, and afterwards they didn't even know his pain, for they had him to blame where he never blamed anyone else for his wife's death.
His heart beat hard in his chest and he reached towards the necklace, then past it, to brush his leathery pawpads against her soft fur like from his haziest memories. She hissed and growled, her eyes turned to fire and her fur all to splinters and thorns, and she leapt away from him. She stopped by the fire, her voice dark and full of rage as the fire illuminated her fur blonde from behind. She cried loud and shrill, "Your firstborn, they were and will be blind and deaf to you!"
Heartbroken he reached towards her, and with a curse on her breath she fell back into the fire and disappeared into smoke and rose through the smoke-hole.
He gasped and jumped awake, eyes wide and heart beating. It was the morning and the wolf woman was beside him, and she just put her hand on his shoulder.
"Nightmare?"
"Reminder."