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Save Point: On The Fabulous Riverboat

Age Of Azatlan

In the end, they wind up taking a sort of riverboat barge from a small, equally riverside town about a week all told from Ypsilante. As the vessel makes its way slowly downstream the weather changes, becoming finer, dryer. The river runs a strange hue of red at these depths, presumably in the transport of some sediment common to it.

Terrowne, it turns out, has in his abstract collecting of maps acquired a slightly plausible one of the local area, obtained in the riverside town from a dubious sometime miner of gold, whom Lelana refers to with cheerful distrust as 'a lying old reptile.' Certainly the map is replete with many areas marked 'Here be lissards,' 'Here be really_big_lissards,' and Cleo's favourite, 'Maybe dragon?'. "It's existential," says Terrowne, "depending on whether or not I feel like it." Reptiles are definitely the theme, and the miner claims originally to be from Kalamantan. He certainly will not give his name, and seems to have busily pulled one over on the locals everywhere, winding up here after a lifetime of badly conceived scams. Cleo criticises that the poorly shaven miner smells like badly cooked meat.

In the upper parts of the river, the gold cages can be seen as the barges slip between them. These are strange alchemical-looking devices, five incurving spurs protruding downward into the river, suspended from ropes, like the claws of an ancient fossilised hand, completely interlocked at the top. They are carved predominantly of bone, with pieces of wood and stone someplace inserted, and seem to operate off a simple magic fed by consistent flow of blood, a sympathy of bone with the red sediments of the river. Cleo sees a pale young girl with unnaturally blond hair, and a series of ritually patterned scars along the length of her arm, calmly holding just such a disassembled spur as the blood trickles down her wrist in branching river patterns, and stains the bone a deeper shade of rust. Her services are paid in tiny swatches of gold dusted hide with the fur still on, provided by the company.

The cages have to be kept relatively still, in a steady flow, to collect the gold to themselves, accreting it as a thin plating on the spurs, and as a faintly glittering spheroidal subsurface cloud that can be netted every day or two. The boat travellers tell tales of how several times a year, when the excess gold has to be scraped away completely to keep the cages working, the rivergirls sleep with the spurs up inside them, to renew the magic. This, Cleo insists, is actually true, because she asked. The girl she asked offered her a tiny triangular gold clipping of the sort commonly quoined by the company, to "sleep with me and let me fuck you with this spike, my delicious Cle-ester cat," as her slurred accent made it sound.

While it seems redundant to ask whether she took up the offer (of course she did, especially if the girl was willing to share one of those green drinks in the conical wooden cups) Terrowne in the course of rolling over is jabbed in the ribs by a peculiar coin hidden in the concealed pocket of the support undergarment that Cleo wears under her armour, or on its own for sporting occasions, "to keep my boobs from bouncing. Did you know that they go up and down more than a hand width when I run? I measured."

More obvious evidence is that Cleo seems unusually calm and relaxed over the next couple of days, which is normally evidence that she has strained, struggled and generally fucked her way an exquisitely painful screaming climax. At the moment of Terrownes rolling over and encountering that particular protrusion, she is distracted by lying in their small shared hammock with her eyes closed, masturbating herself intently in the early morning light, obviously trying to prolong her mood. "Oh yeah.. deeper.. mmmm.." she murmurs blissfully, still half asleep. He kisses her gently, and she pulls the thin blanket up over them into complex folds like a mountain range, using only her extended nailclaws, to create a little territory all her own in which she is queen cat of goddesses, with her breasts and colourful mane hanging down the waterfall.

Lelana and Mariel are also absent for extended lengths of time, and seem well enriched in the local currency, but it would be impolite to question their affairs. There are many ways they could have earned their metal, most obviously by providing healing to the rivergirls, to help replace the strength they have bled out into the spines that have become their familiars. And if this should have led to something, or the sharing of the burden, then it is no business of his, except to wonder if the blood turns the river red, or the red of the river calls to the blood.

Sethkill, who says nothing, knows only that the river spills from the cunt of the goddess, far upstream.

Further downstream, the river widens a little, and becomes a more natural shade, deep, with banks far apart and low. The characteristic changes of vegetation with altitude as the waters descend leads to an archetrope that is less like a rainforest, and more like a wilderness, less hospitable in its way. There are few towns, only isolated settlements. "We do not stop here," says one of the boatmen, simple words concealing a multitude of truths.

At one point, where the current is sluggish and disinterested, the bank of the river has collapsed inward, but the material spilling outward slowly into the turgid depths is recognisably a flow of broken anthracite, black coal fragments with the faintest peacock feather shimmer, rather than the expected riverbank soil and mud. Terrowne points it out, and this motivates Cleo to take a second look at the adjoining treescape with her cats-eyes fully lensed, to realise, several dilations later, that what looked like natural vegetation is in fact growing upwards and outwards through an ancient yet obviously huge building that has been cut in half by the ceaseless erosive flow of the river. Open rooms stacked ten stories tall look outward over the water, occupied only by trees and fallen leaves, an apartment complex abandoned by time.

She does not point out, needlessly, that the building is vastly old, but the construction techniques required to build it belong only to the past few centuries. Likewise, the construction style cannot be recognisably assigned to any past civilisation she knows of. They watch it go past and recede into the distance, lost around a bend in the river. "Something to come back after and look at another time," suggests Terrowne after a while, "if the river hasn't eaten it first."

The day after the ancient buildings, the water has become deep and green and rushing, but not entirely so, and the banks are more stable, more rocky. A cry rises up at noon from the various sailors and boatmen, and even some of the passengers, when they reach an especially wide and deep point where the current seems to be slow and consistent. Initially there is some disconcertment, followed by confusion, and then finally translation through and around a multitude of languages, none of which is really close enough to Azatlani. After a while a repeated two word chant builds up, which seems to be the subject of great enthusiasm.

"It is the crocodile show," explains a cheerfully toothless, dark skinned man to their right. "When they raise enough coins, there will be the crocodile show."

Closer examination shows that the crew, and such of the travellers as have already contributed, are trying to persuade everyone else to part with more coins in order to fill up a clay bowl marked with a picture of a crocodile. Terrowne admires the scam, which forces everyone to pressure everyone else to pay up, because if they don't there'll be no show. Half of the people shouting the crocodile chant probably don't even know the language they're speaking, and he certainly doesn't.

The bowl is passed around and fills up with twists of copper, tiny gold fragments and coins that are round, square, triangular, hard-cast with patterns or cuneiform carved with a chisel, drilled with holes and green with the verdigris of brass and copper. There are bone buttons, and pieces of polished stone, and small wedges of obsidian, and small mass-produced amulets and talismans.

The result makes for an impressive display of numismacy from all the length of the river.

Appropriate funds having been raised to cover the extreme and non-existent danger of the much promised Crocodile Show, a cheer goes up and one of the boatmen steps forward, playing up just how big and tough he is, and how daring he is for being willing to face the crocodile. First, the riverboat puts down anchor, to hold its position in the large open area of the river that it is presently traversing. Apparently, fund-raising for the show is also time-limited by how long they stay in this area of the river, and Terrowne finds himself even more impressed by the scheme. Then, the large oar-like wooden plank which serves as the tiller of the riverboat is hoisted up on its pivot, and a counterweight attached to the onboard end so that the crew can easily keep it raised up in the air with no particular difficulty. This exercise is well practiced, and it seems likely that the crew do the special once-only Crocodile Show every time they can possibly get away with it.

Some amount of posing, back-slapping and exhortation later, a small wooden locker next to the tiller is ceremonially opened, and proves to have been pre-stocked, very conveniently, with a live chicken. The chicken is held up and paraded about, and then shortly, at the hands of the lucky volunteer (who happens to be Cleo) goes from being a live chicken to a dead one with a swift snapping sound. The freshly deceased chicken is then tied by both claws to a string, which is in turn fastened around a notch in the counter-weighted tiller.

"Oh good grief. They're going fishing for crocodiles," sighs Terrowne as he figures it out. Really, he should have worked it out quicker. Fortunately, it appears that the riverboat is too large to be endangered by any individual crocodile, and even if the tiller gets crunched, it should be easy to improvise a replacement. Nonetheless, he takes a step or two back, because being chewed would be both inconvenient and painful.

The Crocodile Show is actually quite entertaining, as the boatmen dunk the chicken and trail it along the water until a crocodile shows, then pull it back at the last second to make the crocodile lunge snapping in the air. There are several chickens, and the show attracts more and ever larger specimens as the crocodiles get more and more worked up and fight amongst themselves, until the boatmen are either too slow to pull the chicken back, or are forced to give it over to calm the feeding frenzy. The final, and largest crocodile, which has to be at least twenty feet long, leaps almost out of the water to snap the last chicken out of the air, taking the string with it as it sinks back into the depths.

"Wanna go swimming?" asks Cleo mischievously, whiskers flicking.

"Don't fall in on my account," Terrowne replies.

"We could take them," Cleo declares confidently. "And then I could make myself some crocodile skin boots, and some luggage, and a hat."

"Only if you want to eat crocodile for the rest of the trip."

"I'd look good in the hat though."

"Of course you would."

~*~

Further downstream, the same vanished culture responsible for ancient tower blocks and crumbling connecting walkways has dealt with with waterfalls too high to be bypassed to imposing on them several vast dual-lock systems, each built from single huge blocks of black artificial stone, ending in sharp downward sloping angles. Such finer mechanisms as might have driven the systems originally are long since lost, a problem now solved using heavy ropes wound about large stone pillars on the riverbank, a solution which allows the locks to be manually opened and closed using the pressure of the water on the riverboat itself. Two matching large flat wooden drogue anchors can be added into the equation as well, should the situation require it, either carried upstream or attached to the main lines as necessary. The pillars have been polished to smooth dark slipperiness by the repeated friction of the lines around them.

Modern economics having intruded inevitably onto the ancient hydraulics, each lock has its own small village to address trade and the purchase of minor sundries such as food, drinks and girls while the locks fill. The riverboat has to pay a fee, as does each individual passenger thereof.

The shifty-looking factors party to collection of these fees all go out of their way to point out just how fair this is, and how the appropriation of said funds aids them, the villagers, to bravely defend the locks against dangerous bandits and criminal types who might otherwise seize control of them and extort money from passing boats. Everyone is kind enough not to mention that such activities are, in fact, exactly what is currently occurring. At least the current holders keep the locks in good condition, and, since they live nearby, seem to maintain a sense of community that keeps the fees constant and the demands mostly above board.

Getting around the several locks takes most of the daylight hours available, and the final village maintains a small harbour of sorts where the boats coming downstream can anchor. Larger vessels cannot come in too close to the shore, and so Cleo manages to persuade the riding cat to abandon its lazing about the front deck and jump into the water, paddling smoothly about with only its nose and eyes and ears above the murky green surface of the river, leaving a v-shaped wake in its path right up until it bounds up onto the bank and shakes itself, spraying river water everywhere. After she's groomed it down with the long wire brush required for such occasions, they ride it around the village, impressing the hell out out of small children and old men.

Local meat purchases are negotiated with finesse.

~*~

The following day, the distance to be traveled is shorter, and the mid-afternoon anchorage is near a curious temple that must be approached along a path of ten thousand steps. This arrangement seems to be deliberate, in that time has been allowed for travellers to go and see the temple, and several stretches of the lower steps seem to have been subdivided, to make the number more exact.

Assured that there is plenty of time to go and see, and for the less trusting, that the riverboat remains visible at all times during the ascent, Sethkill, Cleo and Terrowne begin the climb in high spirits and thereafter disappoint everyone else by not becoming tired, or indeed slowing down in any way. They pass exhausted would-be worshippers at every turn, with Cleo springing around the tighter corners on all fours and Sethkill taking the steps two at a time.

The temple itself is in the raised basaltic core of a long gone volcanic mountain, in a fractured cave modified by its builders such that the afternoon light floods in through the cracks in the ceiling. There is no specific representation of what exactly the temple is intended to honour; the worshippers have deigned to provide one. Sethkill pauses to enjoy the view and the play of light for a while, and says it reminds him of the stripes of the invisible wolf, the Shadow Cybal. Perhaps light and shadow are what is intended to be be honoured, or this is the forming place for a new creature, one that has yet to be seen.

Assured by Sethkill that no-one else looks likely to reach the top for a good half hour or so, they take the time to consecrate the temple their own way, by fucking in the centre of the floor under the bands of shifting light. "Doubt we're the first," pants Cleo as Sethkill ploughs her smoothly but painfully from behind, on her hands and knees. Terrowne watches them with enjoyable interest, until Sethkill arches his back and spunks deep inside her. Then he takes over, fucking her gently and with slippery hotness, while she sucks the head of Sethkills cock and massages his balls until he's clean and relaxed. As soon as she comes, he finishes up and she repeats the performance, licking him roughly with that long pink tongue that's been so busy. "One each," she purrs happily, sharing a lingering three-way kiss with both of them, as she folds her faded yellow cleaning cloth double and wraps it around between her legs, so she can put her pants back on without having to clean herself first.

On the way back down, they stroll along cheerfully, taking turns to nibble on Cleos ears, feel her up a little and generally try to avoid being caught looking as though they've just made it in a sacred temple. "I feel good about this," says Cleo delightedly. "You two will make excellent parents for my little baby shadow cats. They'll have stripes just like their daddies. I feel really knocked up right now!" She pulls them both together in a double hug from either side, and skips a little step.

Sethkill looks rather alarmed.

"She's only joking," Terrowne assures him. "Well, you know. Probably."

~*~