A Speck of Rust in the Machine (open)

The sound of someone else whooping and clapping startles me so badly I jump and fall on my rear in the snow, dropping the fox beside the small hole I'd started. Sitting on a fallen log not terribly far away is a person--a man--whom I only vaguely recognize. Then again I don't pay much attention to other people. I've found they often aren't worth it. "Incredible." I sit back up onto my knees slowly, hesitant. I'm not typically a nice person to people I don't know, so I'm kind of surprised to be complimented by someone I do not know. "Um, thanks," I say. Never one for subtlety, or respecting anyone's privacy but my own, I direct my chin toward the sturdy stick he's brought with him. Mine has an obvious purpose, which he's seen in action now, but I don't know what his is for and I'm wondering if he's going to fight with me over one of the goats. Starving creatures--human or not--are all desperate. It wouldn't be the first time, but the fine on losing one of the little animals is steep. "What's the stick for?" I'm really not in the mood for a fight today. Not only did I have to kill the fox, but I don't actually know how to skin it myself--I'll have to pay the butcher to dress it for me, since this is pretty much the only way I can afford to eat meat.

I resume resolutely digging the hole for the limp fox. The cold will help prevent the blood from seeping into the meat and spoiling it.

{Short, sorry.}

He doesn't seem offended by my bluntness, which is nice. People with weak skins are irritating. If they want to survive, too, they better learn to adapt. "Don't worry. I won't club you over the head like you did to that fox." I grimace. I do feel bad about the fox. Whether or not he means that as a reproach, I don't take it as one. No use getting all righteous now. There's no point.

The guy stands, and I can see now that the staff is used as a sort of crutch. Something about one of his legs is off; it doesn't move properly, with the right precision or decision. I wonder what he went and did to himself to mess his leg up, but until I find a quasi-polite way to ask that question, I keep it to myself. There's only so much inquisition a guy can take, anyway--they seem to find something about it emasculating, and then they get all snippy with me. Well, fine then. Be sensitive.

Frost and Alder--the two herding dogs I and my parents trained ourselves--circuit around the milling goats and keep them from scattering as he approaches, also keeping a single eye each on him and me. The goats don't seem to mind strange people when they're penned up; surely they think the pen is for their protection rather than their containment. They climb up on the fences rungs and nose at the stranger until he or she very suddenly becomes boring, and they wander off to ignore them. I finish burying the fox quickly and stand, glad that for once I've remembered my gloves, if only because they happened to be in my pockets this morning. "Yeah, I never learned, so I'll probably pay the butcher to do it for me." The goats, emboldened by the fact that I'm talking politely to this stranger, become ambling back, trying desperately to look bored, but obviously they're inquisitive. Frost keeps an eye on the goats, settling his rump comfortably in the rough snow, and Alder strides over to me, hackles half-raised in warning. I whistle to her, a tune she and I taught each other years ago, because the sound carries over this terrain much better than my voice does. She settles, still watchful but no longer unwelcoming. "Long way to wander when walking isn't coming easy," I commented blandly.

I wish I could get cabin fever. For the most part, I love my job. I get to spend nearly every hour of every day outside with a squall of animals that take entertainment out of untying my shoelaces when they catch me unawares. They'll keep you busy and keep you healthy, these goats. Or they'll starve you because there's no way you'll make up for all the energy you lose chasing them. I won't say that hasn't almost happened before. At least I get rations for the hounds, because I'd never be able to feed them out of my own shallow, hole-filled pockets.

He mentions the cost of paying the butcher to do what I ought to know how to do myself, and I purse my lips again. He's right, but I hate to admit that anyone but myself is ever correct. I can apologize like a repentant fiend, but I don't like acknowledging the intelligence of others, I suppose. With the toe of my boot, I nudge a chunk of snow over a spot where the fox's blood-spattered ear must be leaking. The one advantage, I suppose, of being armed only with a rope and stick is that the hide of whatever you have to kill is rarely damaged. Unless you do something wrong and rip all the fur out with your rope. But I've worked with these tools since I was ten, and twelve years is a long time to get perfect on something that could prevent you from being kicked out of your home with fines. Everything's about the money here, isn't it?

When the young man offers to skin the fox for me, my foot freezes where it's about to nudge even more snow over the hole I laid the fox in. "I don't have anything to do right now... Do you have a sharp knife?" I hesitate. The money I'd save from not having to pay the butcher could pay for half a week of food. Some bread and some dried corn kernels, at least. But the part of me--the larger part, too, unfortunately--that doesn't even want to get along nicely with other people warns me not to give up my knife. Granted, there's not much he could do with a little pocket knife that I couldn't counter with a six-foot stick.

In the end, it's Sentry's voice that gets me to make a decision, and probably the smarter one, too. He was always the one telling me to get over myself and to stop treating other people like they were all escaped criminals. So I bend and pinch a small, finger-length blade out of the top of my boot. It unfolds from a five-inch wooden handle and will even lock in place so it doesn't fold back in and chop your finger off. My father's friend made this at his request and gave it to me, but since even herders aren't really supposed to cavort about with knives, I don't know how many people have one or know how to open and close it. It's simple, but I had trouble with it when my father first tossed it to me. I twist the metal band at one end of the handle and use my teeth to tug the blade out of the wood, since I'm not taking my gloves off to use my fingernail. Then I twist the metal band again so the blade can't close. I hand it to him handle first. " My name is Hadena. I haven't sharpened it in a while," I say somewhat apologetically, "But I haven't used it in a while, either." There isn't much use for it out here, really. I'll do the occasional, bored whittling or cut something interesting down from a tree or use the blade to slice off a strip of bandaging if one of the goats or dogs manages to cut themselves. Mostly it just makes me feel better to have the knife around.

I'm trying to be nice now, since I usually make up my mind about people fairly quickly, but I still take a step back when he accepts the knife and whistle again, a different pattern, and this time to Frost specifically. He raises his head from his paws and I point out behind him, where one of the smaller goats has crept past his watchful guard by sneaking through some underbrush. Frost takes off to herd the wayward animal back around, and I send Alder to help him.

"You have a dog?" I ask him then, having noticed the unusual interest Alder had shown in his extended fist.

Jack is a good name. Certainly one of the few that's hard to make fun of. And he doesn't have an idiot's handshake, which makes me distrust him just a little bit less. Goodness, I need to socialize more often. I'm turning into a hermit. "Yeah, he's not as well trained as your though. Storm."

I nodded toward my own dogs. "Frost, the boy," and the one with the white streaks on his back. "And Alder, the lass," With a darker, more solid pelt. Named for a moth, just like me. "My parents helped me train them, and they're better with animals than I'll ever be; I got lucky." I wondered if I should offer to see if my parents could do anything to better humble his unruly hound, since I hate every feeling beholden to anyone, but I always feel awkward making offers, no matter what they're for. Usually I just do and say what I want without asking first. Asking makes me feel like a child.

Jack moves over to the scattering of maples as the wind starts to rush over the snow again. I hate wind. And I feel bad for leaving him to retrieve the fox; I should have done that. But oh well. I whistle to the dogs so they can take their time coaxing the herd into following us. The stand of trees isn't far away, but it's less a distance I have to run if another disturbance occurs. I feel another rush of regret when he dangles the rust-colored fox up by its hind paws, like a wrongfully hanged man. I could never be a butcher--killing things, no matter the reason, is a sorrowful thing. I suppose there are a few things that could warrant a grimly pleased killing, but those deaths are all human, and there are only so many things a human can do to deserve such an early end.

I start when he uses my name, having grown distracted by my own thoughts. It looks like he's used to either a longer or a sharper knife, but it's all I've got. Sticks and ropes are much less messy when it comes to dealing with things you don't want around. They provide a much quicker solution for someone like me. "Hm? Oh, yes. It belonged to my parents at first, but they've gotten tired, so it's been mine for a few years now. Seventy in all." I pause, then decide to try my hand at casual conversation, with which I have never been skilled. "What do you do? Or did you do?" I don't know if whatever he's done to his leg prevents him from returning to a previous job. But no one can afford not to work for long. They'll starve. They all do.

"Close? Yes." But we were more so when I was a kid. I think. Everything sort of fell apart when Acmon died of sickness. Just like I'd been terrified that it would, everything changed after that. Sentinel kissed me, I ran off, refused to see him until he disappeared to the city. We didn't see or speak to each other for six years until his mom's funeral just a couple days ago. And, well, I still didn't know where we stood with each other. He'd said there was nothing left for him here, that he was going back to the city within the week. His dad had vanished years ago, I had vanished even before that, his mom was dead and his farm was on the bring of repossession. He was right; there was nothing left for him. But I'd finally come back, hadn't I? Wasn't there any way I could make him stay? He was the only one I'd ever really talked to.

"You have a hand for bad questions." My entire body stiffened. Oh, lord not this. Don't let me do this to another person. This was exactly why I never socialized. The hand with the dull blade in it sunk to the side, and I wondered briefly if I should take it from him so it wouldn't fall and be lost in the snow. But the snow wasn't all that deep here, what with the wind having drifted it elsewhere, and I was afraid to move. What had I done?

His voice was broken, miserable, as he spoke of what had befallen him. Someone had tried to kill him and had maimed him instead? Why? If he could live but not work, he would have been luckier to have died. But grudges don't do any good to those of us on the short end of the stick; we all work harder than the meager coins we make can ever do to replace what we give. What could this harmless, kind-seeming man have ever done to warrant what sounded like a vicious attempt to desecrate his entire existence?

I really needed to just stop talking to people. At all. All I ever did was ruin things that might have been good if I'd just had the sense and decency never to touch them in the first place.

"....And my family is starving." He turns for just a moment, angling his face away, and even I know why.

I'm no good at making offers or suggestions, so I just say it outright. "Well the fox is yours then. I didn't kill it because I needed it to eat--I just needed it gone. Besides, you're the one making it useful." I look away too, up at the gray, cloud-quilted sky. I'm no good with feelings. If anyone ever asks me about mine, they're more likely to get a scowl if they're lucky, or the threat of violence if they're not. "And if you bring your dog to my dad, he can probably straighten him out. May not be quick, though." Good training takes time. These two weren't up to my father's standards of 'perfect' until they were going on three. They're seven now.

Feeling inadequate, like I'm not doing enough and I never will be, I whistle to Alder. She's the friendlier of the two hounds. I give her a nudge toward Jack, knowing she thinks it's for a petting, and guessing that if he's anything like me when it comes to animals, just having her around will do more help than I ever could. Like I said: inadequate. The only things that come naturally to me are pushing people around and finding the most efficient way to insult someone.

Split it? "Sure," I say, not wanting to offend him by implicating that he's incapable of something. He is, in a way, but I have no right to draw attention to that fact, even if I think he might need the whole thing. "My dad won't mind having something to do in the evening," I assure him. "But if you can find any spiceweed while you're out and about, it's cheaper than tobacco to smoke." He and I both like the spiceweed, or anything similar that we can find, to be honest. He always smoked a pipe in the evenings after dinner, so it was hard not to grow fond of the scent and taste of the peaty, slightly cinnamon-like flavor.

I remember that he's asked me about a bag so I dig in the pocket of my pants and fish out a canvas bag that will fit the fox, but only because the animal was kind of small and skinny to begin with. I toss it to him and he hands me the blade, which I bend to shove back into my boot. It's a line of frost against my ankle where the woolen sock has fallen down, so I fall on my rear--intentionally this time--to yank the sock back up around my calf and keep it from bagging under my foot like it always wants to.

"How long have you had him?" I wonder. "The dog, Storm." I hate making conversation. I feel like I'm trying to drag a toothpick from one end of a rope to the other when I try to be sociable.

{Low muse today, sorry.}