Pieces of Selene

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Though born long after any living eye could behold Selene’s glow in full, the Kid still remembered a time she hadn't been so dim. The desert today interred more of the Night’s Eye--already pale and broken when the Kid’s mother exchanged her life for his before a name had crossed her lips--than what still glimmered among the stars. The Kid was a stonebreaker, which was just another way of saying he wasn’t a farmer. In the vast and once-barren expanse formerly known as the Australian Outback--more than a century of rainfall following the cataclysm had in conjunction with lunar deposit produced flora unlike anything the ancient naturalists had recorded in their lost tomes--there were only two occupations; orphans with neither name nor kin typically fell into the more hazardous one. Their bodies--some buried, others scattered by four-legged beasts no villager had ever survived an encounter with to describe, much less taxonomize--covered the desert almost as densely as the lunar asteroids they mined for lignite. They were the hunt’s prize and the treasure every rustic marauder saw in his dreams, these luminous gems villagers across the frontier called shine and imagined were fallen stars. With enough lignite and luck--for without luck, no scavenger prevailed against the outback for long--a stonebreaker could trade his pan and pickaxe for a plot of shrub and grow elderberry.

A storm brewed in the distance and ignited the sky, assuring the Kid and his companion of an early rise. That night, each lad dreamed of the lignite raining in his sleep. At dawn, they set upon the high desert. Necessities were collected along the way: Weeds, wild berries, and, most importantly, the translucent gel they extracted from cacti and filled their canteens with. These were items best procured early. Traps laid by rival stonebreakers and banded wanderers were abundant; a sliced foot could draw scores of every breed of desert-scavenger. Stonebreakers who didn’t quickly tend to their wounds and wrap them with shrub were found, killed, and looted within days unless septicemia took them first. The Kid’s companion suffered gorily two storms ago after stepping on one of these brutal ingenuities and had since grown vindictive.

“Only t'ng yer windin’ to harm, bruv, 's me or ye on way back round,” the Kid said to his companion, who’d been filling fist-sized clumps of shrub with cactus-spine and dropping them along their path for some unlucky creature’s foot to find. “Spare's b'ofe n’ cut ye bollocks.”

“Had’ya been spiked ye be itch'n to put pain in som’un too.”

They had barely a pound of lignite between them by week's end--but they were alive and unharmed. Expeditions after a storm, when the desert teemed with marauders, were always the most dangerous, but those who waited hauled back bulky stones worth in heaps less than a single ounce of shine.

"'S’da use o’da stuff an’how ‘sides pretty way't shine?” the Kid’s companion enquired while they ate berries and on the horizon watched Selene’s rogues begin their journey through the troposphere.

“My guess growman need for trade ‘stead berry. Growman wan’s grow berry and eat it too. Trade berry for meat ye got meat but no berry.”

“Den trinket!”

“Less shine round den trinket, bruv! For wha'ges two shine growman need barrel'n'barrel o’trinket.”

They shared the following fruitless days and nights in silence broken infrequently to curse a pelt of spine laid by their rivals. The only loot they’d collected was abandoned during a close encounter with marauders. They were already on the retreat to civilization when coming upon the virgin lunaite. Each man picked a region and began his work, pausing only to take stock of his surroundings for predators. It was on the meteorite’s peak, where the richest lignite was always found, that the Kid discovered entombed in stone a gem for which he had no name. Perfectly cut around the edges and cooler to the touch than rock or water, it was unlike anything he’d ever seen. Running his finger along the alien object’s contours he detected something thin and sharp. The artifact unfolded before he could make sense of the protrusion. Recoiling, he fell off the rock and landed on his back. The Kid rolled onto his stomach and felt the earth around him for the gem while his companion demanded to know the bollocks he'd been up to.

“Bloody mad, bruv! Ye lost’ar claw!” he exclaimed, climbing the meteorite to look for their pickaxe--for nothing in their line of work was valued more. The Kid finally recovered the still-unfolded object while his companion sang paeans to Fortune atop the rock for sparing these two scavengers their best tool. The Kid’s disbelief grew.

He couldn’t decipher the foreign symbols but thought them more profound than the peculiar shine in which they’d been inscribed. When his companion returned to ground-elevation, The Kid showed him their find.

“Wha's yer eye see here?!”

"Ear stuck on ear,” said his companion, unimpressed.

“Look, bruv!” The Kid stepped back and with his hand drew an imaginary line to divide himself in two.

“Quit bollocks’n.”

“Side here'n'side here--same!” The concept for which he had no sound but in vain described was symmetry, a three-syllable arrangement no doubt worth less in this desert than a mote of tumbleweed. “Look a'da mark'ns!”

“Mark’ns like uns we map in dirt.”

“Nay, bruv! Wind make dirt dirt again--'st's stuck like finger to hand. ‘Sides when ye seen dirt mark'ns like ‘eese?!”

“We see wha’s growman say.”

“Nay, bruv! Som’uns don’t giv't growman. 'St‘s worth plus s’ts weight in gold.”

"Bloody beast'sit mean?!"

“Nay't’ng, bruv. Jus’ som’un a wandrin’ git tell me way’go. Mean all ain’t ‘bout trinket.”

“‘Den giv’ here, bruv.”

“Two whispers ‘go nay even wan's'it!”

“But ye say 'st's more spesh’l'n shine, more'n trinket—"

“'St‘s mine, bruv!” Livid and unassuming, the Kid didn’t see the pickaxe in his companion’s hand, and for his inattention he paid dearly.

The Kid’s companion buried his body to hide it from the beasts. Hauling lignite alone in the labyrinthian outback didn’t make for fast travel; a trail of limbs would lead others right to him and his precious loot. The Scavenger had been surviving on the sap stonebreakers used to treat injury and protect their skin from daylight’s punitive reach for two weeks when--charred, delirious, and half-starved--he traded whatever lignite he had for passage with a gang of marauders. Before this latest exploit, the Scavenger had never seen a beast take man’s direction; in their employ these wild nomads had three! Led by the one they only called Captain, the nomads raided settlements and sequestered crop, trading it with other marauders for goods like currant which they mixed with poison nightshade. The Scavenger adapted quickly to this life and its toxic compote. Consuming too much of it one night, he revealed to his new brethren the object over which his previous partnership had dissolved. Sensing his disclosure had engendered suspicion, he lied and said he’d found it in a village not even two moons ago. A man whose ears and nose were pierced with cactus-spine demanded to see it. The Scavenger, recognizing in the men’s faces the wonder that had animated the Kid’s, grew nervous.

“Ye’ver seen such bloody mark’ns?!” cried the man with the pierced nose.

“Giv’t here. A growman teach my eye the sounds ‘fore the dirt take him,” said another. “Kay-ahr-een Aye-nee."

"Kay'ree'nee? 'St's'posed to mean?" asked a man who had only one eye.

“Nay sound I'ver hear nor see,” the man who’d been taught to see sound replied.

“Giv’t back!” The Scavenger shouted. The beasts growled. “Bruvs,” he laughed meekly, “'St's worf' less'n dirt.”

“Why ye want'sit so bad then?” asked the man with the pierced nose. The Captain, alerted to the commotion by his dogs, ordered the men to reveal the cause for their discord.

“Rat's been ‘oldin out on us, Cap’n!” said the man with one eye, handing him the mysterious gem.

“Where ye ‘quire dis?” The Captain asked his company’s newest recruit.

“Rock’o’da Big Light whence I look for shine.”

“Snivl’n rat! Ye say ye takes it from growmen ‘fore an’ now say ye is from’da Big Light!” said the man with the pierced nose.

Losing his nerve, the Scavenger lunged for the treasure, but surrounding him were opponents more formidable than the one he’d buried when he was still a stonebreaker who didn’t know his own bloodlust. For miles, man and beast alike heard the bellows of ravenous dogs feasting on human flesh.

Kay’ree’nee stirred the Captain’s men. Killers who’d snatched babies from their mothers’ arms without remorse tearfully bowed before it and pleaded with the sky to reveal its origins. Concerned by his men’s loss of resolve, the Captain feared the object of their worship was cursed. Each week further diminished the size of his command. The man with the pierced nose was executed for attempted mutiny; two others expired from nightshade consumption; the man who saw sound, driven mad by questions he could neither answer nor even fathom, disappeared into the night. Without numbers, resources were difficult to secure. Without resources, a man had nothing to barter in this desert but the life thumping under his breast. Although he faulted the mystical artifact for the misfortune that had befallen his company, he would have rather bled his fingers dry skinning cactus like a common stonebreaker than part with it. Unable to corral three hungry dogs, the former captain--he’d now been without a human soldier for more days than he knew how to count--put one down and fed the beasts their own. Every piece was savored, but the hapless general saw by the firelight reflected in the beasts' eyes a promise that their betrayed companion would not be forgotten. In the desert over which he reigned the Nomad had become prey. He narrowly evaded marauders for three moons until a night sky blazing with imminent lunaite left him with nowhere to hide. The Nomad told men for whom reputation was no currency who he’d been and of the exploits he’d commandeered.

“Where yer militia now, cap’n?” Their leader jeered as his men restrained the wanderer’s dogs.

“I got nothing to trade ‘cept them beasts. Have ‘em,” the Nomad told his inquisitor. “I sense they've an itch to eat me.”

“The claw,” said the man, gesturing toward the Nomad's last means of survival. He fell to his knees and asked, “How will I eat?” Men like the ones he used to rule laughed while his subdued dogs writhed beneath their knees. The Inquisitor told them to kill one for meat and pelt and beat the other into submission. The beast protested vainly under two men while their cohorts spilled his brother onto the desert floor. The Inquisitor disarmed the Nomad and inspected his purse. It wasn’t until the enemy sighted Kay’ree’nee that the Nomad took his chance. Distracted by the scene of their general and the stranger wrestling over an object they didn’t recognize, the men lifted enough of their weight for the beast to maneuver his jaw and rip the flesh from between one’s legs. A five-ton lunaite broke the castrated man’s cries. The storm had landed.

Bodies dove in every direction to avoid the igneous hail. Through bursts of light and sand, the Nomad followed the familiar sound of flesh being stripped from shrieking bone and eventually found the Inquisitor torn in half and Kay’ree’nee among his bowels. A nearby blast flung him onto a bed of cactus. He was close to death and clutching the precious agent of his undoing when his last soldier found him and by the fang gave reminder of the oath that had been made. With the treasure for which he'd seen his human overlords kill one another clasped in his jaw, the beast--propelled faster by every leap--dashed across the outback, bending left and right to escape hurtling pieces of the Night's Eye until into the wilderness he disappeared once more.