Apocalypse: road trip transcription
Mar. 2nd, 2014 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strix_albaPoorly written and misspelled transcript of the parts of the story that I narrated into my phone while it was tucked against my shoulder on the drive home from Boston yesterday.
It isn’t long before Tsuya can find a mechanical cab. He sees a couple of empty There’s usually a whole lot of them parked waiting about a few roads down from the tenement houses in which they are staying, waiting for people to come stumbling out of the taverns and bars around the Riverside district. [[surroundings and the fact that Viola is grossed out but resigned and Khatma is horrified]] Tsuya accidentally steps in a pile Steps over an overturned stall and a bit of horse bridle and accidentally in the process steps in a pile of rotting fruit instead He makes a face and wipes it off of his shoes and legs with He bunches up his shirt and wipes it off Khatma wrinkles his nose and Tsuya glares at him. You got anything better for me to use? He asks Khatma has to concede thepoint They reach the cabs which are empty no surly drivers sitting smoking and waiting for people to come Tusya has been in a couple of different kinds of these, usually the crappy kinds used to transport goods from the outside, not the nice sort And only because cabs are cheaper than hansoms these days, with their horses a horse has to be fed And grass ix expensive in the city A mechanical cab just needs to be refueled, and coal is cheap when it comes down the river from the north. Tsuya goes about fiddling with the driver’s side door to open it up and Khatma circles the mechanical cab whistling What is it? He asks It’s a cab says T No but like and Khatma waves his hands around and taps a couple of the pipes running along the exterior where some of the casing for the engine has flalen off What is it.> how does it run? It’s got, you see the It’s one of the new ones, Tsuya says Yiou put coal in the front and then you light it, and hwen you put water in the tank above it, that heats it up and gets the engine going. Then you press the pedels inside and you use the reins to direct he wheels And tyou use the wheel in the cab to direct he wheels and that way it gets you where you want to go Khatma stares at him Tsuya sighs. What’s funny about htat? Khatma is sort of embarrassed but doesn’t want to say it because it’s a small child It’s just…. What’s a wheel Tsuya blinks at him. Maybe it’s a language ething He kmnows that some of the people he knows When his father spoke to him and his brother in Hindi at home he would always speak to them that and there was some words he’d have to use, he’d have to talk about Factory Airships Coal And he would have to use words like coal [[something steampunk]] Cause they didn’t have that when he was growing up in india Tsuya points to the wheels. Them’s wheels Khatma nods. His face is still blank, and Tsuya thinks that maybe he’s just stupid. But he doesn’t say anything more Viola examines the car but her eyes asre sharper, like she knows what to look for, even if she don’t quite understand how it works They get in the cab Tsuya goes and checks under the hood to make sure there’s enough coal to get out of the city/start the engine Then he gets one of the lighters from the driver’s seat pocket and goes around to the hood, lifts it up and puts a spark under the hood He twists up the giraffe that he made out of the broadside, he lights it on fire, and sticks it under the hood of the cab. Then he opens the door and gets in the driver’s side Come on, then he says get in Viola climbs in net to him and he wishes she wouldn’t It isn’t that he knows Khatma terribly better than he does her, but all the same, he’ll take the devil he knows Tsuya waits until smoke starts pouring out of the pipe on the side of the engine before he turns The cab comes to life with a clan k rattle and series of hisses Tsuya can’t wuite reach the pedels so he sorts on the edge of the seat and maneouvers them with his toes He hauls on the steering wheel It’s harder than themen who usually drive it made it look He feels worse and worse by the second as v and k keep looking at him waiting for something to happen and he struggles with the wheel with its ragged leather with holes over the metal But eventually he does get it going and they go rattling and clanking down the street, slowly, slowly, but they’re managing Tsuya may hit a couple of holes that send the hard rubber wheels clanking up against he body of the car jolting them and making violet hiss in pain T looks at her and thinks that he has never seen someone so old in all his life Maybe she should be careful He ought to focus on the rstreets but they are empty and it’s not like anyone will be there to catch him He can’t help b ut askl Say miss, how old is you? Viola glares at him he wonders if he’s misstepped The old ladies that he knows don’t mind boasting about how old they are They wear it as a badge of honor that they have survived this long without contagion or tb or smallpox or black lung or any of the diseases that one’s liable to get in Anacot Old enough to be your gm That ought to be good enough Tsuya chew on his lip awhile How old are you she asks challenging him He shrugs and then he stamps on the pedal to stop the car from moving forward Nah ten, or nine, he says I ain’t quirte sure I was born in the summer so it’s hard to keep track this time of year He knows that’s another point of pride is knowing how old you are he has some friends who know exactly, can count the days specifically as well T doesn’t hold by that. A number is good enough for him. Any more and he starts to look uppity, like he wants to be one of those afolks who can’t help but adverttyize wher etehy came from Wath out Khatma cries, and t winces as they run over the remains of a cart He didn’t quite see that he was thinking He was thinking about his birthday And the summer Thinking about They go along. Tsuya and his new companions are traveling along the bumpy roads and it’s hust carnage There is water everywhere Everything is soaked Things have been turned over There are doors hanging off their hinges And the same eerie silence which makes the clanking nad hissong of the cab unnaturally loud whereas t is not even used to realizing that it’s there He tries to keep talking just to have something to fall back on, because it’s too quiet, and though he doesn’t much like the sound of his own voice and he doesn’t much like the sound of Viola’s voice and K doesn’t seem to talk much, no, he keeps up talking anyway He tells them about his job, and what he was doing when the flood came, and how he had been olooking forwards to going out on the break so then he could go see one of his friends who works at [[robot? Something else steampunk]] factory. In his turn, k says that he In her turn , v says that sh ew as sitting on the porch watching the ocean rise and fall and thinking and carving driftwood Tsuya asks what the ocean is like, and she describes it to him, how it slopes away gently in front of her house until it meets the ocean which laps at the land sometimes closer and sometimes farther away and when it’s farther away she can find shells and the bodies of small shelled creatures with their skeletons on the outsides and jelly rotting on the inside and it smells awful she tells him Tsuya says he can’t imagine anything worse than the smell from when the waters came, and she says yes, like that. There is silence from the back, and Khatma does not speak, Tsuya is feeling slightly more kindly towards Viola until she says I can’t imagine what it’s like for you in this city — basically patronizing him for the curcimstances To which Tsuya says no I dpon’t mind and I don’t like thesmell of the ocean if that’s what your’e describing then I don’t want no part of it And he finds that he is forced to tell her all of the things about the city that he likes, and in doing so he finds that he likes a great deal, but mostly the people and it’s the people that are gone now He tells them about the ladies at the factyory how sometimes they will be angry and stomp on their looms so hard that they break the pedels or they end up the threadsall bunched together from weaving the shuttle through too fast Other times they’ll be in better moods. One will have come into a bit of money, and the sofia She comes from the east, from the mainland, and she spkeains with a thincj funnypolish accent and one time on the day she got married her fiancébought her a bit of acnady and she brought in some for t and all the other children who workec in her area What about your family Khatma say s from the back we were going to find them I’m sorry si’m sort y that they’re lost Tsuya shrugs. He doesn’t want to tell Khatma about his family not just yet It is not that he do But he feels like has to say something to mamke him stop talking so he says my family was too big there wasn’Tsuya enough money for us He can just talk about There was me and my ma and then there was three bothers and 4 sisters and there were two older, and four younger, and then me and my twin brother and so when tere wasn’Tsuya enough food to go around my borther and I left and moved out They should be close to youngest Youngest need to be looked after Oldest need to work and can Middle children looking after the small children Two oldest sisters were working And then my oldest brother would take turns taking care of the little ‘uns, and me and my brother were too old to be taken care of and not old enough to be useful We was just more mouths to feed so we went to the children’says home But we didn’Tsuya much like it there when we left (unpleasant memory) I didn’Tsuya live with my family no more after that We went home to visit them But it hurt so we went home less and less So I’m okay I guess He says this but even as he says it he starts to remember nambi’says songs that she would sing not to get them to sleep ‘casue they always slept like falling logs but to get them to calm down, to calm the baby after she woke up crying as she usually did because she was hungry and she wanted food and his ma wouldn’Tsuya be there to feed her for a while uyet because she was at work As he thinks about this he feels his eyes tsart to burn and the stret starts to wavert a bit and so e he clenches he jaw nad csniffs and keeps on going forwards He takes a tutrn down to the street The city is changing very quickly these days but he still rembervs that big huge red and yellow sign standing outside on the corner of these two intersection streets When he is on the way out of the city on the every other day trips when he was owrkign for the grengro er and so ehty will end up by the farms There is silence in the cab for a while and isilence in the city and even the miechanicla cab seems to grow evert loud er to compensate Viola speaking in her harsh raspy voie with age, seems to device that it is her turn to speak now she tells them She points at the fishmontyter whose sign is still attached to the pole but the pole is not quite attached to the house so it adnlges at an angle it shouldn’Tsuya Tsuya hated the fishmonger He smelled like fish and he gave Tsuya and his sisters strange looks when they went but like he was sixing them up for dinner and deciding how best to parcel them up as fish But Viola who doesn’Tsuya know any of this begins to tell him and Khatma about when the fish came up vromt eh see Tsuya wonders what te hell she’says talking ab out because fish don’Tsuya walk on land but no she tells them When she was a girl when she lived up in one of the Portugal but it wasn’Tsuya , it was controlled by thye moors Northern country of the caliphate Ordinary girl Not much older than Tsuya she says One day they lived in a ostal town Her cousins ent out to fish and she wanted them to take her with them and they refused saying she wasn’ty old enough In restrospect she laughs bitterly it was good that they didn’Tsuya take her because that was the day the fish crawled up out of the sea, all waving tentacles and huge fins and spines that reached higher than the sails of the fishing vessel that her cousins ahad taken And the fish salloed them whole crushing the boats in their ling dripping arms and bringing them bak into the sea Viola was frightened but that night she says she had a dream She should go to the [riests of the town Whichever god would have her And she should ask them for the sowrd The draweam did not indicate which sword It left her with an impression of what she would feel when she saw the sowr And so she went Tere were six gods she says six gods then in that workd I don’Tsuya know what it’says like her ebut they were the ones who walked the erarth at this time And she spoke to the high priest of dinesh, and dinshes said no. and she spoke to the high priest of X, and X said no. And she spoke to the high priest of Aphasia, and aphasia gave her a long hard look and said yes, come in And as the priest opened the door for her Viola felt the priests’says presence depart and an aura filled the room filled it with glowing gold and blue light As if from midair withdrwee the sowrd and gave it to her And though she was but a child and nearly the same sizxe as her she flet that it had been made specifically for her. That’says a load of crap Tsuya interrupts her who in their right mind would give a little kid a sword? Viola glares at him you’re interrupting the story But it ain’Tsuya a tyrue story, Tsuya says. The best stories are true. Who says it isn’Tsuya true? All stories are No All stories are true Khatma says No that ain’Tsuya right Tsuya says I know cause I told lies, and I know lies aren’Tsuya true Maybe a time he said he was well when he was sick because he didn’Tsuya want to get fire Viola laughs There’says a difference between les and stores and this story is true do you want to know why she asks There’says no need says Khatma I trust you we trust you Viola seems to be amused by this Tsuya is not He trusts you he says I don’Tsuya Viola reaches into the bags at her feet and withdraws a sword almost too big for Tsuya but not quite its blade is idly blue and the handle he thinks might have ben gold at one point but is now freen and rusty with age This is it this is the swrod of aphasia she says Khatma stares Tsuya it revetrerenyl Tsuya doesn’Tsuya ake his hands off the wheel Reachest out and touches it and then has to grab the wheel because they are about to turn Go on says Khatma we would like to hear your story Viola continues. Setell them as they rattle along slowly — t may be brave enough to drive a cab but he has no idea how fast it can go because the brakes on this one doesn’Tsuya seem to be functioning properly so he sits back andlistens to her as she tells them how she fought the fish that came out of the sea She went to go train underneath the hot sun with one of the mozarabic priests swordsmen of the day She disguised herself as a boy in order to let him do this for her Tsuya squirms uncomfortably in his seat at the mention of this and looks away and doesn’Tsuya say anything about it Viola tells them that this was the oinly way that she spent four years fighting this battle pretending she was a boy disguising all of her her past her family thought that she was dead She went to fight the fish from the sea and whne the sword was not enough she went and learned magic instead ther ewaw swidespread eevastation and cities were leveled whole people forgotten All of the Galician people whole area was wiped out of existence and became forever a baren wasteland from which no person had ever returned Viola went there wehre the fish king had set up his capital and sent out his envoys She fought him in a duel that lasted three days and three nights and at the end of it she was bloody and could barely stand and her skin had turned ashen But the fish king lay bleeding He swallowed her and hse cut him open from the inside raking her nails and claws against the inside of his gullet until he bled out from within and then she thrust her sword into his belly from the sinide and clawed her way out through the slime And when she got out there was a whole horde of fish standing there, grotesuq e guant dripping pereptually dripping waiting to fill the power void Tsuya asks was they going to surrender because that seems to be the story she is telling She skaes her head anchuckles without homor Of course not stupid boy you think they would just let their king doe? There was no court? No one waiting who wished for tyh etitrle of the king but was too weak to claim it? No. there was then a great war amongst the fishes and ther was more damage done to the people of the caliphate She smiles. What did you do asks Khatma breatheless I went back she says I went back and trained more and that was when I learned the ways of sorcery Not just weapons but how to wield those weapons How to forge swords sharper than steel could cut Thinner than atoms And when Tsuya sand Khatma both give her a blank look she shakes her head Thinner than the thinnest more deadly and subtle than the sharpest blade you could possibly imagine Sharp enough to cut through the walls of this reality itself To revela the horrof or wat lay eyond She cut the fish in two and sent them reeling back into the boid from whence they came And that she smiles and her voice goes so unexpectedly soft that Tsuya looks away from the rutted torn up road edown which they dar driving to look at her Her eyes have gone sort and her face seems less angular and hard and just barley covered in stretched out skin than it had been before It was during the forcing of that sword during the forging of my education that I met LADY that ocmplkements violet possibly in Spanish Luna? Anyway She was and then Tsuya looks back at the road and his mind balanks out all of voices and other sounds Because ahead of them rather than the street he’d been expecting or the openingup of the fields he’d been expecting he sees Woods Scrublands Bushies filing in down tehs treet Stretching out beyond, and the sky is bue and clear and tyeh clouds are white and there is no grey It is empty and open and vast He cannot see the end He stops presses on the brake But it keeps going it rattles it screams metal griding against itself as it attempts to foloow his orders and is irrestiable drawn towards the gradsslands Neither viola nor Khatma seem to realize that anything is wrong. Viola is keeping on talking about his this woman that she met when hse was younger And Khatma loosk even eager as he looks out at the woodlands that should not be there Viola keeps talking and Tsuya finally yells stop stop can’Tsuya you see that this ain’Tsuya right? Can’Tsuya you see this ain’Tsuya what it’says supposed to be this anin’Tsuya what I remember Viola stops speaking and peers forwards she peers out through the front of the cab I don’Tsuya know. How interesting What does interesting men? Khatma asks In this specific context, because I know what interesting means, I’m not that, that uneducated
They hit a couple of holes that send the hard rubber wheels banging up against the body of the car, jolting them and making Viola suck in her breath hard. The first time it happens, Tsuya looks at her and thinks that he has never seen someone so old in all his life; and he can't help but ask, "How old are you?"
Viola glares at him. "Old enough to be your grandmother," she tells him. "That ought to be enough."
Tsuya chews on his lip. Maybe, he thinks, she doesn't realize how it's done around here; old people boast about their age, how they wear it as a badge of honor that they have survived this long without falling to consumption or smallpox or black lung or any of the diseases that like to hang around Anacotshire.
He wrestles the heavy steering wheel to keep them on the same street going out of the city.
It isn’t long before Tsuya can find a mechanical cab. He sees a couple of empty There’s usually a whole lot of them parked waiting about a few roads down from the tenement houses in which they are staying, waiting for people to come stumbling out of the taverns and bars around the Riverside district. [[surroundings and the fact that Viola is grossed out but resigned and Khatma is horrified]] Tsuya accidentally steps in a pile Steps over an overturned stall and a bit of horse bridle and accidentally in the process steps in a pile of rotting fruit instead He makes a face and wipes it off of his shoes and legs with He bunches up his shirt and wipes it off Khatma wrinkles his nose and Tsuya glares at him. You got anything better for me to use? He asks Khatma has to concede thepoint They reach the cabs which are empty no surly drivers sitting smoking and waiting for people to come Tusya has been in a couple of different kinds of these, usually the crappy kinds used to transport goods from the outside, not the nice sort And only because cabs are cheaper than hansoms these days, with their horses a horse has to be fed And grass ix expensive in the city A mechanical cab just needs to be refueled, and coal is cheap when it comes down the river from the north. Tsuya goes about fiddling with the driver’s side door to open it up and Khatma circles the mechanical cab whistling What is it? He asks It’s a cab says T No but like and Khatma waves his hands around and taps a couple of the pipes running along the exterior where some of the casing for the engine has flalen off What is it.> how does it run? It’s got, you see the It’s one of the new ones, Tsuya says Yiou put coal in the front and then you light it, and hwen you put water in the tank above it, that heats it up and gets the engine going. Then you press the pedels inside and you use the reins to direct he wheels And tyou use the wheel in the cab to direct he wheels and that way it gets you where you want to go Khatma stares at him Tsuya sighs. What’s funny about htat? Khatma is sort of embarrassed but doesn’t want to say it because it’s a small child It’s just…. What’s a wheel Tsuya blinks at him. Maybe it’s a language ething He kmnows that some of the people he knows When his father spoke to him and his brother in Hindi at home he would always speak to them that and there was some words he’d have to use, he’d have to talk about Factory Airships Coal And he would have to use words like coal [[something steampunk]] Cause they didn’t have that when he was growing up in india Tsuya points to the wheels. Them’s wheels Khatma nods. His face is still blank, and Tsuya thinks that maybe he’s just stupid. But he doesn’t say anything more Viola examines the car but her eyes asre sharper, like she knows what to look for, even if she don’t quite understand how it works They get in the cab Tsuya goes and checks under the hood to make sure there’s enough coal to get out of the city/start the engine Then he gets one of the lighters from the driver’s seat pocket and goes around to the hood, lifts it up and puts a spark under the hood He twists up the giraffe that he made out of the broadside, he lights it on fire, and sticks it under the hood of the cab. Then he opens the door and gets in the driver’s side Come on, then he says get in Viola climbs in net to him and he wishes she wouldn’t It isn’t that he knows Khatma terribly better than he does her, but all the same, he’ll take the devil he knows Tsuya waits until smoke starts pouring out of the pipe on the side of the engine before he turns The cab comes to life with a clan k rattle and series of hisses Tsuya can’t wuite reach the pedels so he sorts on the edge of the seat and maneouvers them with his toes He hauls on the steering wheel It’s harder than themen who usually drive it made it look He feels worse and worse by the second as v and k keep looking at him waiting for something to happen and he struggles with the wheel with its ragged leather with holes over the metal But eventually he does get it going and they go rattling and clanking down the street, slowly, slowly, but they’re managing Tsuya may hit a couple of holes that send the hard rubber wheels clanking up against he body of the car jolting them and making violet hiss in pain T looks at her and thinks that he has never seen someone so old in all his life Maybe she should be careful He ought to focus on the rstreets but they are empty and it’s not like anyone will be there to catch him He can’t help b ut askl Say miss, how old is you? Viola glares at him he wonders if he’s misstepped The old ladies that he knows don’t mind boasting about how old they are They wear it as a badge of honor that they have survived this long without contagion or tb or smallpox or black lung or any of the diseases that one’s liable to get in Anacot Old enough to be your gm That ought to be good enough Tsuya chew on his lip awhile How old are you she asks challenging him He shrugs and then he stamps on the pedal to stop the car from moving forward Nah ten, or nine, he says I ain’t quirte sure I was born in the summer so it’s hard to keep track this time of year He knows that’s another point of pride is knowing how old you are he has some friends who know exactly, can count the days specifically as well T doesn’t hold by that. A number is good enough for him. Any more and he starts to look uppity, like he wants to be one of those afolks who can’t help but adverttyize wher etehy came from Wath out Khatma cries, and t winces as they run over the remains of a cart He didn’t quite see that he was thinking He was thinking about his birthday And the summer Thinking about They go along. Tsuya and his new companions are traveling along the bumpy roads and it’s hust carnage There is water everywhere Everything is soaked Things have been turned over There are doors hanging off their hinges And the same eerie silence which makes the clanking nad hissong of the cab unnaturally loud whereas t is not even used to realizing that it’s there He tries to keep talking just to have something to fall back on, because it’s too quiet, and though he doesn’t much like the sound of his own voice and he doesn’t much like the sound of Viola’s voice and K doesn’t seem to talk much, no, he keeps up talking anyway He tells them about his job, and what he was doing when the flood came, and how he had been olooking forwards to going out on the break so then he could go see one of his friends who works at [[robot? Something else steampunk]] factory. In his turn, k says that he In her turn , v says that sh ew as sitting on the porch watching the ocean rise and fall and thinking and carving driftwood Tsuya asks what the ocean is like, and she describes it to him, how it slopes away gently in front of her house until it meets the ocean which laps at the land sometimes closer and sometimes farther away and when it’s farther away she can find shells and the bodies of small shelled creatures with their skeletons on the outsides and jelly rotting on the inside and it smells awful she tells him Tsuya says he can’t imagine anything worse than the smell from when the waters came, and she says yes, like that. There is silence from the back, and Khatma does not speak, Tsuya is feeling slightly more kindly towards Viola until she says I can’t imagine what it’s like for you in this city — basically patronizing him for the curcimstances To which Tsuya says no I dpon’t mind and I don’t like thesmell of the ocean if that’s what your’e describing then I don’t want no part of it And he finds that he is forced to tell her all of the things about the city that he likes, and in doing so he finds that he likes a great deal, but mostly the people and it’s the people that are gone now He tells them about the ladies at the factyory how sometimes they will be angry and stomp on their looms so hard that they break the pedels or they end up the threadsall bunched together from weaving the shuttle through too fast Other times they’ll be in better moods. One will have come into a bit of money, and the sofia She comes from the east, from the mainland, and she spkeains with a thincj funnypolish accent and one time on the day she got married her fiancébought her a bit of acnady and she brought in some for t and all the other children who workec in her area What about your family Khatma say s from the back we were going to find them I’m sorry si’m sort y that they’re lost Tsuya shrugs. He doesn’t want to tell Khatma about his family not just yet It is not that he do But he feels like has to say something to mamke him stop talking so he says my family was too big there wasn’Tsuya enough money for us He can just talk about There was me and my ma and then there was three bothers and 4 sisters and there were two older, and four younger, and then me and my twin brother and so when tere wasn’Tsuya enough food to go around my borther and I left and moved out They should be close to youngest Youngest need to be looked after Oldest need to work and can Middle children looking after the small children Two oldest sisters were working And then my oldest brother would take turns taking care of the little ‘uns, and me and my brother were too old to be taken care of and not old enough to be useful We was just more mouths to feed so we went to the children’says home But we didn’Tsuya much like it there when we left (unpleasant memory) I didn’Tsuya live with my family no more after that We went home to visit them But it hurt so we went home less and less So I’m okay I guess He says this but even as he says it he starts to remember nambi’says songs that she would sing not to get them to sleep ‘casue they always slept like falling logs but to get them to calm down, to calm the baby after she woke up crying as she usually did because she was hungry and she wanted food and his ma wouldn’Tsuya be there to feed her for a while uyet because she was at work As he thinks about this he feels his eyes tsart to burn and the stret starts to wavert a bit and so e he clenches he jaw nad csniffs and keeps on going forwards He takes a tutrn down to the street The city is changing very quickly these days but he still rembervs that big huge red and yellow sign standing outside on the corner of these two intersection streets When he is on the way out of the city on the every other day trips when he was owrkign for the grengro er and so ehty will end up by the farms There is silence in the cab for a while and isilence in the city and even the miechanicla cab seems to grow evert loud er to compensate Viola speaking in her harsh raspy voie with age, seems to device that it is her turn to speak now she tells them She points at the fishmontyter whose sign is still attached to the pole but the pole is not quite attached to the house so it adnlges at an angle it shouldn’Tsuya Tsuya hated the fishmonger He smelled like fish and he gave Tsuya and his sisters strange looks when they went but like he was sixing them up for dinner and deciding how best to parcel them up as fish But Viola who doesn’Tsuya know any of this begins to tell him and Khatma about when the fish came up vromt eh see Tsuya wonders what te hell she’says talking ab out because fish don’Tsuya walk on land but no she tells them When she was a girl when she lived up in one of the Portugal but it wasn’Tsuya , it was controlled by thye moors Northern country of the caliphate Ordinary girl Not much older than Tsuya she says One day they lived in a ostal town Her cousins ent out to fish and she wanted them to take her with them and they refused saying she wasn’ty old enough In restrospect she laughs bitterly it was good that they didn’Tsuya take her because that was the day the fish crawled up out of the sea, all waving tentacles and huge fins and spines that reached higher than the sails of the fishing vessel that her cousins ahad taken And the fish salloed them whole crushing the boats in their ling dripping arms and bringing them bak into the sea Viola was frightened but that night she says she had a dream She should go to the [riests of the town Whichever god would have her And she should ask them for the sowrd The draweam did not indicate which sword It left her with an impression of what she would feel when she saw the sowr And so she went Tere were six gods she says six gods then in that workd I don’Tsuya know what it’says like her ebut they were the ones who walked the erarth at this time And she spoke to the high priest of dinesh, and dinshes said no. and she spoke to the high priest of X, and X said no. And she spoke to the high priest of Aphasia, and aphasia gave her a long hard look and said yes, come in And as the priest opened the door for her Viola felt the priests’says presence depart and an aura filled the room filled it with glowing gold and blue light As if from midair withdrwee the sowrd and gave it to her And though she was but a child and nearly the same sizxe as her she flet that it had been made specifically for her. That’says a load of crap Tsuya interrupts her who in their right mind would give a little kid a sword? Viola glares at him you’re interrupting the story But it ain’Tsuya a tyrue story, Tsuya says. The best stories are true. Who says it isn’Tsuya true? All stories are No All stories are true Khatma says No that ain’Tsuya right Tsuya says I know cause I told lies, and I know lies aren’Tsuya true Maybe a time he said he was well when he was sick because he didn’Tsuya want to get fire Viola laughs There’says a difference between les and stores and this story is true do you want to know why she asks There’says no need says Khatma I trust you we trust you Viola seems to be amused by this Tsuya is not He trusts you he says I don’Tsuya Viola reaches into the bags at her feet and withdraws a sword almost too big for Tsuya but not quite its blade is idly blue and the handle he thinks might have ben gold at one point but is now freen and rusty with age This is it this is the swrod of aphasia she says Khatma stares Tsuya it revetrerenyl Tsuya doesn’Tsuya ake his hands off the wheel Reachest out and touches it and then has to grab the wheel because they are about to turn Go on says Khatma we would like to hear your story Viola continues. Setell them as they rattle along slowly — t may be brave enough to drive a cab but he has no idea how fast it can go because the brakes on this one doesn’Tsuya seem to be functioning properly so he sits back andlistens to her as she tells them how she fought the fish that came out of the sea She went to go train underneath the hot sun with one of the mozarabic priests swordsmen of the day She disguised herself as a boy in order to let him do this for her Tsuya squirms uncomfortably in his seat at the mention of this and looks away and doesn’Tsuya say anything about it Viola tells them that this was the oinly way that she spent four years fighting this battle pretending she was a boy disguising all of her her past her family thought that she was dead She went to fight the fish from the sea and whne the sword was not enough she went and learned magic instead ther ewaw swidespread eevastation and cities were leveled whole people forgotten All of the Galician people whole area was wiped out of existence and became forever a baren wasteland from which no person had ever returned Viola went there wehre the fish king had set up his capital and sent out his envoys She fought him in a duel that lasted three days and three nights and at the end of it she was bloody and could barely stand and her skin had turned ashen But the fish king lay bleeding He swallowed her and hse cut him open from the inside raking her nails and claws against the inside of his gullet until he bled out from within and then she thrust her sword into his belly from the sinide and clawed her way out through the slime And when she got out there was a whole horde of fish standing there, grotesuq e guant dripping pereptually dripping waiting to fill the power void Tsuya asks was they going to surrender because that seems to be the story she is telling She skaes her head anchuckles without homor Of course not stupid boy you think they would just let their king doe? There was no court? No one waiting who wished for tyh etitrle of the king but was too weak to claim it? No. there was then a great war amongst the fishes and ther was more damage done to the people of the caliphate She smiles. What did you do asks Khatma breatheless I went back she says I went back and trained more and that was when I learned the ways of sorcery Not just weapons but how to wield those weapons How to forge swords sharper than steel could cut Thinner than atoms And when Tsuya sand Khatma both give her a blank look she shakes her head Thinner than the thinnest more deadly and subtle than the sharpest blade you could possibly imagine Sharp enough to cut through the walls of this reality itself To revela the horrof or wat lay eyond She cut the fish in two and sent them reeling back into the boid from whence they came And that she smiles and her voice goes so unexpectedly soft that Tsuya looks away from the rutted torn up road edown which they dar driving to look at her Her eyes have gone sort and her face seems less angular and hard and just barley covered in stretched out skin than it had been before It was during the forcing of that sword during the forging of my education that I met LADY that ocmplkements violet possibly in Spanish Luna? Anyway She was and then Tsuya looks back at the road and his mind balanks out all of voices and other sounds Because ahead of them rather than the street he’d been expecting or the openingup of the fields he’d been expecting he sees Woods Scrublands Bushies filing in down tehs treet Stretching out beyond, and the sky is bue and clear and tyeh clouds are white and there is no grey It is empty and open and vast He cannot see the end He stops presses on the brake But it keeps going it rattles it screams metal griding against itself as it attempts to foloow his orders and is irrestiable drawn towards the gradsslands Neither viola nor Khatma seem to realize that anything is wrong. Viola is keeping on talking about his this woman that she met when hse was younger And Khatma loosk even eager as he looks out at the woodlands that should not be there Viola keeps talking and Tsuya finally yells stop stop can’Tsuya you see that this ain’Tsuya right? Can’Tsuya you see this ain’Tsuya what it’says supposed to be this anin’Tsuya what I remember Viola stops speaking and peers forwards she peers out through the front of the cab I don’Tsuya know. How interesting What does interesting men? Khatma asks In this specific context, because I know what interesting means, I’m not that, that uneducated
They hit a couple of holes that send the hard rubber wheels banging up against the body of the car, jolting them and making Viola suck in her breath hard. The first time it happens, Tsuya looks at her and thinks that he has never seen someone so old in all his life; and he can't help but ask, "How old are you?"
Viola glares at him. "Old enough to be your grandmother," she tells him. "That ought to be enough."
Tsuya chews on his lip. Maybe, he thinks, she doesn't realize how it's done around here; old people boast about their age, how they wear it as a badge of honor that they have survived this long without falling to consumption or smallpox or black lung or any of the diseases that like to hang around Anacotshire.
He wrestles the heavy steering wheel to keep them on the same street going out of the city.
