Lokos

"I brought back some fish," Peturabo said.

Mors barely lifted his heavy head from where it rested against the top of his wicker chair. He would have wagered that no living person who had drunk the aged malt liquor buried behind his house could have looked any better than he did.

"Good, very good." Mors lazily waved his right hand, his limp fingers expressing just how little he cared. "Roast them yourself, or do whatever you want with those fish... what does any of that have to do with me? Farewell, Peturabo."

Peturabo stared at him for a while, then left the house and closed the door behind him.

Mors placed a hand over his eyes and quietly blocked out the sunlight for a while, until the persistent sun stained his vision with a hazy pale red.

Of course, he knew Olympia's sun was not called the sun, or rather, that Old Terra-specific term should not have been used in its scientific name. Yet the people here still reverently and fearfully called that pale, blazing solid circle in the sky the sun. Perhaps that was simply humanity.

Slowly and idly, he rubbed his thumb against his middle finger, then his index finger, snapping twice in succession, one loud and one soft, to help clear his mind.

Then Mors sprang from the wicker chair, pushed open the wooden door, and leaned against the doorframe with his arms folded across his chest.

The weather was dry and crisp again today. Every cloud laden with moisture seemed to be deliberately avoiding Lokos. Birdsong, the chewing of Lokos Deer, and the distant sounds of Lokos people walking about... Mors's psychic range caught all those trivial noises.

Mors withdrew his psychic power and focused on the present.

Peturabo was cleaning his fish in the yard, and the bloody smell drifted everywhere.

"If you insist on contaminating the clean, dry forest air entering my nose, I'll have to demand payment in exchange," Mors said.

"Can I put it on credit?"

"No."

Peturabo silently struck hard with his stone knife, severing the fish's spinal nerves. His shoulders flexed as he worked, stripping away the scales layer by layer.

Mors had only taught him once how to prepare river fish, and Peturabo had learned very quickly.

Then the boy said, "What do you want?"

"Give me one fish."

"Fine."

"Two?"

"Dream on."

Not even a second passed between Peturabo's response and Mors's demand.

Mors swayed over to Peturabo's side and bent down exaggeratedly, forming a right angle between his upper body and his legs like the corner of a table or chair. Peturabo said nothing and simply continued chopping up his fish.

A somewhat eerie gleam shone from the fish's eyes.

Mors bared his teeth and was about to leave to fetch his unfinished stone carving from the corner.

Ever since he had smashed off the head and hands of the Perseus statue, he had entertained the idea of restoring the entire sculpture.

He had not yet decided what to carve this time.

Perhaps a beast, perhaps plants, perhaps a replica of another precious yet utterly vanished memento from humanity's long history, or perhaps an entirely new depiction of his own life—say, a portrait of himself and Peturabo eating roast meat side by side.

Mors did not know.

These past few days, he had merely raised his chisel and struck the marble at random, waiting for the sculpture's outline to grow out of the stone on its own.

He personally lifted the heavy damaged statue, let his tools float behind him, and prepared to head for his comfortable, long-used handwoven straw mat.

As he passed Peturabo for the second time, the boy suddenly called out to him.

"Mors?" he said quietly.

"Mm... what is it?"

"What do you want?"

Mors patted the stone carving. The smooth surface of marble was always reassuring. These heavy, fixed, unchanging, cohesive, everlasting, time-worn, considerate, never-rebellious, plain-speaking dear stones were far more worthy of a loving embrace than any living creature.

"I don't know," he said. "Do you mean in the long term, the short term, or today, right now? If it's the last one, then I want you to finish preparing those fish faster."

Peturabo stopped moving. Several fish lay spotlessly clean on the smooth stone beneath his scarred palms, their guts and scales tossed aside.

He raised his head.

"The long term." A rare steadiness and restraint filled his words with the pleasant quality of finely crafted machinery in motion. "The very long term. Otherwise, I will never know what I should give you, and never know how you can be satisfied."

Mors's gaze rested on the stone in his arms. "Do you think I know how you can be satisfied? No, Peturabo. You have to tell me about your beautiful dreams too."

"That is fair," the boy said. "We will trade each other what we need."

"You do learn quickly."

Peturabo's gaze lingered over Mors for a while, moving from his messy shoulder-length black hair to the black clothes wrapped around his body, then to the cold white stone in his arms.

He wiped his hands, stained with the cold blood and slime of fish, on the straw mat he had woven himself.

These days, he slept on that mat in the courtyard, sheltered by the cold black sky, enjoying the touch of sunlight reflected by the planets and satellites above Olympia—just as Mors had taught him only once how to weave.

"I will speak first." The boy gripped his mat tightly. His Adam's apple bobbed, and his throat tightened before relaxing. He cleared his throat and tore two stalks of grass from the mat in his hands.

"I do not know where I came from," he said. "I want to know."

"Is that your greatest wish?"

Mors set down the stone carving, raised one leg, stretched the other flat, and sat on the mat with an elbow supporting his slanted body.

He thought for a while, then shook his head. "I apologize. I owe you one, because I have no wish."

"I can only tell you that I am a failed craftsman, that I hate riddles and cryptic words, and that I am innately incompatible with a great future and a magnificent galaxy. I am only an ownerless little game piece in this vast sea of stars, without grand ambitions or prayers."

The earth sent warning-like tremors through his elbow. Without betraying anything, Mors straightened up and smiled. "The only petty comfort I can get now is that I suspect the craftsman who made a tool like you was not very successful either."

"That is speculation," Peturabo said displeasedly. "Baseless slander!"

"I always feel like you get more worked up than I do when I insult your creator."

"More nonsense." Peturabo bit his lip, his face full of reluctance.

Mors let out a short sigh from the tip of his tongue. "Fine. In any case, I owe you one, and you can remember that. Now, we have more matters to deal with."

At Mors's reminder, the clashing of gold and iron became clearer and clearer.

The authority of those man-made weapons was continually asserting its presence through sounds carried from afar. Brand-new iron boots trod across the parched woodland, heavy sword hilts shattered branches and vines in their path, and the colorful patterns on their helmets were utterly incompatible with the harmonious green and pale orange of the forest. It was almost proof of some human instinct—conquerors by nature, whether over nature or over others.

"Lokos..." Mors murmured. "They have come for you, Peturabo. I assume you have not assassinated their usurper?"

"I think I was simply too obviously exceptional," Peturabo said.

Mors tipped back his head and smiled.