by Kyell Gold
Omber laughed. “If I do, I will give them your regards and your apologies for missing them,” she said, and with that, glided down across the treetops toward the edge of the forest.
The moon lay directly in her path, just over the peak of Old Opa. Noc began to worry that she would actually reach it before he did. Faster than you can say jackrabbit, the black coyote was down the tree and off to the old mountain.
Old Opa is the oldest of the old, and all the other mountains are his children. Noc knew them all, but only once had he climbed Old Opa himself. “Old Opa, Old Opa,” he shouted from the base, “may I climb your sides to stand on your peak and admire the world you made?” He knew, as no doubt you do too, that it is necessary to shout, because the mountain is so tall, and he knew that Old Opa was so old that he had seen the rest of the world around him come into existence, and now believed he had made it all.
Old Opa sent a wind down his flanks to tell Noc that he was welcome, and faster than a howl on a clear moonlit night, Noc had run up against the wind to stand on the crown of the mountain, his feet deep in snow, his fur fluffed against the chill. The moon dangled before him, but when he stretched out his neck, he found it just beyond his reach. He strained until his whiskers shivered, but he could not reach its glossy surface.
“Is this a shortcut?” he heard next to his ear. Only his excellent reflexes saved him from tumbling down Old Opa’s sides. He composed himself and saw, to his annoyance, the laughing beak of Omber circling his head, her wings angled to allow her to glide.
“I did not see you on the path,” he said, carelessly sitting back on his haunches to lick the cold from first one paw, then the other. “I feared you might have run astray, so I came up here to look for you.”
Omber landed lightly on the snow, sinking only a claw’s breadth into it. “I am quite well, as you can see,” she said. “So you may proceed on your way. Is this the edge of the world?”
Noc made a show of laughing, his tongue hanging out and his eyes closed in mirth. “Why, no,” he said. “You can just barely see the edge of the world from here.” He pointed away, down the opposite slope of Old Opa, across the plains where Ac-Ta-Mok the forest had never taken root, across the great depths of Lady Asha. “Can you see, out where Lady Asha reaches up to touch Father Hawaa, blue to blue?”
“Yes,” Omber said.
“There where their hands are joined, you will be able to move from one to the other, and walk across Father Hawaa’s body to the bowl of the sky, and from there to the moon,” he said.
“I see,” Omber said, taking flight with the grace and ease of all her kind. “Shall we go, then?”
“You may carry on,” Noc said. “Old Opa enjoys my company and I so rarely have the chance to visit with him. Fear not, I will catch up to you.”
“Farewell, then, four-foot,” Omber said.
Noc watched her soar down the mountain, until she was nothing but a speck on a dot on a mote in the distance. “There,” he said. “Now, to the moon.” For Noc had conceived of an idea. Though the moon was beyond his reach, the stars were not. He believed the lowest was close enough to jump to. “Father Hawaa,” he called with respect, “may I climb the bowl of your sky to admire your greatness?”
The nearest stars twinkled in invitation. Noc bowed respectfully to Old Opa, bid him farewell, gathered himself, and leapt.
The first time, he saw the star slip through his paws. He fell back to Old Opa with a puff of snow. The second time, he caught his claws in the fabric of the sky; when he twisted himself free, he fell back again. The third time, he landed perfectly, starlight shining through his black paws all crowded together, balancing on its tiny surface (of course, you know that stars are no bigger than a coyote themselves, for all the brightly they shine). He stood on the star and gazed down at the land below, and then the moon above. There was a short ladder of stars he could use to reach it, he saw, and smiled to himself as he crouched to leap again.
On the third star, he was resting when he heard Omber’s voice for a third time. “The edge of the world isn’t so far,” she said. “I brought a flower back from it. Is this only as far as you’ve been in that time?”
She dropped a pearl-white flower onto his tail and alit on a nearby star. Noc flipped his tail, carrying the flower to his paw. Breathing in, he caught the exotic fragrance of sea, the chill clear scent of clouds, and the smell of Omber herself. He tossed his head. “Jumping stars is a difficult skill,” he said loftily.
“Must be.” Omber smiled, then looked up at the moon. “Well, I think I can see the way from here. I hope you can keep up.” She beat her wings, laboring upward along the bowl of the sky.
Noc tucked the flower into the brush of his tail and leapt after her, from star to star, but he saw quickly that he would not reach the moon first. No, no, he told himself, not after all that. He cast about for some trick, praying to his Father Coyote to help salvage his pride, and caught his paw in the fabric of the sky .
Anger filled him as he tugged it free. He watched the small black shape of Omber pass star after star, drawing closer to the moon. When he lifted his head to pray to Father Coyote again for help, he brushed the fabric of the sky and caught his tooth on it.
He cursed and shook his head. This time, as he pulled free, he noticed that the fabric came with him, and he realized that Father Coyote had been answering his prayers after all. He reached out and tugged at the fabric of the sky, and the moon shook in response. Laughing, he pulled with all his strength, turning the bowl of the sky around his star until the moon traveled away from Omber, arcing across the sky toward him.
When it was within reach, he leapt for it, shimmering black fur in a graceful leap across the dome of Father Hawaa. His paws settled onto the soft white of the moon with nary a sound but the crow of his laugh as he watched Omber approach. He held onto the fabric of the sky with one paw, leaning casually against it as she approached.
“So,” he said, “you are not so fast after all, with all your winged flight.”
She settled onto the moon beside him. “So it would appear. But you are truly clever. Who would have dreamed I would meet you here, on the moon.” Her talons poked at the soft surface as she walked around him.
Noc’s ears followed her progress. “What do you mean by that?”
“Oh,” Omber said, “I have seen your travels from afar, and always I wondered who this handsome traveler was, as black as I, as restless as I, as bold or bolder, going to faraway places. I thought I might meet you on the shores of Lady Asha, or in the firepits of Gil-Gara, or perhaps among the flowering trees of Vini-Tala. I thought it odd to espy you beneath my home tree, but I never thought to meet you here in the celestial spheres.”
Noc gaped. “You’ve been to the firepits of Gil-Gara? But your stories...all about the edge of the forest, the tall trees...”
Omber clacked her beak in amusement. “Imagine how my parents would worry if I told them about the divine heat on my wings, or the many days I traveled on the breath of Father Hawaa. The forest is all they know, and they think me very bold for my explorations. I need not tell them how much wider the world is.” She peered down. “Look how small Ac-Ta-Mok looks from here.”
Noc stared at her. “Well,” he said, recovering some of his composure. “Still. I won our race.” He lifted his muzzle proudly.
“You are certainly fast, for a four-foot,” Omber agreed. “But you are forgetting one thing.”
Noc grinned. “What is that?”
Omber raised herself to be eye to eye with him. “The race was to the moon...and back.” And with that, she folded a wing behind his head and brought her beak to his muzzle in a deep kiss.
Noc lost his grip on the fabric of the sky, so taken aback was he. Her kiss, warm and sweet, seemed to numb his fingers and toes. Vaguely, he saw the moon slipping out from under him. Then Omber pulled back and beat her wings, hovering beside him. She laughed. “I shall see you back at my tree,” she said, and dove downward.
The black coyote hung by his paw from the sky, the moon sliding further and further, no stars nearby for him to land on. He swung hopefully back and forth, but the crown of Old Opa was impossibly distant, the topmost branches of Shu-Sha below him but far, far below. He tried to climb down the bowl of the sky, but he had to crawl like one of Spider’s children without any of her grace. No other birds flew this high to help him down. There was, he realized, only one way for him to reach Ac-Ta-Mok before Omber. He closed his eyes and let go.
He felt Father Hawaa’s breath around him as he plummeted from the sky. His fur ruffled in waves as the ground approached. For a little while, he watched, and then he closed his eyes. He’d fallen from the third-tallest tree in Ac-Ta-Mok as a young pup, the memory of his broken leg throbbing now as he fell. Surely this would only be a little worse.
Even though he couldn’t see the ground, he could hear it. Father Hawaa’s breath grew louder and stronger. Noc squeezed his eyes shut harder. He waited for the brush of leaves that would come seconds before Ac-Ta-Mok’s arms would break his fall. With Father Coyote’s grace, they would slow him just enough to spare him from serious injury, but not so much that he lost the race.
The impact came as gently as twilight. Ac-Ta-Mok’s leaves brushed softly against his fur, his arms strong and surprisingly warm. And they smelled like feathers and pine. Noc opened his eyes to see Omber’s grinning beak, and behind her the leafy tapestry of the forest, slowly rising past them as the raven lowered them to the ground.
He blinked. “Silly coyote,” Omber said. “Falling like that can be very dangerous for a four-foot. Did you really think I would let you...”
Her feet touched the ground. She touched her beak to his nose and whispered, “win?”
At that, he struggled free and stood on the ground staring at her. “You didn’t...you couldn’t...”
She pointed to the moon, then to her feet. “There and back.”
Noc looked at the reflection of the moon in Omber’s glossy eyes. It continued to slide across the sky, more slowly now, but perceptible. It occurred to him what a brave and foolish thing he—and she—had just done. They had run to Coyote’s Grin together and come back unharmed. He had roamed from the great waterfall Xakha to the scorching dry sands of Lo-Piet by himself, had ventured deep into the caves of Muk to talk to the blind children of Salamander, but in all his travels, he had never encountered another whose journeys had matched his. The scent of the flower from the edge of the world, still miraculously lodged behind his ear, filled his nostrils. His heart felt as wide as Ac-Ta-Mok itself. “Congratulations,” he said, and he bestowed a coyote kiss on her raven’s beak.
Omber put her wings around him, he put his arms around her. When he lifted his head, he grinned a grin as wide as the one that floated overhead. “Where shall we race to next?”
The raven met the coyote’s eyes and tilted her head, matching his grin. “Anywhere you like,” she said, and spread her wings.
Drifting
I listen to Dan Savage’s sex/relationship advice podcast, and story ideas sometimes seep from there into here. One of the topics he returns to again and again is relationships in which partners have differing sex drives. I had by 2009 grown tired of the “perfect relationship” stories and was trying to explore how people might overcome conflicts to save relationships. “Drifting” grew very organically out of that thought (and you will notice a small shout-out to Dan Savage in the text).
I’ve been in relationships where we just couldn’t bring ourselves to talk about problems, and I don’t just mean problems like “don’t leave cabinet doors open,” I mean huge elephant-sized problems that we both knew were there and just for whatever reason decided to live with rather than talk about. I know how hard it is to bring up painful issues with your partner—and how important it is to do so. And hopefully, in another half-hour or so, you will too.
I was pleased to hear the responses from fans upon reading this story. Many people related to one or both of the characters, and I hope they saw in the story a path to a better relationship, or at least the impetus to make an effort. “Drifting” won the Ursa Major award for Best Short Fiction in 2009.
[return to TOC]
It had been four long years since Tobias had looked forward to a bedtime. He and Dylan had shared a bed for eight, and the first four had been delightful, everything he could’ve hoped for. Well, okay. The first three had been delightful—two and a half, technically, if you counted the ski trip as the last really delightful time. It had been good for a year or so after that, or at least for eight months, but it had taken almost six months for Tobias to say something about it, which he remembered because it was right after they’d come back from their fourth and last ski trip, standing in the living room with the ski gear still resting against the couch and his tentative words hanging unanswered in the air. Dylan had just mumbled something and gone into the bathroom, leaving Tobias with nothing to do but unpack and remember the cold of the weekend.
So now, because Dylan always stayed up late on the computer, Tobias retired early to their empty bed, made sure his alarm was set, and pressed his face into the pillow, trying not to think about the giant empty space in the bed. It was better than lying next to the inert black panther, thinking about touching him and playing the loop over and over in his mind: his paw reaching out, the shiver of muscle at his touch—because Dylan still slept naked—and then the panther relaxing again, trying to pretend Tobias hadn’t touched him. Maybe this time it’d be different, sang a tiny, irrepressible voice in his head, but it had been so long since that voice had been right about anything that it, too, felt like a stuck tape loop, as perky as Tobias’s assistant at the office and with as little sense.
Tobias now slept in boxers, his long ringed tail flat between his legs. He usually managed to fall asleep before Dylan came to bed, and his alarm never woke up the panther. Or if it did, Dylan never actually got up while Tobias slid himself out of bed, threw on sweats, and went to the gym.
Gymnasiums in Tobias’s home country were very public affairs, some with showers literally open to the changing room. He’d been puzzled when he saw the walled-off areas here, wondering why people who were working so hard to get in shape would be shy about their naked bodies, but now it was specifically because the Steel Body Fitness gym had private shower stalls that Tobias had started going back there. Dylan had a membership too, one of those things they were going to do together, but as far as Tobias knew, Dylan hadn’t been to a gym—or done any sort of exercise—in quite a while.
He wasn’t particularly fond of exercise either, but he didn’t want to show up at work at seven in the morning, and spending two hours in a coffee shop would only take care of part of his morning needs. And yet, he couldn’t just show up at the gym and shower, so he’d reluctantly started a limited workout routine, half an hour on the treadmills. And then, looking around at the pine marten huffing away at twice Tobias’s speed, at the red wolf straining at the bicep curl, he’d felt ashamed of his indolence and had started setting goals for himself: faster speed, more time. He’d paid for three sessions with Marty, a fox who was one of the trainers, and Marty had given him a set of arm and leg exercises. Tobias still suspected he wasn’t working as hard as he could, but he felt better, and when he cut back his lattes to one a day from three at Marty’s suggestion, he’d started to lose weight.
Not that Dylan would ever notice, he thought, his paws thumping in time on the speeding treadmill, tail kept carefully up out of the way (once you’ve stepped on your tail during a run, you always remember to keep it up). Actually, for all Tobias knew, Dylan could’ve gained twenty pounds. Or lost it. The panther favored loose shirts and baggy jeans, so it was impossible to tell. And he seemed to be eating the same as he always had, to judge from what he got when they went out to dinner (which they still did three or four times a week).
But Tobias had had to buy some new pants. He’d dragged Dylan shopping, and Dylan had helped him pick out the n
ew wardrobe without once commenting on why he needed it. “These’d look good on you,” he’d said, as if he were picking out a color of house paint. Which, in its own way, had a nice comforting domesticity to it, and Tobias wouldn’t have minded it at all if it’d been accompanied by a wink, or even just by the knowledge that that night, or the next, or maybe the next, Dylan might be watching him take those pants off with lustful eyes. Tobias would’ve settled for affectionate eyes, even.
There was no use dwelling on it. It was what it was. Tobias had moved to Riviera knowing only Dylan, and when things were going well, he hadn’t bothered to make friends of his own. When things went bad, he’d made a few attempts to connect with co-workers, or friends of Dylan he got along well with, but inevitably he found himself wanting to complain about his relationship, and he didn’t like himself when he was complaining. Besides, it felt disloyal to Dylan, as if he were giving up. So he remained cordial with his co-workers, saw Dylan’s friends with Dylan, and ignored the few times people approached him at the gym.
And when he had finished his workout, his body pleasantly warm and sweaty, he stripped down in the changing room and took his shampoo into the private shower stall. There, finally, he let himself long for the Dylan he’d fallen in love with, his own black paw becoming the panther’s as he lovingly soaped up his member, which now started to get hard just from the sight of the shower stall. He drew his paw along its length, up and down, keeping his eyes closed. Today, the slickness was just shampoo, not a muzzle or another slickness. They’d played in the shower before. Shampoo was enough.
He closed his eyes, familiar sensations flooding through him as the water soaked into his fur, coursing down his body. He thrust his head back, letting the water run over his muzzle as his legs twitched, and then he had to brace himself with his free paw against the stall of the shower wall. Oh, God, Dylan, yes. His paw pumped faster. The rush of water in his ears drowned out everything else, the smell of the shampoo strong and soothing.
