The Source
Jul. 1st, 2008 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafoc
Another little farce published in the Anthrocon 2008 convention book. Con was fine great time blah blah I'll post this story instead of doing the usual Post-Convention Report. Except that I will say I had a blast, as usual.
The Source
I'm sure humans once existed. After all, they're in all our legends. And why aren't there any fully anthro monkeys? Well, maybe that's what humans were!
But no, I've never found any trace of them.
The stories people tell! No, my last expedition wasn't a disaster. It was one huge frustration, that's all. Still, I met some fine people and had an adventure worthy of this Explorer's Club.
One fine day last June I found myself in Looville, Kintuk District, on the Ohio River. It's a charming old settlement of about three thousand furs. I was looking for riverfurs to take me upriver in search of yet another lost city.
But not just ANY city. I sought the city that has gone down in American mountain legend as the home of the fire god Karneggy, the home of vast workshops that made wonderful machines whose secrets are lost to us, and the home of the elixir Ketchup and of the Sacred Kalzone of Plenty, one bite of which would feed a fur forever. I speak, furs, of the magical city known as The Source. There, they say, humans had their last stronghold, and there humans created the anthro-peoples.
The legends say it stood at the source of the Ohio River. Somewhere far to the east, a clear spring must bubble from the ground. There, in silent mountain fastness, would be ruins of that God-built city, that haunt of legends, that place of magic where humans might still walk the earth!
Now, I'm sure that there are camels, for example, who are good riverfurs. And there's something to be said for having your boat crewed by furs who can't swim any better than you can. Still, nobody navigates running water better than an otter. And if you search the riverfront of any town that has one, you'll find otters before too long.
Cap Flashtail— if that otter had any first name other than "Captain" or "Cap," I never heard it— was a strong fellow with a bit of gray in his muzzle. His eye was bright, and he was cheerful— oh, bother, why do I waste time telling you this? He's an OTTER, for heaven's sake! He looked and acted like an otter. End of story.
He had three little boats he and his crew would use to take people out fishing. "Can you take me upstream?" I asked him.
"Sure, Boss. I know the river deep into the Jungle Preserve, way east of Cincy." Wherever that was. "What's your pleasure? Channel cat, gar, or something more like work?"
"I'm searching for one particular lost city."
"Ah, well, you'll find plenty of them along the riverbank. Where the river hasn't moved away from them over the centuries, or hasn't buried them or washed them away. Always moving, the river is."
"Can you take me all the way to the source of the river?"
"The source? No. Not sure anyone knows where that is, these days. But I can take you further upstream than anyone else in town."
We headed east the next morning. Everything seemed to be going perfectly as we went deeper and deeper into the jungle.
True, the jungle was oppressive. Summer's heat was early last year. The trees were swathed in strangling vines. The mosquitoes swarmed. There were gators in the water, and not the sort you can reason with over a beer or two, either. There were roars and howls in the night, some of them sounding like they might be speech, others not.
For all the time I've spent in the jungles, I'm a native of our Arctic Circle industrial cities. The jungle's heat wouldn't let me sleep. The brooding menace of it had me frightened. I wasn't doing well, and we'd barely started our journey!
Then Cap came to me that morning, knotting his hands and looking worried. "We must turn back, Boss. The lands ahead are forbidden."
"You never told me anything about forbidden rivers."
"You never told me how far east you wanted to go. I would have warned you if I'd known."
I just stared at him. The river seemed open before me. There was nothing in sight to stop me from reaching my dream. "Look, I'll double your pay."
"Money means nothing here. We dare not awaken the wrath of the furs native to these lands by intruding into their sacred precincts. Or at least we don't dare work in them. You see, first you have to settle the dues and get your union card. And it never hurts to have an cousin who's already in the union. But even if everything's right, half the time the steward is out of the village. That means you wait until..."
On and on he went about the local superstitions. Finally I just shook my head. "I'm going on, alone if I must."
"Oh, that's fine. Just do your own lifting and carrying; you don't need a union card if you're working for yourself alone. But we can't go one mile further."
"Will you at least wait here for me to come back?"
"At time and a half, for the dangers we face?"
"Dangers? What dangers? Pay you time and a half for sporting around in the river, playing tag, catching fish? I should think not!"
He wrinkled his nose at me in that cute way only otters and rabbits can manage. "Spoilsport," he said. But still, he seemed quite cheerful about it.
The next morning I set off upstream, alone. For a day and a half all went well.
But then I found the last thing I'd expected. The river split in two! I sought the source of the Ohio, but was the Ohio the river that flowed down from the northeast, or the one from the southeast?
I couldn't pilot the boat and consult my books at the same time. The point where the rivers met was surrounded by vine-shrouded ruins of another great city, but the point itself was relatively open, almost groomed. It looked like a safe place to tie up and camp while I sorted things out.
But I was so tired. So very tired. I took the mooring line and stepped ashore, but my foot slipped. I went down on my knees in the river. The boat was already starting to drift away. I jumped to my feet to lunge for it.
Then I heard something to my left. I looked up, and there was a jaguar, reaching for me, his claws out. I didn't notice in that moment if he was anthro or feral, two-legged or four-legged I mean, but those claws were brutally sharp. And he wasn't wearing any clothes, any trappings of civilization, that I could see.
I twisted away from him into the arms of a panther. "Got you," he growled.
I screamed and kicked at him and broke free, and the boat was out of reach and drifting downstream. I ran for the open ground. There were shouts behind me. And then I ran into a huge spiderweb. No, it was a net!
The panther had chased me here. "Stop fighting! You're just getting more tangled. I just set that up, too," he growled.
"You set nets to catch prey?"
He stopped there, at the edge of the clearing, and looked at me strangely. "No, for volleyball. Geez, man, why did you run? But you look awful. I think you need something cold to drink, and quickly. Hope you like a Mimosa. It's all I brought down from the hotel."
#
Spike, the jaguar, chuckled. He looked quite civilized when he had his pants on. The hotel looked civilized too. It seemed ancient, and they'd let vines cover it as they did almost everything else, but it was in fine shape inside. The cooling system could have sucked the humidity out of the air and made ice of it, and maybe it did. The chill was a blessed relief after days in the jungle.
"I can see why you freaked. It's funny as hell, though. Looking for a lost city, and you stumbled straight into us."
"You aren't on the map."
"We're an artist's colony, seeking seclusion to allow our creative genius to flourish, blah blah woof woof. But seriously, we do like our solitude. What's the point of maintaining an inholding in the Wilderness if everyone and their cousin can find you?"
I took another sip of Mimosa. The ones the bar mixed were even better than the one from Shadow's vacuum bottle. I was getting to like these things. It was strange sipping it through a straw, though. For some reason, drinking through straws was an inviolable custom here.
"Artist's colony," I muttered.
"Yeah. We've always been one, supposedly even before the Troubles and the rise of the anthro peoples. We have sculptors, artists in fabric, painters, and cartoonists. We have a few writers too, but of course nobody cares about them."
"And here I was looking for the legendary home of Karneggy, at the source of the Ohio River."
"But that's here! The Ohio starts out at the point where we found you. The rivers north and south have always had different names."
I gaped at him. "This city is called The Source, then?"
"No, it's Pitts."
"I don't know why you call it that. It seems very pleasant."
"The name of the town," Spike explained carefully, "is Pitts. It's the name of the human who founded the place, I think."
"Humans! Were there humans here? Are there humans here still?"
"Oh, humans haven't come here for centuries. But the legends tell us they came here once, and that they stayed on here long after the anthro peoples took over the world. Not only that, but the humans who came here were the ones most responsible for the creation of the anthro peoples."
"I wish I could have met some humans. I always wanted to thank them, to bless them for making us, and to ask them why they did."
He smiled at me. "You're a domestic dog, aren't you?"
"What?"
"Flop-ear, I mean. A flop-ear canid."
"Yes, of course. What does that have to do with anything?"
"Nothing, nothing. Anyway, let me tell you what we know about humans.
"We think they created furs for practical reasons. They had plagues back then, but plagues don't spread so easily when people are of many different species. And furs are stronger than humans were, eat a greater variety of foods, and are better protected from weather. That means they can live more gently on the land than humans could.
"Perhaps the humans realized that by splitting people among different species, they made bearing young require more planning than it had before. That helped reduce the overpopulation that was such a big problem back then. Personally, I doubt they foresaw that. But if they had, they might not have minded.
"But no matter what other reasons they had, one of the biggest reasons for what they did was simply that they loved you. They wanted you to live, and to be free and happy. They would never have wanted you to worship them."
I smiled. "Then in honor of their memory, I won't. I will try to think of them as real people, both good and evil, wise and foolish, like everyone else. If they ever really existed, that is."
"Oh, yes, they existed."
"I wish I was as sure of that as you are. But thanks to you and Shadow and the rest here who have made me so comfortable. I'm sorry to have intruded on the solitude you prize so much."
"No need to worry. Our solitude isn't that perfect, anyway. Our bankers, suppliers, and buyers know how to find us." He half-grinned, half scowled. "The taxmen do too, unfortunately."
"So what's next?"
"We'll have someone take your boat back downstream to your otter friends. Maybe you should leave here by road, though, down the Columbus Trace. That should be more comfortable for you."
"Thanks. You're much too kind."
"Not at all. Feel free to come back and visit again, if you want. We might have a business proposition for you, once we know more about you. But promise me a few things."
"Name them."
"Let us know you're coming. And no falling in the river. And next time you snag yourself in my volleyball net, I'm letting you claw your own way out."
#
I think I'll return to Pitts soon, if only to learn the art colony's religion and legends. Those must be fascinating.
I did overhear something on that subject. One handsome wolf seemed overheated that evening. He was also drinking more Mimosa than was good for him. He started clawing at his own face. That's when I heard Shadow, Spike's mate, mutter something in the wolf's ear.
Shadow said "Never take your head off in public. It ruins the magic."
It's obvious, from the context, that "take your head off" is local slang for getting drunk. But I have to wonder what kind of magic Shadow meant.
Whatever it is, I suspect it must be something wonderful.
The End
(copyright 2008 William Rogers)
Author's Note, for Those Who Weren't There:
This was written for Anthrocon 2008, and appeared in the convention book there. The convention was held in Pittsburgh, PA, which is of course the source of the Ohio River. The theme was "It's a Jungle Out There."
"Karneggy" is Andrew Carnagie and the steel industry he ruled, of course. And if you've been to Pittsburgh, you probably know that the Heinz ketchup plant is there.
"I've seen the Heinz Ketchup Factory!" I told a friend.
"Now you can die happy."
One of the big things at "furry" conventions is fursuiting. People devote endless labor and love into making mascot costumes, and then quickly work themselves into heatstroke just trying to wear the things in summer weather. How they do it, I don't know.
Of course, no fursuit is perfect. No matter how carefully made, I have yet to see one where you could drink from inside the suit without using a straw. And fursuit performance has certain rules that some of the fursuiters take very seriously. One of these is that you should never allow yourself to be seen half in a fursuit and half out of it.
Because if you're out of costume, you're you. If you're in costume, you're some other creature entirely, a creature with his own life and personality. That's the magic. But letting people see you half out of the suit destroys the illusion that the mascot is a living, breathing being on his own.
That's why people in fursuits often say "Don't take off your head in public. It ruins the magic."
Now, maybe, you understand the punchline of this story.
The Source
I'm sure humans once existed. After all, they're in all our legends. And why aren't there any fully anthro monkeys? Well, maybe that's what humans were!
But no, I've never found any trace of them.
The stories people tell! No, my last expedition wasn't a disaster. It was one huge frustration, that's all. Still, I met some fine people and had an adventure worthy of this Explorer's Club.
One fine day last June I found myself in Looville, Kintuk District, on the Ohio River. It's a charming old settlement of about three thousand furs. I was looking for riverfurs to take me upriver in search of yet another lost city.
But not just ANY city. I sought the city that has gone down in American mountain legend as the home of the fire god Karneggy, the home of vast workshops that made wonderful machines whose secrets are lost to us, and the home of the elixir Ketchup and of the Sacred Kalzone of Plenty, one bite of which would feed a fur forever. I speak, furs, of the magical city known as The Source. There, they say, humans had their last stronghold, and there humans created the anthro-peoples.
The legends say it stood at the source of the Ohio River. Somewhere far to the east, a clear spring must bubble from the ground. There, in silent mountain fastness, would be ruins of that God-built city, that haunt of legends, that place of magic where humans might still walk the earth!
Now, I'm sure that there are camels, for example, who are good riverfurs. And there's something to be said for having your boat crewed by furs who can't swim any better than you can. Still, nobody navigates running water better than an otter. And if you search the riverfront of any town that has one, you'll find otters before too long.
Cap Flashtail— if that otter had any first name other than "Captain" or "Cap," I never heard it— was a strong fellow with a bit of gray in his muzzle. His eye was bright, and he was cheerful— oh, bother, why do I waste time telling you this? He's an OTTER, for heaven's sake! He looked and acted like an otter. End of story.
He had three little boats he and his crew would use to take people out fishing. "Can you take me upstream?" I asked him.
"Sure, Boss. I know the river deep into the Jungle Preserve, way east of Cincy." Wherever that was. "What's your pleasure? Channel cat, gar, or something more like work?"
"I'm searching for one particular lost city."
"Ah, well, you'll find plenty of them along the riverbank. Where the river hasn't moved away from them over the centuries, or hasn't buried them or washed them away. Always moving, the river is."
"Can you take me all the way to the source of the river?"
"The source? No. Not sure anyone knows where that is, these days. But I can take you further upstream than anyone else in town."
We headed east the next morning. Everything seemed to be going perfectly as we went deeper and deeper into the jungle.
True, the jungle was oppressive. Summer's heat was early last year. The trees were swathed in strangling vines. The mosquitoes swarmed. There were gators in the water, and not the sort you can reason with over a beer or two, either. There were roars and howls in the night, some of them sounding like they might be speech, others not.
For all the time I've spent in the jungles, I'm a native of our Arctic Circle industrial cities. The jungle's heat wouldn't let me sleep. The brooding menace of it had me frightened. I wasn't doing well, and we'd barely started our journey!
Then Cap came to me that morning, knotting his hands and looking worried. "We must turn back, Boss. The lands ahead are forbidden."
"You never told me anything about forbidden rivers."
"You never told me how far east you wanted to go. I would have warned you if I'd known."
I just stared at him. The river seemed open before me. There was nothing in sight to stop me from reaching my dream. "Look, I'll double your pay."
"Money means nothing here. We dare not awaken the wrath of the furs native to these lands by intruding into their sacred precincts. Or at least we don't dare work in them. You see, first you have to settle the dues and get your union card. And it never hurts to have an cousin who's already in the union. But even if everything's right, half the time the steward is out of the village. That means you wait until..."
On and on he went about the local superstitions. Finally I just shook my head. "I'm going on, alone if I must."
"Oh, that's fine. Just do your own lifting and carrying; you don't need a union card if you're working for yourself alone. But we can't go one mile further."
"Will you at least wait here for me to come back?"
"At time and a half, for the dangers we face?"
"Dangers? What dangers? Pay you time and a half for sporting around in the river, playing tag, catching fish? I should think not!"
He wrinkled his nose at me in that cute way only otters and rabbits can manage. "Spoilsport," he said. But still, he seemed quite cheerful about it.
The next morning I set off upstream, alone. For a day and a half all went well.
But then I found the last thing I'd expected. The river split in two! I sought the source of the Ohio, but was the Ohio the river that flowed down from the northeast, or the one from the southeast?
I couldn't pilot the boat and consult my books at the same time. The point where the rivers met was surrounded by vine-shrouded ruins of another great city, but the point itself was relatively open, almost groomed. It looked like a safe place to tie up and camp while I sorted things out.
But I was so tired. So very tired. I took the mooring line and stepped ashore, but my foot slipped. I went down on my knees in the river. The boat was already starting to drift away. I jumped to my feet to lunge for it.
Then I heard something to my left. I looked up, and there was a jaguar, reaching for me, his claws out. I didn't notice in that moment if he was anthro or feral, two-legged or four-legged I mean, but those claws were brutally sharp. And he wasn't wearing any clothes, any trappings of civilization, that I could see.
I twisted away from him into the arms of a panther. "Got you," he growled.
I screamed and kicked at him and broke free, and the boat was out of reach and drifting downstream. I ran for the open ground. There were shouts behind me. And then I ran into a huge spiderweb. No, it was a net!
The panther had chased me here. "Stop fighting! You're just getting more tangled. I just set that up, too," he growled.
"You set nets to catch prey?"
He stopped there, at the edge of the clearing, and looked at me strangely. "No, for volleyball. Geez, man, why did you run? But you look awful. I think you need something cold to drink, and quickly. Hope you like a Mimosa. It's all I brought down from the hotel."
#
Spike, the jaguar, chuckled. He looked quite civilized when he had his pants on. The hotel looked civilized too. It seemed ancient, and they'd let vines cover it as they did almost everything else, but it was in fine shape inside. The cooling system could have sucked the humidity out of the air and made ice of it, and maybe it did. The chill was a blessed relief after days in the jungle.
"I can see why you freaked. It's funny as hell, though. Looking for a lost city, and you stumbled straight into us."
"You aren't on the map."
"We're an artist's colony, seeking seclusion to allow our creative genius to flourish, blah blah woof woof. But seriously, we do like our solitude. What's the point of maintaining an inholding in the Wilderness if everyone and their cousin can find you?"
I took another sip of Mimosa. The ones the bar mixed were even better than the one from Shadow's vacuum bottle. I was getting to like these things. It was strange sipping it through a straw, though. For some reason, drinking through straws was an inviolable custom here.
"Artist's colony," I muttered.
"Yeah. We've always been one, supposedly even before the Troubles and the rise of the anthro peoples. We have sculptors, artists in fabric, painters, and cartoonists. We have a few writers too, but of course nobody cares about them."
"And here I was looking for the legendary home of Karneggy, at the source of the Ohio River."
"But that's here! The Ohio starts out at the point where we found you. The rivers north and south have always had different names."
I gaped at him. "This city is called The Source, then?"
"No, it's Pitts."
"I don't know why you call it that. It seems very pleasant."
"The name of the town," Spike explained carefully, "is Pitts. It's the name of the human who founded the place, I think."
"Humans! Were there humans here? Are there humans here still?"
"Oh, humans haven't come here for centuries. But the legends tell us they came here once, and that they stayed on here long after the anthro peoples took over the world. Not only that, but the humans who came here were the ones most responsible for the creation of the anthro peoples."
"I wish I could have met some humans. I always wanted to thank them, to bless them for making us, and to ask them why they did."
He smiled at me. "You're a domestic dog, aren't you?"
"What?"
"Flop-ear, I mean. A flop-ear canid."
"Yes, of course. What does that have to do with anything?"
"Nothing, nothing. Anyway, let me tell you what we know about humans.
"We think they created furs for practical reasons. They had plagues back then, but plagues don't spread so easily when people are of many different species. And furs are stronger than humans were, eat a greater variety of foods, and are better protected from weather. That means they can live more gently on the land than humans could.
"Perhaps the humans realized that by splitting people among different species, they made bearing young require more planning than it had before. That helped reduce the overpopulation that was such a big problem back then. Personally, I doubt they foresaw that. But if they had, they might not have minded.
"But no matter what other reasons they had, one of the biggest reasons for what they did was simply that they loved you. They wanted you to live, and to be free and happy. They would never have wanted you to worship them."
I smiled. "Then in honor of their memory, I won't. I will try to think of them as real people, both good and evil, wise and foolish, like everyone else. If they ever really existed, that is."
"Oh, yes, they existed."
"I wish I was as sure of that as you are. But thanks to you and Shadow and the rest here who have made me so comfortable. I'm sorry to have intruded on the solitude you prize so much."
"No need to worry. Our solitude isn't that perfect, anyway. Our bankers, suppliers, and buyers know how to find us." He half-grinned, half scowled. "The taxmen do too, unfortunately."
"So what's next?"
"We'll have someone take your boat back downstream to your otter friends. Maybe you should leave here by road, though, down the Columbus Trace. That should be more comfortable for you."
"Thanks. You're much too kind."
"Not at all. Feel free to come back and visit again, if you want. We might have a business proposition for you, once we know more about you. But promise me a few things."
"Name them."
"Let us know you're coming. And no falling in the river. And next time you snag yourself in my volleyball net, I'm letting you claw your own way out."
#
I think I'll return to Pitts soon, if only to learn the art colony's religion and legends. Those must be fascinating.
I did overhear something on that subject. One handsome wolf seemed overheated that evening. He was also drinking more Mimosa than was good for him. He started clawing at his own face. That's when I heard Shadow, Spike's mate, mutter something in the wolf's ear.
Shadow said "Never take your head off in public. It ruins the magic."
It's obvious, from the context, that "take your head off" is local slang for getting drunk. But I have to wonder what kind of magic Shadow meant.
Whatever it is, I suspect it must be something wonderful.
The End
(copyright 2008 William Rogers)
Author's Note, for Those Who Weren't There:
This was written for Anthrocon 2008, and appeared in the convention book there. The convention was held in Pittsburgh, PA, which is of course the source of the Ohio River. The theme was "It's a Jungle Out There."
"Karneggy" is Andrew Carnagie and the steel industry he ruled, of course. And if you've been to Pittsburgh, you probably know that the Heinz ketchup plant is there.
"I've seen the Heinz Ketchup Factory!" I told a friend.
"Now you can die happy."
One of the big things at "furry" conventions is fursuiting. People devote endless labor and love into making mascot costumes, and then quickly work themselves into heatstroke just trying to wear the things in summer weather. How they do it, I don't know.
Of course, no fursuit is perfect. No matter how carefully made, I have yet to see one where you could drink from inside the suit without using a straw. And fursuit performance has certain rules that some of the fursuiters take very seriously. One of these is that you should never allow yourself to be seen half in a fursuit and half out of it.
Because if you're out of costume, you're you. If you're in costume, you're some other creature entirely, a creature with his own life and personality. That's the magic. But letting people see you half out of the suit destroys the illusion that the mascot is a living, breathing being on his own.
That's why people in fursuits often say "Don't take off your head in public. It ruins the magic."
Now, maybe, you understand the punchline of this story.
