[Fin] I Put a Spell on You (Chac and Tezcalipoca)

[Geyser Eelborn]

Quote:

"I Put a Spell on You" – RP
Characters: Chac, Tezcatlipoca
Players: Geyser Eelborn
Wordcounts:
→ Chac || 4,146 | 4 Complete RPs |
→ Tezcatlipoca || 4,532 | 4 Complete RPs |
__________________________
8,678 words total

Chac lived on the bank of a river, in a nest of reeds, just upstream of the gentle roar of the rapids below. Rapids were his type of water. For his water-sister Awendelah, the waters cool; for his ice-sister Kasa, the waters warm, but for Chac, worrisome Chac, the waters tempestuous, always roiling, always moving, always frothing and foaming. It reflected in him something deep and unseated. And it was that reflection of himself that drew him to the rapids, always and back again. To leave his home was unthinkable—to be apart from it was to be apart from himself, from some essential part of his spirit. It would be to defy the Weaver who had given him life. He was woven as the rapids. He could no more leave them than he could rip the water orbs from his body. It was what he was, and he was content to accept that.

Which was not to say that he could never be found away from his nest. He had awoken surrounded by two others, a pair of nantlils. They awoke at the same time, and, seeing the blue and purple marks on each other’s bodies, and feeling the water in the very air, they agreed that the three were obviously siblings-in-spirit, made into being as a family. It had become clear, however, not long—not nearly long enough—after their awakening that Chac could not live with his sisters. Their spirits sang out to cool and hot waters, but those waters were still and unmoving. Kasa, though made for ice, was in love with hot springs, and while Wendy was willing to live with her in a valley of such, Chac needed flowing water, and he simply could not find the water he needed in their valley. So with tearful good-bye, he had set out from that sacred place to find a place of his own, one that spoke out to his spirit. He had found one less than a day’s journey away, and had been living there ever since. He would leave his nest once a month or even more often to seek out his sisters’ company for a day or so. Then he would return to the waters that had claimed him so thoroughly, to recommune with the rapids.

A warm summer afternoon, the sun high in the sky, and birds were chirping in the tree-tops. The buzz of grasshoppers was all around as Chac made his way through the long grass towards his favorite creek. It was a happy little body of water, trickling over pebbles and under nettles and grass overhanging the banks. Pine trees stretched up above; ponderosa rubbed against Douglas’ fir and spruce. All along the banks of the creek grew wildflowers—penstamon, paintbrush, lily, and lupine. Skeeters danced across the water; dragonflies swooped above. Tiny frogs, no bigger than his toe, leaped from stone to stone. Here and there a minnow fled to the shelter of a rock. Granite boulders lined the creek, covered in moss. The moss was dry, dormant, waiting for winter rains and snow to cover them and rejuvenate them. Until then? They were closed in on themselves, dry and seemingly lifeless.

The air smelled like algae, evergreen dust, frogs, grasshoppers, and granite. But mostly dust. Chac wandered through the creek, letting the cool water wash over his toes. He had spent the night before visiting his sisters, and now he was making his way back to his nest. The creek would lead back there. It was not the most straightforward of paths—the straightest one would be up and over the hill, through more dust and grass, chasing butterflies and picking up ticks along the way. Much nicer to wander through the creek. It would take longer, but he would be home by dark, and, that being a good enough goal for him, Chac was content to enjoy this little creek. He had explored it so often since settling at his river that he could have walked through it with his eyes closed. It was familiar to him, as familiar as his own home or that of his sisters’. He knew everything about this creek, and it was his, his alone, but for the dragonflies and the minnows. Which was why he was more than slightly startled to see an unfamiliar color sitting, unmoving, on the banks of the creek, staring intently into the water.  

[Geyser Eelborn]

This is Tezcatlipoca. Dashing, no? One glance at him, and you could just tell that he was woven of fire. Well, yeah, besides the horns. The horns are sort of a big duh. So yeah, horns, not quite the point. More of the point were his colors, all burnt and beautiful. Singed pinks, baked reds, and ashy oranges, all set in charred black, as though he had run laughing through an inferno just to be here. And, he thought, that was a pretty good way to describe himself. Oh, not the inferno bit—goodness, no. It was not like he even knew what suffering was. He was young, and inexperienced, and knew nothing of the world. He was new, and shiny, and nothing yet had come along to dim his fire. No. The way to describe him was laughing. He had a big grin on his face most times, and that big, dopey grin of his was hard to knock off his face. Not that anyone had yet tried—Tez had not met many people quite yet. The world was sort of empty, you know? Not a lot of people to get all in his face to knock the smile off. So yeah, running through danger, laughing at the peril and coming out just a little bit burnt? That was Tez, alright. All fired up with nothing to do. At least, that was the way he thought of himself.

Everyone woke up somewhere, didn’t they? And where they woke up tended to have some sort of meaning. At least, that was the way Tez thought of it. That was what he was thinking about as he watched the minnows got skitter-scattering about in the water below. Everyone woke up somewhere, and breathed their first breath, and thought their first thought, and saw their first sight. And it was all significant, yeah? That is, if you woke up in ice, you were not going to be some sort of burning-brightly hot-headed kind of ditz, yeah? So where you woke up had an effect on you. It shaped who you were going to be, and what you considered most important in life. Tez, for example, had woken up on a piece of hot granite under a blazing noonday sun. Yep. That was Tez, alright. He could see immediately how that was going to affect him in life. Er. At least…he sort of thought he could see how that would affect him in life. Kind of. Sort of. He was Tez. He knew everything! No need to worry about things. Worry was for other people who were not Tez, and did not share the surety of granite or the fire of the sun. Pfft. Tez the Mighty knew everything. There were no questions. Not ever. Never.

Satisfied that he had answered the only question in life, he pushed aside his last doubts and looked up into the summer air. He breathed in deep, sighed, and closed his bright eyes. The air smelled good. All dry and warm and summer-y. This was a nice place, yeah? It was not where Tez wanted to stop, no, not by a long shot. No. He knew exactly where he was going. I mean, default, duh? Tez knew where he was going, he told himself. Therefore, he knew exactly where he was going, and there were no doubts, no questions. Yeah. He was cool with this. He drew in another breath and noticed something he hadn’t noticed before. There was something else standing behind him. He opened his eyes and turned his head.

Down there, below the boulder on which he perched, stood another B’alam. Tezcatlipoca blinked. The B’alam below him was bright blue, dusted with pearly grey, with deep, penetrating purple eyes. For the first time in his life, Tez felt more than a little self-conscious. Aw, heck, thing was, he felt self-conscious. It was a new feeling for him, but the word for it came straight to mind. Awww. Not a good feeling. He did not like it at all. So he jumped down from the rock and peered at the stranger a little more closely. The stranger was taller than him by, like, a head, and he seemed to have twice the fur that Tez himself had. What felt like a pleasantly cool day must have been really warm to this stranger. Possibly. Maybe? Maybe those wibbling, wobbling jewels on his paws and forehead had some effect on him. He stared up at those orbs, mouth agape. They were like water—water, all condensed into balls, like the stranger had grabbed up great big gobs of water and, like, smooshed them all together like jewels and plonked them right on his forehead. Whoa. Weird. What were they? Water or something?

He could not keep staring at the water, though. His eyes kept slipping to those deep, dark eyes. Purple? No, wait, just dark, dark blue. Like night after sunset, or night right before dawn. Which was it? An end to fun and glory? Or the beginning of a new and exciting experience?  

[Geyser Eelborn]

The shape atop the rock, it turned out, was another B’alam. The strange tahtll leapt down from the rock at the sight of him and walked straight up to Chac. The stranger looked him over without fear, but with a sort of awe on his face. Chac could not help it; he also felt a curiosity creep over him at the sight of this unusual individual. He was not like anything Chac had ever seen—for one thing, he had the horns of a mountain antelope sticking out of the back of his head, black curliques that seemed to shimmer like fresh charcoal. He was shorter than Chac, and his fur was so thin that the Water Triber fancied he could see the stranger’s skin underneath it. He had big paws, and his coat was a dull array of warm colors, as though he had been burned at some point in the past. All except those eyes—they were the green of new growth, new leaves budding in spring. He saw in those eyes a question. It was not a question he had ever asked. It was not a question he could have put word to. But it was a question that he felt strike him right in the bones, and he thought he could feel his orbs tremble as though at a coming storm.

Chac needed to rip his eyes away from the stranger’s, before whatever fire had burnt through his fur turned onto Chac and boiled him alive. But he found that the stranger’s green eyes held him pinned in place, unable to move. Unable, almost to think. But he forced himself to, anyway. Obviously, this stranger was neither woven of water, as he and Wendy were, nor woven of ice, as was Kasa. So what, then, had the Weaver in mind when he had brought forth this charred creature into the world? For what purpose did he walk? And what element had given his spirit shape in the clever paws of the creator? Strange and troubling thoughts were these, but he knew, the longer he stared, that there was no question at all what catastrophic force surged through this stranger’s veins: fire, ancient and primeval. The first fire, perhaps, or maybe a new and more powerful fire. Standing before him was not a B’alam, but a wildfire, a force of nature, unchecked and uncontrollable, with the power to destroy or to nurture in his awkward paws.

Fire could boil water into nothingness, into mere steam, wiping clean every trace that it had ever existed. So what was the fire doing here? Why had it come here, of all places, to one of the places that Chac loved? Was it here to destroy? Had it been sent here to punish him for some sin unknown? Was it now time to repent? Or was the fire here only coincidentally? It was a warm day, but Chac felt a shiver go down his back. He knew then, without any doubt, but also without any hint or understanding, that the next few minutes would change his life—forever. That after this, there would be no turning back time. He would never be the same, and nor would his world. He would be boiled away into nothingness, and his old life would be just a memory, fading in the noonday sun. The world was about to change. It was only a matter of time until he could see the shape of the change, and see where he would stand in this new world—if stand at all he would.

Why would the fire not speak? Why would this apparition not say a word, but bore directly into his eyes and into his spirit? Why did he stand, mouth slightly open to reveal a pinker tongue, his eyes searching? It was as if he was seeking out the last refuges inside Chac’s head, chasing it out into the open where it could more easily be seen. He felt distinctly uncomfortable. No one should have this sort of effect on him. No one. No one at all. He should not be experiencing this, not from this stranger, not from his sisters, not even from his own reflection. He wanted to scream at the creature, What do you want?! Why are you bothering me? Why can you not just leave me alone? but his tongue was frozen, as if in horror, as if in anticipation. He was frozen in place, and he wished, oh so desperately he wished, that he could move, or even speak, or do something, anything to affect his doom. He wished desperately that he could change his fate, to shape it or to mold it, but his fate was no longer in his paws. It was in those big, dark paws of the stranger, all dark red like iron-riddled rock or like blood at dawn. And he would be helpless against whatever storm was about to break.  

[Geyser Eelborn]

Oh wow, those eyes were intense. They seemed to be digging in at Tez, like Tez’s spirit held answers to the questions of the cosmos. The end of the fire triber’s tail twitched nervously. It was the only part of his body that would move. Even his large claws, sheathed inside heavy paws, could not move. Like, they were stuck in place or something. Rusted or something. He shivered in the cool sunlight. Why was the water guy staring at him like that? Like he was owed some answers? Tez wished he could speak, just to babble something. Or that the water guy would speak, to actually put to word those questions so that Tez could spit the answers back at him. What answers? Well, any answers, really. The answers did not matter, right, just so long as Tez could get the freak away. Those eyes…were like tidal waves. They just sort of smashed into him, smashed him into little itty-bitty pieces. He could not move under those, and that was an uncomfortable sensation, indeed.

So, like, what was this guy’s problem? What possible questions could he ask? Tez’s first inclination was to think of big questions. What caused awakening? What made stars shine? How come some B’alam smelled differently than others? How do you smoosh water into balls? No, wait, Water Guy probably had that all figured out. But that was an interesting question itself: if Water Guy had that figured out, what possible question could he have of Tez? Tezcatlipoca did not know anything (except, maybe, the secret of the Location of Awakening, that whole “where you wake affects you” jazz), so why would Water Guy pick Tez to answer the Question? Or maybe it was some sort of test or something, something Water Guy unleashed on everybody that went wandering through the territory?

Oh, hey, maybe that was the question! Something as unspeakably banal as “Yo, stranger, what are you doing at my creek? Are you coveting my minnows?” Or were they salmon? Well, whatever, maybe Water Guy was just being territorial. Maybe he was just trying to psyche Tez out. Well, if he was, then mission freaking accomplished, because Tez was just about ready to bolt and not stop until he was hiding safe and secure in the magma chamber of the world’s biggest volcano. Because fire was the only place he could possibly be safe from those night-dark eyes. Water could douse fire and turn it into unspeakable sludge. Water could banish fire so thoroughly that fire could never again take root. That sort of eradication was creepier than worms, creepier than creepy-crawlies, and it made Tez squirm. What had he just walked into? What was he going to do? How could he defend himself from annihilation if he could not even defend himself? Because that was a thing, a very definite thing. He could not move. Remember? That whole tail-twitching because nothing else can thing? Because yeah, still a thing. He was just too scared to move, and that was sort of all there was to it (he was sure).

So what to do now? Struggle? Wriggle free? He was confident that he could, with enough effort, force a couple muscles to move in concert, but maybe, like, one leg, or one ear or something. That was the level of movement he was up to at the moment. He could pull out his claws, but that would leave him without enough willpower to raise his paws to strike Water Guy. So he had to pick his muscles carefully. What few muscles, moving together, without any aid whatsoever, could defend himself from utter destruction? His heart was thudding loud enough to drown out the sound of the creek in the background as he racked his mind for ideas.

Claws were out, teeth were out, legs were out…so wait…there was just one choice, yeah? He just had to kind of, sort of, hope that it worked. Well. Here goes:

“Hi!” he said. “Is this, like, your creek? ‘Cause if so, wow, really nice creak, I mean, it’s just gorgeous up there. I’m just, like, passing through, y’know? Don’t mind me. Like, seriously, don’t mind me. I’m just here. By the way, I’m Tezcatlipoca. What’s your name, Water Guy?”  

[Geyser Eelborn]

??? At last, the apparition spoke. And it seemed…ditzy? That was actually almost disturbing. The idea that a creature that filled him with such abject terror could speak as if significant portions of its brain were lacking was an uncomfortable one. Chac tilted his head, still reeling from the moments—minutes? Hours? Days?—of apprehension that had come before, and their sudden disappearance. He forced himself to reassess the stranger, to look him over once again. The end of the stranger’s tail was twitching violently. So the stranger was also…nervous? Or had been before, or was now? Chac was not ready for that sort of idea, and besides, it left so much unsettled. If the stranger had been nervous, then what had the question in his eyes been? It could not have been a challenge to battle, nor could it have been a challenge to quarrel. No. It had been a challenge, but not a challenge so mundane. A challenge much deeper than that, a challenge that sunk deep into his bones and, even now, would not depart him. The apprehension was gone, but the moment of irreversible change was not yet over. Something would yet happen on this day, before he and the fire took leave of each other, which would forever change the way that Chac saw the world.

He only hoped it did not mean that he would live forever in fear, but he had a terrible feeling that the change would be even more significant than that. What it was, he would have to wait and see. He only hoped that he would not lose a significant part of himself in the change. It was a scant hope, a foolish one. A change of this magnitude could only destroy him. So perhaps, then, he should hope instead for the new him to not be the antithesis of what he now was. Beyond that? The future was out of his paws and into the big paws of the short stranger with the killer eyes.

If nothing else, the horned stranger had offered him an opening, some small action he could take in desperate hope to delay that inevitable remaking. He had asked a question—several, actually, now that he thought about it, or maybe it was just that the stranger’s inflection simply implied those sloppy questions—and that at least offered him some way to respond. He could speak—of that, at least, he was fairly confident—though what more he could do he was not sure. Speak. Yes. He could speak now, and wait, and put off that dreadful moment from which he could not turn back. Even if this meeting would utterly destroy him down to the barest threads, he could delay it for a brief while by the desperate waggling of tongue and throat.

It did not surprise him greatly that he needed to clear his throat first. Fear was a corrosive force, and like the scars left on rock after a bitter winter, the panic he had experienced in the first moment of meeting with this…this “Tezcatlipoca” had left his throat in no condition to carry speech from head to mouth. He had instinctively expected to need to clear his throat, and so he did. He was surprised that his voice, nonetheless sounded raw and came out as a light growl. “I am Chac.” He frowned. That growl…no, it would not do. It made him sound aggressive and territorial. He cleared his throat again, more ferociously this time, and continued. “This stream is not mine, Tezcatlipoca, though it lies not far from my own stream. As you say, this one is fair and bright and beautiful, and for that reason I chose to meander along it on my way home.”

Chac forced himself to relax. He sat down on the grassy bank of the stream and tucked his tail around himself. He avoided Tezcatlipoca’s eyes, however. He had learned his lesson about those vivid orbs. They could suck him in like a whirlpool, never to release him again, and he was too glad for the brief calm that he had managed to impose upon himself to go about wasting it already for panic. Far better to avoid that gaze and appear to simply be enjoying the scenery. He watched a dragonfly fly past, hovering in the air before darting back towards the water. He smiled at it. If only he could have the blazing self-confidence of the king of the waters.  

[Geyser Eelborn]

Water Guy continued to stare at him for a second or so after he finished his hasty little speech, eyes still narrowed and locked onto his. He actually seemed to frown at Tez, as if trying to find something wrong with him, then slowly let his gaze rake over the young Fire Triber. Tez’s tail sped up its dizzy dance. He was staring, and it was so unnerving! Why was he doing that? He did know he was scary, right, and that he did not need to belabor it at all? Well, maybe he did not, because that stare was just, well, disturbing. And it was ceaseless, too! It took in his fidgeting tail, his twinging paws, and then back to his eyes again. Tez managed to flinch his eyes away, barely, to return the treatment to Water Guy. Water Guy’s hairs were raised on his back and his ears were canted backwards. Tez was not the best socialized of folks, but he knew aggression, nervousness, and distaste when he saw it. Nope. This was not a good posture to have.

Tez began to seriously reconsider his options here. Water Guy’s tensed muscles implied that he was raring to take off at any minute and flay Tez into a pretty pink rug. He was going to have to run, then, and run fast, and unfortunately for him, Water Guy was bigger than him. Not fatter, no, not less agile or something lucky like that, but bigger as in, y’know, taller and more muscular. As in, could probably easily outrun Tez, and pretty likely to be able to climb a tree better than him. He knew the terrain better, and he must have been a magus or something to smoosh water like that, so yeah, Tez was probably doomed, no matter what pithy thing he chose to say. About the only advantage he had was that he was pretty sure that his claws were bigger than Water Guy’s. His paws certainly were, and maybe paw size was correlated with claw size? Made sense to Tez, but did that mean it was right? He added it to the list of questions to contemplate in the future, but in the meantime, he forced it to the side so that he could concentrate on Water Guy. The last thing he wanted to do at this point was to startle or upset him, or to underestimate him. He really, really didn’t want to let his guard down. If he got jumped, he was going to go down, and it was going to be ugly. So no. Playtime later, thinky-thinky time later, pay attention time now.

A decision seemed to overcome Water Guy and the blue behemoth coughed. Then, in a voice like a roaring river over gravel, he snarled, “I. Am Chac.” Well, that was a promising start. Tez’s muscles tensed like a string. Oh no. This was going to hurt.

But then the entity known as Chac did something that Tez did not expect. He cleared his throat again, and in a voice as gentle and enchanting as spring rain, he murmured, “This stream is not mine, Tezcatlipoca, though it lies not far from my own stream. As you say, this one is fair and bright and beautiful, and for that reason I chose to meander along it on my way home.” For a scary guy, Water Guy—er, Chac—had a really nice voice. And he talked pretty. That was not really as important as sounding nice, but it sort of added to the effect. At long, long last, Tez relaxed. And what was more? Chac seemed to relax as well! All of the tension went out of him at last. His fur went down, his legs melted into a sitting position, and his ears settled forward, trailing their long, silky tufts like a paw through water.

Water, water, water. It all came back to water. The orbs, the color of the stranger, his mannerism—it was like everything about him was all about the water. Like he came from the water, like he was made purely out of it. Tez added that to the list of mysteries as he flopped down onto his belly. His tail had calmed and he realized with a start that he could feel his own ears rolling forward and his hackles lowering to their original level. How extraordinary! All that time, he was just sittin’ around, worried that he was about to get savaged, and…Chac probably felt the same way!

That was a real epiphany for Tezcatlipoca, and rather than push it to the side like he had everything else, he instead brought it out in front of him to examine. It was way too significant not to. Chac was just like him—he had seen a doom in Chac, and Chac, well, he must have seen a doom in Tez as well! How funny! And Tez, well, he was fire, right? So of course Chac was water. Their inherent natures of the elements must have spoken out, and in that moment where they locked eyes, those two fundamental forces of creation had battled each other for dominance. Personally, Tez awarded the victory to water. In this case, water had to have won—it relaxed first. But maybe the fact that it had been forced to calm down made water see the victory as going to fire. That thought did not really appeal to Tez. The first round of aggression and counter-aggression had not been so nice, and he was not in a hurry to repeat it. Nope. So if he and Chac were going to circle each other all afternoon trying to get the other one back for winning, well, there was going to be a problem. And all of that aggression would come back, and, well, gross.

He could not be sure if Chac had figured this out yet. So it was up to him to drag it to the stranger’s feet and settle it for once and for all. But first, he had a minor chore to get over with. With a big smile on his face, Tez said, “Please, Chac, call me Tez. It’s a little easier and it doesn’t get in the way so much.” With that said, he was free to broach the subject at hand. “So I know I startled you and all, Chac. Didn’t really mean to, I’ve just never seen anyone like you before. So sorry I acted all aggressive.” He tilted his head to one side. “To tell the truth, you kinda startled me as well. So I think we’re kinda even on that, so yeah. Um, sorry for startling you. It won’t happen again.” There, done, dealt with. His burden relieved, the fire triber settled down to watch his new friend’s bemused expression.  

[Geyser Eelborn]

After Chac sat down, the stranger flopped onto the ground with a languid manner that matched his ditzy, scattered words. Yes, scattered was a good way to describe him—like embers from a struck stick. And when Chac had finished introducing himself, the aggression he could see in Tezcatlipoca disappeared like a drop into water. Fur flat and ears decidedly not so, the odd entity spoke again. Once again, that voice. It was…not soft. No, it could not be described as such. Rather, his voice was bright and sunny, like a warm afternoon had been spun into sound. It was like Tezcatlipoca was made out of the warmth of fire. That in itself raised a thought. Chac recalled Kala. Although Kala’s soul longed for the steam rising from her beloved pools, there was something about her body that had been plainly made for the icy peaks and snow fields. Her thick fur and a tail kept close to her body. Though she loved the water, Kala was clearly made for the element of ice, even as the water orbs that adorned her brother and sister proclaimed them for the element of water. Perhaps, then, if their bodies had been made for those elements, others could have been made for the other diverse elements? Perhaps, then, Tezcalipoca’s warm nature called to light, or perhaps fire. Perhaps that was what those great, curling horns indicated.

Chac nodded in recognition of Tezcalipoca’s—Tez’s—request. It was a long name, especially for one such as Tez. He seemed too quick, too flighty, for a four-syllable name. Tez, on the other paw, was a good name for him. Quick, short, and with just the right sound. It sounded like a whisp of smoke rising from charred logs. Chac, however, did not have much time to contemplate the stranger’s name. Instead, he was caught up in Tez’s next words. He? He had startled Tezcalipoca? The burning, flaring creature that had stumbled into his life like a natural disaster? Actually, Chac began to rethink that thought. If Tez was so pacifistic as this, then perhaps he had no interest in intruding permanently. Maybe the major change that Chac could feel was something so mundane as a change in, in perspective. Yes. Now, at long last, could Chac relax without forcing himself to. The worst was over. Once this conversation was over, he could start his new life, unaffected by this strange and terrifying encounter. “That’s quite alright, Tez,” he said magnanimously. “I myself extend my apologies for so startling you.”  

[Geyser Eelborn]

Awww, what a gentlecat! Him and his distended, polysyllabic verbage. Tez thought he would quite like to get to know Chac better. He could hang out, ask him all those weird questions, ask him where he woke up. But as soon as he thought about all those lovely, tantalizing possibilities, all those nights he could spend with that sweet voice, the memory of another night flooded into his brain. It was kind of hard for it not to have—it had been popping up consistently in his head ever since he had Awoken a couple months ago. You see, Chac was not the first other B’alam that Tez had ever encountered. Nor was he the first B’alam that Tez had ever encountered that was not from Fire Tribe. Not long after waking up, Tez had attempted to travel around at night. Without the guiding light of the sun, he had floundered around in the dark for a while until a dark—and pale—shape had materialized from the darkness and spoke to him in a low, deep voice.

The voice had been so low that Tez could have felt it echoing in his chest, rattling off his lungs and splatting against his heart. He could not see much of the deep-voiced weirdo, but what he had seen had been even weirder—though certainly not scarier, nope—than Chac. You see, the deep voice had emanated from a great big B’alam who was very, very dark. There were a few pale patches, as previously mentioned, and they made the Dark Guy look like a storm cloud. Mostly, though, all Tez had been able to see of the stranger had been his eyes, like tiny moons stuck to his face. They had talked for a while. Not about anything significant. It was not like the big, dark stranger had loomed out of the shadows, made some troubling announcement about the future, and dematerialized back into the shadows. No, strangely the weirdo had just talked about mundane stuff. Besides that voice and the sensation that he was bigger than anything, the only thing scary about him had been his request for dinner.

But hey, Tez had gotten something out of it, and they had had a chat with each other between laps of the stranger’s tongue. Tez’s paw had healed within a week, and by then, he and the dark guy had long since parted paths. The thing was, in a weird, obscure way, he had actually sort of made an important observation to Tez, and one way more important than a troubling announcement. Nonetheless, that observation had captured Tez’s imagination, and that now he found it interfering with his plans for spending a while with Chac. Drat. How come the universe had to come up with ways to screw with us, huh?

“Hey, nothing to worry about, Chac. Like I said, I startled you, you startled me, we’re on even ground, so yeah, kinda even between us, yeah? So anyway, if you’re not from around here…” he gestured with his paw and horns, “where are you from? You look like you’re from water.” That last bit popped out of his mouth before he had a chance to realize what he was saying. Um, inappropriate much? “Er, sorry about that, I know it’s none of my business. But yeah, you look like a…well, a watery kind of guy, if you’ll excuse the expression. So I guess that’s why I expected this stream was yours.” Well, apart from the territoriality, duh!  

[Geyser Eelborn]

The more he and Tez spoke, the better Chac began to think of the pink tahtll. He was slowly becoming accustomed to the lilting, flickering cadence of Tez’s speech. He still preferred his own speech, simple and solid (in his opinion), but he was forced to admit that Tez’s way of talking lent him a certain childish charm. His speech seemed half-formed, stretched thin to make it useful for adult conversation, but as long as it worked, Chac was willing to listen to it. He imagined he might grow tired of it at some later time, but for now, he kept his ears attuned to it. “I would not say that things are ‘even’ between us, Tez, because that would imply that at some point they were not.” His serene tone conveyed the meaning of his sentence perhaps more clearly than the words themselves: Of course we are even. That is the way I would prefer it to be.

The next question took Chac a little off-balance, however. He had not expected to be asked about his origins. Were they really important? It really was rather nosy of Tez, but he probably had not meant anything by it. Truth be told, Chac was dying to ask Tez the same question, if only to confirm his suspicions about his tribe. Was he fire, or was he light? It was hard to tell, but it certainly seemed that Tezcatlipoca was, either way, the sun itself. As for Chac? Well, “If you mean where I call home, it is a river not far from here—certainly less than half an afternoon’s easy walk. This stream is a fine one, but little creaks like this do not capture my imagination, and my soul, quite so much as my home river.” He could not help but smile at the vision of his river, so close by. “If you mean where I woke up, that was a ways away from here, about a midmorning through midafternoon walk from here. I have since moved from that place to my current abode.”

Chac’s curiosity was coming to a head now, but he was unwilling to be as blatant and clumsy as Tez had been in asking the same question. His liking of the strange tahtll had not diminished any by the rude question, but it had subtly changed. It had made him more aware of his own thoughts and feelings, and the sensation of that was…neither welcomed nor unwelcomed. It was there, however, and Chac marveled at it with the part of his mind that was not trying to place his wonder into appropriate words. “Are you looking for a home yourself, Tez? This stream would make a fine home for anyone. There are rabbits in the woods and fish in the water. I think there will be larger ones later this season, but the fish to be had here now are tasty enough on their own.” There. Artfully stated, or as artfully as he could state such forwardness.  

[Geyser Eelborn]

Every time Chac opened his mouth, Tez had further reason to identify with him—well, except that nice, melodious voice. That he could never identify with, it was just too different from his own! And the fancy speech, yeah, no, definitely was not like Tez at all. But, in at least a small way, Tez was grateful for that. It meant that there was some definition between the two, and they were not identical after all. All that fancy talk, that was a part of Chac that, obviously, was Chac instead of basic B’alam…ness. It was just a little too fancy for something as simple as “hey, you, where you from?” If he had meant that, he could have asked that, couldn’t he? Instead of being all fancy about it?

Then again, well, yeah, Tez had kinda asked a rude question about him. And a real personal question, too. So of course, if he had to turn the tables, he was going to ask a question more politely and gently. He had not known Chac for long, but it had not taken long, either, for Chac to make himself pretty clear: be polite, or else….something would happen. Possibly Chac would explode. Or maybe he would cry. Tez shuddered inwardly. He would much prefer a big, gory, bloody explosion than to watch those eyes fill up with tears. Yes. Okay. Lesson learned: ask a question, ask it smart. That meant intelligently and neatly. He didn’t want to make the Water Guy be all sad.

So this time, before he opened his mouth, he considered what he was saying—thoroughly—before he replied. He even rearranged it a little so that it would come out sounding less coarse. “It’s a nice stream, and all,” he said slowly, “and I could see a…person…wanting to live here for, um, a…while. But…” He took a breath. “I do not have a home, but I don’t think this is the sort of place for me. I mean? It looks very, very….nice. And I definitely plan to stay here tonight. I’d love to taste the fish. But in the morning, I’ve gotta—got to—move on. Y’see, I’ve heard about this place out in the mountains, and it seems like just the place for me. In fact,” he added, “I’ve been looking for it all day today. It’s why I’m up here. I’ve heard about this great, flat place so big you can’t see the other side of it even on a clear day. It’s supposed to be a round valley or something, and it’s full of water so hot that the steam forms clouds. There’s trees bleached white and a big lake in the valley above, glaciers all around, and a fat old waterfall flopping down into the valley from that lake. Have you heard of it?” he asked hopefully. The image that the dark guy had planted in his head still remained all these months later, and he had been combing every mountain he came across for it. He had begun to despair of ever finding the place. Well, he had been told that the place was in the mountains, and he was in mountains right now, wasn’t he? So maybe this was the end of the search, and he could spend time getting to know Chac after all…!  

[Geyser Eelborn]

Chac considered Tez’s words, noticing in passing how Tez’s words had changed after his question. It was odd, and almost disappointing to hear all of that rolling go out of his voice. Where before his tongue had sounded comfortable and at ease, now it sounded nervous and self-conscious. Chac found, to his surprise, that he did not like the change in Tez’s voice. It simply was not natural, and hearing how difficult it seemed for Tez to find the right words, he was relieved when, towards the end of his statement, with that hopeful question on the end, Tez’s voice returned to its original cadence.

With the unexpected discomfort resolved, Chac returned to Tez’s words. It did not surprise him that Tez did not seem to be from around here—he had never seen one such as he, and he would have been disappointed not only in the world, but in himself had he learned that many such lived in these mountains. He had lived here all his life, though—although that was a short period, admittedly, even for the short time B’alam had been around—and to find out now that he had neighbors he had never known would have made him terribly embarrassed. It seemed that Tez might be a neighbor after all, though—Tez’s description of the place sounded quite similar to Chac’s sister’s home. Mostly, at least. “I know of a place similar to your description,” he said. “My sisters, Awendelah and Kala, live in a valley around the mountain from here filled with hot springs. Your valley sounds a bit larger than my sisters’ however, and theirs does not have a lake attached to it. Do you happen to know which mountain your valley is on?”

If Tez was willing to settle for any hot springs, then the thing to do would be to take him to his sisters tomorrow and introduce them. He could visit Tez when he visited his sisters, or at other times, and he could show his new friend around the mountains. It would be nice to have a friend besides his sisters, he realized. Someone to whom he could explain things. He had never had cause to explain things to people before. His sisters just knew, or they could figure out in a heartbeat. A friend, however, was an altogether new phenomenon. If, on the other paw, Tez really did have his heart set on that valley…well…

Maybe…Chac could join him. In the search. It would not be a long search, after all—there could hardly be so many hot spring valleys in this range, and together they could search the whole range in about a month. And it would give him something to think about, and to talk about, and to tell his sisters about when he got back. And he would know where to find Tez when next he wanted a friend to talk to. Yes. The idea sounded quite nice! He resolved to ask Tez when the opportunity came.  

[Geyser Eelborn]

Tez bit his lip and considered Chac’s description of the place. A little valley? No waterfall? No lake? And no mention of glaciers, either. Tez looked up at the scenery around them. They were, at the very moment, in a mountain range in the middle of territory owned by hornless B’alam, the ones that he had already taken to thinking of as “those rock-and-veg blokes.” The stream appeared to be in a flat valley, but he’d been walking upstream all day; downstream, it joined a larger river, crashed into a bunch of rapids, and slopped out of the mountains and onto the plains. The dark guy’s description of the mountains had been pretty specific, and the description had included something about “smooth, great peaks” like “the Weaver himself’s own teeth.” Which weaver he would not say. Maybe it was just a saying or a metaphor that everyone but Tez had heard of. Or maybe telekinesis did not work on looms and you had to make cloth with your mouth. Either way, he had gotten the impression that the mountains he was looking for were supposed to be big. These mountains were pretty big, at least compared to the plains below, but maybe these were not the ones?

There were a lot of mountains in the world, and it sounded like one of the other ones was where he was looking for. He hid a sigh of disappointment. “No, I think your sisters’ place is there place, not mine.” Just saying that made him frown. If he was being honest with himself…yeah, that was also kind of important to him: he wanted a place of his own, all his own. Not someone else’s. He did not want to go swanning into some valley some other B’alam owned just to stay there. He wanted his own place, where he could make his own rules. That was one of the things that had captured him about the place the Dark Guy had told him about: it had been remote, somewhere far away from prying eyes.

He shook the frown off his face. He really should be paying more attention to his face if his face was going to keep getting him in trouble with Chac. He did not want to frighten the water guy as much as he had earlier. Nope, not ever again. “Thanks for the information, Chac. I was in the area, so I thought I’d check out this range, but if it isn’t here, I’ll definitely be leaving tomorrow morning.” He stood up and stretched out his spine. “You said something about fish in the river. D’you suppose you could teach me how to fish? I’ve, uh, never had much luck before.” He looked down at his clumsy paws. Even claws hadn’t helped him out much there.  

[Geyser Eelborn]

So wait…Tez was going to leave, then? Leave these mountains without searching further? That third possibility, until now unexplored, exploded into Chac’s brain and frenzied it beyond recognition. After all of the turmoil today, now Tez was going to leave? His visit into Chac’s life was going to be so brief? It was terribly unfair. He had gotten so worked up about meeting someone new, and a very special someone new at that, and now that new person was going to leave with barely a word passing between them? And how sloppy was he to assume that this stranger, so newly met, knew all there was to know about the mountains? How sloppy was he to assume that there was nothing to be learned now that he had asked a resident who had, after all, never even met a member of his tribe before? Tez should have realized that Chac simply was not experienced or knowledgeable enough to be considered a be-all, end-all of knowledge! How dare he go running off just because Chac was innocent and ignorant?

He did not say anything about that, however, and let nothing more than a brief look of consternation and regret cross his face. To reveal more would have been…unseemly. He did not want Tez—or anyone, for that matter—think him unseemly. “I have not yet seen all of these mountains,” he said, pushing himself to his feet quickly. So quickly, in fact, that he felt his head spin all around him, again and again and again, like the planet upon its orbit. “The place you seek could be in these mountains. If you would be willing to have a companion,” he added, as casually as he could, “I would not mind accompanying you. I have seldom been away from my stream, and the path between here and my valley. If you wish, I could accompany you on your journey, and see you settled into your new home. It would be no trouble to me,” he added again, and he felt proud of adding that. It made him seem less…eager. He would need all the help he could get on that score.  

[Geyser Eelborn]

Tez blinked. Then he blinked again. Okay, so…yes, he had definitely not been so fond of the idea of waving good bye to Chac so soon after meeting him. And yeah, he had, in fact, been interested in spending time with Chac and getting to know him better. Chac felt special, and he was more than a little curious as to why that was. Now that Chac had offered to come with him? He felt an unexpected soaring sensation at the idea. Well…the road would be long, wouldn’t it? And it would be nice to have someone to talk to. Tez had never had someone to talk to before. It would be a new experience. And hey, maybe he could learn the secret of the water molding from Chac! Yeah! This could be a very educational journey for him, and at the end, he’d have somewhere nice to stay. And in the meantime, company!

And fish! He had never tasted fish before, and the very thought of food made his stomach growl. He grinned. “Sure you can come along, Chac! I warn you, I’m not sure where it is, but we’ll get there eventually. Provided, of course,” he gestured towards the stream, “you teach me how to fish. Then we can have supper, sleep tonight, and be off at dawn’s first light. How’s that sound to you, Chac?”  

[Geyser Eelborn]

A journey was about to begin. Chac felt a faint twinge for his lovely riverbank with the nest of reeds. But on the other hand, he would get to learn more about Chac. He returned the smile. “It sounds like a plan to me, Tezcatlipoca! Lead the way!”