Enil
Long ago, I found an ancient trilobite in the shallows along a shore, past a waterfall running out to sea, the sights I never forgot. The arthropod was silent, and I thought of the vast wealth contained in its swollen gut.
As I reflected on how to kill it, a man in a coat with strange bulges came from the woods and approached me. His raccoon face was conspiratorial, and his lizard tail wagged.
“Care for a squirrel?” he asked, and a bird's talons emerged from between two buttons.
“I have no need for squirrels,” I said. “Only good luck.”
The talons disappeared, and another one offered a golden idol. “Free, for my future customer.”
He walked off, taking away my chance to protest.
Under a tree, my hand touched the idol, then my cuff. The spider wrapped on my wrist tapped against my pulse, as if to say: “New gear?”
“A use shall come,” it reassured without a word, and was dormant again.
Back in the island city where I once belonged, I thought of the lies I lived, the fears I learned. When did I lose them? At the side of a cliff, over a steep drop in the desert. From then on, I was free. Or so I thought, til I looked into the eyes of the false god and saw nothing.
“You again.” The strange peddler waved, and hurried over. “Has your fortune changed?”
“No,” I lied.
“It will,” he said. “And when it does, you should pay me.”
“It was not free after all,” I sighed, and removed the spider from my cuff. “Take this.”
The man received the equipment in his claws and grinned with his furry face, beat the ground with his scaly appendage. I shall wait for him to meet his end on his travels, then wait for the cuff to be mine again.
As he left, and was soon obscured by the shifting crowd, I regretted wishing for his death.
By a bog, a verse from the Book of Decay came back to me. Immediately, I felt the power of words—not of spirit, but of waste. Henceforth, there was no new knowledge. Only the old, imperfect ancients.