06-11-2011, 11:44 PM
Ah, to hear the familiar rolling and crunching of spoked wheels through stone-speckled soil and the age-cracked asphalt; to smell the fetid air from dusty human tomb-towers and the signature scents of a dozen new packs and new peoples...ah, what a rush to come into each new place and meet each new face...but that wasn't quite right, was it?
"It's been years, hasn't it?" the coyote said wistfully to himself as he held the reigns of his cart lightly in hand and his mule, Nettle, pulled it along at a steady pace. Gear was stacked high on the wooden wagon, goods from all over the world, or so he'd heard...in the merchant trade, it was anyone's guess where the embellishing stopped and the truth began. Or was it vice versa? Sometimes he had trouble deciding which one was more important: facts were such flexible things when it came right down to it, hardly worth bothering with beyond what they meant to a particular person in a particular place at a particular time of sale. No, facts were very malleable, in the end, subject only to the rigidity of the buyer's knowledge and the salesman's daring. That was the way he preferred truths to be. Fluid, shifting and adapting to the moment as any self-respecting coyote had need to do to make it in this dog-eat-dog world.
It had been years since he'd been here to hock his wares. Years since Sedge had tried a sales-pitch to the primitive wolves of the west...or the coyotes there for that matter. Or the dogs, really, or any other...yes, well, he hadn't done business here in a long time, was the fact of it. He looked back at his cargo and patted the tarp cast over it with the affection only merchants can have for property. Smiling contently as he heard Nettle snort at the meager grasses along the ruined roads, he pricked his ears suddenly. He detected the slightest of wobbles in his wagon's left wheel. Mere moments later, the wagon collapsed beneath him.
"It's been years, hasn't it?" the coyote said wistfully to himself as he held the reigns of his cart lightly in hand and his mule, Nettle, pulled it along at a steady pace. Gear was stacked high on the wooden wagon, goods from all over the world, or so he'd heard...in the merchant trade, it was anyone's guess where the embellishing stopped and the truth began. Or was it vice versa? Sometimes he had trouble deciding which one was more important: facts were such flexible things when it came right down to it, hardly worth bothering with beyond what they meant to a particular person in a particular place at a particular time of sale. No, facts were very malleable, in the end, subject only to the rigidity of the buyer's knowledge and the salesman's daring. That was the way he preferred truths to be. Fluid, shifting and adapting to the moment as any self-respecting coyote had need to do to make it in this dog-eat-dog world.
It had been years since he'd been here to hock his wares. Years since Sedge had tried a sales-pitch to the primitive wolves of the west...or the coyotes there for that matter. Or the dogs, really, or any other...yes, well, he hadn't done business here in a long time, was the fact of it. He looked back at his cargo and patted the tarp cast over it with the affection only merchants can have for property. Smiling contently as he heard Nettle snort at the meager grasses along the ruined roads, he pricked his ears suddenly. He detected the slightest of wobbles in his wagon's left wheel. Mere moments later, the wagon collapsed beneath him.