Sharing is Herring

In past years I have shared as I worked on my book. I have yet to this year. Here you go.

Deep in the Amazonian rain forest a shaman of the Jaguar people is leading a bloodhound dog and his Asiatic friend into the village of the Matis tribe. The people of the tribe all smile at the visitors as they pass.

A smile can mean different things. There are those smiles plastered permanently on the faces of those who were taught that smiling was a good policy and would help them succeed in life. It lacks sincerity. There is the smile of the amused, people who notice something out of the ordinary and take pleasure in it. Often someone who has the upper hand in a tough situation will break out in an opportunistic grin. Like in a knife fight when someone has disarmed his opponent and knocked him to the ground taking a moment to savor his impending victory. There is the smile of winning at a game and the loser's smile of a game well played. Children will have bright smiles when they open a present and discover something wonderful inside. Pot heads lazily smile at the wonderful sensations their doped up brains are receiving.

The Matis had the smile of content, that genuine smile of knowing that some days are better than others but to sit around worrying about it wasn't going to help things. Dieu smiled back at them with the blushing smile of someone not used to being around people with ideas of modesty that involved a string to tie their genitals in place. He had removed his trench coat as a matter of comfort. The jungle was no place for layering. Wearing his canvas sneakers, jeans, and a ratty old t-shit he still felt immensly overdressed. He had paid attention in school, seen the National Geographic specials, had always known tht tribes like this still existed in many places across the globe. The unassuming beauty of it doesn't sink in until you are the odd one out.

He didn't even have any tattoos. Only the children of the Matis were unadorned in this manner. Did they think he was a child as well? Were they staring at how strange he looked to them?

Tate also felt stared at. As a dog he was used to walking among humans largely unnoticed. In this place he was a real oddity. It didn't help that he was having to pant constantly in an attempt to regulate his body temperature. Druel was pouring into his mouth and dripping onto the ground. Not a very civilized look for a visitor from an advanced planet over eight light years away. He reminded himself that he was not an emmisary sent to make contact in the name of his people with the people of the jungles of South America. He was a rogue student on a forbidden planet utilizing its natral resources to make contact with another alien species. Telling himself this didn't change his embarassment over all the druel. Hopefully that hungry looking one wasn't looking at him the way he thought he was looking at him. Best to stay close to Tumi.

They entered the shaman's oka. Behind them the rain began to fall. It was a regular occurrence in a forest named for the phenomenon. The people outside took refuge in shelters while the water from the sky formed a natural veil in front of the door separating the world outside from the one which they were now entering into. The ceremony had not yet begun, but the space seemed prepared. The air crackled with an energy betraying frequent travels into worlds known only by a few yet inhabited by the most curious race of the galaxy. From across the veil, the elves were calling.

Tumi had never known them as the elves. They were the spirits. Everything had spirits, which is why everything was capable of communicating with the spirits. There were spirits and the spirits. Both were built around the same function. The spirits existed as a curiosity for not needing anything but spirit. Tumi sang a song about this as he sat out three bowls and poured out the tea for all to drink. The song was not one meant to be heard, but to be experienced. It was sung from his spirit to the spirits with him in this place. The pitches and vibrations resonated in the vehicles of which carried spirits of one named Dieu and another named Tate.

As the song built, Dieu could not explain his sudden visions of the high school cheerleading squad. The cheerleaders jumped and chanted. Their clothes melted away and revealed the young girls underneath. They were girls of the Jaguar People, pierced, tattooed, shaking pom-poms of grasses. Their voices rattled through his head as they sang, “We've got spirit. Yes we do. We've got spirit. How 'bout you.” He hadn't even touched his drink yet.

Tumi drank from his bowl and encouraged Tate to go next. Not certain how to proceed, he started to bend down so he could lap it up as had been his customary mode of drinking during his stay on Earth. Tumi stopped him. With exagerated motions meant to demonstrate the proper procedure, the shaman took his own bowl from the floor with both hands cupped under it, lifted it to his face, and made a tipping motion. This was the way to drink the tea. Tate relaxed his built up reflexes and let his modified paws drink like a humanoid would. It felt good to use hands again. So good he almost didn't mind the bitter taste of the tea.

Dieu picked up his bowl as Tumi encouraged him to do so. He drank it down and shuttered with the effort of stifling his gag reflex. The shaman smiled and began to chant again. The road had been prepared. The journey had begun. The Matis indian cheerleaders were telling Dieu to go team, go.

A rumble was building. Dieu remembered going to a high school performance of The Rainmaker. Lizzie in the form of a bare breasted native girl was dancing as a rumble like a big chunk of sheet metal being shaken violently built up. Dieu grabbed her and kissed her as he took on the persona of Starbuck. Interesting name, Starbuck. Wasn't Starbuck a sailor? A bucker of stars. Stars opening up all around him as plain Lizzie in the guise of a non-descript woman wearing a black top, black skirt, black stockings, black boots, black sunglasses, black scarf, black blanketing the space between the thousand points of light as celophane sheet metal ripped through the senses and light assembled into dancing beings saying come and see, and he saw. A lone howl in the desert by an abandonned shack of a ship. What's that boy? John has fallen into the not so abandonned mine shaft.

The elves danced and sang as Tumi sang. The song filled his spirit and was not a song, but a map. Look at the stars. Pitsicato twangs telling him to follow the cello hits road. A spirit floated by and asked if he was thai dyeing. A pair of elves escorted him from the stage. Wrong seen. Too much. Jerry berries fucked from bushes this way. Exit stage left behind.

Tumi says tank ewe, sheep will. Back to mountain dew and his little dog chew. Mister tater tot head up town grill. New vader of the lost barks. Ayes have tits. Chew own dong hits weigh four tongues oven RC. Sea? Know the dessert dew drops cheap fall anon might red lightly. Olive juice most flower ore weed eye.

On Dirks hood. Hate orka man. Justice hue archoo. Guess who's tight? Sank two. Dose Elvis car sympathy wired. Ah, greed.

In a little hut in the jungle a shaman laughs as his visitors come back to Earth. As they fall out of the haze into dazed, Tumi chuckles. The chuckle becomes a giggle, which becomes a laugh, which becomes a roar. A young Korean guy and a bloodhound stare at him quizically. Tumi stops laughing long enough to say the first and only intelligable words of a language both of them understand to be language.

“Eyes half tits!” And Tumi is lost once again in his roar of laughter while a young Korean guy and a bloodhound look at each other and shrug.