In the cities they speak of their "civilized" gods: Bet on the sure thing, kid, and throw in your lot with the Wire-bitten Child! Have you not yet paid your pittance to the Petrol Pater this season? Remember that regular sacrifice is needed to keep your auto running! Glut yourself at the Chitterling's trough and remember to take your leftovers home!
Carpenter spits on the ground, scuffing her shoe so it mixes with the rest of the silt at the river's edge. Focus group-tested, toothless gods, who need their sacrifices brutalized beyond recognition as human to actually tear and find the bleeding heart beneath. Their worshippers wouldn't last five minutes out here, where her river winds through thick black mud and the rustling leaves sing of beasts and prey. She knows that even her god is new here, compared to the things in the sleep in the dirt, their names forgotten by all but their hidden worshippers. Her people can still tell the story of when the Trawler Man first came to the Chosen Bride and liberated her from her unkind marriage; how can a god be called old when his genesis is still known?
She picks up a few more of the Trawler Man's scuttling angels and dumps them in her crabbing bucket. They'll be useful when she next sends a sacrifice down to the Trawler Man's garden, and if she doesn't have a new sacrifice in the next few days, then they'll be useful as a snack.
She doesn't dally much longer, though- here is where her river wends through old woods, where old gods sleep, and Carpenter does not care to meet such things.
The Silt Verses, Old Gods in Old Dirt
Bet on the sure thing, kid, and throw in your lot with the Wire-bitten Child! Have you not yet paid your pittance to the Petrol Pater this season? Remember that regular sacrifice is needed to keep your auto running! Glut yourself at the Chitterling's trough and remember to take your leftovers home!
Carpenter spits on the ground, scuffing her shoe so it mixes with the rest of the silt at the river's edge. Focus group-tested, toothless gods, who need their sacrifices brutalized beyond recognition as human to actually tear and find the bleeding heart beneath. Their worshippers wouldn't last five minutes out here, where her river winds through thick black mud and the rustling leaves sing of beasts and prey. She knows that even her god is new here, compared to the things in the sleep in the dirt, their names forgotten by all but their hidden worshippers. Her people can still tell the story of when the Trawler Man first came to the Chosen Bride and liberated her from her unkind marriage; how can a god be called old when his genesis is still known?
She picks up a few more of the Trawler Man's scuttling angels and dumps them in her crabbing bucket. They'll be useful when she next sends a sacrifice down to the Trawler Man's garden, and if she doesn't have a new sacrifice in the next few days, then they'll be useful as a snack.
She doesn't dally much longer, though- here is where her river wends through old woods, where old gods sleep, and Carpenter does not care to meet such things.