Scourged

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Scourged Page 18

by Kevin Hearne


  “Yes, I’ve heard. The Buddha Victorious in Strife. May I ask…”

  “Of course.”

  “Why is a Buddha spending his time serving bubble tea?”

  He shrugs. “It is a simple pleasure that tends to make people happy. And when they see that they can be made happy by something so simple, then all their other grand desires seem silly by comparison—for indeed they are. A Buddhist wishes to point out that desires are what prevent people from achieving happiness, that materialism is the cause of discord. The simple pleasure of bubble tea gets them to a receptive place to hear that message. Or to reinforce that message, if they’ve already heard it.”

  I suddenly cannot keep myself from smiling as I mentally take note of what I’m doing: I am talking to the Monkey King in Taiwan about Buddhism. My life has become far more dangerous since becoming a Druid, but at the same time, I get to talk to living legends.

  It’s at that point that Seven Star Mountain explodes again.

  slomo tells me of the birds she likes and the birds she doesn’t. The insects who bite and who leave her alone. The monkeys, screeching and leaping around her, eating yellow tube fuel. The colorful moths and butterflies snapped up by croaking frogs. The thrilling quiet that settles in the forest when the jaguars pass through. Her occasional, half-hearted yearnings to find a mate, but even yearning was more energy than she wanted to expend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  And then me mind is bombarded by images and emotions, all relating to a sliding scale of satisfaction with staying still through a wide range of environmental factors. Bearing witness to frenetic activity while remaining almost motionless gives Slomo great pleasure, but she can visualize and imagine things so well. When I ask her why that is, she replies,

  I ask her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Slomonomobrodolie chews on the idea along with a leaf, slowly enough that I can hear the exquisite crunch and grind of her teeth and perhaps the churning of metaphorical gears in her head. When she finishes, her eyes refocus on me and she nods, upside down.

 

 

  She answers and I continue to ask, absorbing as many basic facts as I can and combining them with a fluid understanding of her personality so that I’ll be able to shift with her safely. And in truth there is no hurry until I’m asked to be somewhere again. A couple of hours pass with her sharing her life with me in pictures and feelings, and I can sense I’m getting attached to the lass. She doesn’t like toucans, for example, because they have wee beady eyes of death and huge beaks.

  she explains,

 

 

 

 

  I promise her, and then the elemental summons me. I’m needed somewhere in Europe because some daft donkey cock has gone and messed with powers he shouldn’t have.

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