#horizontober2021

Horizontober day 11 - “acrid”

“Here… touch it to your tongue, and…”

Aloy’s lip curled reflexively as the sharp odor of the Stormbird blood invaded her memory. But then curiosity surged within her, cutting off her instinctive swift refusal. Startled by her own hesitation, she tried to resume, stumbling a bit over her words. “No, I… you…”

“Huntress.” Brin’s voice was a ragged chuckle. “You needn’t drink deeply, needn’t dream metal dreams. But perhaps… the smallest taste, a glimmer of insight. No worse than cast-off blood savored during the hunt, yes?”

She had never tasted machine blood, not even in the most chaotic fight. Human blood, well… plenty of her own. And maybe a bit of her enemies’? Machine blood was different; they were a lot less, well, juicy. Much harder to ingest by accident, if you knew what you were doing.

“I haven’t,” she said simply, eyes falling to the waterskin in her hand, now ruined with cloudy, viscous fluid.

“Before I partake,” he hummed, “just… a taste. Then spit it out, if you like. No harm done.”

Aloy raised the waterskin, eyes narrowed and nose crinkling lightly. Her instincts were screaming against what Brin was suggesting she do, and yet… this man had taken four doses, four full skins’ worth of machine blood to satisfy her curiosity. And his own strange desires, of course, but surely she could at least show the barest concession?

“I… just a… just a little-”

His lips parted, baring black teeth in a frightening grin, and Aloy’s stomach dropped. Stupid. This was such a stupid thing to do. Best get it over with quickly.

She wrenched out the stopper and squinted at its underside, glossy from the Stormbird oils within. Overriding every part of her that was smarter than this, she dabbed it quickly on the tip of her tongue.

Bitterness spread instantly from the point of contact, and she had spit before even commanding her mouth to do so. But the acrid taste continued to bloom across her tongue, even as she fell to her knees and repeatedly tried to expel it.

Brin hovered, swaying lightly, watching as the huntress gasped and drooled on the floor before him. He was no longer smiling, and reached a trembling hand out to lay on her shoulder.

Aloy flinched at his touch, but didn’t have the presence to do anything but accept it. At last the drooling subsided as the offending taste faded into a dull metallic tinge. A little more like the coppery taste of blood. A little easier to ignore. She looked up into Brin’s glassy eyes, curious to see how he was taking her response.

Brin gave her shoulder a final squeeze and stood back, as straight as he was able. “The first taste is often so - the flesh rejects what is difficult for it to know. And the other shamans? They saw that as a command not to continue. So may it be for you - a Huntress with other paths to learning the Song of the machines. But I - I saw the path before me. Arduous, bitter, but the visions! So rich, so… edifying. Worth the pain, the isolation, to join my machine brethren for even a few minutes at a time… and now, a chance to pass on what I have seen. And for that, I thank you.”

Legs wobbling a bit beneath her, stomach still lurching, Aloy also rose to her full height. “I worry about you more than ever now, Brin, but… as promised.” She held out the open waterskin to him, only a few oozing drops of which had spilled during her violent reaction.

“At last,” he whispered, gently taking it from her, “the Stormbird’s Song.”

After the shaman had fallen under the spell of the draught, muttering and yelping at things only he could see, Aloy retreated to the far wall of his ramshackle hut and tore into her jerky store. Anything to cleanse her palate of the last lingering hints of bitter metal.