but the next night a coyote was heard
Really. There was too much work to this soldiering. Tucson didn’t know war. Tucson knew the west, and that was the thing about the west. There weren’t no war. There was just full-blown anarchy. He’d heard plenty about petty turf wars and gang wars and cowhands going rogue, but that was just bound to happen back in the west.
He knew bounties and chaos and the anarchy of a land to large for law. But what he didn’t understand was how every goddamn equine in Dusk was talking about the end of the world that, and the end of the world this. A volcano! and a scary magic bridge! If they weren’t talking about that, they were talking about something to do with the Night Court Queen—was she a Queen? A Lady? Or just a damn governor?—and then there was that bastard… what was his name? Tucson couldn’t quite remember, but he knew he was apparently a bad man in the desert scaring people with a giant snake.
Quite frankly, Tucson didn’t understand any of it. And the soldiering was more work than he had bargained for. Get up at this time, go out on this patrol, practice sparring so-and-so. Tucson knew how to fight. Why did he need to practice? Clearly, there was no one endangering a the big empty field he was currently walking and, besides, what was out here for them to threaten? He found his mind wandering, again, from the task at hand.
Then there was the magic. The volcano. The strange bridge to the middle of the sea. The trick to avoiding magic? Tucson thought it was simple. Just don’t believe in the damn stuff, and if it was happening, well. It must just be an act of god or… gods. But he had tried to say that in the bar the other night, and the response was less than welcoming. So, since then, he had refrained.
Really, Tucson had been on his best behaviour. But somehow it hadn’t won him many friends, and he begun to feel somewhat alienated. He was longing for home, even, and home wasn’t even a place so much as a feeling. It was worn leather and sun, the threat of rattlesnakes, the sound of coyotes at night, and Shane’s tobacco. It was seeing a horizon that never ended…
While patrolling Susurro Fields, he could feel just a glimmer of familiarity… It looked this way, he guessed, on the rare occasion that it rained. Far ahead of him he spotted a large herd of deer, grazing in the twilight. The nostalgia had gotten to him. Without much hesitation, Tucson began to imitate the high-pitched, rising yip-yip-yip-yowwwlll of a coyote. The deer glanced up, briefly disturbed, and Tucson repeated the sound with more emphasis, more volume. A younger deer broke from the herd hesitantly, and then slowed. After several long moments, they resumed eating.
And after several more moments, a coyote answered him. Tucson’s ears pricked and before he could help himself, he smiled. However, it soon faded, and he began to contemplate the pros of being a bartender rather than a Dusk Court soldier.
