In this world where death wins all the fights and things run down, his fantasies had accomplished themselves and then promptly turned into muck.
Something had to be done.
Something would be done. He would do it.
“I have to go,” he said. “Keep the wine.”
“Hey, hey, what about these cord-twins here I been saving in pickle for you?
Fastened together in the funniest place, now you come look a moment-“
But Harran was already gone.
“Here now,” Grian shouted after him, rather hopelessly, “you forgot your chicken!”
Grian sighed, finished the wine, and picked up his paunch-ing knife again.
“Oh, well. Soup tonight. Eh, chickie?”
The three did not meet at lunchtime, and dinner turned out to be very late. It was midnight when Siveni came in, all over dust and grime, and sat down at the table with one short leg and stared at it moodily. Mriga and Harran were in bed.
She ignored them.
“Eat something, for pity’s sake,” Harran said from under the covers. “It’s on the kettlehook.”
“I am not hungry,” Siveni said.
“Then do come to bed,” said Mriga.
“I don’t want that either.”
Harran and Mriga looked at one another in mild astonishment. “That’s a first.”
Siveni shrugged off her goatskin and threw it over a chair. “What’s the use of losing my virginity,” she said, “if I keep getting it back every morning?”
“Some people would kill for that,” said Mriga.
“Not me. It hurts, and it’s getting to be a bore. If I’d known what being a virgin goddess was going to mean down here, I would have gone out for being a fertility deity instead.”