Joffun looks up. Cheryl is staring at him through the bars of his prison.<\/p>\n
She says, \u201cI nuked it. I burned it. I impaled it. I electrocuted it. I broke it. And still, no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, it keeps folding itself back into being. It is a snake-wroth in the air and sea, now. It is a thing of fire and water, now. I dream of it, it is coming for me, it will devour me and crack the earth and live forever in the pain that you svart-elves put it in, and we who long to live shall die and it that wants to die shall live forever. Why?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Joffun says quietly, \u201cI don\u2019t have to talk to you, you know. There\u2019s gonna be a general amnesty soon. On account of Gotterdammerung is coming, and all.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI heard,\u201d Cheryl says.<\/p>\n \u201cGonna get drafted,\u201d says Joffun, \u201cand then they\u2019ll bring me that boy\u2019s heart, so I can make weapons for \u2019em. And then, while nobody\u2019s looking, it\u2019s off down beneath the surfaces of things for me, and back to my wife and child.\u201d<\/p>\n Cheryl blinks at him. Then she shakes it off.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s fine,\u201d she says. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to talk to me. Talk to me anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh?\u201d<\/p>\n She shrugs. \u201cCan\u2019t live with a cracked world, you know. I guess I\u2019ve ruined it for you. That snake\u2019ll fold its way down where the svart-elves live and I don\u2019t think that you can stop it where I haven\u2019t. If nothing else, cause it came to me, so long ago, knowing that I was the one to end it<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Joffun stares at the tic-tac-toe boards on the walls. He points at one, thoughtfully. Cheryl\u2019s won that one. He points at another. He frowns.<\/p>\n \u201cHow are you doing that?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n Cheryl looks blankly at him. \u201cDoing what?\u201d<\/p>\n He laughs. He laughs rather a lot. It almost pulls him off his seat. Then he says, \u201cFine. Guess I must like you, even if you\u2019re as tall as two houses and have hair like a sun-bird\u2019s spit. Show me a bit of this snake.\u201d<\/p>\n She shrugs. She folds a paper crane into a miniature giant paper serpent and tosses it to him. It hisses. It snaps at him. He catches it, holds its jaw open, and peers down its throat. After a while, he shoves its tail in its mouth to distract it, flushes it down the toilet, and leans back on his bunk in thought.<\/p>\n That snake never causes trouble for anybody! Flushing living wicked miniature paper snakes down the toilet must be all right.<\/p>\n But don\u2019t do it to a real snake!<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a snake,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s an idea, right?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRight.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo you can\u2019t stop it by folding,\u201d he says, \u201cor even by cutting. You could try a really sharp goat, but \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I wouldn\u2019t count on it, is all. People who get involved with really sharp goats, they tend to end up cutting themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to do that,\u201d concedes Cheryl. \u201cI like myself in one piece!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen,\u201d says Joffun, sitting up again, \u201cI think you\u2019re gonna have to die.\u201d<\/p>\n She pales.<\/p>\n \u201cLook,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s an Ouroboros, right? Around and around and around it goes? And in its ending its beginning\u2019s wove? Kill it and consign it to the sea and the splash another serpent weaves? That kind of thing?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cSome stuff,\u201d he says, \u201cyou can\u2019t put down, because you\u2019re part of the problem. The harder you push, the rougher it goes. You\u2019re its death but you\u2019re its life, too, so if you\u2019re there \u2014 I mean, I\u2019m not saying that you cut your wrists and it\u2019s all over, just, if you don\u2019t die, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s gonna die either. It wouldn\u2019t be proper smithing, if it\u2019d done.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n She looks at her wrists. She looks at Joffun. \u201cThat\u2019s not nice,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cHey,\u201d he says. \u201cLeast you get the chance to take a giant snake down with you. I\u2019m probably going to die of cirrhosis.\u201d<\/p>\n She squints at him. \u201cLeast,\u201d she says, with black humor, \u201cyou\u2019ll get to take the booze down with you, I expect.\u201d<\/p>\n He stands up.<\/p>\n He holds his hand out through the bars.<\/p>\n \u201cA strange game,\u201d she says, and chokes back her fear, and she shakes his hand.<\/p>\n He nods.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s life,\u201d he says, and she lets him go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Joffun looks up. Cheryl is staring at him through the bars of his prison. She says, \u201cI nuked it. I burned it. I impaled it. I electrocuted it. I broke it. And still, no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, it keeps folding itself back into being. It is a snake-wroth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-5932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-16","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Icon_Serpent.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5932"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5949,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5932\/revisions\/5949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5932"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}