(no subject)
Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
Its good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells
~ Pink Floyd, "Time"
Johnny steps out onto the desert sand, and bends to remove his shoes even before the door to Milliways can close behind him. He looks back to see that the door has become a rather large boulder, and figures he'd better mark the place. Taking off his jacket and shirt, he folds them neatly in a pile at the foot of the boulder, ties his shoes together by the laces, and sets them on top. Once all that is through, he steps back and tilts his head up to look at the stars.
Without warning, his throat constricts, and he swallows, thickly.
She's gone.
Not dead. There's a very large difference between dead and gone. As long as the stars still burn in the sky, there is still fire on Earth. Her gift to the world. He looks off and sees Las Vegas ablaze at the very edge of the horizon. Light still lives, and so does Coyote.
It doesn't make the snow-scented woman's atrocity any less cause to mourn, however. A piece of his soul has left him, gone wandering, leaving a tiny hollow below his ribs. He hasn't felt that in ages... not since...
"Holly."
He whispers her name for the first time in decades, even though her image is still as sharp in his mind as it was the day he met her. Tall and blonde, with eyes that shone like a desert sunset - when the oversized white cowboy hat she wore hadn't slipped over them. She had been just as full of life and the love of it as he had been, and though he'd only known her briefly, she'd impressed upon his heart. He carried her smile with him, considering her one of the best instances of his own brushes with luck.
Funny, how love and belief could leave the same marks on someone's soul.
He'd let Holly go easily enough, though. She had had to leave, to move on - and he had understood. That was simple. He didn't miss her as keenly as he already does Coyote.
And yet, Holly Hawshank was long gone - Coyote was, he knew, somehow, anything but.
Johnny walks off across the dunes, sand slipping comfortably between his toes, and lets his mind wander, wherever it chooses.
His first thought, strangely, is how good it is to be back in the desert, to feel the sand beneath his feet, cooling slowly now that the sun has gone down. A few clouds have made dark cut-outs in the night sky, stark against the pure, velvety, shimmering blue. The moon, barely a sliver of a smile, pauses in its hiding to peer out at him, just long enough to wink, before disappearing again. A brief smile in the darkness.
No. She's not dead at all.
Still, somehow, he can feel something he hasn't felt this keenly in ages building within him, tightening his jaw, turning that hollow in his stomach around itself into a black hole of a knot. Frustration. The very concept makes him stop and blink at himself in wonder. He hasn't been frustrated over anything in years. He had gotten so used to taking everything in stride, as it came. Fate was fate, and luck was luck, and that was freaking that, damn it, so why?
Why so frustrated, now?
With a huff of a sigh, he sits, the sand cushioning him like a well-stuffed bean chair, and leans back against a dune, the smell of sage faint in the air. Things had been going so well... he'd been meeting people, getting to know them, watching them ... hell, he'd even started spreading some luck around, the old-fashioned way, leaving cards with the people he felt could use a little luck in their lives.
When he'd met Coyote, and Raven, it had just been like two royal flushes in a row. The jackpot. Seven come eleven, aces and eights, winner take all. He'd found his element there, at the bar. People he could talk with, relate to completely about this whole luck-god-with-a-small-g business. He'd started thinking he belonged. And hell, maybe he still did.
But the fact that people existed there who could temporarily put the gods themselves out of commission was more sobering than a bucket of ice water.
Coyote would come back. But not everyone in the Bar could, of that much he was certain. At least one of the friends he'd made was already dead, for crying out loud. And somehow, Johnny found that he just didn't know what to make of that. What did this woman want, whoever she was, thinking she could come into a Bar and just take and hurt as she pleased?
"It's a fucking bar," he growls to the empty desert, fists pulling up handfuls of sand and letting them strain through his fingers. Not a kingdom. Not a country. Not even a town. A BAR. A business. An establishment. The power that I feel when I walk around, there? It's for everyone. Too much of it will mess you up. ... I mean, she'll find that out the HARD way if she tries, but still!
His head's still spinning, to the point where his aggravation propels him once more to his feet, stalking off further into the desert. He pays no attention to where he's going, whether he's headed towards Las Vegas, or away from it, or to how long the clouds blow by overhead. He simply walks, every thought too loud and too numerous to even hear, until the sheer amount of noise buzzing in his head is like radio static on high volume, with the occasional thought breaking through, distorted.
Still have to go back. BZZT. Help Ray. BZZT. Deal with that casino for CJ. BZZT. --- shark-- BZZT -- maybe something for the -- BZZT, fssshhh, crackle, pop, buzz ...
"AWRIGHT, A'READY, ENOUGH," he hollers, flailing his arms out to the sides. "ENOUGH!"
A quiet desert night, and he can't hear the sweet silence he left the Bar for, for all the noise...
Sighing, he slips out, slowly, until he's just a lone coyote trotting across the sands. It's simpler, that way. Maybe all he needs now is all he needed then, that first night he spent alone in the desert. He just needs to break it down.
Unfortunately, shouting at the top of his lungs scared away anything worth hunting.
Nice, Johnny, he laughs at himself, as he comes over a dune to a tiny oasis of a lake. Nice. I bet she's going to get a real kick out of THAT one...
At least some of the small pleasures aren't lost by screaming at the sky. He pads into the water and rolls around in it, and soon his frustration's lost in splashing water at the stars, kicking his paws in the air and getting himself thoroughly soaked. He's relieved, when he steps back out onto the banks, that he hasn't forgotten how to play after all. He shakes himself out, pleased, and settles back down on the sands.
The moon's high in the sky, and he crosses his paws, resting his chin on them, looking out at the desert. Somewhere off in the distance, an owl hoots, and he lends a howl to the nightsong, quietly, singing for her, wherever she is, until he falls asleep.