Lineage, Part 2

Ashworld. The semi-city of Parity.

"Hey Sam..." Ash was perusing the clouds. "Do you know where the phrase 'For the birds' comes from?"

Sam shrugged. "Fucked if I know. What do birds got to do with anything, anyway?"

"Horses eat various grains. Like oats. They wouldn't always digest all of them. So they'd poop and then birds would come and eat the undigested oats in the poop. So if you're saying something is for the birds, you're politely saying it's horseshit."

"...geeee eeeeye jooooooe," Sam idly sang. He doubted anyone else would get the reference, and was too weirded out to care otherwise. "...and what makes you bring this up?" he added, after a pause.

"I'm just bringing this up, because here? In Parity? The expression is 'For the rats'." Ash said, as he got ready to open the stable door. "Now, don't be alarmed. Provided you don't make any aggressive moves towards the horses, you'll be fine."

Ash opened the door, casting light into the long aisles of the stables.

...red eyes.

Hundreds of them. Thousands, staring from the shadows. The empty stables. The rafters. The grates. The feeding troughs. Everywhere. Tiny little flickers of embers, speaking of presence, watching, danger...

Though it seemed like Ash didn't think so. He just walked right on it.

Sam did not walk right on in, at first. He hesitated a moment, with the dawning realisation that all the things he'd seen in his world were puppies and kittens compared to this. Dragons, Nagas and living embodiments of creation he could handle. This?

"Erm... Ash? Is this... normal?"

"In other places? No. Here? Yes." Ash said, as he reached into his backpack and produced a brick of what appeared to be hardened peanut brittle. He placed it on the ground, and they swarmed from the shadows. Rats, of all shapes and sizes, pouncing on the brick, some running up Ash's body to get there faster. "This is a sursine. Um, that's Aarde. It basically means 'special growth'. The ground seems to have a sort of...specialness to it. In their history, what changed humans to the Aarde species, gave them a connection to the earth, was being enslaved by an empire that made them mine mountains for generations. The specialness there changed them, and anywhere it rests, unique things might occur. Here, it's a unique symbiotic connection between the horses of this land and the rats. A nice side effect is these horses are prized as mounts, because they're near impossible to spook. There's a story if you want to hear it..."

Ash was feeding one of those horses a carrot now. It indeed had no issue with all the rats hanging out around it, and on it.

"...why not? Got nothing better to do."

Now somewhat reassured, Sam stepped over the threshold, making sure to carefully skirt the rats as he did so. Approaching one of the horses, he also produced a carrot from his pocket and offered it to the animal.

It would be a strange day where horses did not like carrots.

"Technically you have lots of better things to do; you just can't do them because you challenged Valse and his girlfriend and her brothers to that gambling game involving dice and coins and they cleaned you out."

"I still say some motherfucker slipped him a loaded dice," huffed Sam. "Besides," he added, patting the horse on the nose, "you're the one who took me out to a big, scary barn on magical soil guarded by a literal army of rats. If it wasn't to tell me a story, then I would have already left by now."

"In any case, this is waxenworm. It's a grain, though it more resembles a seed. Have a smell, and be warned it doesn't smell good." Ash said, opening a bag and offering Sam a handful. Ash was right; it was like someone had carved a knife out of sour candy and used the point to firmly prick the inside of Sam's nostrils.

"GACK," was Sam's immediate response, clutching his nose as though he'd been punched in it. It took several seconds for him to recover, and there was a scary moment during those seconds where he looked like he was going to throw up.

"...and what do you use THAT for?!" he gasped out after the seconds where over, tears streaming from his eyes.

"Wow. You really don't like it. It doesn't taste much better...though I've heard with goat's milk butter and sea salt, you can get a sort of happy medium that makes it passable...but in any case, it's got a lot of essential nutrients and it's a pretty hardy crop. It's just no fun to eat. Plus more than a few species can't keep it down. Anyway, it was about nine hundred or so years ago...this town was smaller, and I think it was called...Nertl? Nerful? Started with a Ner...got changed to Parity three hundred or so years ago...anyway, the story goes that there was a nasty guy going around who wanted to conquer and enslave and etc etc. He was a necromancer...his name was either Naar or Kaar...I'm going with Naar for obvious reasons based around taking this story seriously." Ash said, putting the grain back into the bag.

"...so Naar is a serious name, whilst Kaar isn't?" Sam was busy checking his nostrils for signs of singe marks

"Mainly because it makes me picture fighting an evil automobile."

Or maybe a vampire.

"What?"

Nothing, nothing.

Privately, Sam understood that reference. He just wasn't going to say so, not wanting to confuse Ash even more - and in any case, his first thought had been of a certain snake. Best not to compound the situation.

"So," he prompted, "this Naar guy... What happened to him, then?"

"Anyway, Naar did all sorts of nasty, wide ranging things. He blighted crops and inflicted diseases and so on and so on, and he was spreading his net so wide that not every area could be protected or helped. The two main issues that arose back in Ner-whatever was his diseases didn't just kill; it tried to raise whatever it killed, and if it failed, it left the whole body toxic. Poison. And by extension, inedible. Even to carrion animals like rats. So death called them and they found there was no food."

"...I think I can see where this is going. Oh, hullo."

A large rat had climbed onto Sam's foot, and was now staring at him intently. Sam's hands automatically went into his pockets, searching for peanut brittle.

"Of course, it wasn't just the rats that were put in danger by this. There were the people, their farm animals, their hunting animals...but the only crop that resisted Naar's necromancy shit was waxenworm. So they had to exclusively grow that, and feed it to their animals. The animals were a little less picky...which brings us to Naar's other nasty little trick. The stupratape parasite. I'll spare you the gory details, but they basically settled onto animals, entered them, and did their best to drive them mad with pain. Didn't work so well with humans who noticed their presence and could remove them, but unless you want to be checking every animal twenty-four seven..."

Sam sucked in a breath from sympathy pain. "Yeouch. That's just... mean. I can't imagine what it must have been like, watching your own animals suffer like that... If my Dad still had his good hip, he'd have found where Naar was and given him a kick in the balls for that."

Peanut brittle was found, and the rat practically yanked it out of Sam's fingers. Then it dashed into the shadows, pursued by at least a score of it's fellows admits a chorus of hungry squeaking.

"Now the last detail. Do you know rats can't vomit?"

"Geeee eeeeye- no, I already did that. No, I did not. Thank you for sharing."

"It's important. It's how rat poisons work. Many animals might expel the poison, but rats can't, and their poisons are based around that. Rats also can't eat raw waxenworm. It's too intense, often kills them. So we have masses of rats drawn by death and no food, nasty parasites, and a food crop rats can't eat but others can. Rats are clever animals, and they ultimately discovered something interesting. Waxenworm that passed through a horse's digestive system but didn't get wholly digested...they could eat THAT. Something about the process rendered it more tolerable. And it was only the horses. Humans were too short a 'cycle', animals like pigs too. Cows were too long with the whole multiple stomachs thing. But horses, it seemed, were just right. And hence the only source of food for the rats."

If Sam had a facial expression at this moment, Ash did not see it.

"...so that's why it's 'for the rats', then," he ventured, at last.

"Yep. But horses don't really want to be around rats, and the rats wanted food, so...the rats puzzled out a deal. They'd lurk around, and if any stupratapes decided to show up and try and infect the horse....gnaw gnaw gnaw. It didn't take the horses long to get the hint."

"...oh, like oxpeckers and ticks. Except the oxpeckers bite first, because the ticks are massive bastards."

"Yes. Now, Naar only plagued the lands for like...four years...but on a sursine, that's long enough. Even when things went back to normal, the bond endured. The horses shared their food, the rats acted as bodyguards. And the longer it went, the more intertwined it became. Now horses and rats born in Parity are basically brothers from different mothers. Only here too; attempts to replicate the circumstances have never worked. Also, I don't know what happened to Naar. He just stopped plaguing and poisoning everything, so I assume someone kicked his head in."

"I should hope so. Bastard."

Another carrot. The horse in question didn't complain - who would, when free carrots were here? Then a thought came to Sam - one he often had around Ash, who tended to not outright state anything due to, as far as the other blond was concerned, some crippling need to be dramatic about everything.

Surely there's more going on here.

"So..." he ventured, as the horse crunched happily away. "This still doesn't explain much about why we're here. Is the story all there is?"

"Well, we're here because I'm debating getting Christine a horse for an anniversary present, and you're with me because...you're broke and you feel most comfortable with me." Ash was checking a horse's teeth, rats swarming around his feet. It was clear if the horse expressed discomfort, Ash would rapidly be in much MORE discomfort. "And this place has an interesting story, and all."

It was a moment before Sam next spoke.

"...alright," he said, suddenly, "time for another story. I grew up on a farm, as you know. And that meant my dad had to teach me some of the ins-and-outs of it - especially checking on horses. The first time I went solo, a stallion the size of a small car kicked me in the ribs and laid me in bed for a day because I got frustrated with him. But dad said 'Try him with kindness' or some shit like that. So on the next time, I gave him some sugar and a pat on the head, and he stood still as stone whilst I filed his hooves down.

"So I can tell you straight off," he added, turning and walking over to where Ash was, "this one's got a bum knee. It's in his posture - I can tell from here he's not putting enough weight on that leg, and that worries me. You want your wife to be jostled about like a courtesan every time she wants to go for a morning trot? No offense," he added, although he wasn't sure if that was directed at Ash or the rats.

Hopefully, the latter. He did not want to exchange stories with Bishop Hatto in the afterlife.

"Well, I would have consulted experts, but I'll defer to your expertise. We'd best get one of the animal doctors then." Ash said. "Though, speaking of past lives, that brings up something else..."

----

The same town. Somewhen.

"One elephant went out to play...upon a spider's web one day..."

Some things have inherent beauty. A setting sun. A fossilized animal. And a mother singing to her child, as she slowly walked the little girl forward, holding hands with her with the little girl streching her arms above her head. She swung her daughter up, and she laughed.

"He has such tremendous fun...that he called for another one to come..."

Swing. The rats watched with wary interest: young ones of this kind did not come into their haunts often. The purpose became clear, as the woman walked her daughter all the way to a young horse and swung her up onto its back.

"Yayyyyyyy!" The mother said, clapping.

The rats came.

Not to harm, or threaten. Just to be there. The centuries and the sursine had taught them some lessons that normal rats would never learn, really could NOT learn. Don't be dirty. Don't climb bare skin. Don't react badly if being picked up unless violence was immediately apparent...

Still, it was surprising when the little girl didn't scream, or panic, or run. Instead, she let the rats climb on her, sit on her shoulders and head, the horse snorting beneath her. Sometimes, children knew things even adults would have a hard time discerning.

"...Two elepants went out to play..." The mother said, taking the horse's reigns and guiding it, the little girl gripping the saddle, the rats remaining on her like she was their general. "Upon a spider's web one day..."

"Fun fun fun!"

"Yes, Aggie. They had such tremendous fun."