The Life of Barney

Posted on Sat 13th Jun, 2020 @ 10:31pm by
Edited on on Wed 17th Jun, 2020 @ 2:59am

748 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Pale Moon Books

Yucholl was coiled in the aisle, watching her girlfriend Aiko dusting the shelves in the MacBeth's bookshop. The shop, Pale Moon Books, was located in the Riverside Village, Tivoli Gardens. The shelves were tall; Aiko had to climb a stepstool to reach the tallest ones.

"So let me get this straight," Aiko said. "These people, the... Monthon? They've been fighting a religious war, a 'holy' war, for three hundred years? And the two factions differ in which of two twin brothers they revere?"

"That's what it says," Yucholl responded, tearing her gaze from Aiko's slender-but-shapely legs and returning her attention to the book in her hand. "Fredwick and Barndore were itinerant preachers, now regarded as prophets. Apparently, they met only once a year, on the anniversary of their parents' wedding, when they would return to the caravan of their birth and have a meal together as a family."

"That's sweet," Aiko said, climbing down the stepstool and moving to the next section of shelves. She dropped the dust-attracting cloth she was using into a bucket, and picked up a clean one from the stack before squatting and starting again with the bottom shelf there.

Yucholl found herself watching again. "Wouldn't it make more sense to start at the top and work down?"

"You just want to look up my skirt," Aiko teased. When Yucholl blushed bright red and looked back at the book in her hands, Aiko asked, "So what led to their followers going to war?"

Yucholl cleared her throat. Being a lamian, she had no legs; her humanoid body turned serpentine at the hips. Legs fascinated her; Aiko's legs, doubly so. "Um," she read on. "Their followers identify by which of the holy relics they revere and display. Fredwick's gourd, with which he carried water through the deserts, or Barndore's sandal, in which he walked the length of the river system."

"So the guy in the sand carried water, and the guy near the water wore a sandal? That's...." Aiko shook her head. "So did they preach radically different doctrines or something?"

Yucholl read on silently, flipping the page. "No... their doctrine seems to have been 'solve it without punching, please,' and 'would it kill you to wash your hands?'"

Aiko snorted a laugh, moving up a shelf. "You're making that up!"

"I'm not, I swear!" Yucholl protested, looking up from the book and right back at Aiko's legs. "Though I may be paraphrasing a little."

"My eyes are up here," Aiko teased, and Yucholl's blush refreshed itself before she looked back down at the book.

"Um... Ah! Here we go! I found it!" Yucholl read further, and laughed. "So, the Freddies believe that the appropriate hand with which to serve oneself from the community dishes is the right. The Barnies, however, swear that it's the left. This difference of opinion has led to anger, hatred, and open warfare between the two factions."

"Huh," Aiko said, tilting her head to the side as she considered. "I guess... that kind of makes sense?"

"What?" Yucholl asked, looking up in surprise. "In what twisted universe?"

"Well, these Monthons, they're humanoid, right? And most of them live on the edges of the desert, along the banks of that river, you said."

"Yeah?" Yucholl agreed, still not understanding what her friend had perceived.

"So, what did they do all day with their other hand? I mean, when I was really small, my mother used to tell me all the time to wash my hands, because she didn't know where they'd been. I always said that they'd been right there on the end of my arms, but..." Aiko trailed off with a shrug.

Yucholl filed that story away in her mind. It was rare for Aiko to say anything about her long-dead mother. She thought of the things people did with their hands, and a figurative light came on for her. "Oh! These weren't highly technological people, so their hands would be dirty!"

"Bingo!" Aiko said, standing and stretching. "And to the winner, a prize!" Yucholl raised her own torso up to meet her, and they kissed for a long moment.

At the front of the store, Aiko's father cleared his throat and called, "You're supposed to be shelving those, Yucholl, not reading them!"

The two girls broke their kiss, and Yucholl called back, "Sorry, Mr. MacBeth! Shelving now!"

"Oh," Aiko teased, soto-voce, "is that what the kids are calling it these days?"

 

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