Longs and Shorts of Laverito: Talisman

There was nothing else for it. 

Laverito hopped up onto Badallaioc’s wide white back, twice as far a jump as Laverito was tall. The hare-demon pawed through the buckles and ropes and bags and sacks, sifting through haplessly disorganized snacks, tools, jewelry, books, scrolls, hides, teeth, claws, and at least two pickled eyeballs in elaborate jars. Everything Laverito had was either useful or valuable, because the right tools saved time, and time was money, and money could buy snacks, which were physical manifestations of happiness.

The right tool for this particular job was Laverito’s three-legged, two-handled, cast iron bread pot, with a lid that clamped. It was longer and deeper than Laverito’s head, but not his ears, and nearly as wide as the length of his hand. It was black and rough and slightly gritty. Laverito never, ever washed it. He’d rinsed it recently, only about a month or two ago, which was more than enough.

He’d stolen it from his mother, you see.

When Laverito hopped back down, staggering through the soft sand under the weight of the bread pot, Badallaioc ruffled his feathers and shuffled his wings as if shaking off a fit of heebie-jeebies. The big stryx loved to kick up an equally big fuss over every little thing — but they both knew very well that if Badallaioc truly minded, Laverito would’ve been left in the dust with his pile of bric-a-brac long ago.

In their line of work, Laverito had learned not to get overly attached to trinkets, or even tools. Oh, feigning deep emotional attachment was all very well and good when making a sale, because that could make the price go up. Supply and demand, or something. So the bread pot was not important, or sentimental, or even all that nice to have - it’d been his mother’s, after all, and that would leave a sour aftertaste on anything. In Laverito’s experience, cannibals were simply not to be trusted. Or liked. Or smelled, if any clothespins were handy.

But it was big, and the lid clamped, which was the bread pot’s way of showing that it was a dab hand at holding onto liquids.

Laverito lugged the bread pot over to what Badallaioc had found.

At first glance, it had seemed like a gemstone jutting from a cone of granite, but when Badallaioc nipped the rounded red crystal in an equally red beak, it snapped off. An unnervingly blood-colored ooze issued from the resulting fissure, seeping ponderously, occasionally swelling up at the edge in a flurry of brittle bubbles. Whatever-it-was certainly wasn't boiling; the desert was bitingly cold at night, though Laverito hardly felt it. Badallaioc picked at the area, clawing and scooping bits of crumbly granite out of the way, avoiding direct contact with whatever-it-was. 

Frankly, Laverito had been much happier while nervously watching from a safe perch atop Badallaioc’s back. 

Now, however, Laverito wrapped both hands around one black handle, and dunked the bread pot into the burbling abscess Badallaioc had popped — being extremely careful not to get any of it on himself. Dangerous? Most likely. But mysterious concoctions like this were always magical, and magical always translated to expensive, because if someone didn’t want the magical whatever-it-was, they’d still pay to have it nowhere near them.

Laverito pulled the bread pot back, or tried to. The ooze did not want to be scooped. 

Badallaioc clicked low in his white throat, and glared when Laverito had the audacity to ask for help. Instead, the stryx stalked around to the other side of the ring of granite, squinting suspiciously at every crack and chunk. The ooze had been seeping slowly, like a small, sleepy volcano, not rushed in the slightest by Badallaioc clearing the way. It hesitated at the lip of the granite basin, rising like bread, before beginning to roll down the outsides like barely-warm candle wax.

Fine, then. Laverito gritted his teeth, planted his paws, and pulled with all his might. Little by little, he was winning the tug-of-wills, and then — SCHLOK! The bread pot came free so quickly that Laverito actually threw the very heavy vessel over his own head and off somewhere behind him.

He frantically patted and stroked his ears, searching for any trace of the ooze, and then moved down in a cursory sweep over the rest of himself. But there was not a drop of ooze on his person. When he turned around, the bread pot was squatting silently on its three feet, wholly unperturbed, and about half-empty. Within, there was a block of brittle, rounded red crystal. There was no more ooze anywhere to be found.

Badallaioc stomped over to retrieve the rounded red crystal that the stryx had initially snapped free. After dropping that last piece of whatever-it-was into the bread pot with a hauntingly hollow noise, the stryx began to dig around the vacated fissure, tossing chunks of granite willy-nilly all about. Badallaioc scrutinized the fissure itself, even going so far as to stick one foot down there to feel around, but the only interesting thing about it now was that it was a very smooth, regular, beaker-shaped hole. When the stryx widened his search, he inadvertently combed a tangle of metal wires up from the sand with his long talons. 

Meanwhile, Laverito set the lid on the bread pot with a heavy clonk! and latched it shut. Maybe he’d find out what this was the next time he and Badallaioc darkened a magically-inclined thrift store’s back alley, or maybe he’d only find out how much money it could get him. Either way, he’d get what he wanted.

He collected the wires, too, because there was always a blacksmith interested in some recyclables. Whatever shape they’d once formed had been bent out by Badallaioc’s talons now, but it probably wasn’t important.

After Badallaioc had scratched, and scraped, and pecked, and peered, and finally decided that there was nothing else of interest here, Laverito heaved the bread pot back up, up, up onto Badallaioc’s back. The stryx did nothing whatsoever to make the process easier, and Laverito knew better than to ask. Once the bread pot was safely entangled in a lattice of rope, nestled among all the other goods waiting to be sold to the nearest unquestioning merchant, Laverito hopped into the saddle, and Badallaioc began to run.

No matter the jostling of Badallaioc’s gait, or the occasional, sharply displeased crackle-pop! from within, the lid never so much as twitched. It was every bit as stubborn as his mother’s cauldron. Nothing, no matter how vile or toxic or deadly, ever escaped it. Maybe stealing it had been the chance whim of a desperate young leveret, but keeping it was a decision made easy by simple math: nobody had offered Laverito enough money for it yet.

It was a very good bread pot.