Osgood Schlatter is a dove; not very attractive, as doves go, because of his damaged knees and the company he keeps—and kept—and, please understand, those reasons aren't the only's. Just the top two. Supposedly, Gore Schlatter is a type of dove; Ok, ok, more of a pigeon. Mostly pigeon.
There was a pun, bandied about when Osgood started-up with her, or she attached herself to him—whichever. It went something like:
who's dumb as a rock, been a pig for eons, and behaves like a gore?
Admittedly, the pun landed better with those who knew her prior-name had been Gore Behavre (she escaped from Quebec) and were aware she, visually, could be of rock pigeon ancestry. And—it certainly helps understand the pun better—to know that a gore is a chunk of land, which is on the outside of every local jurisdiction, created by a surveying error.
Many consider it impossible to mate-love with a different species; morally, physically, practically—whichever. Well, Osgood appears to
actually mate-love Gore. That's what is important, right? He deserves to be happy. Today. None should hold the service-related crimes of his past against him. But many do. Which is puzzle-confusing. Relatively speaking, he never committed any of the autocracies caused by his masters.
Did his master commit crimes? Well, of course
they did or
she did—unless one ascribes to the philosophy that she/they only behave as a goddess is/are required to behave. Generally accepted logic (among every mammal who, annually, suffer the whims and dictates of Spring) is that
if there is a
Goddess of Spring Moral Code, those twisted bitches constantly violate it with impunity. When Osgood was drummed into service as one of her/their translator-protectors, in the eyes of many, he became guilty by association.
So. Gore is Osgood's sole associate now. (There is a pun somewhere around-near here, probably; it would only take a small flex to create it.)
Gore never had parents. Instead, she was genetically created. In a Canadian laboratory. And somehow escaped or was intentionally released—whichever. One trait of the lab-born is they smell wrong; Gore smells like a member of the porcine species, which can cause problems. It is very difficult to get comfortable when anything (with a working game-nose) is constantly being screamed at by their inner voice:
fly, dumb ass, fly! some predator-pig is too close, fly! it is going to eat you! fly...
⟪ ๐ ⊗ ๐ ⟫
"Oz. You awake?" Gore asked in her rumble-cool-quiet tone which would not wake anyone who was even lightly napping.
"I can be. What's shakin' me favorite bacon?" Osgood murmured from under his wing-pit, causing a few tiny white feathers to fluff with the pop of his breath.
Gore liked that Oz wasn't put-off by her smell and the smile in the back of her voice caused her to pause longer-than-she-intended between words, so she could prevent herself from laughing. "I was just. Thinking. Maybe. We. Go much further south to where it is already summer. Avoid the vernal equinox. Otherwise. She will be here. In a few weeks."
"Appreciate you thinking about me." He replied while slowly straightening his neck and beginning to flex his angrily swollen leg-joints. "But it seems a lot, too much, for the sake of avoiding them. You know they can't make me do anything anymore. Right?"
Gore swiveled her neck. The iridescent sheen of her grey ruff shone silver-green-to-pink in the early morning sunlight. She preened along the apex of Osgood's neck, where he always got a nasty kink and said, "Honestly, I'm more concerned about myself. I've never been outside of a cage when she arrives. Never been influenced by her designs or affected by those who were influenced by her. What if she makes me do things I can't control?"
Osgood sighed and replied, "Please Gory, we need to communicate clearly when talking about Ostara. You and I do, that is. Others may refer to the Triple-Goddess of Spring using the singular pronoun, but I see and hear all
three. When you use
she, I think you are referring to the central mother-figure."
"You've not wanted to discuss this with me before. I have questions. But, don't want to raise feathers. Is now a good time for blunt?" Gore asked, still preening Osgood's angry-swollen knees and legs.
"Yes. Now is a good time." Osgood said.
Gore bobbed her head up and looked him in the eye. She wanted her silence to give him an opportunity to change his mind or to indicate pessimism or show he was being untruthful about it being the right time. Body language was more honest than word-language. Always. "Ok. Tell me." She said, "I've heard others talk metaphorically about Spring. I've heard you vaguely mention the Triple-Goddess. That you worked for..." Gore allowed the sentence to drawl-out in a questioning-to-quieting way, while shrugging her wing and shoulder to indicate she didn't know how to end the sentence correctly.
"I was forced to work for them an endless season. Years ago. The choice was serve or die. I chose to serve. After summer arrived and they departed, I tried to kill myself. Many of the slaves of spring die of exhaustion or will themselves to death, I gave myself to be eaten by a human. Only the human wanted... I don't know what. It kept me in a cage with a horrible idiot-dove. I think of her as my penance-torturer. She would not shut the fuck up. Bitched and moaned—dawn to dusk—for almost two years and then the human let us go. Maybe Ostara caused the human to release me; release us. Not everything they do results in evil, even though that seems to be their intent. That was a month before you found me in that culvert."
"Explain what they look like to you, Oz. I've listened to others say they've seen a single goddess. Still others say they have never seen a physical entity, only environmental effects." As Gore said this, she nuzzled her chin along the back of Osgood's neck.
Ozgood appreciated her directness and replied with a directness of his own, "I was selected because I understood their language and could translate their commands. From Vernal Equinox until Summer Solstice, for every year of my adulthood, I have seen the Triple-Goddess as they are and not as they wish to be seen. Or unseen, as the case may be.
They appear to me as three human women. The young one, referred to as The Maiden, is named Patience; she is playful, naรฏve, foolish, and more-than-a-little careless. Fortitude, known as The Mother, is noticeably heavy with child, commanding in a not-to-be-trifled-with way, and is always emotionally-somewhere between low-simmer and high-boil angry. And the elderly woman, some refer to as The Crone, goes by the name Resignation; she routinely attempts to temper, cajole, and encourage acceptance of what they do as if it were inevitable. They have the power. The most fantastic power. I... I'm sorry." Osgood's voice grew quiet. Then he slowly turned his pink-white beak towards the side of Gore's grey beak, until they touched, and said in a whisper, "They can question anything, everything, into and out of existence."
Gore waited to see if Osgood would continue. She was certain he did not intend her to think he was speaking metaphorically, but she also knew things which looked like magic were, actually, explainable by human technology or microbiology or science. And carefully worded her next question to determine if there was a logical explanation. "Which one caused the most harm?" She asked, not pausing between words nor emphasizing any of them. Gore wanted to learn where Ozgood's mind was focused; if he answered with a name—then he'd interpreted her question as if she'd asked:
which one caused...' and if he described an event—then his mind had heard: ...
the most harm?
"What you really want to know, Gore-me-love, but are treating me as if I'm fragile-minded—which I greatly admire, as well—is if I was a co-conspirator in a ninety-day, pan-species, mass-genocide or if I was merely tricked into tagging along with an entity who possesses a limited superpower of a..." As Osgood spoke in his normal, somber, quiet manner, he now slightly raised his right-most claw and curled his inside talon.
Then said, matter-of-factly, "...shape-shitting ability: either one human, three humans, or invisible..." As he said
one,
three, and
invisible, he nodded his head for emphasis, then curled his middle talon.
And continued with a quizzical tone, "...a second superpower which involves a limited ability to see a short time—no more than a few days—into the entire planet's future..." then, curling the last talon on that claw.
He finished with a increased weight to his words, "...and this entity must, then, constantly
pretend to initiate the infinite rape, death, plagues, floods, droughts, and misery, which are merely the result of thermodynamics, entropy, electromagnetism, chaos and hormones. For over two thousand straight hours. every. single. year.
"If
that is what happened and happens? Then I did not participate. I was just one of many victim-witnesses who's real purpose was/is to tell others of the mighty Ostara. Spreeaad the word." Osgood breathed a somber exhale looking down at the branch in a contemplative way and then turned his neck to look close-directly: his left eye into Gore's right.
He said matter-of-factly, "Only. I never saw behind the curtain, so—from my perspective—it all seemed to be literally caused by them. With my assistance."
"Shape shitting?" Gore whispered, trying to add a bit of humor into the conversation.
"What?" Osgood asked, with confused uncertainty.
"Did you say shape shitting, as in, "the entity had such great anal sphincter power it could crank out a square sh..."
"Rectangle. From a rectangle shaped..." He giggle breathed, loving her more for her attention to his verbal faux-pas and willingness to not get too dragged down by it all.
"...Rectum." they both said at the same time and cackled with full-on laughter.
