While the divvying up was taking place, Githarie, who was starting to feel a little bummed, went to Deyandra and, while no one else was noticing, took a cheeky little bump from Deyandra’s vial.

  Woof! It woke her up, but it didn’t not make her feel any less unsettled.

  Gromnir had no idea how easy it was to grow mushrooms. Orcans loved mushrooms, and grew and ate them all the time, but Gromnir, so very young, just didn’t know how successful his little sporified crop would be. He had only needed to bring a live fruiting psilocybe, which he found handily, and smudge it all over the… uh, the number twos! He had followed the instructions precisely, obsessed with his first harvest, and especially because he was sure he could sling them for some coin. But psilocybe mushrooms were an intense experience indeed and given Gromnir’s cohorts, they all agreed that they wanted to stay away from a potential bad trip.

  Because psilocybe mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties. Orcan shamans would use them to divine the nature of Reath, and they were used as therapeutic tools. But if they were consumed in the wrong set and setting, they could lead to unpleasant sensations, to say the least.

  While Zholl, Zhon, and Deyandra knew what they were doing, Zholl and Zhon were quite drunk already having swigged a baker’s dozen tankards between the two of them, and so, feeling reckless, had agreed earlier that they were going to do a heroic dose. As long as they stuck to it together and did not leave the other one to the mercy of the mushrooms, they should be okay. Deyandra, a little bit more sensible, took exactly the amount she wanted to have the intensity of a trip that she wanted, and let the twins split the rest of her share.

  But Lawrah, wanting to impress Zholl, to show her she was one cool gof bub zug, shoved the whole mass into her mouth, just like Zholl.

  And Githarie, caving into peer pressure, and having no idea how much she should take anyway, and besides, wanting not only to be on the same wavelength as Lawrah but also wanting Lawrah to notice that she was going just as hard and that maybe they could dance a bit together, just the zugs and the music, did the same. It tasted nasty! Gross!

  It was highly inadvisable, but Zholl and Zhon were not in any position to give advice, preoccupied as they were haggling over who got more of Deyandra’s remainders. Deyandra surveyed the pham with slight concern. This was going to be an interesting rotation.

  Gromnir vacuumed up the rest. He would not be on Reath at all later in the rote but rather flying through the void with the dragons.

  “Yao yao yao, ayo, let’s light up a da-aily sho-ow”, Zhon Thraxes singsong lilt.

  He whipped out a blunt which he had reinforced with just the right amount of hashish to keep it burning longer, and flicked his cumbersome ghash lighter, roughly fist-sized, it blew a jet of flame, and the cherry ignited.

  He would have taken the blunt to the face had Zholl not snatched it out of his mouth, bark, “Oi! Sha bogart!” He huffed hard with a look of concentration, trying to look cool, and passed it to Lawrah.

  “Hey!” Deyandra complained, who was on the other side of Zhon and would therefore be last in rotation.

  Lawrah took it, as she swung alternating elbows forwards and back, her index fingers extended and tapping too to the beat – Githarie thought she looked kind of dorky, but in a very cute way, and besides, Lawrah couldn’t give less of a skai right now – she took two smooth hits and passed it to Githarie. Then she threw back a glug of her hard kombucha. It was just plain kombucha, not even that sweet, and what made it hard was the vodka they poured into it.

  But Githarie smoked it pensively for a bit before passing it to Grom, who took huffed it happily before catch Deyandra’s death stares and walked all the way around the procession to hand it to her. She patted him on the head before scooping his neck and striding ahead with him. Zhon jogged forward to catch up.

  Githarie was really starting to get a little ticked off at her best friend. All this time that they were here, Lawrah hadn’t said one single word to her. Durban’s daughter’s attention was completely wrapped up in her gezzno glob dick older brother. Piss off, Githarie. Nook’s ours. On her birth-rote! She realized that unless she wanted to hook up with Gromnir, and ew, wu way, that would be totally gross, she was quickly getting fifth wheeled.

  Grom was shyly staring at the slit cutting through the side of Githarie’s overalls, trying to mentally remove Lawrah’s black cashmere sweater so he could imagine her side boob. Oh, how he so wished to see her side boob. That would have been so hot. He tried chatting with Deyandra to up his social proof, but it was futile, because Deyandra was now flirting with Zhon:

  “Sha wanna be my nakaz lokboi, Zhonny? I’ll cutsha in. Fifty fifty?” She tilted her chin up and waggled her eyebrows.

  “Snaga gurl, I ain’t workin’ for sha, you’re workin’ for me. Ha-ai.” Zhon, totally oblivious, always let his ego come first before engaging in an obvious opening.

  “Psh, suit sha self, globby.” Zhon wasn’t wearing any top, just some baggy hemp cargo pants with all his festival goodies stuffed into the big square pockets, so Dey bent down and blew a raspberry on his navel. “BPH-PH-PH-PH!”

  Zhon doubled up and tried to reach over and grab Deyandra, for after Githarie he was surely the most ticklish of the family, and she just snarked, “Too slow, Thraxes!” And skipped away. Zhon dashed after her.

  It was then that Githarie realized they had stridden well ahead of Lawrah and Zholl, and now she was completely alone. She spun around, seeing if she could signal them to catch up.

  Lawrah and Zholl were flirting hardcore, having sauntered ever more slowly. Lawrah, already a little bit nervous about what would happen once the shrooms kicked in, was uncharacteristically excitable, and her voice was noticeably squeakier. Any attempt at nonchalance was gone. Zholl was now firmly grabbing her butt and was not letting go, and she didn’t even mind. Zholl rolled a knuckle down from her temple down to her cheek, he beckoned her chin closer and then like that they were proper making out. Snogging. With tongue. Lawrah bit Zholl’s lower lip lightly, pulling a little flap of skin and biting just a bit harder, just as much as she could get away with – it began to hurt but Zholl took it stoically and actually it was kind of turning him on – before letting it snapback, crinkling up her nose evilly as if daring him to do something about it. Zholl just responded by shoving his tongue into her mouth, which she happily began to slurp on.

  Githarie stared at this obscene display with a mixture of shock, disgust, and fuming resentment.

  “Go gimb a lug, sha two! Lok leeroy!”

  They completely ignored her, having stopped moving entirely, just standing there embracing and sucking each other’s faces as all the razza goers streamed around them, either not noticing, or giving a glance and thinking - ay, these orcs gettin’ lucky tonight.

  Skai ‘em! The cocaine rage was perking up now, and she threw a dismissive wave of her forearm hard enough to show anyone that Githarie was still far too hung up to have dismissed anything. She raced ahead to find Zhon. At least Zhon had so little rizz that they could remain a trio.

  Now, at the big yurt, Githarie scooted up to Zhon and Deyandra pushing themselves up against the edge of the crowd. Zhon threw his arms back and beckoned for Githarie to promptly leap up on his back so she could piggyback ride. It gave her a clear view of the crowd, many hands raised up and gently bobbing to the beat. It reminded her a bit of surfing, if Zhon was her surfboard. She folded her arms atop his head, and relaxed.

  The emcee was a squat but tough orcan boi, Urk Zweigas, a.k.a “Nakaz Zwei”, the microphone zweihander, cleave sha up with his bars. Thick around the waist and stocky, he was unassuming, but he was a strong powerlifter, who could put numbers on the board with his clean and snatch. His shirt was so baggy it was unclear if he was wearing any bottoms and Githarie thought this was odd- it was basically a dress. He looked bub in it though.

  His partner, Yeevax Rhataghast was laying down a beat with his prized relic. He blew revs worth of savings to score it, but he wanted to have the authentic thing, the real deal. He didn’t want no fakes, no counterfeits, no facsimile or simulacrum.

  Nakaz zwei rapped:

  “All sha orcs listen, cutsha dick off, glob’s pissin’,

  Ain’t no snaga gonna match my flow, got that naz glow,

  All these braggahs think they ghash, slash, cross that shit out.

  Don’t front if sha fucked, fool. Gangsta? Just thug, dumb lout.

  Not real if it ain’t authentic, don’t pretend, it’s just pathetic,

  Think ya skai sha hai sing a slick rick? Morty send sha to the mortuary!

  Bye sha fake wank - stahs, whippin’ ‘round with sha wurl - stahs,

  Slow and stupid, slidin’ round, insipid, gamblin’ witsha life,

  Sha waghing all out, wide as an elf-wife, c’mon, step up, battle.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Sha momma nevah taught ya how?”

  Thrak ghash. He brought the bars.

  She started nodding her head along to the beat.

  Nakaz zwei kept it up, dropping bar after bar, but it was all just braggadocio, as well put to the beat as it was. Either he was killing an orc, or hurting an orc that stepped up to him, showing that orc who was durban, or owning an orc at a rap battle, or maybe sometimes killing elves. He claimed he smoked fifty blunts a rote and had thousands of nazge chains. He rapped rapid fire about different types of firearms, gats, which he apparently had a whole armory of. He didn’t just have this armory; he had an entire army of souljas – he took care to warp the word so no one thought he meant elvan soldiers – to take up his arms in his name and massacre large groups of people. Why that was necessary- no explanation was provided, he refused to elaborate further. And despite his claims of having flow, he would lull into a monotone sometimes.

  “Hm, not really much of a storyteller, is he?” Deyandra snarked. Couldn’t they do better than this? Only really basic orcs stayed at the Hip Hop tent the whole razza, orcs who had never bothered to cultivate their own taste and just followed the flock like meatmutts.

  Githarie skipped back off Zhon’s back, and they were promptly pulsed to the edges of the yurt by a stream of whooping and hollering brus and gurls, wasted one and all, who pumped their arms as they streamed in yelling, “ZWEI! ZWEI! ZWEI!”

  The birth-rote gurl was starting to feel a little weird. Had the shrooms hit yet? She was starting to feel quite rotten, really. She didn’t know Deyandra that well, so she felt insecure, which was very peculiar, because Githarie didn’t often feel insecure. For sure, not this bad. She wondered why she cared so much about what Deyandra thought about her. Suddenly she wished she could just read her mind. Just know exactly what Deyandra was thinking at the time. If it was something innocuous it would put her at ease.

  But what if all these bizarre suspicions pinging around her brain right now were true?

  “Hey, hey, Dey, I’m feeling a little nuk- I dunno. Ugh.”

  “Sha scarfed a lotta shrooms, zuggie. This ain’t sha first time, is it? I did ask you if sha knew what you were doing, and you told me yah, gesh it. Remember that Gith?”

  “Ah-”

  “Well, it’s okay, you’ll sail through this, Gi. I’ll make sure of it. Mog.”

  Githarie was busy staring at her hands, and it seemed the blood vessels – squirming gray through her lime skin – were popping out. Not popping but almost buzzing out. Ascending through and out of her body. They weren’t of course, but that’s what it looked like. She squinted and looked closer, and it looked like vibrating molecules, little connecting spokes and all, tumbling around. She knew that could not be magickally possible. Molecules are just too small to be seen by the eye. But the shroomy fantastically magical thinking was starting to convince her that maybe, just maybe, she’d transmogrified microscope eyes. It all had a… naz glow to it.

  Coo-ool!

  She shook her head to snap out of it. What the hell was going on? What was she thinking? Snap out of it zug, use logic!

  Deyandra seeing her distress, thinking that – skai, Gith, you’re going to bad trip if you don’t just embrace it and go with the flow – then had an addict’s flash of insight. She just needs another bump! That’ll bring her out of it. Plus, she felt like she could use a little top up and this would be the perfect excuse.

  “This’ll bring sha out of it.” Githarie, with full faith in Deyandra’s drug knowledge, went for it immediately. Wouh! It burned and Githarie grimaced. But Deyandra was already on to feeding Zhon’s nostril, before then both her own.

  “Ghash!” she cried out, and pointed ahead, “Leeroy!”

  She led them to the clearing.

  Distortion. Dissonance. There was a plethora of pedals all arrayed around three lutists wielding electric axes, the bass lutist had seven strings, and the drummer! The drummer! It was a wicked set, so many drums it felt complicated to even begin for Githarie, but the drummer was wailing and smashing away at the drums with such frenetic precision that she had to squint to make sure he hadn’t transmogrified a second set of arms. Wait. He had! But they were flying about with such speed that it was all a blur, he was completely one being with his drum set, a fusion of percussion and player.

  The singer, Yarmanghael Ruzzeh, swung the mic to his lips, rocking the mic stand like a blade being pulled out of a scabbard.

  “DREAMS OF WAR! DREAMS OF LIARS!”, he was shrieking into the mic, she could have easily heard him without amplification but now it was as if he was a giant dragon, hovering before her, roaring sonic dragonbreath. She felt she would be torn asunder. He was singing falsetto yet somehow was able to make his throat gravelly and hoarse, as a deep voice sounded, creating a surreal and monstrous tenor at the same time. It should have been impossible.

  “DREAMS OF DRAGON’S FIRE!”

  These headbangers were, without a doubt, the most technical performers, indeed they were the only real instrumentalists, of the entire razza. So virtuosic were they – showing off with fancy irregular time signatures, switching off from an indescribably weird asymmetric meter and back from basic 4/4, or alternatively, gradually going berserk with a progressive buildup from a 6/8 to a 9/8 and finally a 12/8 where they just absolutely dominated– what they understood was that it was all about building anticipation. A dread march. An inescapable doom. An unstoppable force of fury and hate and unforgiving savagery.

  Githarie was- she couldn’t quite find the words to describe it.

  “AND OF THINGS THAT WILL BI-ITE, YEA-AH!”

  The word that came to her felt so obvious that she was almost too cross at herself to allow the thought, but in the end, it really was the only way to describe it.

  It was metal. It was fucking metal.

  “SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN.”

  Deyandra was an orcan who really appreciated highly trained musical skill, and though there was a large gathering here, there was enough space to spread out. A good thing, for the head bangers would smash the lights out of anyone in their way of their gul headbutting. Deyandra was twirling around and screaming along with the lyrics- she knew every word. It got Zhon so hyped up that he started headbanging even though he didn’t have long hair, so it looked quite silly, just him swerving his neck furiously up and down. Up close to the stage was a mosh pit, orcans were shoving each other as hard as possible and gleeful in the pulse of bodies slamming back and forth. They were moshing so hard that the tangle of bodies moved like a liquid, flowing and slopping and breaking up just like waves.

  “GRIPPING YOUR PILLOW TIGHT.”

  Totally gripped by this ghash ass wagh, Zhon roared, “LEERO-OY!” and charged headfirst into the mosh pit.

  “Welp, he’s gone,” mused Deyandra.

  “I dunno if this is my scene…”, Githarie said.

  “WHAT, ZUG?”

  “I DUNNO IF THIS IS MY SCENE.”

  “YEAH, THEY’RE GOOD, BUT I’M DOWN FOR THE NEXT THING.”

  Dey put her hands on Githarie’s shoulders to lead her forwards. Githarie felt a bit shook by the metal, because her head was racing through all the different meanings that the lyrics could have conveyed. It was all very grimdark. Exit light and enter night? Take my hand, we’re off to never, never land? Whatever way she worked it out, she couldn’t help but conclude- the song was about death. It was definitely about death.

  Githarie was now thinking about death. And she feared it. She didn’t want to think of herself simply… not existing. What would that feel like? She knew that it wouldn’t just be like closing her eyes and being in darkness. It would be like dreamless sleep. But that’s the sleep you don’t remember. Even dream sleep is hard to remember.

  He had taken to calling the manure pile ‘the number twos’, to compartmentalize just how disgusting his shroom farming was.

  By the rule of the stricter Chiefs – it varied from village to village – under the guidance of a shaman who would know how to best guide orcans under his ward through their journeys. Without guidance, and indeed in the chaos of a gathering hormonally charged with youth, one might succumb to, say, jealousy of a best friend’s attention taken.

  They would split up almost immediately.

  In his head. His physical form would be spent hugging a crop of bamboo, for if he let go he would surely spin away into the void, but these dragons – they were not dragons but bamboos – these dragons would carry him home!

  They obviously did not have tobacco to waste for a wrap, so they used suitable dried algae.

  Orcans made things highly durable and clunky instead of compact, and often with cut corners.

  Which, of course, killed all the probiotics.

  ‘Lokboi’ - runner boi, a dealer who didn’t want to get in sticky situations would often employ a runner to fetch and deliver.

  Gromnir had wandered off, having started to trip much harder and much sooner than the rest of pham. Did he even count as a member?

  Also known as French Kissing, but orcans had forgotten who the French were.

  We’re up all night to get some, we’re up all night for good fun. We’re up all night to get lucky.

  For the record, this means that technically it was Githarie who ditched Lawrah. This will be important later.

  Ballers, I put numbers on the boards. Hard to get a handle on this double-edged sword.

  He was wearing bottoms, an embarrassingly short pair of short shorts that he hid with his over large shirt, because that was the only clean thing he had to wear as a bottom. His boxers stuck out of it. They did not belong to him at all, he’d pilfered it in a hurry post hookup after his last gig, a misadventure that he couldn’t even remember, as he was blackout.

  An original Roland TR-808 drum machine.

  He was referring to brood mothers, and they hyperbolized the obesity of these so-called ‘elf-wives’.

  But that was only because he was piecing together new rhymes, for every single bar he dropped came completely off the dome. Had they known how impressive the feat was, they might have stayed longer.

  She didn’t think she often felt insecure, but she was. It was just coming to the surface now.

  Outside the frame is what we’re leaving out. You won’t remember anyway.

  It would not. As it turned out, it would make it sometimes feel impossible to stop thinking negative thoughts, for the combination of cocaine and psilocybin isn’t an advisable one.

  They were not following the exact instrumentation and approach of Metallica’s Enter Sandman but having spent almost all their time carefully crafting the intensely complicated riffs and licks and complementary timing that had to be absolutely perfect, or it would sound horrid, their creativity was completely spent. So, they just cribbed the words from the crowd pleaser. They knew well from experience that playing the more interesting stuff – at least, interesting to them – the stuff they wrote after being inspired, that they wouldn’t be able to hold a crowd. And they had been shoved off to the clearing, where they needed a crowd more than any other stage.

  It was. That was not how pitch worked. But Githarie was also tripping face right now.

  Je ne sais quois.

  Practice. We’re talking about practice. Not the game. We’re talking about practice. Not the game to go out there and die for play like every game is the last. We’re talking about practice. How silly is that? - Allen Iverson

  And she didn’t usually think about death.