Ain't Talkin'

Roche slept with his head against his saddle and his feet up on a stone beside Alma’s tent. The old woman snored to high hell and Roche barely slept. What couple hours he did manage to nod off was due entirely to the four full cups of vodka he’d downed with the old woman.

Fuck, for a broad who looked a hundred she could still drink like a fish.

And the fish. There was still the yarn Alma had strung about the fish.

Etherfish were a common thing. A bit of ether that was somehow alive and managed to tweek people’s perceptions of their world for a moment before they were gone again, picking at consciousness and slipping in and out of their own twisted reality on white currents.

A walker generally didn’t notice the fish anymore unless they gathered en masse, in schools. A group of them could cause a noticeable perversion of the white. Older walkers than Roche could ignore even these. But that begged the question.

Didn’t it?