Meltdown XXV & Fallout 025 (Jan '23).

"In bull-fighting they speak of the terrain of the bull and the terrain of the bull-fighter. As long as a bull-fighter stays in his own terrain he is comparatively safe. Each time he enters into the terrain of the bull he is in great danger. Belmonte, in his best days, worked always in the terrain of the bull. This way he gave the sensation of coming tragedy."
- ‘The Sun Also Rises’, Ernest Hemingway.

On her twenty third birthday, as she hesitantly placed her right boot on the penultimate rung of a teetering ladder, Michelle couldn’t help but think about the steady stream of new experiences that had imposed themselves upon her throughout the preceding twenty three years of existence. Love and death. Isolation and suffocating, overwhelming contact. Violence and tedium. Life flitted between the unexpected and the banal, throwing her around in an uncomfortable saddle upon its back. A passive and often pathetic plaything for its unpredictable, sudden whims. Little still surprised her, even at this young, tender age. But none of that really prepared her for her first ladder match.

Blood trickled from a fresh cut above her left eye, blinding her as it pooled around the socket. Her body was a patchwork of fresh and tender bruises. The aches made each step of the climb - which seemed to take an eternity, the ladder essentially a mountain with her body in this dilapidated state - a torturous ordeal, her body's fragilities betraying her mind’s resolve. She wondered how many breaks and fractures the adrenaline concealed. But she was here: at the top of the ladder, her fingertips brushing against the cold, smooth plating of the golden belt. Amidst the whirlwind of boos that surrounded her, she caught herself smiling.

Not for long. Never for long.

The ladder began to teeter more vigorously and more ominously than ever before, prompting Michelle to release the belt and grip the top of it with both hands. Not that this helped. The instability was stemming from the base of the ladder, where a familiar, smiling face greeted her frantic, helpless gaze. Anzu huffed and puffed, and eventually the ladder began to fall. During the ensuing plummet, Michelle's ankle caught the top rope and the velocity of the rest of her dramatically increased. Her face was the first of many parts of her that crashed through a pair of tables set up on the outside.

Her eyes remained open for only a second or two, and all that she could see was the wooden debris that she was buried beneath. Then, all was black, but the sounds of the cheering crowd still filled her ears.



"One can afford to be ostentatious every once in a while," Anzu declared, as she placed her drink - a bottle of Mexican lager with a lime shoved ungracefully through the neck - down on the table. She nestled the bottle between a dozen or so discarded, empty tequila glasses and, more noticeably (or ostentatiously, as Anzu had put it), her PAW Continental Championship. Dreamer had suggested that the act of displaying it upon their table, hidden away though it was in the corner of the bar, was a provocative one. Anzu concluded this surmation was born out of envy. Barely a pair of hours had passed since the champion had toppled the ladder the challenger was climbing. "You'd agree, if you had a championship to parade."

“I have a championship,” Michelle contested, with a sideways glance at the rucksack beneath their table. Anzu was well aware of this, but she scoffed nonetheless.

“That thing from Europe?” she said, whilst draining her drink and signalling to the camarera that a fresh one was needed. Michelle was struggling to keep up. Her head still throbbed, and her two lower ribs on the left side - or what was left of them - nagged at her regardless of the position she assumed. Anzu reached for Dreamer’s rucksack and lifted it from the ground, implying its insignificant weight. “Is it even metal?”

“It’s metal,” Michelle assured her, with a small smile beginning to impose upon her lips. Anzu’s devious and playful nature was overcoming the tapestry of needling bruises that tortured her body. “Just not precious metal.”

“Well, you’ll get there one day, I’m sure,” Anzu went on, as a fresh beer and another pair of tequilas were placed next to her belt. The champion flashed a thumbs up and a broad smile at the responsible waitress before pushing one of the shots towards Michelle. Dreamer instinctively glugged hers and placed the empty next to the others, Anzu a little slower in accomplishing the same but enthusiastic none-the-less. “It’s staying there that’s the problem.”

“Don’t worry, I’m leaving before you’ll be made to defend it again,” Michelle responded, whilst returning her divided, unfocused attention to her beer. With idle hands she removed the citrus fruit from its neck and threw it into a nearby ashtray, which reminded her to light a cigarette.

“I’m not talking about myself,” Anzu said, suggestively. Dreamer cocked an eyebrow, which acted as a silent request for elaboration. “How many championships have you held now? European ones, not proper ones.”

“Four,” Michelle answered. “This is my fourth.”

“And how long did the previous three last?” Anzu asked. She sat back in her seat and took another deep pull from her bottle, suggesting triumph. Dreamer narrowed her eyes in response.

“Not as long as I’d have hoped,” she said, finally.

“And why exactly is that?” Anzu continued, assuming the role of an unqualified and ill-informed therapist. But before her counterpart could answer, the champion continued, with an air of authority on account of the championship belt that lay between them. "Because the moment you get your hands on a little strap of leather, you end up challenging half the roster in a vain, futile attempt to prove yourself. You call it ambitious. I’d prefer overzealous. But what you haven't realised yet, Michelle, is that the championship is the proof."

Michelle disagreed. A long reign did not mean an historic one. Overzealous, perhaps, but to Dreamer the pursuit of her ideals was an important thing. It made the failures worthwhile. She didn't say anything in response, but eventually tore her gaze away from the other woman, beginning to idly scan the bar instead. She needed to loosen up. Her next match wasn't for weeks, and a long, tedious voyage across the water still loomed between now and then. Michelle didn’t want to think about any of it. Yet, with the other woman's idle chatter and the multitude of war wounds that hummed through her body, she found it difficult to consider much else.

"Can we talk about something other than wrestling?" Michelle asked, whilst observing a large, burly American who’d surrounded himself with an entourage of enthusiastic locals. They seemed to be hanging on his every word, which were spoken loud enough for the whole bar to hear.

“Am I reminding you of your loss?” Anzu said. Michelle stubbed her cigarette end into the ashtray, her distaste clear on her countenance. “You should look on the bright side. You’re lucky they didn’t let you defend your common metal championship here. You’d have probably put it on the line at La Marquesada. Half of Guanajuato, chasing after you and your title.”

“Don’t remind me,” Dreamer replied, her mind drawn back to the frantic scenes in the city of Salvatierra, where a half-dozen enraged bulls had been worked up enough to chase the citizenry through the streets. Still, even that gruesome ordeal was preferable to the wicked bullfights that Anzu insisted on attending across the entire tour.

“No bullfighting, no wrestling,” commented Anzu, with a rueful shake of her head. “Would you rather we sit here in silence? We’re meant to be celebrating, Michelle! I’m still a champion, and it is your birthday.”

“I need to stop telling people when my birthday is,” Michelle replied.

“Balderdash!” Anzu declared, whilst nodding at a tall, thin man who was drinking alone at the bar. “You see this guy?”

“You know him?” Michelle asked, as she scanned his lithe frame and handsomely drastic features. His angular, pronounced cheekbones sat high upon his face, and a dark pencil moustache framed his thin, pursed lips. His black hair was tied into a tight ponytail that ran down between his hulking shoulder blades. He was reading a book, and would occasionally break his focus to mutter a few, quiet words to the barman, who obeyed him silently.

“I know of him,” Anzu answered. “And so would you, if you’d come with me to the bulls last night. I imagine everyone in this place knows who he is, but don’t dare approach him. Strange power.”

“So he’s a matador?” Dreamer concluded.

“It’s easy to tell, yes?” the other answered. “You can see from his frame. Agility and a sudden, quiet power. You should’ve watched him last night, Dreamer. You could only see his eyes through a slit between his black and green bandido’s mask and his wide-brimmed hat, though the steel in them was visible from the very back of the arena. Cold and calculated, moving around the floor as if he was engaged in a dance with the beast.”

“Dances don’t usually end with the unsheathing of a blade,” Dreamer said, obtusely.

“Not usually,” Anzu answered, with a shrug. “It depends where you are dancing, and who you’re dancing with. You are unimpressed by the matador?”

Michelle took one last look at the tall, thin man as he finished his drink and bade the bartender to fill up his glass. He reached into his pocket to collect a case of long cigarillos before walking out of the bar with one perched between his lips. He left his possessions - his hat, a heavy, black coat, and a long, curved estoc hidden in a sheath, hanging from the side of his chair - behind unattended, confident that his reputation would ensure they were left untouched.

“He is impressive enough,” Dreamer allowed, after the man had left and she could re-apply her focus to her drink and the conversation. “Though the blood on his hands doesn’t excite me.”

“It repulses you?” Anzu asked, suppressing a roll of her eyes.

“No,” she answered. “Not that, either. I pity him as I pity the bull."

"I doubt he wants your pity," Anzu replied, with a knowing smile that suggested she'd identified the other's superiority complex and was amused by it. "How about the other one? The American. He was in the show, too. Though it doesn't look like they came here together."

The older woman now nodded towards the brash, loud foreigner from north of the border, who was still engaged in regaling his entourage with bawdy tales from a life well-lived. Michelle came to the same conclusion as Anzu: the American couldn't have been further from the matador in both his looks and his demeanour. Whilst the bullfighter was quiet and reserved, with only hints of his skill and his strength apparent to a trained and curious eye, the other puffed out his barrel-like chest in place of the shaking of tail feathers. He constantly pulled his sleeves back up over his thick, tattooed arms, wearing his power more obviously by a clear and tactless design.

"I didn't know there were American bullfighters," Michelle said, eventually.

"No, he doesn’t fight the bulls," said Anzu. "He rides them. Well, the same one… but lots of times. He was quite good, if you’re into that sort of thing. He rode from the pen and into the ring over and over again, attempting to master a bull that had escaped the sword. But his fights were, by their nature, deliberately temporary. Everybody wanted the cowboy to put up a fight, but nobody expected him to actually win. Eventually, when the bull tired of having him on his back he would buck hard enough to throw him into the sand."

"Doesn't sound as impressive."

"Well, I guess you have to see it," Anzu responded. The cowboy was rolling around a thick cigar between his fingers, and - although he was busy sharing some sordid anecdote with a young local girl on his arm - Michelle fancied she noticed him eyeing her or Anzu or both of them from across the room. "It lacks the elegance of the matador, but he has no sword on his belt. And brute strength is an adequate substitute for silent elegance. He tames the bulls, if only for a time, with nothing but his bare hands. That is remarkable in itself."

The matador had returned to his seat at the bar and was beginning to sip on the tall glass of tequila that waited for him. The cowboy removed himself from his group and made for the bathroom, reaching into his pockets and sniffing expectantly on the way.

"So, which one?" Michelle asked.

"Well, preferably both," Anzu answered. "One each. I don't want to share. But you can choose your favourite."

"I'll choose later," Michelle said.

*****

[... LAST NIGHT - (I) ]

“He okay?” Bob asked, as he watched the bullfighter being carried through the holding area. Two of the other toreadors that he’d gone out there with - to perform some strange dance with an angry bull that made little sense to the cowboy - had a grip around each of his wrists, and as they dragged him towards the medical tent he left a red, bloody trail in the sand.

“Perdió un cuerno, vaquero,” one of the other fighters said, his voice full of scorn. Typically, Bob didn’t understand a word of it, but comprehended enough from the other’s expression and tone. “Ellos tendrán que traer un nuevo toro.”

The bullfighter spat on the floor, right between the cowboy’s boots, and then followed the others. A nearby stableboy, who up until then had been engaged in calming a horse in heavy, steel armour, allowed himself a thin, high-pitched laugh.

“What did he say?” Bob asked. “¿En Inglés?

”He says the bull broke its horn,” the stableboy said, after stifling his chuckles. “They’ll bring a new one.”

“I meant is the boy okay?” Bob clarified. “El torero.”

“He’ll be fine,” the stableboy said, with an apathetic shrug. “Es normal. Are you ready?”

“Always, partner,” the cowboy replied. The stableboy continued to prepare the armoured horse. His amusement at the frantic and bloody scene they’d just witnessed continued, too. Bob left him to his business and went to the bullpen, where a half-dozen strong, young men were wrestling with thick ropes. These bonds were attached to the inner cage of the pen, the men conspiring to keep a restless bull in a position the cowboy could mount. Nobody seemed particularly comfortable with the situation, least of all the animal.

Bob looked at the beast for the first time since he’d arrived in Mexico City, but he got the sense that he’d seen the old bull before. Ridden him, probably. Here, his act was seen as little more than a sideshow. Something to keep the crowd enthused whilst they prepared the next fight, and each one of those (save the last) but mere preludes for the eventual main event. They were here for the matador and his red cape. Everything that came before his entrance was just padding.

Sometimes, you’d get a good crowd, or a good run would win a bad one over to your side. Mostly, though, you could expect lots of repetition and a fair bit of pain, too. Occasionally, the promoter would have you ride different bulls, or even change costume and go out under a new name, to present the idea of variation. Not here, though. The man who’d put together the new year’s eve fights was fully aware of and open about the cowboy’s secondary role in the day’s proceedings. He was to go out between each of the fights, on the same bull and in the same clothes, destined to be bucked from the beast’s back and land face-first in the sand.

He climbed onto the bull, the animal’s powerful muscles already beginning to shift beneath him. He felt it was expressing its discontent. He patted the bull's head dismissively and collected the reins. The bullpen gate opened and, a pair of cattle prods urging it from behind, the animal charged forward into the ring. Bob closed his eyes and accepted his passivity.

*****

[... ANOCHE - (II) ]

This is what they had all come for. He was what they had all come for. Forty thousand people, crammed into La Monumental, and now - after a long day-turned-evening in hot, humid, and generally quite uncomfortable conditions - the long-awaited conclusion of the show was finally upon them.

Alejandro Negredo was the main event, and he walked out into the centre of the ring as if he was fully aware of this fact. His back was straight, extending his tall, slender frame to its greatest length, his silhouette made more angular still by his pronounced shoulder blades. He stood in the shadow cast by his wide-brimmed hat, and beneath it the bandido's mask - black as night but for a delicate green silk embroidery - reduced him to a pair of cold, hard eyes. His red muleta remained furled at his side.

The bull was already tired. It had been a long day for the audience, but a longer one still for the animal that stood before him. Negredo had watched the poor beast's formulaic toil unfold from outside the ring, through the gaps in the slats put there to keep the audience safe. The toreadors, whose job was to fight the bull only and to leave the killing blow for the evening's climax, had gone out in groups to engage in preliminary scuffles. First, a dozen bullfighters in white suits walked towards a bull in a line, hoping that it would charge them in this domino arrangement until there was enough muscle behind the pack to bring it down without weapons. That was the idea, anyway. They tried three times, and on the third they came close, but the toreador at the head of the pack lost his footing and was trampled beneath the bull's frantic hooves.

In the ensuing frenzy, the panicked animal charged head-first into the steel wall around the ring and broke one of its horns. The bull was incomplete, and no longer worthy of a glorious end on Negredo's blade. They would change it before the next fight for a new and unfamiliar animal. One he hadn’t made it his business to get to know in the days leading up to the fight. The new bull seemed ill-tempered and aggressive, and almost knocked a mounted toreador from his horse in a particularly savage interlude. The armoured steed stood firm, though, and the bullfighter plunged a long spear into a fleshy spot below the bull’s right shoulder. The beast was staggering from there, allowing a toreador to approach it with two short swords and no muleta. When the beast began to charge, the fighter skilfully evaded by leaping to his left and thrust his blades into its back. The bull wheeled around in pain and darted away from the fighter, who would go on to repeat the dance three times. He was mostly successful and, when he was finished, a total of five blades protruded from the bull’s back for macabre decoration before the grand finale.

In-between the fights, light entertainment would be given by the rodeo clown. It was one that they’d shipped in from north of the border before, and each time - after the young, aggressive beast that was destined to die was chased back into his pen to make room for the novelty - the American would ride an old and timid bull into the middle of the ring and try to stay on top of it for as long as he could. Negredo had little interest in the sideshow, and used these brief moments to get to know the replacement beast that he’d stand across the ring from later in the night.

That moment had now come. The stadium’s floodlights were fighting off the darkness that loomed outside the arena, and Negredo stared into the eyes of the beast without the metal railings of the bullpen between them for the first time. They were close. Only a few metres apart. There was no need for a long chase. His reputation superseded the requirement for such theatrics. He allowed only three passes of the bull beneath his muleta, the red colour of which signified his fatal task. On the first pass, the bull’s left horn brushed his abdomen as he evaded the charge, ripping open his shirt before it passed beneath the cape. On the second, his estoc now in position, he swiftly drew the blade beneath the animal’s neck, the sand beneath it stained by a gushing red spray. The third lunge was slower, owing to this sudden loss of blood, and Negredo found the sweet spot between its shoulder blades with poise and ease.

The crowd cheered, the death suitably graphic and swift. It’s what they had come to see. He had played his role magnificently, as had the bull, which now lay dying amidst the audience’s adulation.

*****

She left the cubicle with a smile on her face and the cowboy’s wallet stuffed into her back pocket. She’d heard a lot about Mexican coke and was happy for the newish experience, the aches and pains of her evening’s work becoming duller and more distant thanks to the home remedy. Upon returning to the bar, she found her booth empty, Anzu and their new companions having left and, it seemed, taken her rucksack and her smokes with them. But she had the cowboy’s wallet, so concluded that they couldn’t have gone far.

She found them outside. They were mostly huddled in the same group, except for the matador, who remained aloof and abstracted whilst smoking a vanilla-scented cigarillo. Some of the locals that had attached themselves to the cowboy had drifted off, but a pair of young women were still clinging on to his star despite his diminishing focus. The cowboy himself was hanging on to Anzu’s conversational thread, the veteran treating him to a story of her own, which seemed to centre on the championship belt that she now wore on her shoulder.

“The rodeo clowns love stories,” said the matador, who’d reluctantly introduced himself as Alejandro Negredo when Anzu had descended on him and punctured his quiet sanctuary. His facial expression was only a few marks short of scornful, and in-between drags from his vanilla cigarillo he glanced over at the cowboy with reproachful disdain. It was clear that, despite them earning their living with the same animals and - at least for this tour - in the very same show, there was no love lost between the pair. “Especially this one.”

“You don’t like stories?” Michelle asked, as Anzu reached the end of her narrative. It was an old one that Dreamer had heard before, surrounding a twelve-person cage match in Yokohama back in 2007. She’d been out for far too many drinks than she should’ve the night before, and ended up emptying the contents of her stomach on the ringmat towards the final moments of the contest. Highly non-traditional, of course, but the act had inadvertently caused half the field to climb out of the cage in disgust, clearing the way for Anzu to get the win.

In actuality, she’d lost that match, but this detail had been lost amongst half a hundred retellings.

“Not ones with so many words,” the matador replied, as the American engaged in a series of increasingly lowed guffaws in recognition of the unexpected turn in Anzu’s story. The local girls that were gathered around him joined in with the amusement, though it was unclear how much of Anzu’s rambled speech they’d followed.

“Not bad, not bad at all,” the cowboy - whose name was predictably Bob and who predictably came from Texas - said, as he puffed on his thick cigar. “Reminds me of a night in Aguascalientes. I don’t remember the year, but I remember the bulls. Seven of the fuckers, and I rode all of them. These Mexican promoters get their money’s worth.”

Until now, the cowboy had conversed primarily with Anzu and his followers, and a little with Dreamer when she’d enquired after his cocaine. Although the matador had reluctantly joined the group following Michelle’s polite request, it was obvious that he didn’t quite relish the thought of an evening with the American. As his sullen, despondent, and often antagonistic nature became clearer to her, her interest in him grew accordingly. Now, though, with the cowboy’s assertion that he’d rode seven bulls in a single night - a statement the American clearly thought worthy of the group’s respect - the matador allowed himself a sudden, derisive snort. The meaning of this would’ve been left unclarified without the subsequent prompt. It was initially left to each person’s imagination whether the matador thought this accomplishment meagre and unnoteworthy, or if he doubted it happened altogether.

“Problem, torero?” the cowboy asked, whilst blowing a thick column of smoke into the matador’s face. The Mexican continued to smile and his grin suggested mockery.

“To ride seven bulls is to eat the sand seven times,” Alejandro replied, casually and in a thick accent. He’d finished his cigarillo but was still clouded by a thick smog from the cowboy’s cigar. “Brave men don’t ride the bulls. They fight them.”

The cowboy didn't reply for a moment, but slowly narrowed his eyes in the direction of the matador as he considered the insult. His hands were now stuffed into the front pockets of his thick jacket, his cigar flapping around in the side of his mouth between tightly pursed lips. Eventually, the silence a little too silent to be comfortable for the others in the party, the cowboy turned away from the matador and towards Anzu. The tension broke when his facial expression and body language relaxed.

“You see what an outsider has to put up with here?” he said, before flicking the chewed end of his cigar into a nearby drain. “Riding five, six, seven bulls a night, and then to face the matador’s elitism. And there is none worse for it than the great Alejandro Negredo. I don’t know why I come back.”

“Finish your drink,” Anzu instructed the cowboy, who acquiesced meekly and drained the half-litre of thick, cloudy beer that still remained in his pitcher.

“Eres un animal,” one of the local girls said, with the cold fire of passion in her hazel eyes. The other one bit her lip.

“Where are we going?” the cowboy asked. “Another bar?”

“Where would the guest like to go?” the matador queried, whilst diverting his own attention away from the American, where it had still been directed even after the cowboy’s dismissal. He turned to face Dreamer, who was busy lighting a cigarette and wondering why they’d come outside to smoke when there were ashtrays on the table inside. She thought about the open-ended question during the first, long drag, and framed it within the context of the impromptu company that had settled on her, rather than the other way around.

“I want to see a bull,” she said, finally.

*****

The party arrived at the ranch and, after the matador had paid off a couple of stablehands who were employed to patrol the premises at night, they made their way towards a series of buildings that dotted the landscape in the distance. They were a long way from the stadium, which at first surprised Michelle, but she soon noted that the pig doesn’t live inside the abattoir. The bull wouldn’t see the sword until it was too late.

“¿Lo montarás?” one of the locals asked, whilst kicking at the sand through which the group trudged.

“I don’t speak Spanish, chica,” the American answered. He’d stopped the cab that had brought them here in order to buy a bottle of whiskey, which he pulled from deeply before offering it to each of his guests. “I told you already.”

“She wants to know if you’ll ride it,” Anzu translated, as she took the bottle from the cowboy and helped herself to a lengthy swig.

“In this light?” the cowboy said, whilst pulling a face that implied - to Dreamer, at least - that he didn’t intend to ride it. “A bull I’ve never seen before? Tonight’s my night off. Gotta pick your battles, chica.”

“You sound scared, vaquero,” the matador mused, antagonistically, from a few paces ahead.

“Sensible,” the cowboy said. “Not scared.”

“There’s little difference,” came the matador’s reply.

“You’ve got your sword,” responded the American. “Perhaps you should fight it. Or maybe you aren’t so confident without a small army to weaken her up before you take the stage.”

“Her?” the matador said, with another derisive laugh. “Bulls are male, vaquero. You can tell by the cuevos. Do you know what they look like?”

The American didn’t immediately respond. Michelle fumbled around for her packet of cigarettes whilst she listened to the six sets of footsteps marching through the sand.

“Torero.”

The single word, spoken in a thick, unbecoming accent and at the end of a tense period of silence, prompted the matador to stop and turn around. When he did, the cowboy, who’d bent down to collect a fistful of it from the ground, blinded him with a projectile of sand. The matador clawed at his eyes and pulled down his bandido’s mask to allow himself to breathe, but before he could contemplate what had just happened the American tackled him to the ground and knocked his wide-brimmed hat from his head.

Dreamer joined the others - Anzu and the two local girls - in watching the scuffle for a brief moment whilst passing the whiskey between them. The cowboy rained down a trio of blows - two lefts and a right - before the matador could throw up a hasty guard. The larger man attempted to prise the other’s arms apart, but when he did the tall, thin Mexican threw a headbutt up at him to turn the tables. She sucked at her cigarette as the matador rolled the cowboy onto his back and mounted him in turn, but decided that she’d seen enough and turned away.

She stuffed her hands into the front pocket of her hoody as she walked alone between two rows of stables, horses whinnying either side of her from behind a screen of darkness. The only light illuminating the scene was the end of her cigarette, which glowed amber with each of her long inhalations. The night was warm, but a cold shiver ran through her regardless.

The bullpen waited at the end of the path through the stables, and from within she could hear the restless moans of a helpless, caged animal. She paused for a moment at the gate, peering through the gaps in the bars and into the pen. The darkness was pervasive, and - if it wasn’t for the low groans of the invisible beast, along with the stirring in her kindred heart - she would have assumed it empty. She climbed over the gate and entered the pen.

Inside, the bull emerged from the shadow. Padded at the ground with its cloven hooves. Lowered its head and brandished its horns.

Slowly walked towards her.

She stared into the animal’s expressive, green eyes. They were sharper even than his horns.

The bull grunted at her. She grunted back.

Eventually, after observing the interloper in his pen for what felt to Michelle - in her role as that interloper - like a very long time, the bull lay down, and placed his head upon the ground. His eyes remained open and directed at Dreamer.

She sat down, cross-legged, a metre away from the bull. The animal was calm. She smoked her cigarette in silence, the unspoken bond soothing her own heart and warming her through.