The height of Spring, that glorious time between when the trees – the deciduous ones at any rate – finally bud and regrow their leaves for the year, but before all the annoying insects of summer make their unwelcome appearance. A high pressure system situated directly over Canterville made the weather unseasonably warm. It also put a stop to any sort of breeze, though the relative lack of humidity meant being outside had not yet become completely unbearable. Most of the townsfolk relished the short amounts of time they spent outside.
Of course, there are those occasional souls for whom no change in weather seems to ever change their behaviour or demeanour. This particular day, one example could be seen walking down the sidewalk along a major downtown thoroughfare. She was a young woman in her early 20’s, simultaneously striking yet dull in her appearance – grey skin, medium length purple hair cut straight across in both back and bang, cerulean eyes framed in lavender eyeshadow, all of which was packed into a reasonably hippy figure, clad in a teal shirt and dark grey denim jeans perhaps passively chosen to hide her assets but failing.
An unknowing fellow would call her beautiful… until he noticed her totally blank expression. Her voice sounded utterly bored as she spoke into her cell phone to a much more enthusiastic recipient, so loud she could be heard clearly even though the grey girl’s phone was not on speaker.
“Seriously, Maud!” the voice said. “You really ought to try the place! Sunny goes there all the time and she says it’s good! Besides, you’re still a student, even if it is college, so you can get a discount!”
Maud blinked slowly. “I understand, Pinkie. Your point is taken. I will refrain from cooking supper tonight and instead treat myself to this eatery you recommend.”
“Awesome! I wanna hear what you thought about it when you get back home! Or, when I get back home, since I’m gonna be heading to the skating rink with Rainbow Dash! It’s gonna be awesome!!” Pinkie enthused.
“Please be careful,” Maud said.
“I love you too!” replied Pinkie, and then hung up.
Maud slipped her phone into her right pocket. She blinked twice as she looked at the building before her, a small single-storey restaurant with a logo depicting a stylized wrapped tortilla in front of a red silhouette of a Dutch-style barn, above the name ‘Big Beulah’s Burrito Barn’. Some type on the glass-front door listed the hours, along with a taped-up piece of paper confirming that student, senior, and military discounts were in fact a thing.
She reached into her left pocket and pulled out a small ellipsoid piece of basalt, holding it in front of her just below her chin, speaking to it as one would a best friend, or perhaps a long-term partner.
“I see. So you’re hungry too, Boulder? Perhaps we can split a burrito.”
Maud placed Boulder back in her pocket and entered the restaurant, which was about three-quarters full of people of all ages and colours, and had a queue of a few at the ordering spot, giving her time to look over the menu.
Once she made it up to the counter, she was greeted by a vivacious blue-skinned girl with blue-striped hair tied up in a waist-length ponytail and magenta eyes, who excitedly took her order – flour burrito with everything, as Maud could find nothing amongst the fixings to which she could object – though the blue girl had trouble understanding Maud’s monotone voice over the din of the crowd. Still, the young lady tried her best; fortunately for her, ‘everything’ is a fairly easy order to carry out, though it did cause her to elicit a surprised “For realzies?” to which Maud simply nodded.
As Maud watched the blue girl create her burrito, her mind turned inward.
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of the city
I take a look around myself and notice what I try not to see
For it occupies my every waking moment if I let it
All revealing, all consuming, all encompassing
Everything Is Rocks.
The sidewalk upon which I tread
Concrete: Portland cement, scored every few feet
Because it has to breathe to avoid buckling
Rocks do not breathe
But they buckle and crack on their own
A massif reduced to pebbles by the freeze-thaw cycle
The road I cross
Asphalt: Bitumen. Basalt, limestone, sand, chert
Heated at over three hundred degrees
To melt, to spread, to smooth, to pave
Thrown up onto the red clay, underlain with fine gravel
Spread flat by men with rakes
Then a steamroller
The bricks in the buildings
Heated clay, red as the setting sun
But also cut with silicate
Held in place by mortar: lime or concrete
Bricks are not rocks
Bricks substitute for rocks
Most buildings here have brick façades
I wish more buildings were faced with rock
Ordering a burrito
The way the girl adds the layers
Is as the deposits of clays and sands
At the bottom of a prehistoric ocean
Each layer, compacting over time
Into minerals which make up rocks
My Burrito is unto a canyon wall
But then it is wrapped and twisted
The uplifting disturbs the layers
Pieces of chicken sit amongst them like batholiths
The beans are chert, the rice is porous limestone
Queso and salsa the water permeating the layers
The vegetables, sundry sandstones
If a burrito were a rock, it would become metamorphic
But it is not
For rocks are crunchy and burritos are soft
Rocks also have very little taste
Burritos taste like their components
Perhaps that may be said of any thing
What would I taste like?
Ideally, I would taste like a rock
Pay the girl with coins made of precious material mined from rocks
Rocks are not currency except where they are
The blue girl is excited, most unlike a rock
I nod, but think she could do with more rocks in her life
The floor I walk across is some sort of concrete
Different from the sidewalk outside
Passing the people to whom I feel naught but indifference
…What was that sudden sensation on my rear end?
Maud turned back to see a man with dull gold skin, slicked back light orange hair, and blue eyes, sporting a smug grin. He wore an extremely expensive-looking suit and a red power tie. Every fiber of his being radiated belief in his own superiority as he ogled Maud, who blinked slowly in response.
She approached a nearby vacant table and placed both her food and Boulder down, asking him to keep watch over it. Orders given and understood, she turned back and approached the smirking man.
“Heh. I figured you’d come back,” the man said. “There hasn’t been a girl yet who’s failed to be enraptured by the perfect charms of Marantz Goldbar.”
Maud, her expression unflinching, studied her butt-groper from head to toe. “You seem out of place in this establishment,” she said dully.
“Yeah, well, sometimes I like to slum it. Especially here, the place where my father Orangeglow died. He was supposed to rule the world from Ferus Palace,” Marantz Goldbar motioned towards the west where, four miles away, the ornate brick building in question sat amidst a massive green space. “And I was going to be his right-hand man.”
“My condolences on the death of your father,” Maud said without emotion. “My parents mourned him for hours.”
Ignoring her, Marantz Goldbar continued. “So now it’s up to me to take what is rightfully mine and force that pretender Tightfist Bleedingheart out. And what better way to do that than with secret documents from a hostile government smuggled through back channels implicating him in hypothetical wrongdoing? And also a beautiful woman by my side? Unlike my late father, I’m not overly attached to blondes. I do however, respect a chick with a rock solid ass, cool eyes, and doesn’t talk too much. You are more than worthy of me. The food here sucks. What say we blow this low-class hellhole and get some real food made by real chefs?”
Maud blinked slowly. As she started to walk back to her table, Marantz Goldbar grabbed her left arm. Her widening eyes were the only part of her betraying any emotion. She did not move.
“I said, let’s go,” Marantz Goldbar said, this time more forcefully as Maud turned her head to check on Boulder, who was still faithfully guarding her food.
With a soft sigh, Maud wrapped her right hand around Marantz Goldbar’s extended wrist and applied what was, by her standards, light pressure until his radius and ulna snapped. He yelled at a resonance and volume somewhat higher than diners around him would have expected.
“Your pitch is off,” Maud said bluntly as she pulled her arm away. “Perhaps instead of trying to move unwilling women, you might try pitch. Its viscosity is so high that it seems to be solid yet is in fact a liquid, dropping from its funnel into a beaker about once every twelve years, which is in all likelihood slightly more often than a woman succumbs to your so-called charm.”
“W-what?” asked Marantz Goldbar, thoroughly confused and in extreme pain.
Maud stared at him, or perhaps through him. “The thing one needs to understand about rocks, aside from the fact that hauling 16 tons of them each day merely ages one and leaves one indebted to the company store, is that they seem harmless when they are merely in place, existing, but when in motion can become…”
She placed her right hand over the table next to Marantz Goldbar, where his half-eaten taco bowl sat. With an imperceptible twitch of her left eye and frown that only those close to her would have noticed, she slapped the table, causing it to crack in half and collapse in a heap. He jumped in his chair with a barely perceptible “Eep!”.
“…destructive,” Maud concluded as she walked back to her own table and sat down to eat.
Not one to take humiliation lightly, Marantz Goldbar stomped over to Maud, face red with anger, nostrils flaring, but also keeping his broken arm in his jacket pocket because he did not want other customers to see it flopping around.
“You think you’re so smart, huh?” he asked Maud as he pointed at her with his good hand. “Well let me tell you something, Missy. My father may be gone, but I’ve still got my brother and sister /and/ our attorney, Carriage Chaser. One phone call from me, and your life is over! Got it, bitch?”
Maud said nothing but continued to slowly eat her burrito, taking zero notice of Marantz.
“Nothing to say? Well, I didn’t think you would. No one messes with the d’Orange family and gets away wit—”
Marantz Goldbar’s monologue was interrupted by a piece of basalt flying at him at top speed and embedding itself just above his right eye. It took him a few seconds to realize what had happened, at which point he screamed at the top of his lungs as blood poured out from the wound in his skull. Maud slowly approached him and forcibly pulled the rock out, causing the blood to flow even faster.
“Boulder, I appreciate your loyalty,” Maud said to the rock, “but I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Now I’m going to have to clean you off so you don’t stain. …Hm? Yes, we can finish eating first. After all, I did pay for the meal.”
The blue girl who had made Maud’s order, and had witnessed the entire ordeal from her post at the register, ran past the bleeding rich man as he reached for her rump, unknowingly kicking him in the face in the process, and approached Maud. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Maud slowly chewed her bite of burrito. After swallowing it, she turned to the girl and, completely deadpan, asked simply, “What?”
Author's Note
I promised I wasn't through with the Burritoverse just yet. Hope you enjoyed Maud's story!
Seven down, two to go…
