This month’s word is scar, meaning “a mark left by a healed wound, sore, or burn” or “a lasting aftereffect of trouble, especially a lasting psychological injury resulting from suffering or trauma”.

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I have a lot of scars. It’s the first thing people notice about me. I run very warm, and I live somewhere hot, so I don’t wear much in the way of clothing. Anyway, it’s good advertising for me. Makes some people uncomfortable, but my job does that anyway.

I didn’t set out to be in this line of work. It’s not the kind of thing you dream of as a child. I mean, on the one hand, people come to you and bring you everything you could ever need, but on the other… Well. You lose all your friends, all your family. You live alone, because you can’t have even the appearance of favouritism. And most of all, everyone who sees you knows what you are. You can’t hide, you can’t be incognito – not with the brand on your face that cannot be removed or covered up; it shines through even if you wrap your head in cloth.

So how did I end up here? The same way most of my colleagues did: a lifetime of bad decisions, and a final choice of the “or death” variety. I’m not a truly evil person, or I’d’ve been summarily executed. But I’m by no means a good person either. Just your regular petty thug, really, and so I get to atone for my sins by eating those of others.

It’s not, as you might think, to ease those others’ burdens, to save their souls or send them to some heavenly reward. No, my job is to reduce the amount of sin in the world by eating it, taking it into my body. When I die, they’ll burn my body and offer the ashes to the gods, and that will destroy all the sins I’ve consumed. Or so they tell me.

It’s one of those things that seems very simple, but is actually very complex if you think about it. Essentially, someone comes to me, tells me their sin in as much detail as possible, I write it down on special edible paper, and then I eat it. Sounds ridiculous, right? I left out the part where the priests performed the ritual that turns a person into a sin eater, mostly because I don’t really remember it, and I also don’t like to think about it. It was extremely painful, that’s the main thing I recall. And of course every time I eat a sin, I get a mark on my skin, to indicate the sin’s been consumed. Those hurt, too. I guess they want to make sure I remember that this is a punishment.

Sometimes, if it’s been a busy day, I try to remember that I chose this. I chose to live, no matter how painful it might be. It doesn’t always help. But there’s no running away from this. If I leave my temple, I’ll die. So I carry on, day after day, and just wait for it to end.

What, you were expecting some kind of redemption? There’s none of that here, just pain. Deserved, true, but if I’d truly known what it would be like, I might not have made this choice. There’s no going back now, though. I have to live with it.

© bardofupton 2019

This month’s word is winged, meaning “having wings”.

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How do you tame a winged horse?

Some people say you tame it with kindness, befriending it gradually. Those who believed that died, flung off in midair by a beast they thought was their friend.

Some say you tame it by force, capturing it in a net or bridling it in its sleep. Those, too, are dead, trampled by the enraged beast.

The truth is that you don’t tame a flying horse, but if you are brave enough, perhaps you can make a deal with one.

First you need to locate a flying horse. They tend to live in remote and isolated locations: high mountain plateaus, for example, or rocky islands.

Once you’ve located the horse, you learn its habits, where it drinks, what it eats, and so on. Some flying horses are carnivorous, and some not. Some are nocturnal, and some are not. All are intelligent, and none are friendly. You try to discover something that will please it – food is often acceptable, although some winged horses enjoy small items that can be woven into their manes.

Then you approach, slowly and carefully, but also openly. Winged horses do not like being sneaked up on. Show no fear, because they will not make bargains with cowards. Carry your gift in your hands so they can see it, and do not carry any weapons. If you are armed, they will kill you. They may, of course, kill you anyway; that’s the risk you take.

Ensure you look at the horse you are trying to bargain with, but do not make sustained eye contact. They don’t like that; it reads as a threat.

Hold your gift out on your outstretched hands, and state the terms of the deal you want clearly. Ensure to include stipulations such as “no intentional injuries to be caused” and “to be delivered to the agreed destination within the agreed time period”. Winged horses will exploit any loopholes you leave.

If the horse agrees to your bargain, it will take your offering and allow you to mount it. If it does not, it will take your tribute anyway, and if you are lucky, it will let you go. If you’re not, well, I think you know by now what is going to happen.

Because of the slow and convoluted process involved, nobody has successfully ridden a flying horse. But perhaps you can be the first. If this is really what you want, don’t let me dissuade you. Go chase your dreams: at your own risk.

© bardofupton 2019

This month’s word is improve, meaning “to bring into a more desirable or excellent condition”.

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When it came right down to it, most people were willing to bargain with demons. The chance to improve instantly, to become the perfect version of themselves, was too tempting to resist.

And it wasn’t like the demonic bargains you read about in myths. There was no loophole, no hidden fine print, no catch. You got what you asked for. More than that, you got what you wanted. Of course, you were going to be eternally tortured once you died, but there’s a downside to everything. And most people managed to ignore that part, anyhow: the general feeling seemed to be “I’ll probably go to hell anyway, might as well get some benefit from it”.

So demonic bargains were common, is what I’m saying. If somebody’s life suddenly improved, most people assumed they’d made a deal with a devil. After all, why struggle to do it the hard way, and possibly fail, when success could be guaranteed?

There were some who railed against it, saying that the chance of heaven was worth pain and failure here on earth, but most people ignored them. Once their life started going downhill, most people would go to their nearest demonic summoning station.

The process was simple: you took one of the small needles available, pricked your finger and put a few drops of blood in the receptacle. A demon appeared and you negotiated for what you wanted. Very simple, practically foolproof. And yet, Tod managed to mess it up.

He didn’t mean to, of course. Whenever he caused catastrophe, it was never deliberate or malicious. He was the giant puppy of destruction. And he nearly ruined the demonic bargaining system forever.

He didn’t like needles, you see. And you can already tell how this is going to go. He brought a friend, and used a few drops of the friend’s blood to activate the receptacle, and then made a bargain in his own name. This worked fine – until, a few years later, his friend decided he too wanted to make a bargain with a demon.

Because, as it turned out, the bargain is actually made with the person whose blood is used, and so a number of beings were extremely angry:

• Tod’s friend, because they couldn’t make a bargain of their own, and because they were now doomed to hell
• The demon Tod had bargained with, because they’d been tricked
• That demon’s superiors, because it made them look bad
• The angels, because they hadn’t noticed the issue either

Those who thought it was no big deal:

• Tod, because he had died and somehow ended up in heaven, from where, it appeared, you could not be ejected even if you didn’t really deserve to be there.

At this point, a number of changes were rapidly made to the system, the main one being that a demon was stationed in each summoning station to watch people give their blood. This was an unpopular, because boring, job, and the majority of the demons doing it spent their time coming up with special punishments for Tod, should they ever get their claws on him.

Tod was fully aware of this, because he liked to people-watch back on Earth, but he wasn’t worried since he knew that there were no take-backs for heaven: once you were in, you were in. He did feel a little sorry for his friend, but mostly he felt smug. Somehow he, Tod, an average individual, had outsmarted hell. He was actually kind of proud of that.

© bardofupton 2019