More Borne

I think this is the last excerpt I'll share until it's done. I've had a steadily increasing awareness that "Borne" is going to be something extraordinary, and that it needs to grow in private from now on. Every time I work on it I'm spent by the end and near tears.JeffThe first time I saw Mord, it was at twilight on a day when I'd found nothing much except some disembodied meat quivering foul in a ditch, and a few crackers in plastic that must have reached the city by way of a cafeteria. I stood on an abandoned median strip covered over with lichen and rust and filth in a pattern of dull red-and-green. I had found a faded deck chair somewhere and I sat in it eating my crackers, my stomach a tight, aching ball, and watched the sun go down.Because of the high level of chemicals in the city's air, a sunset was always a stirring sight, with orange and yellow melting into blue and purple. I was filthy from climbing through tunnels all day. I stank. I was exhausted. Anyone could have seen me. Anyone could have assaulted me.Mord rose from directly in front of me, some several yards ahead. At first, he was a large, irregular globe of dark brown against the orange edge of the sun. My first thought was: eclipse. But then the "eclipse" began to move toward me effortless, blocking out the sun, blocking out the sky, and I could see the great furred head in every detail.I don't know why I didn't run. I should have run. I should have leapt out of my deck chair and made for the drainage tunnel I'd popped out of an hour before.But I didn't. I just sat in my deck chair with a cracker half-in, half-out of my mouth, and watched as this apparition stole over me.Back then, Mord wasn't as large, and he still lived in the Company building. As he rose over me, large as an elephant, his pelt was golden brown, the fur pristine and clean-smelling. His eyes were bright and curious and distinctly human--neither so curved nor so yellow as they would later become. The smooth white of the fangs in his muzzled mouth seemed less ragged threat than the promise of a clean execution.I cannot explain the effect of him on me. As that silky, gorgeous head glided toward me, as his gaze flickered almost humorously over me, as that body was mere feet overhead, as the scent of jasmine and passionflower came from his perfumed fur, and as I watched that pelt slide above me and then past (me fighting the urge to put out my arm to touch him), I could not decide if I had seen a god or simply, out of hunger, a hallucination.I didn't look over my shoulder to watch him leave. I was afraid. Afraid I had made him up. That such a thing should exist within our ruined city.And then darkness, and the stars and me in my deck chair, with my crackers, and a softly gibbering piece of endlessly regenerating meat that was probably poisonous.If I could absorb that vision, couldn't I also not only accept, but love, the strangeness that was Borne?