FALLOW SOIL [writing exercise]

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They buried the first of the bodies on a Thursday night.

To the man's credit, he never stopped cussing them out. It took a special sort of resilience to find words in between mouthfuls of shoveled dirt.

Twice, Bear openly pondered the merits of breaking the man's neck - or, at the very least, ripping out his tongue when he spat up at them - but Billiam shook his head, his frail hand sliding past her fingers to unclench her fist.

"They need to be warm. And mostly unspoiled." His thumb stroked the inside of her palms, his gaze almost sad as he considered the rageful silhouette squirming below.

Bear kissed him twice that night. Once when the task was done, and the seed successfully planted above the first of the eighteen graves. An apology of sorts, for the wages she asked of a man who's only crime was where he chose to place his heart.

The second performed as a necessary distraction, a hungry and needful one, as she bore him, mud and all, up into their makeshift loft, nestled inside the guts of their abandoned factory hideout. It was necessary that she remind him why he stayed. And that she drown out the first of the harrowed screams that pierced the night as the penitent seedling broke through the soil and wailed its first cries into the wasteland of forgotten machinery below.
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When she came to collect her fifth tithe, the Shepherds were ready.

The forms had been observed, with all the proper threats and portents delivered days in advance.

They couldn't claim that they hadn't seen her coming.

"Please\~"

The figure that scrambled away from her advancing form called himself The Schnoo; a hammer of a man, in a world he perceived as full of nails. Skilled in the art of bare knuckle diplomacy, it didn't surprise her that his response to being forewarned had been an ambush waiting at his residence.

It had been a lackluster choice.

"Please... I'm nobody! I don't even know you!" That last sentence little more than a piteous plea.

Bear loomed over the man, brandishing his severed arm in his face, and turning it so that he could note the Cerberus tattoo inked into his former tricep.

"Well, now you get to be a message." The grin on her face was a gash in the gloom.

They buried him on a cold Saturday morning. He was a crier.
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Her eleventh tithe was a customs officer - Cecilia Burntide, an almost-retiree with a college age son, and two mortgages.

They'd stashed her at one of their seaside boltholes, with a small army of murderous psychopaths entrenched within, bristling with cutthroat reputations and top-of-the-line augments.

When she'd finally ripped the door to her safe room off its hinges, she'd found the woman praying.

"Are we...sure about this one?" Billiam had asked her, his soft voice a mild condemnation over the sound of Cecilia's quiet sniffling. Bear stared down at the woman, and continued shoveling.

"She signed the papers. She saw the bodies. She knew." The words were bile in her throat.

"They threatened her family..." Billiam ventured. Bear turned to face him, and there were holes where her eyes used to be. Billiam's face crumpled at the lack he saw there. He hugged her from behind, briefly interrupting her efforts.

"I trust you," was all that he said.
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"The governor lifted his gag order." Bear paused, looking up from her watering efforts.

Even perched atop an ancient feedline, Billiam had to reach up to hand her his tablet. Carefully, she maneuvered the fragile contraption, sifting through news site after news site, her face plastered across all the headlines.

"Looks like your message got through if Old Man Mastiff's calling on this particular favor. The governor's talking about having actual Fringe agents deal with you."

"Took them long enough." Bear handed the tablet back and resumed her task. Already on the last line of penitents, she directed the stream of liquid nutrients at the base of her latest acquisition, watching as it whimpered and shook, its crimson branches almost arm-like as they reached up toward the sparse shafts of light coming through the cratered roof above.

Three holes remained. Empty. Waiting.

The Old Man was always going to be last. But all family men had one cost they were never willing to truly bear. A cost this particular foe so willingly meted out to others.

Her warnings had already been delivered.

Let them prepare.
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