Marbles: The Hawk Who Refused to Die a Virgin

Chapter 6. The Riverlands? Quite Nice Actually

Opal had dashed back to his rented room at the warren and grabbed the necessaries for a long journey. As soon as he shut the door he threw his raptor baiter hat into the corner and put on the scarlet hat that Clementine had given him. It was the most expensive thing he owned. He got his pocketknife, a collapsible fishing pole, a fishing hatchet, a fifth of Ole Geode gnomic whiskey (named so because it made you feel like the inside of a geode at night and the outside of a geode in the morning), a frying pan, a compass he did not know how to use, three of his most prized porno globes, his bedroll, and a canteen he had left over from Owl Scouts. He shoved them all into a backpack and ran out the door to join Lucy and Marbles on the road.

Looking back on it now, their trip through the riverlands may have been the part of their journey where Opal had been the most useful, and when he had felt the most content. Most of the time, these feelings were in contention with one another. When he was useful, he was working, and he did not like to work. And when he was content, he was a lazy sack of shit that nobody wanted on their team, least of all on a quest to pop a hawk's cherry. But Opal was like, a savant at fishing. I mean he was just really good.

On their second day he landed a huge rainbow trout, just a gorgeous creature that savaged the grass with its sparkling sides, flopping about in an otherworldly rebellion against gravity. Opal straddled it lengthwise to hold it still, placing his left boot at the base of the fish's tail and stomping his right foot into his gills, and hacked through its spine with his fishing hatchet until it lay still. He filleted it and fried it with a handful of caramelized wild plums. He smiled as Lucy and Marbles dug in, famished, after a long day of walking.

"This is delicious," said Lucy, and Opal was glad because on day two, day fucking two, he had fallen hat over heels in love with her.

"Yeah dude awesome," said Marbles, tearing into the fish and gasping a little as its hot oily flesh hit his grooved little hawk tongue. There was like a cute main tongue, like a humanoid's tongue, then two connective flaps forming a hole in the back.

"Wow Marbles what's up with your tongue?" asked Opal, never having seen his primary and most terrifying natural predator this closely before. He thought about how many gnomes had looked up and seen this Fruit Roll-Up-esque tongue and wondered about it as too, before their eyes had been torn out.

"It allows me to eat and breathe at the same time," said Marbles. "It's you guys who have weird tongues."

Opal was beginning to like Marbles. He couldn't envision a less haughty hawk. He never complained, even though he had to walk most of the time because of the bag of magical marbles wrapped around his left ankle, weighing him down.

"It's tied in place by magical means," said Marbles, matter of factly. "The knot cannot be undone. I can still fly though, it's just super awkward and tiring. I don't mind walking."

Marbles never hunted either, he just ate with the party, but modestly, partly because he was a bird and partly because he was self-conscious about not contributing to the food supply.

"It's super embarrassing not being able to hunt," Marbles had confessed to Opal. Lucy was about a hundred yards ahead. She just moved too fast, she was a big human, and this was a good time for her to think alone. Plus Marbles loved to hum and sing and talk about himself and Lucy did not need that right now. Every couple of hours, she would stop and wait for them to catch up.

"Girl hawks hate it when you can't hunt," said Marbles. He sounded like he had learned this fact via a particularly devastating interaction. Marbles went on to confirm this.

"Oh my God dude one time I tried to catch a rat in front of this girl," said Marbles, as they stood on the side of the road underneath an oak tree, waiting for a hay wagon to pass. "This was a bigass rat dawg, lot of fight in him, and I didn't know how to like grip, you know?" Marbles held out his right hand and curved in his talons to demonstrate, causing Opal's balls to bang a broom handle up into his stomach and complain about the noise.

"Anyway this thing would not die, and the girl hawk, she had to come over and kill it for me, and then she wouldn't share the kill. It was like, the opposite of mating. I became like, a double virgin that day," said Marbles as a milky white nictitating membrane blinked back tears.

"What's that for?" asked Opal.

"It's so I can blink and see at the same time," said Marbles. "It's you guys who have weird eyes."

It was on the third day when Marbles told Opal and Lucy his entire life story. They had made camp for the night, and Opal was trying to catch a third bream for the party. Lucy was mortaring more ingredients for healing salve and doing that cute thing where she bit her lower lip in concentration.

"Goddamn," thought Opal.

"OK so this wizard stole me right out of the nest when I was a chick," said Marbles. He was telling Opal this in between preening, moving his beak in precise lines up and down every inch of his wings. Because Marbles had to walk, he would get coated in road dust during the day. He was unconscionably filthy by hawk standards.

"He made me his familiar and had a mechanical hawk mom raise me in a brass castle floating in the clouds. I hadn't talked to a real hawk until I escaped. You can see how this might have fucked me up regarding women," said Marbles.

"Oh yeah," said Opal.

"I was tasked with guarding these marbles," said Marbles, shaking the bag with a little wave of frustration. "The wizard put a spell around me that protected me from all harm and made it so the bag and I couldn't be separated. But the spell only works if I'm a virgin."

"So the rumors are true," said Lucy. "Wizards are weird about sex."

"You have no idea," said Marbles. "It's all about whether things are 'pure' or not. It's an obsession. And they never have partners, because that means they would have to divulge secrets or share power."

"But what do the marbles do? And why did one choke the Owl God to death?" asked Lucy.

"Those statues have had marbles in them since they were placed here on earth, however long ago," said Marbles. "The wizard figured out how to remove them, but when he does the statues go apeshit."

"And why does the wizard want them?" asked Lucy.

"They impart in me a thematic power of the totem I've defiled," said Marbles, in what was apparently a disdainful impression of the wizard in question. He made a jerking off motion with his left claw, and the marbles clattered like dice.

"He gets an ability that corresponds to the god he stole the marble from," Lucy deduced.

"Bingo," said Marbles. "So like when he stole the marble from the Owl God he could fly. He is going to be super pissed now. Oh man. But like, I'm the equivalent of 35 years old in hawk years and I've never mated, never even had a girlfriend. I was tired of it man."

"But what happens when you lose your virginity?" asked Opal. "I'm guessing I nut like a fire hydrant," said Marbles, shrugging.

"No I mean to the wizard and the marbles and everything," said Opal.

"Well the wizard told me that the protective spell, the marbles, and his powers are all related. The protective spell shields me from the senses of the gods and other power hungry magical beings. Otherwise, if the god knew where I was it would hunt me down and take its marble from me. That's why they go crazy when I get near them, they're just furious about losing their essence or something. So if I lose my virginity, I'll be able to remove this bag and let the gods take back what's theirs and die."

"Sounds nice," said Lucy.

"But the wizard will lose all his extra god abilities," said Marbles. "And he will be...most displeased. He's trying to find me right now. I'm worried about you guys. He's pulled so much repugnant shit in both this reality and many others that I know he'll destroy whomever dares threaten his power."

"Does the spell also somehow prevent you from losing your virginity?" asked Lucy.

"No," said Marbles. "My body and personality do that. The wizard said straight to my face that there was no spell on earth that could possibly make me more unappealing to the opposite sex than my own appearance and behavior."

"He sounds like a real piece of work," said Opal.