The Craw

Chamatilly warm up the room:

Nau, yall come to me and you know which ones, who you are, every day i see ya cumup t'me nau, yu cumonup t'me nau and yu sez:

Chama, Chama I tellya i wanna, wanna
an i say y'don't hafta hafta, cuz the way
the rose grows chillun, what's the word
I'm after? Mozis. MOzis. Mozis. When t
-he rain hit da barn anda elemental hitd
-a ethereal farm that the misunderconc-
luzhuns begin to happen, happen. The c-
ment duss be mixing witda offrins an in-
sence and pity pie? is wenda sky start t'
open, open. Can it fly, they wanid t'no. C
-an it take to d'winan leave dem chiluns
behine, and of course you and I can say
cuz we livd to see the day when her life b
-ecame a way, chile... for every woman n
-au, every lady grrl lovin b'be womachal.
We know the sun went down and it stay
-ed that way for a wal. Mo longa than a h
-dred day, boyz. Ahm swe'in bullets whe
-en I try to tell you bout the tam when t-
he heavens met the seas but because no
one believed, baby oh yes: it didn't happ-
en. So when I tell you that by Peggy, she
, that monogram of womanhood in a form
-fitting and pressed uniform, except a re-
al doctor? It was inspiring to everyone. M
ost of all, Rick: who has given his life a nu
mber of times up to her, and finally, all up
in her. They say there is an "eschew"; so-
me call it "The Craw," where one day you
will come out. No, not born again, but real
-ly uglier. It will be another chance at life
for you, but with much more pain from sc
-ars that look as if you had thrown yours-
elf into a live volcano. Oh, wait-- I forgot.
You did throw yourself into a live volcano.

The entire congregation was standing and
applauding, even as they stooped to wipe
their tears on a co-worshipper's shoulder.

It was something came out during Volca years before, and they let her keep telling it now, as if she had earned tenure or had passed a rite of gases and would no longer have to suffer by torture but rather, now, and she preferred it, the torture borne of being a major source of pain for others, and beyond the pleasure of that, the building and maturing ability to self flaggelate and blood manage with no supervision. Because Illyn had taken it upon hiself to self-feed the Mthyuh, he had now lost any sort of nose terror over the Chama. She had always known and had been planning, at some level, his return and her rightful slow retribution: the collection of his debt to her being Top Bitch: he forced her to be moral by feeding drugs intraveneously that gave her a conscience, then convinced her to be true to her lying and theiving background. It made her stronger, but it had not created loving between them.