Coyote and the Sun

Coyote was hot. And sweaty. And mad.

Every time he was invited to Sun’s house, this is what happened! He ended up sunburnt, and no rain would fall for weeks! Months!

And for all the hospitality that the Sun’s house boasted, Coyote always left parched.

He tried to dig for water, but the jumping cholla cacti would yell at him for stealing their supply.

He would beg the barrel cacti for some of their moisture, but they remembered what he did last time, and would refuse. They threatened to go fishing with their hook-shaped spines, and use him as bait.

He tried asking the saguaros for fruit, but they were too busy playing Keep Away with a tumbleweed. Normally, he would join them, but he was too thirsty to stop and play.

(He also suspected them of hiding a cooler behind, or under, a boulder, with a never-ending stream of agave nectar. They always got prickly about his asking, and wood respond with barbed replies. The boulders, of course, snickered, which was Not Gneiss. They did NOT like being taken for granite.)

Coyote sniffed around the arroyos, but not a drop of water could be found.

He crawled under a patch of wilted mesquite trees, and panted. No breeze could find him there, so he was just about as miserable as he was in the full sun.

The mesquites rattled.

One mesquite was much bigger than any Coyote had ever seen, and this one rustled more than the rest combined. “Oh, ya, hi there, Coyote! Why do you look like a piece of jerky, that the vultures have rejected?”

Coyote didn’t waste moisture on sighing. “Hail, Lord Mesquite. I am hiding from the Sun, who insists on inviting me to dine with him. The food is good, I guess, but without beverages, it’s as tasteless as sand.”

“I hear ya, friend. I keep being invited to barbeques, and cookouts, only to find out I’m a seasoning, not a guest. Disheartening! So I hide in this valley with my kin, and will pull up roots and flee at the merest suggestion of footsteps.”

“I just… I don’t get it. Why? Why would Lord Sun do this? It’s like he wants to cook my brain into pudding! Every time he sees me, it’s ‘Ho, there you are, come dine with me tonight!’ He pokes his rays into my cave! Into my swimming hole, now just a dry bowl full of dust! My neighbors, the Frog and Turtle families, moved, and I don’t know where they’ve gone. I daren’t show my face anywhere, lest I get blamed for this mess. I swear, I’d give myself a case of the mange, just to shed my fur!”

“Coyote, friend, what else have you done, to avoid the Sun?”

Coyote rolled over, but that only put dust on his back, to go with the dust on his belly. “It’s hard to think when I’m this hot,” he muttered.

The leaves above him rustled, a very autumn sound in the thicket of summer. “Humor me, Coyote. You are no stranger to discomfiture.”

“Hmph. Well, I did try digging a hole so deep that it would form a new lake. I kept digging, and digging, till I thought I should find water. Instead, it got hotter and hotter, and I reached a boiling mineral lake, instead. Incidentally, avoid the Yellowstone area, okay? Just letting you know that.”

“Appreciated, my friend. I will let my kith and kin know, and move our saplings away from the danger.”

“Well, I also tried to drink a lake dry. It tasted funny, and now there are these weird stone formations in the water. But lots of minerals. I would avoid Mono Lake, too, it’s a strange place.”

“Duly noted, indeed. What else?”

“Well, I was so itchy and sweaty, I grabbed some dessicated moss to give myself a sponge bath. I kept scrubbing and scrubbing, and I didn’t feel much better by the time I was done. So I dropped the moss and left the lake. I heard they’re calling it The Great Salt Lake, and the Wasatch Mountain Range, now.”

“It is a blessing from the Great Spirit that I don’t have a mind’s eye to imagine that lake, friend Coyote. It gives an interesting tingle to my mycorrhizal network, all the same. The mushrooms involved tell me to tell you, ‘No, thanks, brother, and stop snacking on our more psychedelic brethren.’”

“Fair enough. But it did happen.”

“I don’t question your veracity, I question your methodology. What else?”

“Ugh! Do you know how hard it is to be clever, when you’re hot and tired and thirsty and itchy and slimy and sweaty and grumpy and irritated and at least three of those conditions contradict the others but here we are??”

“You forgot the fur coat you’re wearing, while feeling all those things.”

“Gah! Why did you mention it, I had just successfully forgotten it for a moment!”

“Friend, think for a moment, outside yourself. My roots should be lapped in moisture, bathed in fresh spring water. I should be reveling in the feeling of wetness, like you would appreciate the feeling of dipping your paws in the water. Yet, here we are, baking in the Sun’s pleasure.”

“It’s almost worth risking the Sun’s displeasure to get a break…”

“That would likely involve a volcano again. I don’t think we have time right now for another Krakatoa.”

Coyote thought about the implications, till his brain itched in the heat. He silently agreed.

“My friend, I don’t think you’ve thought this through. The solution is obvious, but it seems to have slipped your mind. Why have you not consulted Lord Owl? You know he had the same problem. Why have you not talked with Lady Hawk? Her feathers are still burnt from the last interaction she had with Lord Sun.”

Coyote blinked, slowly. It was too hot to do anything faster than that.

“Friend? You there?”

“I… I had not thought of talking to anyone.”

“I fear you never do, Coyote. The Ultimate Trickster (And Accidental Geophysical Architect) does not think to do consultations.”

“Right. So, where do I find them?”

“Just lay there. Both will come by eventually, and I can call to them. If you’re going to sweat, you might as well drip nutrients onto my roots. The soil will filter out the salts.”

Coyote lay there, and dripped. And tried very hard not to think about drinking anything. Lord Roadrunner also sped by, and dropped a sprig of mint with a murmured “I’m still mad about the cartoons,” before taking off.

Coyote chewed on the mint. It still tasted like spit from Velocitus delectiblus.

Eons crawled by. Photons did their ionizing thing, universes pinwheeled and exploded, and still the sun pulsed its emissions onto the unwilling surface dwellers.

Coyote zoned out.

When he awoke from his unhelpful half-slumber, there were two large and feathery lumps in the tree above him.

One chuckled down at him; the other twittered and hooted. “Welcome to the crucible, hashtag flattened fauna,” the latter tweeted.

The other snorted. “If you pissed off Lord Sun, why do the rest of us suffer? What did you do this time, that the Keepers of The Waters have abandoned us?”

“Didn’ do nuthin,’” Coyote whispered out of a dry throat.

Lord Owl hoot-chortled. “Let me guess, those interminable meals he offers? Keeps feeding you, course after course, and not a quaff to be seen. The being out-hospitables himself, for sure, and comes looking for more. Glad he’s on your case now, and off of mine! Good riddance!”

As if on cue, they could all hear, from the now-freaking-finally setting sun, “Yoo-hoo! Coyote, my guest, where are you?”

Lady Hawk hissed. “We cannot disclose you without outing ourselves, and that is not our goal. Lord Mesquite, why did you call us here? To draw us back into the Sun’s clutches?”

The leaves rustled slightly. “Peace, Essence of the Buteoforms. Perhaps if you give Coyote the wisdom to escape his clingy host?”

They both blinked. At each other, at the near-roadkill below them.

“Really? Coyote, have you lost your mind?”

“Yeah, prob’ly. Left ‘em in my other pants.”

“Dude. Come on, the answer’s right in front of your nose.”

The shadows were lengthening. The halloos were fading, as Sun walked away, over the horizon.

Owl launched himself into the sky, followed by Hawk. “We’re going to do some quick crepuscular hunting. Since when did you stop being nocturnal?”

And they were gone.

Coyote would have face-palmed, but he was still in fur-form.

Mesquite chuckled. “Truly, the heat has scrambled your wits.”

“Scrambling. What I should do.” Coyote scrambled out of hiding. “Thank you, King of the Desert Flora, for hiding me. Now I’m going to make tracks all night, and find a hiding spot before sunrise! Away from the equator. And deserts. And smart-ass raptors. See ya!” And off he went.

Coyote is fast, but Sun can be faster. Watch a sunrise at a beach some day.

Coyote ran all night, and dug himself a snug hiding place come false dawn, when Sun’s rays were stretching, testing the skies. It did not take much longer for sunlight to go snaking through the dry grass, searching for hide or hair of a particular Trickster.

Forget the rosy-fingered Dawn nonsense. When the sun rises in the desert, it has all the force of Thor’s hammer, with all the delicacy of Harley Quinn on a rampage.

Coyote may have been heated with all kinds of annoyance, but this time, he stayed silent to the celestial companionship pleas.

And the next night, as soon as the sun had set, he was out and running. Again.

Now Coyote may have made tracks for the north, but that’s the problem: he didn’t hide them very well.

Bu the third day, Lord Sun was tracing the headlong flight, with an “Oh, delightful! A fox hunt, but bigger! What sport! Ta-tah-rah, halloo, hallay!”

Coyote was not amused.

The farther north he traveled, the farther north Lord Sun came.

It was a race Coyote wasn’t sure he could win. He would snatch mouthfuls of water from stream or pond as he galloped by, but didn’t have time for a decent bath. He was shedding hair, sweat-scent, and leaving a trail in the dust that blind bats could follow. Sun, with all that hot, bright light, could certainly chase his quarry.

(That’s another rock joke, there, but not very many people know what coyamito agates are, so, well, I just wanted to toot my own horn for a moment. Moving on…)

Coyote ran so far, and so fast, that he didn’t even notice when the bears changed color. Only when one reared up and swatted at him did he realize where he was.

He also didn’t realize that too much cold was just as bad as too much hot. It bit deep, but in different ways, though just as uncomfortable. And this ice didn’t cool the burns, but made them worse.

But the bear gave Coyote a germ of an idea.

He sharpened his claws, and began to dig.

When Sun caught sight of Coyote on the horizon, he was very happy. “Hah, there you are! I have caught you, and now you shall come dine with me!” Sun bounded up to the figure of Coyote, standing in the wasteland.

But when Sun approached, Coyote – melted.

“Ah, friend!” Sun cried. “What trick is this?”

But Coyote, hiding as an old ratty fur blanket in an igloo somewhere, didn’t answer. Coyote miscalculated, though: igloos can be so warm inside that the best way to be there is by being quite nekkid, so it seems that he chose poorly in the disguise department.

Brain freezes can do that.

Lord Sun circled for months, trying to learn where Coyote hid, but finally had to admit defeat. He sadly returned to the more temperate lands, but he swore to return again and again to search for his friend.

And that is why the sun never sets in the very northern lands, because Lord Sun is looking for his friend Coyote. He searches through the fall and winter, and returns in the spring, to try again after his scorching summer heat has crisped the more temperate zones.

Coyote? Still hiding out as a fur rug somewhere. For now.

He never did get that bath.

But if he gets traded to Finland, maybe he’ll get a chance to try one of those Finnish saunas, with birch rods. I’m sure Lord Mesquite would love that delicious irony.