This is an image post. Inspiration for this sketch came from this image.

In the high places overlooking the valley of Embers. The god of the mountain, who looks like Veronica Lake with a Fu Manchu, wants Cedar to go down into the city and testify. They’re dickering over terms.

Cedar ticks off her fingers: “Eternal youth, eternal health, eternal life unless I want to kill myself.” Ask for more than you want, then walk it back.

The god is scandalized. “I can’t do that!”

She tsks. “A wallet that never runs out of food, a key that opens any lock, and a horse to carry me anywhere in the world in seven steps.”

“Be serious, would you? I’m a mountain, sweetheart. You want to know about rocks, erosion, avalanches?”

Cedar spits in her palm and slaps hands with the god. “Done and done.”

It takes a couple of days. When she comes down from the high places, she’s walking funny. Knowledge has its own mass, and she hasn’t gotten used to hauling that extra weight around. Plus, she’s stuffed with a bunch of prophecies, most of which boil down to “stop strip mining me, you dicks, or I’ll dump a bunch of snow on your precious little houses.”