To make up for not posting on Saturday...

This is a story fragment I started when in the writing group I founded with several science fiction fanatics. We called ourselves Viscous Mileaux, and we wrote and shared writings and drank beer. At the time, shared-world anthologies were all the rage in the science fiction publishing world, and this story came out of my suggestion that we form our own shared world. We came up with the idea of an anachist artist colony space station, which had formed somewhat haphazardly in earth orbit and grew as various free spirits attached modules and ships to it. We agreed that there would be two governing bodies, both self-appointed - The Management, and... I forgot the other one. The main character of my story was to be severely accident prone - until she met a peculiar woman who thought she was a Viking...

And now, the story.

On the night the Aesir fresco was finished, Falla and Tiger drank a pitcher of beer together in the Cyandome. The ceiling echoed above them, gods moving in the half-light. Thor driving his goat cart, Odin hanging by one foot from Yggdrasil, the world tree, seeing runes in the patterns of leaves on the ground. Sig combing her golden hair.
"It's beautiful," said Tiger. Falla observed his face and wondered if he would sit for a portrait. "All of the Norse gods are so beautiful. A terrible beauty."
"Terrible how?" she snorted into her beer. She had pictured Tiger as Heimdall for a moment, but there was nothing terrible about him. Only that gentle, smiling beauty of the artist at peace with himself. And he was too dark to be Norse, anyway. Dark and almost inscrutable. She wondered why he hadn't asked her to have sex yet.
He smiled at her. "I think the Germanic peoples had to engineer the deaths of their gods; it was too terrible to always be in the shadow of that grandeur."
Falla snorted again. "Hey!" she suddenly yelled, and waved. Across the crowded room a slim figure was picking a fight with a contingent of fashion police. "Ted," she told Tiger. "He should be here."
Tiger nodded solemnly. It was only right that the three of them sit together. They had worked together to make Falla's vision into reality; they should sit together and toast it. The Cyandome, of all the artistic venues on the spaceport Dali, had a special place. A place firmly ensconced in the hearts of the vagabond artists who filled the vagabond spaceport; whether they admitted it or no. And Falla would never have placed her vision there without shoulders to lean on.
"You must admit," Tiger was saying as Ted made his way toward their table, "that you have felt something of that grandeur. That atmosphere; it's as though the gods breathed something heavier than air, you know? As though if you get too close to them you get drunk on the exhaust. They're like plants."
Falla held out a hand to Ted as he came up the stairs to their platform; long-legged, sandy-haired, dishevelled. He kissed each finger and murmured, "Your obedient servant."
She patted him on the head. "Sit. Drink. Be merry."
"As always," he replied, falling into a chair. "Well, what are we doing tonight? Falla, you're the very picture of a goddess."
She smiled at him and shook her head. Just an hour ago she had stared at her image in the uneven, pentagonal mirror in her makeshift bathroom. Another woman seemed to stand behind her, stepping into her golden fall of hair. Looking out of her blue, blue eyes. So she knew what Ted was talking about, but chose to ignore it.
"Tiger thinks gods are like plants. Or drugs," she added thoughtfully. "I'm not sure which."
Ted poured himself a mug of beer. "Drugs. Definitely drugs."
"No no no," blustered Tiger. Falla reflected that he was the sort of drunk who became more, not less, agitated with the application of relaxants. She wondered briefly at her own mood, the feeling of being not entirely a part of their trio. A detached observer. They were all three artists, and all three Dali bums - no obvious wall between them to cause this feeling.
Perhaps it was that she had been in the atmosphere of the gods a little too much.
"--Frank is planning a recreation of the Death Star fight scene," Ted was saying. "But the explosions could be a problem. Lots of modules can't be counted on to remain airtight. We need some kind of enforcement for that stuff, y'know?"
"Yeah, but which Government is going to do that?"
"Count on The Management," Falla chipped in. "It's in their circle of influence."
Tiger and Ted snorted together. At that moment she wanted to capture their identical expressions; the squint-eyed glare, elbows on the table, hands on beer mugs. It was endearing to think that scorn was so universal. And essentially they were so dissimilar. Ted like a gangly young whirlwind, Tiger with a meditative air and a body like sculpted bronze -- Falla suddenly wanted to freeze them in time.
"Will you guys sit for me?" she asked.
Tiger drained his mug. "Only if you return the favor."
She made a face at him. "Tease."
Ted looked from Tiger's mug to his own, which was nearly full, and then tilted back in his chair until the front legs came off the floor and poured the whole thing down his throat. Tiger and Falla, after a moment of stunned silence, burst into applause.
"Now puke over the balcony!" urged Tiger.
Ted shook his head. "Maybe later. Hey, that's an idea!"
"What?" asked Falla, already having some idea of what he must be thinking. The artist mindset, she told herself.
"Get ten guys. Or however many you want. Line 'em up on the upper balcony. Give them each an unlimited quantity of beer, but have each batch of beer colored a different shade. Instruct them to drink for as long as they can bear it--"
Tiger roared. "Why not just pour the beer?"
"But then it wouldn't be--"
They finished together, "a technicolor yawn!"
Falla looked up at the ceiling again, through the rising haze of someone's smoke. Odin kept his single, watchful eye on her. She wondered why she wanted to be someplace else, and wondered where. And why. It was so hard to finish a piece and know that the work was over. The future streached ahead unfilled. Or filled with countless small accidents.
She grimaced and drank her beer.