Chapter 2
FLYNN
Perfect.
The fine amount took consideration. Seventy-five dollars communicates severity without cruelty. Fifty says slap on the wrist. A hundred says vendetta. Seventy-five says I am a reasonable orc who has been unreasonably wronged.
Dragon compost. On my walkway. Growing things in my concrete.
I bring the mower from its bay. A Greenfield GX-9 rotary with a 22-inch cut deck, self-sharpening blades, and a mulching attachment I've never once used because mulching is just littering with extra steps.
I run my thumb across the blade edge. Still factory-sharp, because I maintain a weekly honing schedule.
The lawn doesn't need mowing. I mowed it Tuesday. Today is Thursday. The grass is at exactly two and three-quarter inches, which is within acceptable range, but my blood is hot and my hands need occupation, so.
Boots on. The spare boots. My good ones are in the mudroom, wrapped in a towel, soaking in a vinegar solution I mixed at midnight. Green sparkles still embedded in the leather grain. Every time I look at them my tusks ache from clenching.
I wheel the GX-9 to the northeast corner of the front yard. Starting position. Feet shoulder-width apart. Hands at ten and two on the handlebar. Spine straight. Shoulders dropped. Breath in through the nose, out through the mouth.
First pass.
Push forward. Three-count stride, heel to toe, each step landing on the invisible grid lines I've walked so many times the grass grows in slightly different shades along the tracks.
The blades engage with a clean whir, trimming the top eighth-inch I don't need to trim but am trimming anyway because this is my yard and my yard obeys me.
Turn at the property edge. Ninety-degree pivot.
Left foot plants, right foot sweeps. The mower arcs without breaking the line.
Warboss Krullak would have approved of the footwork.
Twelve years in the Bloodmaw regiment and the thing that stuck wasn't the axe drills or the shield walls.
It was the turns. Economy of motion. No wasted energy. Every movement serving purpose.
Second pass. Parallel. Two inches of overlap with the first, because consistency demands it.
Third pass.
The daisy is six inches now.
I can see it from here. Pushing up through the hairline crack in my walkway like a small green middle finger. Bright white petals, cheerful yellow center, absolutely no right to exist in poured concrete.
Fourth pass. I grip the handlebar harder. The GX-9 protests with a slight vibration change and I ease off, because the machine is not my enemy. The machine is my ally. The machine understands straight lines.
Fifth pass. Pivot. Push. The grass falls in uniform ribbons behind the deck. My breathing settles into the rhythm. In for three steps, out for three. The morning air is cool and carries the scent of cut grass and order.
Across the fence, something crashes.
I don't look.
A muffled voice says a word I won't repeat.
I don't look.
Another crash. Glass this time. A yelp. Then, distinctly, the sound of dirt hitting a window from the inside.
Sixth pass. My jaw is a locked vault. My eyes are fixed on the grass line ahead of me. Straight and true and mine.
Her front door bangs open. Footsteps on the porch. The crinkle of paper being read. A gasp that carries across thirty feet of property line with theatrical clarity.
"Seventy-five DOLLARS?"
Seventh pass. I allow myself excellent posture.
"For FERTILIZER? It's ORGANIC!"
I pivot. Clean. Sharp. Krullak's ghost nods in approval.
"And you nailed it to my DOOR? There's a HOLE in my door now!"
Eighth pass. I keep my breathing measured, my stride even, my cutting line geometrically precise. The mower hums. The grass submits. All is well on my side.
"Flynn! Flynn, I can see you! You're mowing in a straight line and ignoring me, which is very mature!"
Ninth pass.
"Your lawn doesn't even need mowing! It's like a putting green already! You're spite-mowing!"
I am not spite-mowing. I am performing scheduled maintenance on my personal sanctuary, which has been violated by enchanted agricultural runoff and the presence of an unauthorized daisy.
Tenth pass. The front yard is done. Every blade uniform. Every line parallel. The GX-9 purrs with satisfaction as I kill the engine and stand in the silence of a job well executed.
The daisy is seven inches now.
From across the fence, softer: "I really am sorry about your boots."
I wheel the mower back to the garage. Return it to its bay. Wipe the deck with a microfiber cloth. Hang the cloth on hook number seven.
The walkway daisy sways in the breeze.
I'm going to need a chisel.
The hedge wall is seven feet tall, four feet deep, and trimmed to tolerances that would make a barber weep.
Boxwood. Buxus sempervirens. I planted it the week I moved in, nursed it through two droughts and a caterpillar infestation, and shaped it with hand shears because electric trimmers leave a ragged edge that only amateurs and psychopaths find acceptable.
It is not a hiding spot.
It is a privacy barrier, and I am performing a visual inspection of its eastern face, which happens to be the face that runs along the property border, which happens to provide an unobstructed sightline to her front porch.
She's sitting on the steps now. Cross-legged.
The citation in both hands, held up close to her face like she's reading the fine print on a treaty.
Which she should, because I spent forty minutes on those subsections.
4.2.1 through 4.2.7 outline the specific municipal codes she violated. I included footnotes.
Her lips move as she reads. She flips to page two.
There are three pages.
Her eyebrows climb. The wild hair, a storm system of brown curls held back by what appears to be a screwdriver jammed through a bun, shifts as she tilts her head.
Soil streaks her left cheek. Her overalls today are orange.
Not burnt orange. Not autumn orange. Traffic cone orange.
The kind of orange that says I have given up on subtlety as a concept.
She reaches the penalty section. I can tell because her mouth drops open and stays open for a full four seconds. Then it closes. Then it opens again.
"Subsection 4.2.4: dispersal of non-approved organic particulate matter across neighboring property boundaries constituting a Category B environmental nuisance." She reads it aloud to no one. To the universe. To the ugly ceramic gnome squatting by her mailbox like a concussed toad. "Category B!"
She stands. The citation crumples in her fist.
Good.
She smooths it back out, reads it again.
Better.
She folds it once, twice, three times, then shoves it into the front pocket of the traffic cone overalls and disappears into the garage.
The garage door is open. It's been open since yesterday.
Inside: a landscape of cardboard boxes, potted plants in various stages of revolt, bags of soil stacked like sandbags before a flood, and tools hanging from absolutely nothing because she doesn't own a pegboard.
She emerges dragging a post-hole digger.
The thing is almost as tall as she is. Two steel blades at the bottom, spread like a jaw, connected by a hinge to twin wooden handles that rise above her head. She grips both handles, hoists the digger upright, and immediately overbalances backward.
Her boots skid on the gravel path. The digger tips. She catches it, overcorrects, and the blade end swings in a wide arc that decapitates a marigold in a hanging basket.
I grip the hedge wall. The boxwood compresses under my fingers. Two years of careful shaping, and I'm denting it with my bare hands like an animal.
She hauls the digger to a patch of yard near the sidewalk. The patch is dirt. Raw, unsodded, weed-choked dirt, which is its own citation but one thing at a time. She positions the blades over the ground, raises the handles above her head, and drives the digger down.
It bounces off a root.
The handles snap back and catch her in the sternum. She doubles over, wheezes, and the digger topples sideways into what I think was once a flower bed but now resembles a mass grave for begonias.
She picks it up. Tries again. Same root. Same result, minus the sternum hit, because this time she's braced for it. The blades skitter across the packed earth and gouge a shallow trench approximately four inches to the left of where she intended.
Third attempt. She jumps onto the crossbar with both feet, using her body weight to force the blades down. They sink maybe three inches. She whoops. Actually whoops, like she's conquered a mountain and not penetrated topsoil.
Then she can't pull it back out.
She yanks. Twists. Plants one foot on the ground and heaves with her whole body, curls bouncing, face reddening, the screwdriver threatening to launch from her bun like a ballistic missile.
The digger releases with a pop and she staggers back, triumphant, holding a clump of clay and root fiber aloft like a trophy.
The citation. She pulls it from her pocket. Smooths it flat against her thigh.
No.
She tears it. Once down the middle. Then again. And again. Neat, deliberate strips, each one separated with a decisive rip that I can hear from thirty feet away through seven feet of premium boxwood.
She sprinkles the strips into the hole.
She's mulching with my citation.
My citation, with its perfect margins and its footnoted subsections and its carefully calibrated seventy-five-dollar fine, is becoming compost in a hole she can barely dig.
She scoops the clay back over the paper strips, pats it down with her palm, and sits back on her heels. Wipes her forehead with the back of her wrist, leaving a fresh streak of earth. Grins at the patch of dirt like she's just planted a flag on enemy territory.
The screwdriver finally ejects from her bun and lands point-first in the dirt beside her.
She doesn't even flinch. Just picks it up and jams it back in.