Off-Schedule Post: Rainwater Jaguar

It cast a shadow laced with restless white veins. The breeze became cold and sharp where it had touched its flank. It growled with the sound of thunder on the horizon. The treetops swayed at its throat like tasseled wheat.

It was Rainwater Jaguar, the hungry, merciless bringer of moisture, the changer of blood into bounty.

The rites had been interrupted by the idol priests, the worshippers of Darab-of-Floating-Whiteness, Blue-Eggshell-Ferzeen, Afshan-in-Heat-and-Coolness, and countless others, the priests of the soft and silent gods who did not appear to their men except as flashes of light on the edge of the sun, or a breath of mountain jasmine on the desert wind, or as a heartbeat of compassion in a flinty shopkeeper's eye. The implements of sacrifice had been scattered, and the offerings taken, given bread and wine, hidden from the prelate of iron, the prelate of obsidian, the prelate of bone...

Without offerings, Rainwater Jaguar was growing thin. His watery hide clung to his bones of ice, making deep ripples on His divine ribs. His eyes were darkening with dust, his clarity clouded by the sand in the airs.

Without offerings, Rainwater Jaguar was growing angry, coming to Earth and worrying at things, batting sheep between His paws, looking for a companion to play with. He is but a kitten yet, and for that we are fortunate, for He has not yet learnt the way to hunt.

He must be fed, so that He will go to the sky and bury His droppings there; boiled against that azure dome by the sun, they will become clouds and the rains of spring.

Here I am, Jaguar! Look, I have bared my throat to you! Look, I cut it, the blood comes out! Devour me, Jaguar! Turn me into rain!

His Teeth are so cold.