Archer v. Architect

After realizing that she has no dominion over crows, the Archer goes through a mild existential crisis. During this crisis she kills her hound. When she sees the hound is dead she mourns. She mourns the death of both her hound and herself: one dead and one soon to die.

She decides to practice her shot. Then she sees the ultimate futility in this and undoes her bow and throws it in the creek. She spends the rest of the day weeping. Or, if not weeping, sleeping.

The Architect arrives. He's a serious man with designer glasses and prematurely white hair. He looks around him and concludes that, given the grim beauty of the setting - which he couldn't describe in any other way than beautiful and grim, in the classiest sense of the pairing of those two words - he should design something. But what? A house, he says, made out of recycled newspaper. This wakes the Archer.

In whatever I do, I only live to keep from dying, she says.

Well, fine. And I live for inspiration like this, he says. Have you ever seen how people live in third-world nations?

She turns away.

They live like animals, he says. In little huts with corrugated tin roofs. Why not put them in paper houses? Stylish, hip, fully recyclable. House burns down? Okay, no problem! House gets carried away in a flood? Hey, I'm done with the Sunday Times, here you go, here's another house.

He paces, consumed. I've got to get this on paper, he says. He pats himself down. He comes up empty. He asks the Archer if she has paper and a pen.

Each day brings me closer to the end, she says. But only my end, not an all-encompassing end. And I can't accept this.

No, huh? the Architect says. Well, fine. Then let's get this over, and maybe I'll find something after.

What if you die? asks the Archer.

Then I die without this brilliant, revolutionary idea falling into the hands of my competitors! Hell, it's almost better if I die! I don't know if I could ever pull this off. I'd probably kill myself trying.

The Archer picks her weapon. The Architect takes the other pistol and joins the Archer on the field. They stand fifteen paces apart.

They raise their guns. Their guns go off.