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wheretwofacesmeet · 7 months ago

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Jelly Tart Thief

Things had been quiet since they'd brought back the pearl.

Too quiet. A storm was brewing, but there wasn't any sign of that yet.

"... only one matter to discuss today."

"Huh?"

He was awake. He was awake now... this wasn't his super cozy bed though, it was the table around which the...

"Oh no. Did I doze off again?"

The young king groaned, rubbing at his eyes.

"You appear to have lost sleep, my king. Are you still keeping your brother company to help with his?" Opeli asked gently. The others were looking at him with concern.

"No, no, don't worry. Callum's mastered some new spell, it's...

He's. He's okay, now. He's not still dreaming about... "

Ezran trailed off. "Well. You know who."

The ensuing silence was awkward, and a bit painful.

Opeli spoke again, after a very long moment.

"The fallen elf?"

"The pirate one. Now that I think about it, he hasn't said anything about more possession dreams either," Ezran sighed.

He turned, addressing Bait.

"I... Callum said..."

"He's still taking a break. To process, he told me. He'll show up next meeting, Bait, don't worry."

Bait made a worried noise in response, staring into his eyes.

"Well, back to the matter at hand. As you all know, there is a thief who's been raiding the kitchen for almost two weeks. As some may not know, the only food they've taken so far, is..."

Ezran and Barius complained in unison.

"MY JELLY TARTS!!"

"Ezran and I have waited ALL night for the culprit, for the past FIVE nights!!"

The frustrated baker continued :"Rayla is even sneaking around the castle, trying to catch them unawares."

Bait grumbled. Ezran translated.

"She just keeps finding... Callum? Bait! You didn't tell me he was still sleepwalking??"

Bait apologized.

"Callum told you both not to say anything? Oh." Ezran sighed.

"He probably just doesn't want you to worry too much and lose even more sleep," Corvus piped up.

"Yeah," Ezran sighed with a fond smile.

"Have any of you made any progress on apprehending the thief so far?" Opeli asked.

" Crownguards searched the whole castle, we searched everywhere outside, now we're looking further away. Here's hoping we spot this Jellyburglar heading for the castle," said Soren.

"You won't. I've been attempting to find their trail, where it comes from, how they enter here. Nothing. Whoever it is, it's someone inside the castle. This morning I found jelly tart crumbs scattered on the floor, inside that one wall with the metal grate."

"Finally! A clue,"Ezran exclaimed.

"But that's it. Just some crumbs. It's like they're making the tarts move on their own or something," Corvus frowned.

Gears starting turning in everyone's heads.

"Uh, why's everyone staring at me?"

"Ezran..." Soren said slowly.

"I think we have uncovered the identity of our 'Jellyburglar',"

Opeli said.

*****

"Ez, why would I be stealing all the jelly tarts and hiding it from everyone? I would NEVER do that!"

"Yeah,he wouldn't!" Rayla defended him.

They smiled at each other. She laid a supportive hand on his shoulder.

Ezran cleared his throat, before they could start leaning in close to each other's faces.

"That's not what anyone thinks. You know your sleepwalking?"

"Sorry, I should have -"

"You didn't have to tell me. It's okay. The important thing is, I think you've been sleep-snacking, too."

"That would explain why the thief's so good at evading capture," Rayla said.

"Sorry for using primal spells to take your tarts, Ez."

"You don't have to apologize. I'll sit by your bed again tonight. Sweet dreams, and no sleepwalking," Ezran smiled.

*****

Ezran had sweet dreams too, and they ended abruptly when he fell out of his chair.

"Wha-? Callum!"

He was already gone. Bait said he'd just seen him leave, wandering in a trance-like state out the door, his head lowered.

He grabbed the Glow Toad and ran out.

There was no sign of Callum, but he knew exactly where he'd find him.

Indeed, there he was outside the wall that offered a sneaky way into the kitchen.

His arm was extended, hand elegantly positioned.

Ezran stopped walking, gasping quietly.

"I didn't know you could do THAT, Callum."

The jelly tarts were floating in the air, and into his arms.

Half of them abruptly dropped straight down, as the mage froze.

Slowly, Callum turned around to face Ezran.

But it wasn't Callum.

His eyes shone with star magic.

His mouth was stuffed with tarts.

"They're delicious, huh?"

Aaravos managed to swallow the tarts, and stood staring at him.

Neither one of them was quite sure what to do now.

"They, uh...they go down pretty well with hot brown morning potion."

"Why aren't you calling for your guards?"

"That's no way to have a conversation."

"For what reason would you like to converse with me?"

"You keep stealing my tarts."

"And I will not cease stealing your tarts. They are quite delectable."

"How about I just ask my baker to make extra tarts, and I'll leave them for you."

"What would be the purpose of that, child?"

"To be nice, Archmage."

"Ahh, I see."

Aaravos laughed.

"You are trying in your adorable yet sad way to sway me. If you think you can change my plans for the sake of mere pastries..."

"How about mere new books? You've been in there for a while, and Callum said you had books. I'm sure it's super boring, having nothing new to read."

"What would you like in exchange, child? I can't pinkie swear that I'll never ever do bad things ever again, and that we'll always be the best of friends."

"You really have forgotten what kindness and empathy are, haven't you? You don't ever miss having friends?"

"My so-called 'friends' betrayed me ."

"I know what that's like. Want to talk about it?"

"No. Leave me alone."

"With all my jelly tarts? No!"

"You cannot stop me from walking away with these tarts, and you surely know it. Move out of my way."

"Alright. But in that case I'm ordering Barius to never, ever, bake another jelly tart again."

Aaravos glared at him.

"I'm not bluffing. I'll do it. Either we do this the nice way, or we can do it the not-so-nice way."

"I will not answer any of your questions."

"We don't have to talk. You bring the tarts, and I'll bring the hot brown morning potion. Trust me, it'll be worth tolerating my company."

"Your idealistic dream of changing the world's hearts,

will one day be cruelly shattered, child king."

"I only want to change one, right now. That's how you change people. One act of kindness, one act of mercy, one hand reaching out to help. One heart, at a time."

Aaravos suppressed a smile. "They said something like that to me, once. Alright, as long as you bring that strange potion of yours, I'll tolerate you. But I won't be talking. We won't be friends."

"We just talked, Aaravos. And it went well. I'm sure this is the start of a wonderful not-friendship."

Ezran smiled, and Not-Callum started walking off with the tarts.

Hopefully, this situation would not require another battle, another war.

He was hopeful.

#the dragon prince #mystery of aaravos #ezran #opeli #soren #high mage callum #rayla #tdp jelly tarts #Jelly Tart Thief #barius #minister of crusts and jellies #Bait the Glow Toad #tdp corvus

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blooblooded · 3 years ago

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Tony and the Thing from the Void

Tony

Tony regained consciousness and immediately understood how dire the situation was.

He was sitting in a chair, his arms tied behind his back and his ankles tied to the legs with what felt like phone charger cords. His head throbbed and he was aware that a smear of blood had dribbled from his temple, where Kassidy Nguyen had struck him with a lamp. The blood was still wet, so he knew that he had not been unconscious for long. He saw that the door was now closed.

He did not yet understand what was happening, but knew that he was double fucked. Tony turned in the chair and began to move his wrists back and forth to try and loosen the cord they were tied with. “Oh god,” he said to himself. “Oh fuck.”

Tabby and the rest of the girls had gone with the awkward Northern boy Marty to talk to someone called the Prime Minister. Tony had stayed behind to take care of Kassidy because she had been too sick to leave. In pain. Shivering. Spitting up blood. She had been in bad shape since they had left Eden. He was the only one that knew that she was not entirely herself and had stuck around to make sure…make sure of something. Make sure she was OK.

Up until now, he had not fully realized how Not Herself Kassidy really was. Or what that meant. He had not wanted to See.

“Anthony,” said Kassidy. No. Not Kassidy. Kassidy had never called him that. Kassidy had never tried to hurt him. Kassidy had never looked at him in the way she was looking at him now. It was the….thing inside of Kassidy that now spoke. It was the Book, the entity from the Void. “You’re awake. I was worried I hit you too hard.”

There it was. The thing in Kassidy’s body. He saw how it had destroyed her. Her arms and face had grown too thin but her belly was swollen grotesquely, the way that bodies become during malnutrition. Her skin had a grey cast to it and the acne on her cheeks had turned into bloody, crusted scabs. Black veins were visible at her temples, running up her arms. Dying. Kassidy was dying. And this thing had taken complete control.

A part of him hated her for letting it inside of her. Stupid little girl. Just a stupid little girl, full of grief and rage. But how was she supposed to know what was going to happen to her? The moment that she touched Cihad’s Book, it was all over. He knew what it was like, what it was like to willingly choose something destructive only for it to take complete control.

It had been sitting on another one of the chairs in the room but now it got up to approach him. It wobbled a little, like it was about to fall over. Too weak.

Tony struggled harder against the cords that bound his hands.

“It’s good to be able to talk to you,” said the thing. It stood before him. An unthinkable monster, curling itself inside of a sick young woman. “I never thought I’d be able to actually talk to you.”

“Oh god.” His heart pounded in his chest and he tried not to look at it. He didn’t want to see it. “Oh fuck. Tabitha! Goddamn it, Casey!”

“They aren’t here,” said the thing. It chewed absently on one of its fingernails. “You don’t need to scream. You’re not in any danger.”

It couldn’t know that. Tony gritted his teeth, worked harder against the cords. Sweat poured down his forehead and soaked his shirt at the chest and armpits. The smell of fear radiated from his pores. No. He would not die like this. This wasn’t supposed to be the way he died, so far away from home. There were people he needed to get back to. Cynthia, she was only 12 years old and did not even know he was still alive. He couldn’t die here, this thing couldn’t kill him here. Not until he got back to his daughter and made up for how he had failed her.

“Can you stop?” asked the thing in Kassidy’s body. In front of him now and crouched down, resting it’s arms on its knees. Still wearing Kassidy’s clothes, the torn jeans, the loose long sleeved shirt. But not Christopher Nguyen’s jacket. When the jacket went out of the picture, Tony had known something was wrong without even needing to See. “I can’t talk to you when you’re jerking around like a rat in a trap. I want to talk. I’ve been so alone.”

“Nope,” said Tony, panting. “Nope, nope, nope.”

“Aw.” It put its hand on his knee. A chill shivered up Tony’s spine and he did what he could to jerk away from it, but could not move much. The chair was carved from wood, ornamental, heavy. “I don’t know why you’re so scared. You don’t need to be scared. I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to kill you. I care about you, I’ve cared about you for 3 years. Even when I was trapped, formless inside of that Book, I was hoping you were OK.”

“You killed my wife,” said Tony. It was useless to struggle so he stopped. His mind rolled back and forth between his options. Talk to it. Waste its time. Maybe Tabby would come back. Maybe someone would save him. He could not save himself. Even as a young man, it had not been something he was capable of. “You— you’re killing my friend.”

It smiled in the unsure way that something that does not know how to smile does. Kassidy’s lips were chapped and peeling. Her teeth had turned brittle, the gums receding. “Kassidy? She wanted this.”

“No.” Tony turned his mind to Tabby, reaching out for her. He was not a psychic, not really. He had no telepathy, only the cursed, useless Sight. “No.”

“Yeah.” It squeezed his knee. “She was nothing. So stupid and weak and sad. She wanted to be something. She let me inside, it was her choice. And now she’s gone. It’s peaceful. No more pain or fear, only me. I take care of her.”

He was not a violent man but Tony wanted to lash out at this thing, smash it to jelly. Kill it. Kill it for what it was doing, for what it had done. He remembered the way that Cathy had looked at him before she had plunged the knife into her own chest, he remembered the way she had screamed. Back then he had not been able to understand it, he had not understood the totality of how this parasite obliterated every part of the self. But Cathy had known. She had felt herself slipping away and made the choice to take control one last time.

It was a choice that Kassidy had been unwilling or unable to make.

“Go away,” he said. “Please. Just go away. Why are you doing this? Go back, just go back to the Book. I don’t know why you’re doing this?”

“Why does anything do anything?” It asked. It leaned over his lap, still crouching, and untied the knotted cord that was binding his wrists. Even though his hands were free, Tony found himself unable to strike out, unable to even move. It was an unfortunate leftover of his childhood: when faced with danger, his first instinct was to flee, and when he was unable to do that, he froze. Why hadn’t he just run away from home when he was a kid, why had he just taken everything? Easier to freeze. People were less likely to hurt you when you were limp and quiet. But this wasn’t a person. “I just want to live. You know, I just want to live. I deserve to live just like anything else.”

“Please,” said Tony, ice water running through his veins.

It took his hands in its own. Kassidy’s hands were very small and several of her fingernails had fallen off to reveal crusting infected nail beds. It turned Tony’s hands over gently so that it could look at the raised white scar running thickly up his left forearm.

That had been from when he was 17, stupid and cowardly, trapped in foster care. It had been bad enough for stitches, but not bad enough to be taken seriously. When his foster parents had found him passed out in a bathtub and covered in blood, they had just yelled at him for being stupid. Tony had never regretted doing it. Sometimes he regretted not trying harder, regretted that he had been a scared child unable to bring the blade down on himself again.

“You don’t even want to live,” said the thing living in Kassidy’s body, with a contemplative tone like it was unable to understand. “Did you know that humans are the only creatures I’ve seen that do that? I’ve lived for thousands of years, I’ve lived in countless worlds. Every other living being fights to survive. Not you things. You put yourselves in danger, you consume things that aren’t good for you, you even actively try to die. Why is that? What were you thinking about when you did this to yourself?” It lightly touched the scar on Tony’s arm and he drew back with force like he had been burned.

He had not even talked to Cihad about this, there was no way he was about to explain 41 years of suicidality to something that was not human.

It was all too much. Tony willed himself to move, to react, but could not. What good would it do? He had seen Kassidy use blood magic, he had seen the way that she had made the pyrokinetic secret police agent writhe and squirm on the ground when they were fleeing Eden. If he hit this thing or tried to get up, what if it did something even worse to him? It could pull his intestines out of his asshole or make his one good eye burst like a grape. It seemed to…like him, but for how long?

Tabby. Tabby needed to come back. Tabby and her gun. Or the witch, Jules, with her white magic. Or Anatole Surkhov with his magic starmetal sword. Or Esther, Rosaline, Casey, anyone! Anyone.

And then—

A WATER PLANET WITH FOUR MOONS. THE SEAS ARE GREEN AND WARM, POPULATED BY THE RACE OF SHAPESHIFTING SLIME CREATURES THAT NOW LIVE ON EARTH. THEY ARE BEING HUNTED INTO EXTINCTION BY THE ENTITY. THE WATER IS TURNING BLACK WITH THEIR ICHOR. IT IS HUNGRY, IT IS SO HUNGRY, AND IT WILL NEVER STOP. THE CREATURES FROM THAT PLANET HAVE THEIR OWN MAGIC, THEIR OWN PRIESTS, AND THEY RIP A HOLE THROUGH DIMENSIONS TO SEND THEIR OFFSPRING TO EARTH, TO SOMEWHERE THEY CAN BE SAFE. THE ENTITY FOLLOWS THEM THROUGH THE RIFT BUT ITS BODY IS TORN FROM IT BY THE VIBRATION OF EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD. IT IS SCREAMING AND SCREAMING AND FEELS FEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME AND—

Tony squeezed his eye shut to block out the Sight. No, no, he did not want to know. He did not want to know about this thing, did not want to know where it came from, did not want to know what it wanted. His head pounded.

“What’s wrong?” it asked. Tony could still feel one of its hands on his knee.

“Go away,” he said. The air was cold, even inside of Florence Gauthier’s estate, and his sweat was lowering his body temperature. “Please go away.”

“You don’t like me? I gave you your Sight.” It rose up. Tony clutched his hands to his face. “You need to get used to me. We’re going to be very close for a while.”

Tony’s eye shot open. Did it mean to leave Kassidy’s body and enter his? No, it would have already done that. Would it? Did it need…did it need permission? He would never accept that. He could accept a lot of things, but never that. It was not the slow death and rot that scared him, it was the violation. He felt his legs start to tremble.

If it left Kassidy’s body, she would die. He understood that much. He understood that it was keeping her alive, making her watch as it sucked everything from her body and made her decay. Even if it left her and allowed her to survive, how would she ever come back from something like that? Cathy had chosen death instead, Cathy had…Cathy…

“What does that mean?” He asked. His mouth was as dry as sandpaper and his own voice sounded raspy. “What does that mean?”

It stood before him and pushed its hair out of its face. It looked down at itself, pulled at its shirt. “I like this world,” it said. It ran its hands down Kassidy’s body. “I like humans. You feel so much. I like the way you eat and drink so that you feel good. No other creature does that either. You just do things for pleasure.” It lifted up the edge of its shirt a little to show its swollen abdomen in an awkward parody of sensuality. “Do you want to have sex? I want to know what that’s like.”

Tony’s breath hitched in his throat. He could not speak.

Wherever Kassidy’s consciousness was, he could only hope that she was not aware of what was being propositioned. But Tony could not spare much thought for her when he was much more worried about himself.

The thing laughed, horribly, it was something that did not know how to laugh. It was more of a wheeze. “Relax” it said. “I wouldn’t make you. What, you don’t like her? You only like Cihad Tariq, don’t you? The two of you always used to go at it like rabbits. You used to make him hurt you. You’d ask him to put his hands around your throat so you couldn’t breathe. Did you really like that or did it just excite you to be so close to dying? I was always there, you know, watching you. You were funny.”

“Stop,” said Tony, stupid and frozen and very afraid. The knowledge that this thing had about his sex life with Cihad was obscene.

“Are you excited now?” It asked, then leaned over him, put both of its hands on his shoulders. Kassidy smelled like rotten meat and her eyes had filmed over. “Are you aroused to be so close to dying?”

For the first time in his life, Tony Delmont was positive that he did not want to die.

What he wanted did not matter. The thing inside of Kassidy’s body leaned forward and pressed its open mouth against his. This was something that did not understand what kissing was and it did so sloppily, with teeth. Panic finally burst through Tony and he tried to shove it away from him or pull his head back, but the creature had monstrous strength despite its 90 pound frame. At first he thought that it was only kissing him, acting on some sick impulse of wanting to experience human desire. It was not.

Hot, slimy fluid gushed from its mouth and into Tony’s. He began to choke and gag, his throat closed up against it, but there was too much of it and he found himself being forced to swallow. The liquid was thick, the consistency of pudding, and had a metallic, organy taste. When he tried harder to pull himself away, the creature just pushed itself against his face with greater force and their teeth clicked together. He could hear its stomach constricting and pumping as it regurgitated.

There had never been an experience in his life so abject and humiliating, forced to kiss something that was vomiting into his mouth. He had seen documentaries where mother birds regurgitated food to feed their young and this seemed to be a repulsive twisting of that act. He could only think of his need to get away, to try and get whatever was inside of him out.

The demon pulled its face away from him. Its mouth hung open, dripping black slime down its chin and shirt. It dragged the back of one hand across its mouth, then spat on him, and more of the black slime hit him directly in his good eye.

“Was that good for you?” it asked in Kassidy’s voice.

Tony’s mind had just about decided that this was all a fucked up nightmare, that this wasn’t really happening to him when--

IT NEEDED TO GET ITS GENETIC MATERIAL INTO HIS BODY TO CHANGE IT, IN THE SAME WAY THAT ROSIE’S BODY HAD BEEN CHANGED. IT NEEDED HIM TO CHANGE BEFORE IT TOOK HIM TO THE LOST COLONY BECAUSE IT WAS GOING TO STRAP HIM INTO A DEVICE THAT WOULD ALLOW A NEW CREATURE TO BURST FROM HIS BODY. A REAL BODY, A SUSTAINABLE BODY THAT WOULD NOT DIE. AND WHEN IT OCCUPIED THAT NEW FORM, IT WOULD BE FREE TO ROAM THE EARTH, CONSUMING EVERYTHING THAT MOVED.

Tony sucked in lungfuls of air so that he could scream.

The door to the room opened and in walked Casey Agapama, holding two mugs of tea. She looked at Tony, tied to a chair, panting and shivering. She looked at the thing that had once been Kassidy, leaning over him with its black mouth. For a fraction of a second, she was perfectly still, but that was only as long as she needed. The polar opposite of Tony, she instantly took action. She dropped the mugs, bounded across the room with four long strides, and seized the creature with both arms to wrench it away from him.

Immediately, Tony bent to untie the cords binding his ankles, then collapsed to his hands and knees. He jammed two fingers down the back of his throat as hard as he could to trigger his gag reflex. A little trick from his years of drinking. It took a few tries, then Tony heaved and vomited at least a cup of black slime onto the wooden floor. The smell was unbelievable. He repeated this process until he saw only bile and the remnants of his lunch. His stomach lurched, he dry heaved. Was it enough? It had to be enough.

“What the fuck?” Casey yelled, struggling with the creature. She had pinned its arms to its side in a bear hug but it was fighting hard to get away from her. “Kassidy! Calm down, what the hell is going on?!”

“Anthony, you stupid insect!” It kicked its legs, no match for Casey’s strength. Despite everything, it was still inside of a dying body. “I’ll just do it again!”

PRODUCING THE FLUID TOOK A LOT OUT OF IT.

Tony scrabbled up, dizzy and his head spinning from vomiting, terrified and half insane. The instinct to freeze was over, replaced by the older instinct to drop everything and run. He could just go, just go far away. The woods, the wilderness, anything was preferable to being stuck here in the same place as the demon of the Void. He would die in the woods, yes, he would starve and freeze, but that was better, that was so much better. Killing himself would be so much better.

But no. He had to go home somehow. He couldn’t die. Cynthia was still out there.

“I don’t want to hurt you!” Casey gave the demon a little shake, as if that would bring Kassidy back. Of course she thought that. She didn’t know. She didn’t know that Kassidy was gone and that this was just a hollowed out shell, a body for a parasite. “Calm down, OK, just calm down!”

Tony scrubbed at his face with his sleeve. The black slime that had been spat on him felt tacky on his skin, it gummed up the fabric of his shirt. He tried to calm his breathing as he drummed up the courage to look at the thing again.

“You would have liked it better if I had choked you,” said the creature from the Void. It stopped fighting against Casey now, realizing the futility. Much easier, much better to try to use its words to try to hurt him. It blinked rapidly, its eyes rolling back under its eyelids, smiled so that it showed Kassidy’s decaying teeth. “I’ll remember that. I’ll remember that next time. You don’t want to die anymore, Anthony? I’ll remember. Someday you’ll beg me to let you die but I’m not going to let you.”

He did not want to die. Not really. Not anymore.

“There’s not going to be a next time,” said Tony. He pressed himself back, further away from it, pressed against the wall. His stomach spasmed and churned and he knew that it didn’t matter that he had thrown up. Somehow it had infected him. Something really bad was about to happen to him, something that he did not understand. He knew that, but he also knew that he would not allow this creature to have a second chance. “You-- you’re gonna go back to the Void.”

And it just laughed at him. Laughed and laughed.

There was no getting away from it and Tony knew it. All he could do was again, wipe his hand across his mouth.

CYNTHIA

Cynthia Tariq-Delmont found herself in a dream that was not her own.

She saw a planet covered in a warm green ocean, lit by the gentle shine of four moons. Beneath the water lived a species of shapeshifting chitinous invertebrates. Somehow she knew about them, she knew that they had lived on this world for millions of years, that their civilization was unlike her own, but was a civilization nonetheless. The shapeshifting creatures swam through their oceans, communicated with one another as a psychic hivemind, and raised their gelatinous larvae until they grew exoskeletons and could protect themselves from predators.

And she knew that they were scared. She could feel the chittering fear of the hive. Because something, some predator, had ripped a hole into their world to devour them. The warm green ocean was turning black with the slime that made up their bodies, the water boiling with ammonia.

Cynthia blinked and found that she was under the water, inside a cave-like structure built from porous pink rock with holes in the roof that let light from the four moons inside. But the light was darkening now, going out, because the moons were being eaten up. Everything was being eaten up. The water, the invertebrate creatures, even the light itself. Inside of the cave were a pair of mate-bonded creatures, along with a translucent egg sac containing a couple hundred of their larval offspring. She looked at them and sensed their desperation, a desperation that was shared across thousands of others belonging to the hive-mind.

The mate-bonded pair of creatures were the same size as she was, with segmented black carapaces and fan shaped tails. The heads were unusual; five eyes and a clawed proboscis extending over toothy mouths. Somehow she knew that this was the usual adult form of these creatures, but that they could shapeshift into any form they wished. The larvae in the jelly-like egg sac were only tiny black balls of slime, each no bigger than her thumbnail. Over the next several hundred years the larvae would grow larger and larger until they reached maturity.

Cynthia looked at the egg sac and felt a pang. She knew that her sibling was in there.

These creatures did not have a spoken language. They did not need one, they communicated through the psychic hive. Individuals could communicate their personal thoughts and feelings by changing their color like a squid does. She watched the mate-bonded pair dapple their carapaces red, she watched them nuzzle each other with their proboscises, then touch their egg sac.

A plan. The invertebrate species had their own magic, their own priests. If the predator destroying their planet could rip a hole between worlds, so could they.

They wanted to protect their offspring.

Inside the egg-sac, the little black larvae squirmed and looked up at their parents. They were too small to be a part of the hive-mind, too small to understand what was going on.

The water around Cynthia turned black and she could sense the presence of something huge, something with only one purpose: to consume. A high pitched buzz filled her head and she watched the carapace of the mate-bonded pair of invertebrates dapple a terrified yellow.

And she woke up in her own bed.

The dream had been so nonsensical and surreal that for a moment she considered disregarding it as the result of eating pizza a little too close to sleep. But those thoughts, those images, could not have possibly come from her mind, they had to be from someone else. She looked at the digital clock on her bedside table. 5:00am. Cynthia rubbed her face and got out of bed, stumbled around in the dark.

Careful to be quiet so that she did not wake up her Dad or Tony, she walked out of her room, into the hall, and into her sibling’s room. Until she was 9, Billy had always slept with her. They had liked to curl up inside the top drawer of her dresser. But then her Mom had died and they all had to move; the new house had three bedrooms. Dad had said that it was OK for Billy to have their own. Good thing too, since now Billy had grown larger and more...solid, less apt to spend long periods of time in a form that resembled a blob of pudding.

Billy’s room was cleaner than hers was. They liked the blue walls. They had a dresser full of clothes for when they wanted to go out in public on days that their body was solid, visible to people who didn’t have Abilities. Pictures of the family on the dresser. A picture of Mom too, even though she had never actually been able to see Billy. It was the kind of room that a normal 14 year old kid would have. Their bed was underneath their window and it had blue blankets.

Her sibling was tangled face-up in their sheets. Their body was mostly humanoid, but could only manage monochromatic colors. When they slept, they liked to wear pajamas, and had a loose tank top and shorts on. Billy’s face was screwed up, 4 eyes closed tight. They made squeaky, whimpering sounds.

“Hey.” Cynthia put her hand on her sibling’s arm. Their skin-- if it could be called skin-- was always clammy and had the texture of soft silly putty when they were in this form. “Hey.”

Billy opened all of their eyes. Two eyes were where they were supposed to be on a normal human face and two smaller eyes were higher up on their forehead. “Huh?” they said. Billy’s voice sounded almost exactly like her’s did, since they had learned to speak from mimicry. “Are we late for school?”

“No. You were dreaming.”

“Oh.” Billy sat up and untangled themselves from their sheets. “Weird. I think I dreamed that I was drowning, but I don’t need to breathe.”

Cynthia thought about the planet covered in a warm green ocean and its four moons. Maybe they didn’t need to know about that. Maybe knowing about that would make them upset. It was hard enough for them here, trying to be a normal kid when they weren’t one. She reached up to take off the silk scarf she used to keep her braids neat.

School didn’t start for another 3 hours so it was useless to try and get back to sleep. “Sorry. I thought you were having a nightmare, it woke me up.”

They shrugged. Billy’s face rippled and changed, rearranging and sucking the two extraneous eyes back inside their head. It was getting easier and easier for them to appear like a highschool aged kid. They had more control over their body, no longer worrying that they might grow an extra pair of arms or split in two when they got upset. While their true form-- their larval form, Cynthia thought-- was still a 35 pound mass of black slime, they preferred to look human. Now that others could see them in certain forms, they wanted to make friends and experience life.

Billy rolled out of bed. They were taller and thinner than she was, and in this form their skin was stark white and their hair and the inside of their mouth was black. “What time is it?”

“It’s five.”

“D’you think Dad is awake yet?” Billy smoothed down their pajama top.

“Dunno. Let’s see.”

Downstairs, the lights were already on. Dad woke up early to go for a run before work most days. It looked like he had already been in the kitchen and left; the tea kettle was still warm. Cynthia opened the fridge to look for something to eat.

Usually their fridge was only stocked with healthy food. Dad was particular about that kind of thing, and willing to shell out extra money if it meant getting himself and his kids real meat and eggs instead of the insect-protein alternatives. He bought fresh produce and whole grains at great expense to himself. Things like sugar cereal and snacks had always been rare. Now, however, Cynthia’s birth father Tony Delmont had moved back in, after almost 5 years of absence. And Tony’s tastes were….more proletarian. It meant that there were heavily processed toaster strudels and bags of chips on the house now.

Tony. Cynthia was still not sure what she thought. She was not yet comfortable with calling him by anything but his name. The years he had spent in her life could be counted on the fingers of one hand. She’d give him a chance. If he left again, for the 3rd time, that chance was all he would get.

She shoved a couple of toaster strudels in the microwave, two for herself and one for her sibling. Billy didn’t need to eat, just like they didn’t need to breathe-- they just liked to.

“Did you finish your geometry homework?” she asked her sibling, waiting for the microwave to beep.

Billy sat down at the kitchen table. Their posture was normal, if not a little slouchy. A few years ago, they would have just melted into a black blob of goo instead of trying to maintain their physical form. “Uhhhh. No. I’ll copy yours.”

“No the heck you won’t.”

“I’ll copy Rach--”

“What are you doing up so early?” Suddenly, Tony was in the kitchen with them, having walked in silently from the living room. His long hair hung around his shoulders and he wore the same clothes from the night before. His eyepatch was not on, and Cynthia found it hard not to stare at the unnatural whiteness of his prosthetic. “Morning, Cyn.”

“Morning.” She hesitated for a moment, then walked over and hugged him. Hugging Tony was always awkward, it felt like he did not have much experience doing it. Still, he wrapped his thin arms around her and patted her on the back. “Sorry if we woke you up.”

Billy said nothing, but their hair started to stick up from their head and their face started to split, revealing the black goo inside of them. As if noticing this, they used their hands to press their face back together, and hunched over, watching Tony.

The relationship between her sibling and her birth father was the source of a lot of underlying tension in the household. When Tony came back again 2 months ago, Billy acted the way they always did-- friendly and curious. But Tony’s disgust and fear was not something that he could hide. He’d cringe away to keep them from touching him, and would look at them the way that someone looks at something that wants to cause harm. Tony never said anything, never did anything, but his feelings were obvious.

And it was hurting Billy’s feelings.

Tony stretched and pulled a band from his wrist so that he could tie his hair back. “I was awake. I was talking with your Dad this morning.”

Sometimes he just said things like that, not realizing how uncomfortable it made other people. Tony was an open book. He didn’t lie, he didn’t even...half-lie, like he didn’t hide what he was thinking or feeling. Maybe that was part of having the Sight. Or, maybe that was Tony’s way of having the Sight.

As for Cynthia, she kept herself closed off. She didn’t want to See.

The microwave beeped, and she left Tony’s side to grab breakfast, putting the toaster strudels onto plates. She handed a plate to Billy and sat down at the table next to them. Tony sat down on her other side and wordlessly scrolled on his communicator.

“I heard Lulu Boggs wants to be prom queen,” Cynthia told her sibling, since she was unable to think of anything to talk about with her father. It wasn’t just because he was an adult-- Cynthia got along with adults just fine-- it was because she didn’t really know him. “You think anyone’s gonna vote for her?”

“Maybe,” said Billy. They bit off a corner of toaster strudel and their teeth grew longer and sharper as they ate. “Have you figured out who you’re going to ask to the dance? I’m gonna ask Andronicus Lemay, I think he really likes me. We’d make a cute couple.”

“Ewww,” Cynthia said jokingly. Andy was an Artificial in their class, weird but nice. She didn’t know who she was going to ask to Prom, but would probably end up asking Leah. It wasn’t that important to her.

Tony’s gaze had snapped up from the flat screen of his device and onto Billy. Some of the color had drained from his face. His good eye was very wide. “What do you mean, couple?” he asked them, his voice a little shaky.

There had never been a moment where Tony had spoken directly to them. Usually when Tony was in the same room as Billy, he didn’t even look at them. This had been the source of more than a few arguments between him and Dad over the last few months. The shock registered on Billy’s face. For a second, their skin rippled, like they were going to collapse back into their slime form. “Huh? Like date? Like me and Andy?”

The air in the kitchen grew heavy. Tony’s good eye was very blue, blue-er than blue.

“You-- why would you do that?”

“Tony,” said Cynthia haltingly, sensing what was about to happen without knowing why.

Billy was having a hard time maintaining eye contact with Tony. Their face split down the middle, all the way down to their neck and their hair began to float, stand on end. They shrugged, almost helpless, not understanding. “I dunno? He’s cute and I like him? What are you asking me?”

Tony smiled like he was in great pain. Like he was hurting. He rubbed his eyes, shook his head. “D-Does this boy know you’re...you know…”

“What, that I’m trans?” asked Billy. A few small eyes popped up on their foreheads and blinked. “Yeah, he knows. He’s nice, I went to get ice cream with him last week.”

“No. Does he know you’re not a person?”

There it was. The terrible thing. The terrible thing that she had always known Tony believed, but had never imagined he would say out loud. Billy stood up from the table abruptly and walked out of the kitchen. They were able to maintain emotional control enough to remain bipedal, but Cynthia could see that their body was slipping and changing. She heard them walk upstairs and shut the door to their bedroom. The fact that they did not slam the door in anger was indicative of their personality.

Furious on the behalf of her sibling, Cynthia stood up too. She grabbed her plate up off the table and clattered it into the sink. “What’s your problem?” she asked Tony, her voice raising just below a yell. “Why would you say that? That was so hurtful!”

Being almost yelled at made Tony flinch a little bit. “I know you care about them, but they’re not a real person. They’re not.You don’t know about those Things like I do, you don’t know what they can do to people. Billy just said that they want to go out with some boy? How is that fair to that boy? Some...some Thing just deciding that it likes you?”

7 YEARS AGO TONY TOUCHED HER FATHER’S BOOK AND AN ENTITY FROM BETWEEN DIMENSIONS NOTICED HIM. IT HAS FOLLOWED HIM EVER SINCE. IT HOLLOWED OUT HER MOTHER’S BODY. IT WANTS TONY’S BODY. IT LOVES HIM AND HATES HIM AND NEEDS HIM AND IT IS HUNGRY AND WILL NEVER STOP TRYING--

Cynthia closed her eyes to block herself from whatever knowledge she had just accessed. She did not need to know it. She did not need to understand Tony’s reasons for being so afraid of her sibling. Even if those reasons were valid, it still wasn’t right for him to make them feel...othered.

“Whatever,” she said. Tony looked miserable, staring down at his hands. “Billy is a person. They’re just a kid. You’ve been through a lot, but so have they. Something ate their whole family, their whole planet. I’ve Seen it.”

“I’ve Seen things too,” Tony said, very quietly. “Please, you have to understand. Something a lot like that thing did something bad to me, it’s still doing something to me. I—I just don’t want that happening to anyone else. These things, they can…change people’s bodies.”

“But you know that’s different.” Cynthia thought about the way her body had changed. Thought about how she was stronger than any other kid in her class, thought about how when her baby teeth fell out they were replaced by sharp canines and incisors. “What’s so wrong about Billy liking someone if he likes them back? They should get to be happy too.”

“They shouldn’t even be capable of liking a human that way.”

She knew that he wasn’t really thinking about Billy’s innocent crush on Andy Lemay. Tony was thinking about himself. Thinking about himself and some other...thing….that had set its sights on him, some other thing that had changed his body. Cynthia could understand this and could understand why he was hurt and afraid, but could not accept the way that he had just treated her sibling.

Billy was not the same as the thing that had set its sights on Tony.

But she didn’t have anything more she could say to him, to her father. Cynthia only shook her head and left the kitchen to be with her sibling. She left Tony alone with his dark thoughts.

#writing

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