#yet another Clark Ashton Smith homage from me

[stainlesssteellocust]

Excerpt from a chapter of my alex/cassie fic that I haven’t finished and don’t think is good enough to post (just doesn’t sound right) with a surprise appearance from bob’s fake name

”…Yeah, and he was obviously just trying to get in my pants, too. Like, I get the mutual interests thing but it’s not a ticket to score, right?”

Oh, Alex thinks as his stomach curdles at the idea of Cassie with someone else, so this is what getting defensive feels like.

“- and I was like sure, Jeremy, it’s great we both agree the Suitors’ characters get butchered in adaptations. Yes, I also think that Lucy deserved better. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna fuck you, and it absolutely doesn’t mean I want to hear you drone on about The Lair of the White fucking Worm for an hour straight while I wonder why the actually cute boy I invited stood me up-“

“Sorry.” Says Alex automatically.

“It’s okay. You came back.”

“You know,” While it was nice to hear Cassie call him cute, Alex would rather like to change the subject now, “I read a story once called The Coming of the White Worm. It was a Lovecrafty sort of thing. There was a w-“

“Alex if you say ‘a white worm’ I am going to kick you.”

“No! Well,” At this point honesty compels Alex to admit that there was, in fact, a white worm in it. It had something of a starring role, even. And so his girlfriend, who grew up in the Host and was taught the importance of keeping your word, kicks him, however lightly, in the ribs.

“Ow! Right, that’s it, no more foot rubs for you until you learn to stop jabbing me with them-“

“Nooo!”

Negotiations are held. Once they’re done, and Alex has been thoroughly wrapped around Cassie’s little finger in exchange for some minor concessions, he remembers what he’d been talking about.

“A wizard!”

“What?”

“There was a wizard,” Alex says, lost in recollection, eyes off in the middle distance as his fingers trace circles in the fluffy fabric of Cassie’s bat-themed Halloween socks, “and he meets the white worm, which lives on an iceberg with some other wizards and zooms around the sea freezing people with magic. I don’t think it was actually a Lovecraft story, though…”

This conversation is entering dangerous territory. Because if Alex keeps talking about Lovecraftian monsters then he’s going to start wondering if this is one of the ones based, however loosely, on a magical reality. And that will lead him to think about the displays of entropic magic that relate to the concept of fimbulwinter, and to the theory of what dwells in dead universes, and to a few of those reports from his boss Mr. Howard’s early career that he’s been cleared for, which Pinky had obliquely made reference to and Alex hasn’t gotten round to really digging into yet, and from there it’s a very short jump to Cassie’s very specific recollection of what started the war which ended her people and her planet.

But thankfully he distracts himself. “…it was one of the other ones. Y’know. Frank whatshisface Long, August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith…Bob Howar…

“Wait a second-“