Of Olympian, Primordial, and Eldritch
The damage was significant. Our suits were cumbersome and useless without the power function, and our supply drones were on the ground. Worse than that, Hagrid's electric heart muscle took a powerful surge and he dropped like a stone. Or maybe a dump truck load of them. His breathing was labored as his feeble heart struggled to pump enough to keep Hagrid alive. Thankfully he slept while a technician searched his kit for solutions.
We gathered around the giant, worried. Beyond that, with the tragically unplanned for surge attack, we had gone from the superior force to the clear underdog. Our leaders had been so sure the enemy force was meeting us on the field that they overlooked that tactic. After all, it would have disabled both armies. Now they had equal footing, or better. The numbers were now on their side.
I took a quick minute to lay in a pocket of comfort, drifting on gentle waves on a salt cove. We were younger now, on holiday from the rigorous training, and I was surly. Dee constantly had the better of me, always scoring higher, forever performing better. I adored her, I always had and probably always would. But it rankled me all the same. Together we floated, bobbing on the primordial waters of Eldritch on the Bay. We were playing a game of moth.
The man squirmed in the ground. He'd been buried alive and was ripping at the crust with his claws and arms. He pushed with his feet, moving dirt aside, struggling to move and to breath. He was racing against time, fighting against death, fearing dishonor. Finally one hand was free, he felt the empty space, the cold bite of air against his bloody skin. He pushed, dug, pulled until his head broke the earth. It was almost like being born. He bled and he cried.
Not too far away another being broke free and hoisted itself from the hole. A woman, strong, bellowing with primal joy. She stood, shakily, then broke into a run. The man followed, panting. There was to be no rest. He was faster at first and caught up, but she grinned as he pulled even, and she winked then sprinted ahead.
There was a wall ahead, constructed of bricks too smooth to climb. The woman jumped onto the surface and tried to dig her sharp fingered claws into the mortared crevices, but she kept slipping and falling. The man knew he couldn't succeed when the woman failed. Instead he stopped short of the wall and stood very still.
The woman tried to climb again and again, and the man began to slightly quiver, then to shake, and finally violently convulse. His skin started to harden until he was growing the carapace of a stony beetle. The woman gave up her hopeless efforts, breathing hard, and watched the man with wonder.
He stopped shaking and ran his hands across his chitinous belly. He looked up at the woman, who nodded, then started shaking again. The woman blurred to his sight.
She did as the man had done, and soon her body had the smooth exoskeleton as well. The woman saw that the further shaking accomplished nothing, so she bypassed that option and began throwing herself against the wall once again. The man watched. Did she think she would now climb the wall like an insect? No, of course not. Her shell began to spider and crack.
The man gasped. No, she was getting ahead again. He put his hands up to face and willed them to harden, to grow, to sharpen. Then he plunged the claws into his carapace and dug it away from his body, piece by bloody piece. Each segment fell away with a fibrous gooey strand until the chunks lay in a pile, oozing.
The woman had gradually achieved the same results and together they stood naked, wet and slimy, shelled like peas from a pod. For a moment they did nothing. The goo weighed them down, made them weak and vulnerable. They stood, haggard, cold beside the wall. But steps away the fading sun still shone, though it was dipping quickly to the horizon. The man and the woman ran, struggled, to the sun beam and arched their bodies to the god of life. The corona sent a gentle finger forth and caressed their gentle bodies, sloughing off the ick and mucus until their furry bodies dried and fluffed heartily. The man and the woman drank the air, filling their lungs, and unfurled their wings. They looked like sails of stained glass, which threw forth a shaft of colored lights with the last ray of sunlight. The dark crept on.
Above, then, high on the steep wall, a beacon arose and signaled the warriors. The man and the woman gasped, then flapped their wings and flew. They didn't fly well. They were new at the moth game, and the man slammed hard against the wall. The woman smartly winged the opposite direction, but she only made circles in the dust. Gradually she lifted from the ground, beating down the gravity. But the man had bent his wing. He tried stretching, then smoothing it out, his tiny moth brain wouldn't give up.
The woman flew ever higher, until she reached the lamp. Unlike Icarus she touched the sun before she turned to ash and fell back to earth. She had won the game, though it be an effort of Olympian proportions, and bittersweet. The man didn't know what to feel, until a cat came along and swept his broken body into its cavernous maw with a hot, sticky tongue. Crunch was the last sound he felt.
Dee let the ocean do as it would, her hair fanned out in the dapped waves.
The pocket was warm, the pocket was deep. The pocket of respite gently pushed me out and I tumbled back to reality.
