A guy, a cat, a bird, and a turtle

[FS]

So, after many, many frustrated attempts at fleshing out a serious fantasy story I've been trying to realize on and off for a few years now, I decided, for a change of pace, to try something rather different. Inspired largely by the peculiar dreamworld (or skerry) in the Sandman volume "A Game of You" and partly by the videogame "The Longest Journey", I kicked off a semi-humorous fantasy story where a fairly ordinary guy gets drawn into another world, where technology is the stuff of legends while magic is fairly accepted practice. I'm trying to keep it contemporary in various ways, such as using present tense, a fairly loose writing style and references to present day stuff, cause I think it'll help me stay in the feel of this story.

I would be grateful if you'd take the time to read some of it and perhaps point out things you did or didn't like - maybe help me sort out any recurring problems I have in my writing English (believe me, to a foreigner, there are worlds of difference between posting in English, speaking it, and writing stories in it).

I need to write much more to come up with a definitive title, so right now it's more descriptive of the story than anything else.


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Opening: Blind dialogue
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“OK, so; how does it work?”
“Huh? How’m I supposed to know?”
“How… what do you mean? You’re the one who got it from the old man!”
“Wex, you know how it is. How he is. When I finally got his head unscrewed enough so he could give me what I needed, he disappeared.”
“You… drabslag. You slugfunnel! If you don’t know how to make this thing work, what the scrat are we doing out here?”
“Look, just calm down. I couldn’t wait around any longer, there were octalytes banging on his door. I’m lucky to have even escaped with it. Maybe it’s not even that hard to turn it on.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“Well, let’s see. I think you can twist the top half around…”
“Don’t break it, you fool!”
“I’m not breaking it! Gault save me, some trust you guys have in me. If I wasn’t…”
“Jynx…”
“What?”
“Something’s happening.”
“…”
“It’s starting to glow. Put it down. Put it in the ground. Quick!”
“…”
“…Jynx?”
“What, Beene?”
“…is this going to work?”
“Hell if I know. Take things one step at a time, that’s my motto. We’ll wait for it to toss someone over. That’s step one. What comes after that, we’ll deal with in its own time.”
“…”
“…Jynx?”
“Beene?”
“What if it’s unfriendly?”
“That’s a good question, Beene. Did anyone think to bring a sword?”
“…”
“Shit.”


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I
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As far as I know, there’s any given number of ways to rip something – or someone – from their world, and toss them into another. Of course not all of them work the way you might want them to – they might tear your subject to pieces upon arrival, or cause them to explode, or fling them into an entirely unwanted direction; over a cliff, into a random world, or maybe into outer space. It’s a subtle craft. Yup, there’s many ways to toss someone into another world, and not all of them work… and none of them are easy.
As Ben Davis’s luck would have it, the method used to toss him across the multiverse, at least worked.

Who’s Ben Davis? Ben is twenty-three years old and works at a video rental store that’s running on its last legs, because the owner’s nose for business has failed to pick up the urgent scent of DVDs. After wrestling his way through high school, Ben gave up on the process of education. He can do it – he just can’t commit to it. Ben has few family members left. He comes from a long line of only children. He only sees his parents on birthdays, and among the three of them, they have silently agreed this is the way they prefer it. Ben lives on his own and keeps to himself, in an apartment that is cheap and shows it. Here he spends his ample free time watching movie after movie, trying to take in all the genre has to offer, almost obsessively daring the worst of the worst so he can also absorb the best of the best. He has stopped trying to explain to himself why he has no friends, only acquaintances, and never a girlfriend, only female acquaintances. Between his scant education and the looming fate of the store, Ben’s future is extremely uncertain. He knows this, but refuses to deal with it until he can’t anymore. He does that with a lot of things.
He’s not a bad guy, though.. A little slow in some ways, pretty sharp in others. A treasure trove of trivial knowledge, but not the least bit street-smart. More familiar with kitsch than the classics. Timid, but friendly. Wiry, and not in great physical shape. Long face, dark hair that points in all directions in defiance of a hairdo. Let’s hope you’re getting a good picture of him, and see what is happening to him now.



Ben isn’t sure what he’s looking at. If he’d have to tell another person,
(and will he get the chance? Who knows?)
they would probably have a number of theories prepped and ready. A dream, of course. Either he somehow dozed off a the counter of the store,
(standing up? There’s no seats in here.)
or more likely, he’s still lying in his bed at home and dreaming that he woke up in the morning, went through the whole morning ritual, picked up a paper, went off to work, had a bad run-in with that notorious bitch Mrs. Trevors, the worst customer known to mankind… Huh. Not likely, he guesses. The rest of the world can live in tranquil harmony with their vivid, lucid dreams, but Ben’s dreams are always as insubstantial as a fantasy with your eyes closed.
A completely sudden lapse of insanity, then? That’s a kind of extreme theory. It’s not like he’s seeing the ghosts of his parents as undead fiends, or listening to voices from the radio telling him he must kill. This is just a chaotic, undefined mess of light and colors swirling and swelling at the other end of the store. Besides, while he can’t be sure it’s true, he thinks he’s read somewhere that going insane is a gradual process.
Maybe there’s some more exotic, but believable explanations. Maybe it’s some kind of weird, unusual electric discharge. God knows his boss isn’t prudent about maintenance,
(or fire prevention, for that matter. Maybe he shouldn’t keep standing around here like this)
maybe one of the ceiling fixtures just exploded
(Maybe he’s two seconds away from getting vaporized)
and now the energy’s all… building up in midair, or something.
OK. OK, probably not.
So… experimental weaponry? Yeah. The military has begun producing phasers, or quantum torpedoes, or stasis-mines or some other sci-fi thingamabob. Or probably terrorists. It’s all terrorists these days.
What else? Ugh… don’t tell me. Aliens? Hell, the experimental weapons thing was a stretch, but Ben would make a face at this if he wasn’t so damn…
Is he scared? He’s not sure. He’s warm, at least. Awfully warm. Tom, that’s his boss, he keeps the heating up too high all year long (and his heating bills will surely cause the store to go under several months earlier than otherwise, but he doesn’t seem to realize this), and Ben has gotten used to that, but it seems warmer now. Hot. His hands, fingers, forearms, face, neck: all the skin not covered by clothing is faintly tingling on the surface. Static electricity? So it is electrical, then?
Maybe minutes have gone by, during which Ben has stood absolutely still, one hand leaning on the counter and creating a sweaty patch, the other hanging limply by his side with an equally sweaty palm. His mouth is hanging open in the most literal sense that real life allows, and it is dry. His mind seems to simultaneously be drawing a blank, and twisting and turning like a rubix cube in the hands of a kid with ADD. It’s like he’s trying to see the subject of his thoughts from all angles, looking for a way in but not finding one.
He becomes aware of something significant; there is a customer standing off to the left, somewhere inbetween Ben and the… whatever it is. He must’ve come in while Ben was standing, frozen, at the counter. It’s a guy of about eighteen in an ill-fitting leather jacket, holding an empty tape box in each hand and reading the backs in an attempt to decide which one he’ll rent. From where he’s standing, Ben can easily read or recognize the spines of both boxes. One is 2001: A Space Odyssey, the other Boondock Saints. Ben would tell him to pick the latter.
The guy’s immersed in reading the boxes, and his back is turned towards the light swirl, but he can’t possibly be missing out on what’s happening here; that thing makes sound.
It’s one of the few things Ben has ever seen or heard that would constitute the use of the word indescribable. At best, he could call it ‘the sound of stirring clouds’. And vaguely, behind it, a sound like Velcro being torn from whatever it’s stuck to. Or maybe it’s not so much tearing as breaking, the sound of a tree that’s been chopped halfway through and is then pushed down… or maybe it’s both.
The guy doesn’t notice any of it even though he’s closer to the light than Ben, and for the first time, our storeclerk friend gets scared. It seems as if the idea that nobody was around to see this (or rather, to not see it) was more comforting to his sanity than this. Maybe those sudden fits of insanity aren’t as impossible as he thinks. Maybe he’s having a very slow stroke. Maybe he’s dying. He’s always thought that ‘tunnel of light’ stuff was a coincidental crock of shit, but for all he knows, he’s looking into it right now. Doesn’t look inviting, though.
His slow-fast train of thought seems to suddenly take a detour as the notion comes to him that it is high time to do something. Move, at the very least. Maybe go outside and get some fresh air. Tom would kill him if he’d see him leaving the store unattended, but Tom isn’t here right now. Fuck Tom. Going insane and / or dying is a little more important than this crappy, too-hot, soon-to-be-dead-end job.
He takes a step left that feels like a leap, but isn’t actually more than a shuffle, and blinks. A step to the right. As he does so, part of a metal wire mill holding this week’s employee’s picks moves between him and the light, and blots part of it out, but… the light has moved with him. In a straight line, it’s still the exact same distance from him, but when he moves… it moves with him. A brief, insane string of trivia flickers in and out of his thoughts; you put your left foot in, you put your left foot out. In, out, in, out, shake it all about. Everybody knows it’s called the Hokey Pokey, but for some reason the Brits insist it’s the Hokey Cokey.
This seems to be the last drop. This sets him in motion. That’s it, Ben tells himself. Enough of this dopey-standing-around-like-a-goddamn-horror-movie-extra-shit. And as he begins walking towards the entrance of the store, the light moves along with him, and begins to approach.
There’s only a few seconds as Ben stands at the end of the counter, gawking once again at the ball or hole of light and color cheerfully coming closer, moving through stacks and racks and boxes. Then he panics. And he turns. And he runs.
The guy in the leather jacket looks up at him sheepishly, then returns to the process of picking a movie. Ben runs without looking back. He crosses the romance section with the ten worn-down copies of Titanic, the sales section with its titles no sane person has ever heard of, the latest releases section.
He reaches the door with an incoherent, instinctual, childish thought drumming through his head like a mantra; if he looks back, it will be right behind him. Whether or not that will be true if he doesn’t look back is of no consequence; like a bogeyman or an axe-wielding maniac following you to the bathroom in the middle of the night, if he looks back, it will be right behind him.
Ben swings the door open and stares straight into the round, red face of Mrs. Trevors, her lips drawn tight and her eyes looking suspicious in preparation of trying to dodge yet another fine for turning in one of her musicals too late. Her eyebrows leap up as the door she was about to grasp is suddenly gone, and in its place, Ben has appeared. The box she’s holding – Ben thinks it might be the Sound of Music – drops from her hand as she flinches back, hits the store’s mat, and pops open. The tape jumps out, and even in midair Ben, who’s unwillingly developed an eye for this sort of thing, can see that she once again neglected to rewind it. He thinks how she wouldn’t – or rather, he wouldn’t have this problem if the store would just switch to DVDs, before he turns around.
And, of course, it is right in front of him.
He hears Mrs. Trevors’s bitching beginning and immediately fading as the light overtakes him, a mixed blessing of sorts. He feels his body heating up fast, as if he’s being propelled towards the sun. His senses become filled with light, he feels like his brain tumbles over backwards, and then he is gone.



He is in another state of sensory input now. Vaguely he thinks, because thoughts are like faint words from other rooms now, that this is what feeling in dreams is like; when you feel pain or pleasure or movement in dreams, this is what it feels like. But in dreams you don’t recognize those feelings as false, as clever tricks of your subconscious. Right now he does, and he thinks it might be because his mind and his body aren’t exactly in the same place anymore. There is the sensation, being true or false, of being pushed through something that constantly seems to change. At first it is silky and sticky but dry, like old cobwebs. Then it’s wet and membranous, like jell-o. Then it feels as if he’s a magnet being pushed towards another magnet of an opposing pole, and the force of it is sending a stinging, prickly feeling of pins and needles through his body – it would surely be painful if his body didn’t feel like such a distant concept now.
Then there is an indescribable rushing feeling, speed and pressure mounting all at once, and he realizes that whether or not he actually left his body, he’s been pushed back just now. His eyes are there, feeling like hot grapes, forced to stare into a whiteness that is like a bleak, clouded, spring morning sky. His ears are back too, registering a sound that suggests the very air inside them is being torn open like the seat of a pair of old jeans. His nose smells bitter ozone and a growing, sweet scent of grass and flowers; his tongue, though his mouth is closed, seems to taste sour smoke and copper. He realizes whatever’s happened to him is subsiding and giving way to the real world again, whatever that may be.
There are colorless silhouettes materializing before him, growing in detail as the light fades away. A stark blue, a cloudless sky, is becoming above him. Gentle, cool things tickle his ankles inside his pants legs, staining his socks with wetness, and before his head becomes clear enough to tell him this is not possible, he knows he is standing in the middle of a field of grass, wet with morning dew.
The sounds of the light begin to subside (and how can light sound so loud?), and he faintly discerns a voice that is strangely high-pitched, strangely screechy; he has never heard a human voice sound like that.
“…I can see it! I can see it coming through, Jynx!”
Another voice replies, this one sounding slightly nasal and, instantly, like a real wiseguy. And even through the haze, Ben can hear a twinge of anxiety in it.
“Don’t wet yourself, Wex. Let’s uh, give this thing some more room, yeah?”
The shadows, varying in size, but none of them very big, shuffle and shrink a bit. And then, in a great sigh, all the light is blown away and Ben feels like he’s crashing into the earth – as if he got used to weightlessness and is suddenly confronted with gravity once more.
He is indeed standing in the middle of a vast grassy field, a brighter green than Ben has ever seen in his life, drops of dew twinkling like little lights that rotate when he moves, a few reddish rocks and boulders strewn around almost purposefully. Above him the sky is a clear blue in which the sun shines uncontested, showering him with warmth that feels far more benevolent and natural than the damp, sweaty heat of the store. His socks are getting pretty wet. The fields stretch on far into the distance, curving in hills and dales as they approach the horizon, where a range of silvery-blue mountains crowned with mist seem to go ever on from left to right.
And five or six feet in front of Ben, standing knee-deep in the grass, are a crow, a cat and a brown turtle, eyeing him with a mixture of curiosity and nervousness.



What do you do when one moment you’re in a videstore, running away from a strange convergence of light that’s gaining on you, and the next one you’re in the light, and then you’re outside in a field, staring at three animals that don’t really look like animals, and that are staring back at you?
Screaming, or fainting, or both are optional, but probably not likely. This is weird, and plenty unsettling, but not really frightening.
As he stands there, his jaw agape but his lips nearly touching, his hands, trembling a little, slightly raised in weak, defensive claws, his legs feeling drunk, the cat seems to shrug off most of his anxiety, and starts to speak.
“So… that’s all? I mean, this is it? This is him?”
He looks at Ben, but he’s speaking to the… to the other animals. His tone is rather depreciative. And he’s not a cat, not really. He’s…anthropomorphic, or something. The face is less elegant than a cat’s, it’s more like a shrunken tiger’s face, its fur striped with blue-gray and white (rather like the mountains in the distance). The eyes are hellish green with flecks of yellow, the slits of pupil so thin, they’re almost gone in the open sun. And perhaps more of note, the cat is wearing a faded brown cassock that covers his ears and shadows his forehead. Most of his body is covered by the cloak, and Ben can’t see if the cat has a tail, but aside from somewhat stubby fingers, the hands look almost human. The major differences are of course his fur, a parting in each fingertip that no doubt hides a claw, and what look like de-evolving pads of smooth, soft pink flesh in the palm and on the inside of the phalanges. Seeing this detail makes Ben momentarily sure he has lost his mind.
“What’d you expect?” says a raspy, squeaky voice that Ben remembers hearing only seconds ago, and his eyes are drawn to the left of the cat, lower to the ground.
Perching there, in the grass, is what he initially took to be a crow. It’s shaped like one, but for one thing, its feathers aren’t really black. As it moves, and as Ben moves, the sunlight bounces off the bird’s feathers in a myriad of dark colors, flowing and twirling like oil. Its beak, however, is a blade of pure yellow.
“Hell, I don’t know,” the cat replies. “Somebody darker, maybe?”
“What, like a Jujumaag?” says the bird.
Ben feels like he’s coping rather well with this situation so far, but the thought that there’s a bird and a cat having a discussion in front of him makes him feel a little like laughing and a little like vomiting.
“No, no, I don’t mean his skin,” the cat continues, matter-of-factly. “I mean, aren’t guys like this supposed to look… what’s the word… grim? And be armed, or something? Apostrophus said they have small things, like sword handles, that spit jagged chunks of metal. He said that on the flip-side, everyone has at least one and some people have a lot of them. Gault! He doesn’t even have a knife!”
In his confusion, Ben’s thoughts have ceased to be entirely coherent; he no longer thinks in such specific terms as this is a dream or I have gone insane, he is merely aware that something is wrong, this all can’t be real. He is on the verge of saying something, addressing the dream or hallucination, but keeps reconsidering.
The cat walks around Ben in a circle that is wide enough to suggest some apprehension, but not nearly wide enough to suggest fear anymore. Ben follows him with his eyes as the cat checks him out from all sides, but is not yet sure if it’s wise to move his head.
“And where’s his cybertechnics?” the cat complains, like a man buying a second-hand car and pointing out all the negatives to get a better deal. “Fergus’s teeth! They all had a cybertechnics harness in Apostrophus’s drawings!” He seems to be getting pissed off, his voice rising.
“Calm down.” The bird says soberly. “The Flippant specifically picked him to toss over. That means something, right?”
“Excuse me…” Ben finally starts.
“Mean what, exactly?” the cat shoots back at the bird, irritably. “We know they can’t do magic on the flip-side, so why does it send us someone who’s unarmed?”
“Pardon me…” Ben tries.
“Obviously, it must have some other reason for picking him then.” says the bird. “Maybe he’s the best Mechologist there is over there.”
The cat finishes his circle and stands in front of Ben, paw-hands curled into fist on his sides, looking up at him with those fiery bright animal eyes. He slants his head and gives Ben a queer, investigative look.
“Well?” his tone suggests he’s speaking to a mentally retarded person. “Are you the best Mechologist one can find on the flip-side, guy?”
“What’s a…” Ben’s mouth feels dry. “…Mechologist.”
First the cat seems to determine whether or not he is joking, then he casts an impatient glance over his shoulder at the bird. When he replies to Ben, he sounds both exasperated and mad.
“You had best be joking. A Mechologist, son. Are you a Mechologist?”
Ben’s head is spinning, and he thinks he knows why. Everything is so goddamn clear, so goddamn sharp and bright. It feels unnatural and it’s making him dizzy. Whether these are dreams or delusions, he doesn’t want them to be this real. He wants them to be fuzzy so he can keep them at arm’s length. His sense of reality is being violated.
“Where… is this?” his voice is almost a whisper.
The cat throws up his hands and turns around, walking off angrily. The bird, however, hops forward and looks up at Ben.
“Sorry. We’re being rude. These are the Waterlight Fields, but that’s probably not what you mean. You’re on the… on our side. We call your side the flip-side, but we don’t have a name for this one. Your side probably does, though.”
Ben puts his hands over his face and rubs his forehead.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he says softly. “My side, your side?”
The bird hops up and turns to the brown turtle.
“I forget. Did Apostrophus ever say if they can flip on the other side?”
After a few seconds, the turtle answers in a very timid, barely audible voice: “I don’t think so. That they can flip, I mean. Without magic. Oh, unless they can do it with Mechology, though? But probably not.”
Ben removes his hands and briefly studies the turtle, who avoids his glance and seems extremely uncomfortable. Now that he’s actually looking at it, he sees that of all the animals, this one looks the least like what it looks the most like. Its block-shaped head only vaguely resembles that of a turtle, with small eyes on the top, tiny nostrils high up on the nose, and a blunt-looking beak. Its skin is mottled, light brown and leathery, creased and wrinkled around the neck. It’s wearing a cassock similar to the cat’s, so long only its toes stick out from under the robe. They are four toes per foot, akin to its four fingers per hand, and they are all short and stubby. Of the three, this guy looks the most harmless… but also the most alien. Ben can’t help but think of ET with a smaller head and a body less like a space penis. He feels his lips wanting to curl into a goofy grin and he presses them together; for no reason at all, it feels unwise to smile right now.
The bird hops around again to face Ben, and as it speaks, the humanity in its posture strikes him.
“OK then, let’s see… Do you want the long version, or the short version?”
Ben isn’t sure what it means, but his attention is lacking right now.
“Short.”
“Right. See, there’s these things… wait, let me find a good place to start. Think of your world, like a coin, right? Your world’s on one side of this coin. And my world – our world, is on the other side. Actually, there might be a whole lot of sides to this coin, I’m not sure of that. Anyway, if you know how to do it, and you have the means to do it, you can toss the coin and flip from one world to the other, see? Only it’s not really like you toss the coin, it’s more like you toss… well, you. Understand?”
Ben looks around glassily as if he’s not even heard the bird.
“Yeah, that’s gonna do it, Wex.” the cat says from a couple of yards away, his back turned to the others. “You even lost me around ‘like a coin’.”
The bird throws him an irritated look – again, strikingly human – and snorts. In the mean time, Ben remembers to pinch himself, and feels a very distinct, awake sting of pain.
“I don’t get any of this…” he says, and feels only a little relieved that his voice sounds more solid now.
The cat suddenly turns around and strides towards Ben.
“Look. Man. It’s really quite simple. You have stories where you’re from, right? Tales, books, myths, legends?”
“Yes.”
“OK. And you have those about people going to other worlds? Flipping over, as you will?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we do. Lots. Wizard of Oz. Alice in Wonderland.” A fragmentary thought strikes Ben and he utters it with the distinct impression that he’s suddenly got the situation figured out, just before he realizes that he doesn’t. “Are you the Cheshire Cat?”
The cat blinks at him. “What did you call me?”
“The point is,” the bird intervenes, “you’re in one of those stories now. Only it’s not a story.”
“Nor a dream.” the turtle adds softly. “I saw you pinch yourself. You shouldn’t do that. Um. Not that I’m telling you what you should do, but it doesn’t help.”
Ben glances down at the grass, considers its glistening dew for a moment, then decides it doesn’t matter and sinks down to the ground. He crosses his legs, Indian-fashion, and rubs his eyes with his elbows leaning on his knees.
“I’m not acknowledging you.” he finally says. “This is not real.”
“Gault help me, Wex, I’m gonna scratch his face open.” the cat growls.
“Back off,” the bird tells him. “Give the guy a moment. How do you think you’d do if you got tossed over to the other side with no warning?”
“But we’ll want to get moving soon,” the turtle interjects, softly but urgently. “Jynx is right about that. If there were Octalytes at Apostrophus’s home, they might pass through here eventua-“
“Aah!” Ben exclaims, catching the attention of the three animals again. He was leaning back, when he suddenly felt a hard tip poke the skin of his back. He turns around as far as he can and plucks something from the ground. “What’s this?”
“Whoa, whoa, careful with that.” The turtle, startled, lumbers forward and snags the object from Ben’s hands. “I mean, please. Sorry. It’s just that, this is important.”
The object appears to be a short metal rod with intricate patterns carved into it. There are two golden bands in the midsection, and a shard of faint blue crystal on the top. Inside the crystal there seems to be a hole, but it is brown and black with soot, like a burnt-out lightbulb. The turtle holds it solemnly, brushing off wet earth from the bottom side with his fingers.
“I don’t think it’s going to do anything anymore, Beene.” says the bird. “I think you could just use it once.”
“What is it?” Ben asks the bird, and then mentally adds You’re talking to the dream again. That’s not helpful. But the unrelenting clarity of this dream or illusion is wearing on him. He wonders if the crossing point of going insane is perhaps simply accepting the delusions that your subconscious is offering you.
“It’s a Flippant.” the bird replies, seeming faintly pleased that Ben has temporarily stopped considering them an illusion. “Also called Tosser, Flipstick or Springkey. They’re really hard to make, and sorcerers use them to bring things or people over from your side.”
“That’s what… brought me over?” A frightening thought hovers at the edge of Ben’s mind, but he can’t quite grab on to it.
The bird nods, a very weird gesture to see.
“Is it broken?”
“Just burned out.” the bird replies. “They only work once.”
“Then,” The question crashes in on him, and in the fear it bestows upon him he understands that he has accepted this world and these creatures as real. “Then how am I going to get back?”
Both the bird and the turtle look up at him in a way that seems to suggest this thought never even crossed their minds. The awkward silence is broken by the cat, who is pacing back and forth over the field.
“Later! We worry about that later, Gault!” The cat walks up to them again and stands before Ben. “Could you stop thinking about yourself for five seconds and… what’s your name, anyway?”
The suddenness of the question startles an immediate answer out of him. “Ben. Davis.”
The cat nods with one eyebrow raised ironically. “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. So pleased to meet you, Ben Davis. I am Jynx Jumyinia, just call me Jynx. This here’s Wex,” he says, waving a hand at the bird, “she’s the brains behind this operation.”
“Wescaphelia, in full.” the bird corrects. “Jynx was never big on formalities.”
The cat continues, as if uninterrupted. “And the gentleman standing over there is Beene St. Netherdorf.” He waves his other hand at the turtle, who is studying his toes. “You are Ben Davis, our Mechologist –“
“I don’t know what that –“
“ –and we’re going to need you to take care of our problem. Now, first question: where is your cybertechnics?”
The cat has his paws in his sides again, eyeing Ben with impatience.
Ben sighs deeply. “Look. Cat. Jynx. I don’t know what you mean by cybertechnics.”
Before the cat can reply, the bird – Wex – chides in: “You might have a different word for it on your side. It’s supposed to be this black suit, kind of like knight’s armor, with glowing yellow dots and lines on it. Wires and leds, I think. Sometimes it has spikes. Or a cannon on the arm or shoulder. Does that sound familiar?”
“What it sounds like is science fic –“ Ben halts, feeling like that thought is significant. “Science… fiction.”
“Sinesfiction?” Wex says unsurely, pronouncing it as a single word. “Does that mean you know what we’re talking about?”
Ben scratches his head, thinks for a moment, and says: “No, and… yes. The stories you were talking about earlier, we have them about many things… And science fiction is… are… stories about the future and technology that doesn’t exist yet, like cybernetics and cyborgs… cybertechnics, I guess.”
“What is he talking about?” Jynx, the cat, says confusedly. “Stories about cybertechnics? Apostrophus never said they were just stories!”
“How come I can understand you?” Ben suddenly asks.
Jynx glances left and right. “Understand us? I’m not following you.”
“I mean, what language are you speaking?”
The cat looks flabbergasted. “English. And so are you. Look, no offence, but do you qualify as a particularly slow person on your side? Cause, if you’re a Mechology genius on the flip-side, I don’t think I want to know what everyone else is like.”
At this, Ben is overtaken by an abrupt need to snicker. The sound is very alien and slightly frightening to his own ears.
“Let’s just get going.” Wex says a little anxiously. “We’re sitting ducks out here, and if we’re going to keep arguing till everybody’s satisfied, we’re all going to find out what octalyte venom tastes like before long.”
In response, the turtle, Beene, casts some frightful glances around the area, and hobbles around Ben. Ben feels no apprehension or fear or disgust as the creature gets so near to him – of the three, it seems the most harmless. Beene examines the hole in the ground where the Flippant stood, and starts patting and stomping the ground around it softly to close it.
Jynx stands with his arms crossed, sighs, and nods.
“Alright. This isn’t getting us anywhere, anyway.”
With a flutter of wings, Wex perches on Jynx’s shoulder, and they begin walking off. Three seconds later, they halt and turn around to look at Ben, who is still sitting cross-legged in the grass. He watches them warily over his shoulder.
“Are you coming already?” Jynx asks sharply.
“Um…” Ben honestly doesn’t know what to answer. “…no.” he finally decides. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
There is no valid reason to rationalize it, but having been torn from his own world and tossed into another, if that is really what happened, Ben thinks that leaving the spot where he arrived could make it impossible for him to go back.
More impossible than it already is? a nagging voice in the back of his head asks.
“Tell you what.” Jynx says. “We’ll answer one more of your questions, and then you decide whether you want to stay here or not.”
“OK. How am I supp-“
“No. The question you may ask us is, ‘what are octalytes?’ Beene, fill him in.”
Beene looks up and glances at Jynx, not understanding.
“Well, um, uh. They’re about as tall as you are, Mr. Davis, if they stretch their legs, I guess. And um, their bodies are black or gray, sometimes with spots. The ones you really want to watch out for have a red stripe, those are uh, those are nasty. Their legs are kind of pink and fleshy, with sharp tips, like fingernails… Oh, they can stick to walls and ceilings, and make small webs, and they have three huge jaws to shoot you full of poison. The ones with the red stripes though, the females, they can just uh, spit the poison at you from afar. And I think the adult ones can fly. With wings.”
There is a moment of silence among them. Ben’s eyes have grown a little wider.
“Tell him what happens when they bite you, Beene.” says Jynx, still looking at Ben.
“Oh, um. When they bite, they shoot poison in you. Well, obviously. Yes. The poison turns your skin dry and hard, like a crust, and it turns all your innards to fluid. So they can drink you. Also, the poison works on your brain so you stay conscious until you, well, die. It’s really quite unpleasant. Really.” Beene shivers unselfconsciously.
“Do you want to stay here and meet them?” Jynx asks, his arms crossed again.
“I…” Ben swallows. “I think that’s probably not a good idea.”
He stands up, beating some of the dew, dirt, and grass off the seat and legs of his pants, and rushes after the animals, who have already resumed their trot. From where he stands Ben can’t see it, but Jynx is smiling smugly.
As he catches up with the animals, Ben asks:
“Beene… do octalytes look anything like spiders?”
The turtle considers it, then softly nods.
“Hm… Yes. I mean, now that you mention it, I guess they do, a little.”
“Spiders.” Ben says, looking ahead, shivering unselfconsciously.

[center:693c4f7544]Continued, to be.[/center:693c4f7544]

[MLE]

Jesus Christ, that's long.

i'll read it when i get back from the store.

[MLE]

that's a pretty awesome story. and not the same as every other science fiction story i've read, too. i like your ideas better than most of them. if you can keep up this type of writing for a book's worth, you'll be on par with the narnia series, in my opinion.

i like it, and i'd like to see more.

[FS]

Thanks! So far most of the (unfinished) stories I've tried to write are six or seven pages, and then I get stuck or lose interest. It probably would be good practice to try and write some short stories, but I never seem to get ideas short enough to make a complete story out of that's only a few pages long.

Though I did write a lot of essays in school as a kid. Thrilling stories like one where I magically turn myself into a monkey, and heartfelt dramas like the story of how my first dog died.

[MLE]

[glowbelly]

i likey too. there's a couple of grammar things going on that are less than smooth, but i think you've got a really good grasp of writing metaphors and the like in english.

[hawaiian mage]

That's good shit there. Impressed me for it being on the internet and all... I'm not personally sure if I would want to read an entire book with this premisis. Like, the writting isn't bad at all but the it was sort of wearing on my by the end. (that might have just been the scenery though, actually... trying to concentrate while in a bright sunny place isn't my forte. If that's the case it might be fine for someone else.)

So any way, here's the part where I nitpick without restraint.

drabslag. You slugfunnel!... what the scrat

Reading the sentance that had these words almost turned me off from reading the rest. It just seems entirely obvious they were made up, and from where I stand it didn't seem like much thought went into them. I mean, slugfunnel? Holy christ. You might as well just say "You skitleeboo!" or "What the poom!?" Make the curses more believable, or just use normal ones. Don't be afriad to use both made up and normal ones either, that might be an interesting effect.

Another voice replies, this one sounding slightly nasal and, instantly, like a real wiseguy

The use of the word "wiseguy" to describe him was way to much of a short cut, and it makes the character seem more fabricated to label him like that. Say he sounded sarcastic or witty, but don't say "wiseguy."

And five or six feet in front of Ben, standing knee-deep in the grass, are a crow, a cat and a brown turtle, eyeing him with a mixture of curiosity and nervousness.

Who's knee deep in the grass? The animals or ben? I couldn't really tell. And after that I suddenly had the nagging thought of "How big are these animals?" I assumed they were the size of their flip-side equivilents, but at times I couldn't tell. Maybe make that clear somehow.

Ben can’t help but think of ET with a smaller head and a body less like a space penis

Admittedly, saying ET looked like a space penis was funny, but it's just a random culture reference put in for almost no reason. Maybe that's the way Ben pictures it, but the description still relies upon the assumption the reader knows who ET is. I would cut out this sentance with someing more general about just aliens. (Or, alternativly, use this type of reference more often, creating a more targetted audience and making it apparent that this is just the way Ben thinks.)

“Look. Man. It’s really quite simple. You have stories where you’re from, right? Tales, books, myths, legends?” “Yes.” “OK. And you have those about people going to other worlds? Flipping over, as you will?” “Yeah. Yeah, we do. Lots. Wizard of Oz. Alice in Wonderland.”

The dialogue around here seems somewhat contrived. Like another writing short cut. Jynx somehow knows we have stories about people going to other worlds. Everywhere else in the story he doesn't know shit about Ben or his world. Asking about stories was just to effective a strategy to be used by a believable character. Also, the way Ben responds is counterintuitive to the momentum he's built of disbelief. The exchange of ideas happens too fast and effectivly here, and threw off my reading a bit.

Besides all that this seems like a damn decent story.

I had a question though. Did you come up with the idea of magic being normal and technology being a lost art yourself, or was that part of the "inspired by" you mentioned at the beggining? I ask becuase I came up with the same idea and was sort of working out a videogame RPG premises that had that same ironic twist. I thought I was being innovative and completely original with that one... once again however, I realize that originality died out around the 18th century and since then it's all remakes.

[FS]

Nitpick away. I found most of this very insightful, even though I felt my face flush here and there as I read it.

Originally Posted by hawaiian mage

I'm not personally sure if I would want to read an entire book with this premisis. Like, the writting isn't bad at all but the it was sort of wearing on my by the end. (that might have just been the scenery though, actually... trying to concentrate while in a bright sunny place isn't my forte. If that's the case it might be fine for someone else.)

I've only added scraps to the story since I posted this part, but the 'beautiful day' scenery was mostly there to establish the completely different place Ben found himself in. From here on they're on the move, and end up in much different conditions.

Reading the sentance that had these words almost turned me off from reading the rest. It just seems entirely obvious they were made up, and from where I stand it didn't seem like much thought went into them. I mean, slugfunnel? Holy christ. You might as well just say "You skitleeboo!" or "What the poom!?" Make the curses more believable, or just use normal ones. Don't be afriad to use both made up and normal ones either, that might be an interesting effect.

Believe me, that's one bit of the story that I've re-written dozens of times. Problem is that most of the time when I use regular swearing or namecalling in a story, it ends up feeling way too forced. Not that this doesn't, when I think about it. So yeah, I think I'll eventually change that into something less stand-outish.

The use of the word "wiseguy" to describe him was way to much of a short cut, and it makes the character seem more fabricated to label him like that. Say he sounded sarcastic or witty, but don't say "wiseguy."

Agreed, needs more subtlety. It's bad form to try and tell they're supposed to think of the characters.

Who's knee deep in the grass? The animals or ben? I couldn't really tell. And after that I suddenly had the nagging thought of "How big are these animals?" I assumed they were the size of their flip-side equivilents, but at times I couldn't tell. Maybe make that clear somehow.

I guess that's a mistake in sentence structure. The grass isn't unusually high - it's the animals that are standing knee-deep in it.

Admittedly, saying ET looked like a space penis was funny, but it's just a random culture reference put in for almost no reason. Maybe that's the way Ben pictures it, but the description still relies upon the assumption the reader knows who ET is. I would cut out this sentance with someing more general about just aliens. (Or, alternativly, use this type of reference more often, creating a more targetted audience and making it apparent that this is just the way Ben thinks.)

In retrospect, it's an out of place joke. I might swap that with "bald space monkey" or something later. Still, I think ET's a fairly contemporary cultural icon, and that one could probably get away with including him, though more helpful context might be useful.

The dialogue around here seems somewhat contrived. Like another writing short cut. Jynx somehow knows we have stories about people going to other worlds. Everywhere else in the story he doesn't know shit about Ben or his world. Asking about stories was just to effective a strategy to be used by a believable character. Also, the way Ben responds is counterintuitive to the momentum he's built of disbelief. The exchange of ideas happens too fast and effectivly here, and threw off my reading a bit.

Actually, the idea here was that Jynx means to ask, almost rhetorically, that Ben's "people" have stories in their world just like they do in Jynx's. He's assuming they do, because they're rather common things. I'm not sure what I was going for with Ben's response, but I think I neglected a line here explaining that he's just kind of shocked to a point where his mind's working and replying on auto pilot. I'll put some more thought into that later.

I had a question though. Did you come up with the idea of magic being normal and technology being a lost art yourself, or was that part of the "inspired by" you mentioned at the beggining? I ask becuase I came up with the same idea and was sort of working out a videogame RPG premises that had that same ironic twist. I thought I was being innovative and completely original with that one... once again however, I realize that originality died out around the 18th century and since then it's all remakes.

The idea came from a PC adventure game called the Longest Journey, in which a woman living in a slightly sci-fi future time discovers that there's kind of a 'twin' world to Earth, where instead of technology there's magic, and mythical creatures. On the magical world, called Arcadia, they're aware of the existence of the other side (called "Stark" by them), but the opposite isn't true. Both worlds exist in a balance that's disrupted, and the woman has to travel back and forth between both sides to fix the balance.

You can see there's strong resemblances between that idea and mine, but I felt the concept of opposites wasn't explored much in the game. The characters in Arcadia, for the most part, weren't very interested in technology, and in the end it turned more into a Zelda-like "get the element from each race" mission.

In my version, both 'sides' kind of mirror each other, in that our more exotic sci-fi is their fairytale, and both sides are mostly wrong in their storytelling.

I hate when I feel I come up with something brand new and then find out someone already thought of it, or someone does in time (ie, some time before Warcraft 3 showed up, I thought what a cool name "Night Elves" was), but yeah, no sense in getting bothered about it.

[FS]

I'm just going to add what I've added to the story since. I left it alone for some longer periods of time, but luckily it's still easy as pie to pick up where I left off. Mage, I've marked some of the stuff you mentioned so I'll remember it when I make a second draft - should this first draft get finished. Thanks to you who take a moment to check this story out and much more thanks if you're willing to leave your feelings on it.

P.S. it's unfortunate that I can't seem to insert tabs here, as I've been using them plenty.

[center:bb353cc8e1]---------------[/center:bb353cc8e1]

They walk downhill at a steady pace for the next twenty minutes or so, none of them talking. Jynx still seems to be very irritable about the situation. Ben has, perhaps consciously, temporarily decided to focus his attention on his surroundings. The grass at his feet is becoming increasingly mixed up with wild growths of plants and flowers. They look fairly normal to Ben, though he couldn’t name them even if they were… in his own world. Above, there’s still not a cloud in the sky, and at the foot of the hill, there’s a dense forest stretching out to the far horizon.
Surrounded by only the calm sounds of a soft breeze blowing through the grass and the chirping of crickets (or this world’s equivalent of them), Ben starts to feel that the silence among them is turning the air into something too heavy to comfortably breathe.
“Uh… Where are we going, exactly?”
Jynx gives no response to imply he’s heard Ben, but Beene looks up from the ground, and Wex suddenly spreads her wings and briefly flutters into the air, landing on Ben’s right shoulder. He feels pretty uncomfortable by this, not so much because he hasn’t completely shrugged off his apprehension of these creatures, but because his human instincts are still telling him that a bird this size might bury its beak in your eye socket as soon as look at you. He tries to hide his discomfort, as the bird has been the friendliest of the three animals so far.
“To be honest, we’re not entirely sure.” Wex says. “Once we’re out of the forest, we’ll have to ask someone for directions.”
“I… I don’t mean to be rude, but if you don’t even know where we’re going, why did you bring me here? What am I supposed to do?”
“That’s not rude.” Wex replies cheerfully. “We need you to set the sun and the moon back in motion. I’m gonna fly ahead and make sure everything’s clear.”
And before Ben can ask any more, the bird lightly pushes herself off his shoulder and flies out into the forest, oily rainbows glistening on her wings until she disappears among the trees.
Ben stands still for a moment, gaping a little while trying to make sense of the bird’s words. Ahead, Beene and Jynx are entering the forest as well, unaware that Ben is lagging behind.
Suddenly, a distinctly high-pitched voice chirps something unintelligible from out of the grass.
Ben’s attention shoots to the left, but there is nothing other than trees, grass and flowers. Before he can decide it was just a funny-sounding cricket, there’s another chirp, though this time what it’s saying seems to be different.
Following his hearing, Ben softly treads through the grass, into a bed of yellow, horn-shaped flowers. For all he knows, he’s looking for a tiny gnome or fairy. It doesn’t seem a far stretch in this world.
“Ass!”
Below. To the right. Not far from his foot. Ben leans over.
“Shithead!”
Behind him. He spins around, but sees nothing among the plants.
“Fuck! Fuckface!”
Ben spins around again as he hears the words, and a notion strikes him that’s so absurd, his vision briefly fills with dark red spots as if he’s going to faint. He presses his palms against his temples to stay conscious.
The flowers are talking to him.
One of them turns its yellow horn towards Ben, and as it sharply tells him “Cocksucker!”, the rim of the horn actually forms the words, weakly, in a crude impression of a mouth. Inside it, Ben can see tiny ridges of sharp tips that look like teeth, running in a straight line from the edge of the horn to the inside.
More and more of the flowers begin to speak, surrounding Ben with chirped insults and swears, some of which appear to be badly pieced together, like Holeshit and Facecock. Ben is just about to try and say something back to them, when a small hand closes on his upper right leg.
With a cry of surprise he leaps forward and turns, crushing one of the flowers underfoot. It utters a short, soft croak.
Standing just at the edge of the flowerbed is Jynx. A little further behind him is Beene, who seems even more reluctant to be near the flowers. Both are panting, as if they just came running out of the forest to get him.
“What is your problem?” Jynx says exhaustedly, but with a hint of fear. He urgently beckons Ben with his paws. “Get out of there, now!”
Not really understanding, but reading both animals’ body language well enough, Ben makes his way out of the flowerbed with several leaps. The three of them hurriedly walk away from the madly chirping flowers, heading into the shadows of the forest.
“I’m sorry, I… I got distracted.” Ben says to Jynx.
“No shit you got distracted. What were you thinking? ‘Gee, these flowers are talking to me, I’d better investigate?’” the cat replies.
“What are they?”
“Swearblossoms.” Beene says in an unsteady voice. “They don’t know what they’re saying, they’re just flowers after all. They’re just doing what nature made them for – attracting nearby animals for food.”
Ben swallows and looks over his shoulder. In the distance he can still hear a few chirps, but they’re rapidly dying out. “They eat… meat?”
“Don’t be silly.” Jynx says. “They lure animals over so predators can catch them off guard.”
“Oh.” Ben says, and utters a soft sigh.
Jynx reaches up and scratches his ear under the cowl. “No, they just eat the bones.”



Ben soon loses any sensation of time as they continue walking through the forest. There is no easy path to walk, and they frequently have to climb over fallen trees or wade through bushes. Occasionally, Wex returns to them to say there is nothing out of the ordinary ahead, before flying off again.
While the sun is undoubtedly still shining bright and hot, it’s pleasantly cool and dark under the cover of the trees. For a while Ben jumps at any and every sound, until he begins to accept that there are quite normal squirrels and birds that don’t talk in this world too. A few times he attempts to initiate conversation with Jynx or Beene, but both brush him off and seem intent on keeping relatively silent.
The local plant life certainly looks normal, but Ben has never seen such wild, unbridled growth in his life. Of course he’s seen forests, on a few holiday trips and family visits, but only now does he realize how much you could see the human hand at work in them.
The temperature seems to drop rapidly as they move deeper into the forest. In fact, Ben is starting to feel downright chilly. All he had on when he came into this world is a pair of fading black jeans and his work shirt, imprinted with the store’s name and logo. The dew hasn’t entirely dried out of his pants yet, and is starting to turn his ass into a block of ice.
He begins hearing the swelling sound of running water ahead. When Wex comes back, she informs them that there’s a creek nearby where they could rest for a while. Ben feels relieved.
They reach a small clearing under a huge tree, its roots coiling and twisting around each other, forming an excellent place to sit down. The tree looks extremely old, as does the creek running next to it, which has etched itself a swirling path through the forest ground. Big rocks (or small boulders? Ben thinks pointlessly) line its banks, smoothed by the wildly rushing water. The sound is loud, but Ben also finds it soothing. In fact, he wouldn’t mind lying down for a few, if he wasn’t so sure that the cat would probably make fun of him if he suggested it.
Having circled around the area for a while, Wex returns and lands on one of the higher tree roots.
“We’re clear.” she says. “Let’s take a moment to rest here.” Then, looking at Ben: “And maybe talk some more.”
Beene and Jynx seat themselves against the tree, and Been produces a little pouch of rough, faded blue fabric from inside his robe.
“Should we… strike up a fire?” Ben inquires, relishing the idea of getting a little warm.
“In the middle of the forest? While we’re being pursued? Are you nuts?” Jynx asks, but he doesn’t look at Ben as he says it – it’s more like he’s accepted that Ben is just naturally dull-witted.
Sighing, Ben sits down. Beene reaches deeply into the pouch, as if he’s trying to pick something from the bottom, and finally draws out a chunk of turbid, red crystal, almost twice the size of Ben’s fist. As Beene places it on the ground before them, Ben blinks at what he just saw – there’s no way an object that size could’ve come from such a small pouch.
The crystal begins to glow softly, bathing their nearest surroundings in a dull red hue. Remarkably, Ben starts feeling himself warm up, but it’s as if the feeling is coming from inside him rather than from outside.
“Mmm. That’s better.” says Beene, and reaches into the pouch again.
In the following moments, he takes out a small tea light, a set of four artfully painted cups, and a matching, adorable little teapot. Ben looks away and shakes his head.
Humming softly, Beene takes the teapot to the creek and draws water, then returns and puts the pot on the tea light. Just before he does so, Ben sees that instead of a candle, the tea light has another of those red crystals put into it, this one carved into a flat, cylindrical shape.
The water begins to steam quickly, and Beene shakes some tealeaves into the pot from the same blue pouch. Finally, he pours four cups and offers one to Jynx. Looking like he’s feeling comfortable for the first time since Ben met him, the turtle holds out a cup to Ben.
“Tea?” he asks, smiling humbly.
“Uh… thanks.” Ben replies as he accepts the steaming little cup.
Beene puts the third cup on the ground near Wex, who promptly hops up to it and – somehow, without lips – starts blowing in it, and finally sits down to take the last cup.
Ben sniffs the tea – it smells strong, kind of spicy.
“You wouldn’t happen to have sugar, would you?” he cautiously asks Beene, who then looks uncertainly at the others. Jynx cocks an eyebrow. “Ah… never mind.” Ben says, and takes a quick sip. The tea doesn’t taste particularly good, but it tastes like it might be good for him, and at least it’s nice and hot. They all sit in silence, colored red by the light of the crystal, listening to the rushing of the creek and drinking their tea. Wex keeps darting her beak into the cup, looking like a very ordinary bird drinking from a very ordinary cup of water.
Time passes, and Ben begins feeling very relaxed. It might be the fact that he’s sitting down and that he’s warm, but he suspects the tea has something to do with it as well.
“Now.” Wex says, as she, as the last one, finishes her tea. “We need to talk.”
“I suppose we do.” replies Ben, leaning back against the tree. He’s starting to feel like all this weirdness is no longer so important. He’ll be content if he can just sit here, warm and comfortable.
“So, um. Where do we start?” Beene asks Wex.
“Maybe Ben can tell us a little about where he’s from?” Wex suggested. “It might clear up how he can help us.”
“Sure.” Ben says softly, closing his eyes. “What do you want to know?”
“What’s up with that sigil on your clothes?” Jynx immediately inquires.
Ben opens his eyes again. “What? Sig… Oh, you mean my shirt? Nothing, it’s just name of the store I work for.”
Jynx squints his eyes and haltingly reads out the name. “Stand-by Video Rental? What kind of store is it? Does it sell food?” Suddenly, he looks up as if something significant occurs to him. “Or Mechological parts?”
“No, no.” Ben replies tiredly, not wanting to get back on the topic of ‘Mechology’ right now. “It sells… how do I explain this…” He sits up a little, hands resting on his knees. “Do you have plays over here?”
Beene and Wex share a glance, and Jynx frowns a little. “Plays?” he asks. “Do you mean like, with actors telling a story, or-“
“Yeah, yes, exactly. Stories being acted out. Well, see, on our side, we’ve managed to… put plays in a box, sort of. And if you have a box like that, you can see the play whenever you want. The store where I work has all sorts of those boxes, and for a little money, people can take a box home to watch it. After a while, they have to bring it back.”
Ben sits back again comfortably, feeling clever for explaining things like this. But just as he closes his eyes again, he hears Jynx’s self-assured voice again.
“That doesn’t make any sense. Buying it only for a while? What if someone doesn’t bring them back?”
“Uh… maybe they’re cursed?” Beene suggests. “Oh wait, no. No magic. Never mind. Sorry.”
“And what about the actors? Are they just stuck in those boxes forever, performing their plays over and over again?”
“No, that’s not…” Ben starts, annoyed and sleepy. “You don’t understand. In my world…” he trails off, and finishes with “Never mind. It’s not important.”
He hears Jynx snort lightly. Not wanting to have to do anymore talking, Ben invites Wex: “So tell me, why did you really bring me over here? You said something at the edge of the forest, but it didn’t make any sense.”
There is silence for a moment. Ben imagines he can almost hear the animals looking at one another, maybe deciding who can best tell the story, or what they should – or shouldn’t – tell him. Finally, Wex begins.
“It’s because of something that happened almost a year ago. There was… an earthquake. A very bad one. As far as we can tell, it was felt nearly everywhere, and it did a lot of damage. Entire cities were cracked open like eggs, villages were buried. There were a lot of-“ she pauses briefly, and Ben doesn’t realize until several seconds after what she says next that her voice has cracked a little. “Deaths.”
She lingers on a pause, then continues. “Of course, time passed, the damage was repaired where possible, people picked up their lives again. But everyone could feel something had changed, they just couldn’t lay their finger on it… except for a few.
“It took a few months before it was strong enough that we could notice, and say for sure. People around us wouldn’t believe it, told us we were anything from being foolish to going mad… but when we found out others had noticed as well, we knew. We knew we were right. The sun and the moon were slowing down.”
Ben’s eyes pop open, and he slowly sits up. The animals are eyeing him curiously, as if assessing if he believes them.
He struggles for something to say, finally managing only a frowning “…What?”
As if just waiting for Ben to give him an opening, Jynx immediately starts: “Oh, don’t you give us this too! It’s-“
“Jynx.” Wex says abruptly, and he stops. Then, turning to Ben again, she repeats: “The sun and the moon are slowing down. The days are growing longer and hotter, the nights longer and colder. If we’d have to make a guess, we would say what was once a normal, late summer day now lasts two… maybe two and a half days. But whatever is happening, is happening faster. Dawn and dusk are drifting apart at a rapid pace.”
Ben is reminded of what he’s read about Pole days, where the day and night both last six months.
“But how can people not notice something like that?”
“Lots of reasons.” Jynx says, sounding more serious – and more bitter – than Ben has heard him before. “There’s people who worship the sun or the moon, or both, and see questions as blasphemy. But most of them are just being stubborn. Their leaders insist there’s a sickness going around that’s to blame for people being tired long before the end of the day. They refuse to realize it because it’s too big a thing for them to realize.”
“Maybe their biological clocks are adjusting.” Ben murmurs, mostly to himself.
Jynx seems about to ask him what he’s talking about when Wex says: “But it’s already becoming too big to ignore. More people are understanding what’s going on every-“ she pauses, snorts, and then finishes “Every day.”
Interested to a point where he’s forgotten he was brought here to fix this problem, Ben inquires: “Do you know what’s causing it?”
Wex tilts her head slightly. “We think we do. Several of us, among which we three, met with a man. His name is Apostrophus. He’s… kind of a wizard. I think. He knows a great many things, but he’s very absent-minded most of the time. Or just confused.”
“What Wex is trying to say is, he’s whacked out of his gourd.” Jynx interjects.
“Jynx!” Wex croaks, genuinely shocked. “He’s not mad. Not really. Anyway, he told us a lot of things that answered… some of our questions.”
“Now she’s trying to say that he went on and on about a thousand different topics, like we weren’t even there.” says Jynx
Ignoring him, she goes on: “Apostrophus is a treasure trove of myths. He knows more of them than anyone. Myths about your world. Where men live in peace with machines, and they fight their wars with men and animals of metal that breathe fire. And they ride among the stars in the bodies of huge birds.”
Ben momentarily means to remind her about science fiction, then remembers that will probably get the Mechology debate started again, and decides against it.
“Apostrophus told us many myths we’d never heard before, but the point is – he told us they weren’t myths. He’d seen this world that we told our children stories about when they lay in bed. He’d made drawings of the people that lived there, your people. He told us that you would be able to help us.”
Wanting to direct this conversation away from the idea that he can help these creatures again, Ben asks: “But did he tell you why the sun and the moon are… are slowing down?”
“Yes.” Wex replies. “There is one myth we know, that is very old. All of us were told it when we were children, different versions of it, but they all boil down to the same point. Somewhere in this world, there is a great machine, that is commonly called the Realmheart. It’s a machine that directs the sun and the moon… and there’s something wrong with it.”
Ben thinks this over. It all seems rather silly, and part of it strikes him as very naïve, but he can’t lay his finger on it… something about rotation… it’s hard to think right now.
“That’s what we’re looking for? The machine?” he asks.
“Yes.” Wex answers. “Only…”
“Only you don’t know where it is.” Ben finishes for her, making no effort to hide his sarcasm.
“No.” the bird admits. “But Apostrophus told us it exists. And he thought… maybe, that you would know…”
“I don’t know where it is.” Ben snaps back. He doesn’t want to snap, but he feels tired, and increasingly pissed off at the fact that these creatures who ripped him from his own world don’t even seem to know what they’re doing. “Of course I don’t know where it is, because I don’t know what it is, and I didn’t even know this world existed until a couple of hours ago.”
“Hey, don’t start!” Jynx says, agitated. “It’s not our fault you’re not the Mechologist we expected…”
“You don’t understand, do you?” Ben says, sitting up. His voice is becoming louder. “Your precious Apostle guy was wrong. Yes, my world is real, but it’s not what your myths and stories make it out to be. They’re just stories. I’m not a Mechologist because Mechologists don’t exist, not in my world and not in yours! I can’t help you guys and now I’m stuck here!”
They are silent then. Jynx looks angry, Wex looks shocked, Beene looks at his feet.
“Apostrophus.” the turtle corrects Ben, almost inaudibly. Then: “Oh-oh – I hear something.”
It’s such a sudden change of subject that Ben doesn’t immediately understand, but the other two cock their heads and listen.
“Two.” Beene whispers. “Coming from the south. On the ground.”
“We can’t outrun them here.” Jynx says seriously. “Up the tree then?”
“Won’t they see us? Or smell us?” Wex asks.
“Uh, no. Not with the cloaks.” replies Beene. “That reminds me – “
He again draws out the blue pouch and reaches in it, then pulls out something that looks like a rolled up, brown blanket. He tosses it casually at Ben, who catches it.
“What’s this?” Ben asks sluggishly.
“Put it on.” Jynx grumbles. “They won’t see you.”
If he wasn’t so tired, he would surely ask a couple more questions before doing so, but right now Ben decides to just follow orders. He unrolls the fabric and finds it to be a cloak of the same material as the ones Beene and Jynx are wearing. This one, however, is far bigger. In fact, it looks kind of big even for Ben. But he slips into it anyway, calmly, not letting himself be rushed. The long sleeves make it feel like a straight-jacket.
As he puts on the cloak, Beene and Jynx start scrambling up the tree, where Wex has already seated herself on a high branch. Jynx looks over his shoulder, sees Ben, and for the first time seems genuinely concerned.
“Ben!” he hisses. “Get up here!”
Not answering, Ben stands up and sets his hands on the tree, but it’s like he’s not really making an effort. Sleepiness is in all his limbs.
“What’s wrong with him?” Jynx groans.
“Oh dear.” Beene whispers. “Oh dear, the tea.”
“What about the tea?” Wex chirps from her high branch.
“It’s not for men.” the turtle replies miserably. “Oh, I’m so stupid. Oh dear.”
Cursing and growling under his breath, Jynx lowers himself along the bark again, gesturing impatiently at Beene, who sits rubbing his hands together, to follow. Halfway down, they hastily beckon Ben.
“Come on! Come on, climb up, you Gault-forsaken idiot! They’re coming!” Jynx mutters, and he actually hisses, like cats do.
“Please Mr. Davis, I know you feel tired, but you have to hurry!” Beene adds, looking perfectly unhappy.
Ben looks up at them drunkenly, and as he does so the world actually seems to spin briefly. But despite this, he hears the anxiety in their voices, feels the incoming danger. Adrenalin begins to flow and, to some extent, battle the weariness that’s stealing over him.
He reaches out to get a good hold of the bark, when Wex’s voice from high up above croaks “The stone! Get the stone!”
Ben casts one glance over his shoulder and sees the chunk of crystal, still lying on the ground and spreading its red, warm light. He turns, reaches out and grabs it, all of it feeling like he’s wading through water, like it’s taking forever to complete the action. Behind him, Jynx and Beene still urge him to hurry, one calling him foul names Ben’s never even heard of, the other simultaneously apologizing and beginning to stutter.
Ben clumsily jams the rock in his pants pocket. The majority of it sticks out and it’s painfully pressing against his leg, making him wish he was wearing both looser pants and a belt, so he could hook it behind something. He’s already imagining it falling out of his pocket by the time he’s up the tree. In his growing discomfort, he realizes the rock itself doesn’t feel hot itself – it actually feels like it’s a perfect room temperature.
As he sets his feet against the tree to get a foothold, and the cat and the turtle paw and yank at his arms, Ben hears the rustling of leaves somewhere far off – but not very far. His chest suddenly feels tight, his skin prickly. He realizes in a slightly detached way that he is really beginning to get scared. He doesn’t know what’s coming, but that’s somehow a lot worse than knowing it. That sudden spark of fear seems to wash out most of the fear, and though he, at any normal moment in his life, would probably not have believed himself capable of climbing a tree, he’s suddenly quite good at it. Jynx and Beene barely have to help him and soon make their own way back up the tree, all of them gathering in the thick crown, wide enough for them to almost sit down.
The rustling approaches, faster now.
Beene draws his cloak close around him. Wex hops up to Ben, and Jynx leans in close, whispering: “Listen closely and don’t ask questions. They can’t hear us, but they can smell and they can see. The cloaks make it harder. Hide Wex and hide yourself. If you move, they’ll see us. And they can climb.”
In the corner of his eye, Ben sees the bushes shiver as something passes under them.
The cat stares at him intently with his fiery green eyes, the pupils now dilated into big black circles. Ben realizes he’s looking for confirmation, and he nods once. Wex hops in a little closer, and perches on Ben’s arm. This time, he feels no aversion to having the bird so close, and he draws the cloak around them both. Wex pushes close against him, and he feels her heart beat impossibly fast.
Jynx, satisfied, leans back and wraps himself tightly in his own cloak. Ben feels a ridiculous urge to ask him something, anything, and then something crawls into the clearing.

There is no urge to scream; that’s at least something. That’s the only thing. As Ben sees the thing crawl its way out of the bushes, his mouth seems to instantly turn dry. Cold washes through his bowels, his privates draw tight, and his throat locks up.
He instantly realizes that this is one of the things Beene told him about, an octalyte. However, his description really doesn’t do this thing justice.
Its body is perfectly black and smooth, consisting of three parts. The biggest part appears to be its hind quarters, which it drags along the ground. On each side of the middle part, it has four legs, if that’s what you can call them. They’re nothing like ordinary spider legs. What they most resemble are giant, spiny fingers. Their flesh looks loose and wrinkled, and on each tip, there’s a sharp, flat, shining nail. On either side of its grooved head are clusters of tiny yellow eyes, too many to count. And in the front, sticking out around a crescent mouth full of little ridges of sharp teeth, are three poison jaws, like a triple vice grip.
Ben has a brief, perfectly clear vision of those jaws closing around his head, and nearly fails to stop himself from shaking his head.
The creature, the octalyte, scuttles onto the clearing under the tree, and Ben sees it examine the crockery they forgot to pick up. Perhaps it’s smelling the remains of their tea. Whatever effect it had on Ben, has now migrated into a tiny pocket at the back of his mind, and he is wide awake.
Clumsily, the thing tries to pick up one of the cups. It makes a sound, some kind of hiss, and then shatters the cup by slamming its leg down on it. Next to him, Ben hears Beene suck in a breath, perhaps in fright, perhaps in indignation.
The creature shifts its attention to the red crystal in the tealight, and as it begins what looks to be an attempt to pry it out of its base, a second octalyte crawls out of the bushes. It looks the same as its companion, save that its body is not black and shiny, but gray, dull, and covered in a regular pattern of dark spots. Its legs have that same sick tone of flesh, and it joins the other one at the foot of the tree.
The first octalyte turns to face the other and taps its jaws together at various intervals, generating a rapid clicking sound that sends a wave of sickness through Ben’s stomach and head. The other answers with a clicking sequence of its own, apparently responding. Before Ben can entirely recover from that awful, alien sound, the black octalyte raises its head and looks up the tree.
Ben sits frozen, staring wide-eyed at the spider-like thing, feeling his innards knot up into a hard ball. Any minute now the thing will climb up, they both will, they’ll wrap them all in their fleshy legs and their webs and shoot them full of venom with their vice-like triple jaws and drink their organs like…
The black octalyte lowers its head again, exchanges another pattern of clicking with its companion, and gets in motion. They both scuttle up to the creek, seem to pause to consider it, and then proceed to follow it downstream. After a while, they vanish from sight. Later than that, the sound of their pushing through the foliage is gone.
Up in the tree, Ben and his animal companions still sit in perfect stillness. None of them seems ready to accept that they’re safe. Then their silence is broken by a sudden croaking, muffled voice seeping out from under Ben’s cloak:
“Ben – you’re crushing me!”
One by one, they exhale deeply, and Ben opens his cloak to let the bird out. Wex ruffles her feathers several times, and says “I’m sorry, but I was about to choke. I couldn’t hold still any longer.”
“It’s OK, Wex.” Jynx says, stretching himself carefully. “I think they’re gone far enough now.”
“Uh.” Beene stutters. “Mr. Davis, sir. Are you ah, are you alright?”
Ben considers the question, and answers: “No. I don’t think I am.”

[hawaiian mage]

I'm dissapointed that there's not more. You're giving out the information at a good pace, and it makes me want to keep reading.

Didn't really see any problems in this peice. Nothing overt enough for me to really notice, any way. The part where you were talking about "plays" confused me a bit, but probably just becuase I've never seen the word written. Maybe use some synonyms instead of saying "plays" over and over again? Say theatre or something? It's probably just me, but it can never hurt to use more variety with words so consider it.

Also ...

Ben sits frozen, staring wide-eyed at the spider-like thing, feeling his innards knot up into a hard ball. Any minute now the thing will climb up, they both will, they’ll wrap them all in their fleshy legs and their webs and shoot them full of venom with their vice-like triple jaws and drink their organs like…

A purely asthetic suggestion would be instead of using an elipses at the end use a dash. "triple jaws and drink their organs like-" It makes it more abrupt, and would transition into the instant releif of the next paragraph better.

Other than that I can't think of anything other than the subtleties that can only be learned by writting more. Which you should do. I've pretty much gotten over the flamboyent archtypes of the characters as they begin to develope more.

And you know? It's not fanfiction. The characters may seem a little one-dimensional still but at least you fucking made your own. And for that applaud.

Also, the swearblossoms were completely hilarious.

[FS]

I was kind of making a temporary compromise with "plays." Felt like a crappy word to use, but I couldn't come up with a suitable replacement that describes a theatre piece. I checked online for some synonyms, but nothing of the same broad description seemed to come up. "Drama" doesn't really seem to fit the bill either. I'll have to think it over some more. Suggestions would be welcome.

A dash might indeed be a better choice. It's probably something I'd change sooner or later after reading it over a couple of times.

[FS]

Here's some more, the greater part of which I wrote today waiting for a call... that never came Also, since this is a sucky method of publishing a story, if anyone wants to read it in original .doc form, PM me your e-mail and I'll send it. I'm not one to be overprotective of my work, but putting it up for download and linking that here seems like just asking for potential trouble.

If you're reading, keep an eye out for tense errors (though I suppose they'll be obvious if you find them) - three or four times while writing, I had to go back and edit whole paragraphs because I slid back into past tense without realizing it.

[center:6ed20fe332]- - -[/center:6ed20fe332]


“Is it the tea? I’m so awfully sorry, Mr. Davis. We’ve been travelling for weeks now and, and I just plain forgot that it’s not for humans, oh dear, for us it provides energy, but for humans it does the opposite, I’m such a fool…”
“It’s alright, Beene. It’s not the tea anymore. I think it’s mostly worn off. It’s those… things.”
“Yeah. They’re not pleasant.” Jynx says, and Ben glances at him. Contrary to his expectations, Jynx doesn’t sound sarcastic. The cat is looking down the tree with a clouded look in his eyes.
In silence, they slip down to the ground again, piece by piece. Beene sadly regards the remains of his shattered teacup, and gathers up what’s left of the other crockery. Jynx walks up to the creek and looks upstream first, then downstream. Ben thinks he sees the cat shiver unselfconsciously when he does the latter.
“Which way now?” he asks the others without looking.
“We should cross the water.” Wex answers, perching on one of the tallest roots of the tree. “If we follow the creek against the current we’ll just get deeper into the woods, and… it’s probably not a good idea to go the same way they went.”
“Can the spiders cross it?” Ben asks apprehensively.
“If they go through the trees, they can.” the bird replies. “But I don’t think they will. They really hate water.”
Beene finishes up on his clean-up job, having apparently put all his things back in the blue pouch, and solemnly covers the shards of his broken cup under forest soil with his hands. It’s almost kind of funny, like he’s giving the cup a burial, but looking at the turtle’s downbeat face, Ben doesn’t think it’s funny at all. He looks like someone who’s lost one of the last few important possessions he had left in this world.
Ben silently hands him the warm, red crystal, glad to be rid of if its poking him in the leg.
“I’m – sorry we forgot about your cups, Beene.” he says, feeling obliged to say something.
Beene doesn’t look at him, but only slips the crystal back in the pouch, where it seems to shrink to half its size again.
“They were my mother’s.” the turtle mumbles, almost inaudibly. “She’d be furious if she knew.”
They all join Jynx at the river’s bank, and Ben surveys the distance. It’s too far even for him to jump across, and even if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t consider it. The stones lining the banks are slippery and sharp in all the wrong places. He looks up, but there don’t seem to be any sturdy branches crossing over the water. Even the crown of the big tree they were just in doesn’t fit the bill.
“How are we going to get across?” he asks, and as the words leave his mouth, he feels how redundant they are.
“How do you think, genius?” Jynx says.
A few moments later, they’re all wading through the running water, all save for Wex, who sits on one of the stones on the opposite bank of the creek. The water is cold beyond description – in fact, Ben’s whole understanding of cold is being redefined. He is numb up to and including his groin, and the water is stealing bone-chilling kisses against the skin of his belly with every splash that reaches a little higher than the last. He’s huffing and puffing, his arms raised in straight arches along his sides, his teeth clamped together and exposed between his outstretched lips. And yet, he thinks, it must be worse for Jynx and Beene, who are up to their chins in the water, paddling a little and carefully groping his pants pockets under his cloak, as if they’re life preservers.
They drag themselves out of the cold on the opposing bank, feeling twice as heavy. What Ben doesn’t immediately realize, is that the cloaks are still perfectly dry. The same can’t be said for his pants and shirt, though. Similarly, Jynx’s fur is so soaked that he looks as if he lost half his bodyweight.
“Ooohhh. That s-s-sucked.” the cat says, his teeth chattering. “I’ll b-be right back.”
He hurries into a nearby bush, throws off the cloak, and shakes himself furiously, causing water to spatter in all directions. The self-awareness behind this gesture – a talking cat, wanting to hide his nakedness from the others – strikes part of Ben as funny, and part of him as perfectly reasonable. They might not look much alike, but both him and Jynx have two legs to walk on.
Ben is shuddering himself, and realizes he’ll have to get rid of his own excess in moisture if he doesn’t want to enjoy a case of pneumonia tomorrow (whenever that is, he tells himself as he remembers what Wex told him about the days and nights growing longer). Excusing himself to the others, he slips behind a broad tree, tosses off the cloak – finally noting that it’s dry – and slides out of his soaked shoes, socks, and jeans. As he wrings the water out of his clothes, he’s at least thankful that the creek’s water was clear. When he was little, there’d been a ditch full of still, brown, plant-infested water behind his house, and if he’d ever gone swimming in there, he would’ve never been able to wear those clothes again.
As he puts back on his cold, wet, but at least not dripping pants, he’s suddenly missing something – and he can’t help but laugh, a laugh that sounds a little strange and disturbing to his own ears.
“Ben?” the voice of Wex. “Is everything alright?”
“My key!” he calls back, and it feels so desperately stupid, he laughs again. “I lost my apartment key! In the water!”
“He lost his what?” Beene asks Wex.
Ben stifles a laugh, then abruptly bends over as if he has to vomit, and stays in that pose with his head down and his hands clenching on his knees. He feels like he’s on the verge of doing something; roaring in insolvable rage, the way you might do when you stub your toe, or breaking down and crying, or maybe have a mad laughing fit. Whatever it is, he feels that if he can’t hold it down he may very well lose his mind here and now. He waits for it to pass and then slowly rises up again, surveying his cold, wet lower half.
I’ll have to wear those clothes all the time from here on, he thinks faintly. A change of clothes in my size is just one world away, but it’s one world too far. What I wouldn’t give for a pair of fresh socks right now. He tries to still these thoughts, making him feel lonely and homesick, wraps himself in his cloak again and steps out from behind the tree.
“What did you say you lose?” Wex asks as he joins the others. “Some key?”
“It’s not important.” Ben replies. Then, to get off the subject: “How come my cloak didn’t get wet?”
The animals look at him with a mixture of confusion and disinterest, as if he just asked them why the sky isn’t red. Finally, Wex shrugs – another curious gesture, coming from a bird – and says: “I don’t know. It’s how they’re made, I guess.”
“Is it – magic?”
“Maybe.” says the bird. “Probably, a bit. If everyone’s ready, shall we head out again?”
Beene and Jynx nod, and soon after they’re plodding through the forest again. Occasionally, Wex flies ahead to scout out their surroundings, but for the most part she hitches a ride on Jynx’s shoulder. The silence among them that results from the events at the tree gradually lapse into a different, more pressing silence, and Ben suspects the others are thinking of what he said, that he couldn’t help them. It’s what’s he’s thinking of, anyway.
The cold, at least, isn’t bothering him that much. Just before they left their landing spot at the creek, Beene reached into his bottomless blue pouch again. Ben thought briefly to ask him about it, then imagined that the answer would probably be as obvious as it was puzzling – magic. What the turtle drew out was three necklaces, which he divided among them. The necklaces consisted of a simple brown string laced through a sliver of those warm red crystals. For Ben the fit was so tight, he had to pull it down over his face. The crystal isn’t doing anything to dry his clothes, and he supposes that’s not much of a surprise – Jynx doesn’t appear to be wearing anything but his fur underneath his cloak, and from what Ben has been able to tell, Beene has on some simple garments of old leather underneath it, which he initially mistook for more of his wrinkly skin. They obviously didn’t prepare for the eventuality that they’d have clothes to dry. But the crystal spreads a comforting warmth through his body, radiating from within his chest, and he’s fairly certain he won’t be getting sick just yet.
The uncomfortable silence is becoming too much, but it’s not just that. The animals, each in their own way, seem so lost now. Ben imagines that his little speech may have knocked the foundation out from under whatever faint, idealistic hope they clung to that he could save their world. For that, he’s sorry. It’s not until the implications dawn on him, however, that he starts to get scared. What is he going to do when these creatures decide it’s no use to go on, and just throw in the towel? What if they decide to leave or abandon him, a useless human in a world that will eat him alive and leave his bones for the flowers? That can’t happen, says a little voice in the back of his head, a little voice that, if these things do happen, is sure to run all the way to the front and claim the spotlight as Panic with a capital P.
“Listen…” he begins to say, before he realizes he means to. The animals look up. “I… I’m sorry about what I said up in the tree. I was angry. I was scared.”
Much to his own relief, he finds relief in their eyes.
He continues: “The thing is, all the things you know and have heard – none of it makes sense to me…” a single word pops out of his mouth then, as involuntary as a sudden cough or burp, but he regrets it instantly all the same. “…yet.”
He sees the three pairs of eyes light up then, hope flickering back on like a trick birthday candle that doesn’t let itself be blown out. He realizes that with a single word, he’s told them one of the biggest lies of his life, and he can’t take it back without probably ending any last chance he has of coming across some way of returning to his own world.
Don’t worry, he tells himself, in a voice that reeks of cold logic and self-preservation. It fills him with loathing, but he can’t switch it off. You know that what these creatures are looking for doesn’t exist. Magic or no, pulling rabbits out of a hat or teacups out of a pouch is one thing. Giving heavenly bodies a boost because they’re slacking off is quite another. All you have to do is play along, play the savior, play it cool… And as soon as you come across another one of those Flipkeys or whatever, you grab it and… and see where it leads you.
The voice quickly struggles past that point where he actually has whatever he’d need to get out of this world, because what would he do with it once he had it? And how would he know if, and where it’d lead him into his own world? What if he’d break it, what if he’d get tossed in a world far, far worse than this one, what if it dropped him in his own world but somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, what if… But those questions seem distant and unimportant, and he focuses his mind on the point of actually getting one of these keys… not thinking of how he is clinging to a frayed rope almost as much as these creatures, because the only thing he does know about the keys is what Wex has told him: they’re really hard to make, and sorcerers use them to bring things or people over from your side. There is no telling if, even with one of these keys, there is any going back at all.

As they go on plodding through the bushes, the vast roof of trees begins to diminish and show holes. Through them, shafts of sunlight stab into the closed darkness of the forest. The light is orange going on red, and as Ben looks up, so do the others.
“The sun is setting.” Jynx says. “Slowly. Very slowly. It might not even be nightfall yet when we reach the edge of the woods.”
Ben wonders how long a time that will be, and what that means to the cycle of day and night here. He might not’ve been an outdoorsy person in his own world, but he knows how quickly a sunset will slip by once the light had gotten this strange, wondrous hue. The bird had told him days and nights lasted two, maybe three times as long as before now… But if a sunset could already take that long, maybe the process is speeding up exponentially. Slowing down, rather, he tells himself.
“What’s past the forest?” Ben asks none of them in particular. “Won’t we be in danger out in the open? Won’t there be more of those…” he swallows. “…of those spider-things?”
“They should all be behind us.” Wex says, reassuringly, but not doing a very good job.
“All?” Ben exclaims, unable to hide his fear. Maybe it’s just his fear of spiders, but he is starting to feel that these animals don’t take the octalytes seriously enough. “How many are there, then?”
Jynx gazes ahead, raises his eyebrows, and exhales deeply. If this is meant to convey the same message as the human equivalent, it means ‘How are we supposed to know?’ and that is not a comforting thought.
Something else occurs to Ben. “Wait. You said they’re behind us. Did you mean we’ve left their territory, or… are they actually looking for us?”
Wex shoots a glance over to Beene, who answers it, and Jynx looks uncomfortable.
“Actually…” Wex starts, and pauses for a long time. “…they’re looking for you.”
Ben stops in his tracks, stiffening, while the cat and turtle walk a few more steps before they turn around, surprised.
Fear and disbelief war in Ben’s head with anger, which is being rapidly stirred up by the look of guilt that is practically stamped on the foreheads of Wex and Beene, and while much less apparent, still visible in Jynx’s eyes.
From all the questions running through his head, Ben picks the one that seems to matter the most right now. “Why didn’t you tell me this?” He hears the tremble that is one part boiling anger and two parts childish terror, and thinks he is doing fairly okay keeping it down.
The bird and turtle seem lost for an answer, but Jynx immediately replies.
“It didn’t come up.” he says simply. He sounds angry himself, and Ben is starting to think the cat always gets angry when he does too, because Jynx resents him for not living up to his expectations. What he had expected to step into this world, probably, was a man that looked competent and had all the answers, would maybe set everything straight in a flash. Ben thinks that not despite, but because of his unfriendly attitude towards him, Jynx must’ve had more hope for this mission of theirs to succeed than Wex and Beene combined.
“We told you they were around, and we told you they were dangerous. If we’d wasted more time than we did, they would’ve caught us on the field.”
“Lecturing me on the local predators and clueing me in on the fact that they’re after me specifically is not the same goddamn thing!” Ben’s voice begins to rise, and he sees how it pisses off the cat, and he knows it’s going to be a shouting match, it’s inevitable.
There is a deep, low, rattling hum coming from somewhere, and it’s not until it’s broken off at the moment when Jynx begins to speak that he realizes the cat is actually growling at him from deep within his throat.
“We didn’t tell you – “ Jynx says, eyes blazing, and ready to let loose the torrent of accusations that’s bubbling behind them, “ – because we knew you’d be scared shitless!”
And there it is, Ben thinks dimly. It’s one of many derogatory remarks the cat has made towards him since the very instant he stepped into this world, but it’s one of the few that isn’t just a sarcastic veil hiding the true contempt beneath it. Jynx’s make-belief Mechologist hero was, of course, supposed to be fearless.
“And once you’re scared, Ben old boy, you cease to be of any use!” Jynx goes on, furiously, seemingly unable to stop. “We could see that from the moment you started to balk on the field!”
If he’d glance over to the side, where Wex has taken up residence on Beene’s shoulder instead, and is sharing his expression of shock, he might’ve reconsidered on using the word we. Beene seems to actually be folding in on himself – he may not have a turtle’s shell, but right now it looks like he wishes he had one to curl up and hide in.
“What would you have done,” he rages on, “if one of them had climbed the tree? You’re at least twice as big as any of us, Ben. But what do you suppose you would’ve done? Do you think you would have fought them off? Do you believe you would’ve done anything to protect yourself or any of us? No. You would have sat there, and you would have waited, and you would have died.”
They stare at each other furiously, a man and a cat standing upright, breathing fast but not saying anything. What needed to be said, for now, has been said.
Ben feels not just anger flush his cheeks, but to some extent, shame as well. He knows the cat’s accusations aren’t fair – though he hides it well, Jynx is at least as scared of the octalytes as Ben is, if not more – but that doesn’t make them any less true. He would have stayed and died if the spiders had seen him and climbed up the tree.
Wex finally speaks up, coolly, but neither Ben nor Jynx looks away from the other. The shouting match, it seems, has become a staring contest.
“Tell him about the octalytes. We owe him that much.”
“WE DON’T OWE HIM SHIT!” Jynx screams, one final time, and turns around. He paces away from them, heading out alone towards the edge of the forest. They all gaze after him as he pushes angrily through the foliage, taking out his frustration on the plantlife.
“I’m sorry.” Ben and Wex say in perfect unison, then look at each other and smile. The bird’s smile is faint, the tiny flexible corners of where its beak meets the skin curling up, but Ben sees it nonetheless, and the human characteristics of these animals are beginning to stop striking him as odd.
Seeing that the growing wall of ice between them has been broken, Beene relaxes a little and smiles a thin, relieved smile of his own.
“Jynx deals hard with disappointments.” Wex says. Then realizing how insulting that sounds to Ben, she starts: “I mean – “
“I’m not what he expected.” Ben interrupts her, then throws out in the open what all of them save for Jynx are afraid to admit. “I’m not what any of you expected.”
Neither of the animals can think of a way to respond to that. But Ben feels drained and tired of dealing with their underlying feelings about each other, so he quickly ends the silence.
“Tell me about the spiders.”
“Uh…” Beene interjects. “W-will Jynx be alright? On his own?”
“He can fend for himself.” Wex replies, a little resentful, and the fact that the bird seems to have chosen his side in the argument makes Ben first feel warm, then a little sick, for offering her a glimmer of hope in something he himself doesn’t believe in.
Ben sits down Indian-fashion, and after a few uncomfortable glances over his shoulder, the turtle does too.
“Now, about the octalytes.” she begins.
“Before the Great Quake, and maybe for some time after that, they only lived in caves, in a cold mountain range, northeast from here.”
Ben feels an urge to ask if that lies in the direction they’re going, but decides he’d rather not know the answer.
“Octalytes can’t stand the sun very well. They may not like water, but if they stay out in the sun too long, they dry out and die. That’s why they mostly stuck to their caves, and far and wide everyone knew them well enough to leave them alone.”
“What changed?”
“Everything did. The moment the days started stretching. All of us knew that night was an especially bad time to get anywhere near the octalytes’ caves. Food must be scarce in their territory, and they tend to wander outside their borders a little when the sun is gone. Catching small animals on the plains or in the forests, maybe. In winter time, when the nights are the longest, they can stray very far from their home, though they might never make it back alive. A town full of people might easily take on one straying octalyte.”
“But now the nights are longer.” Ben says, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“Yes.” Wex goes on. “And they’ve been straying further than we’ve ever seen them, in packs. They still wouldn’t come out in the full sun, and even seeing them under protection of the forest’s shadows is a rarity during the day… but they have a specific purpose now.”
Ben swallows. “You still haven’t told me why they’re after me. Is it because of what you – “ (What you believe me to be, is what Ben means to say, but he doesn’t want to come right out and say that he isn’t what they want him to be, not again) “ – What my purpose here is?”
“We have reason to believe so.” Wex says, softly.
Thinking for a moment, Ben asks: “Are they intelligent? I thought I saw them talking together, under the tree.”
“No, not really. They have a crude language with which they can convey a few basic concepts, but in that respect they’re not much smarter than wolves or dogs – “
Or cats, Ben thinks involuntarily.
“ – but they’re not on the same level as us.”
“Then why are they after me?” Ben asks in an I’m not gonna like this tone of voice. “What’s driving them?”
“Their mother.” Wex says, her voice hardening. “Their queen. The Queen of Poisons. Threnalidant.”
The name sends a shiver up Ben’s spine. His mind begins to piece together some colossal, bloated, arachnid monstrosity littered with chitinous Black Widow’s legs and big, razor-edged snapping jaws, and he momentarily closes his eyes and shakes his head to lose the image. In any other situation such a vision might not’ve been that disturbing – what makes it that now, is the idea that in this world, such a thing might actually exist.
“Most of what any of us know about her is from old tales.” Wex continues. “But what I’m sure of is that she, at least, is intelligent. Probably more clever and devious than all of us combined. We even have reason to believe that her octalytes can convey information to her from afar. Not through magic, but some kind of natural mind-chain… Something she consciously bred into them, no doubt.”
“Telepathy.” Ben suggests. “Long-distance communication in your head.”
“I don’t know that word, but it sounds right.” Wex replies. “She may even be able, to some degree, to look into the future. There’s not many other explanations for how she found out what we were trying to do.”
“Bringing me over.” Ben says, answering the non-existent question. “She wants us – me – to fail? How can she want that? If the sun and the moon stop moving, nothing on this world will survive! Everything will either be scorched or frozen!”
“One half of the world will be burned, yes.” Wex says. “And it will be a desert she has no use for. But the other half… the other half will be a frozen winter night. She’ll be able to send her octalytes out in all directions, turning her half of the world into a game reserve.”
“But that’s crazy.” Ben says, as if reason will make it not happen. Part of him realizes that he is just trying to stave off the enormity of everything the bird is telling him, but he doesn’t allow himself to realize it in full. “She might have plentiful food for a couple of months, maybe a couple of years, but eventually everything but her spiders will be dead. And what then?”
Wex sounds tired when she answers. Obviously, she isn’t looking to rationalize the actions of another creature with her explanation.
“I don’t know, Ben. I can’t tell you. According to the stories, she hates everything that lives. She’s supposedly older than anything in our history, and her reasons and grudges are her own. Maybe she has simply grown insane beyond reason. The point is that she wants the sun and the moon to stop moving, and she won’t rest until everything that threatens to prevent that is dealt with.”
Ben tries to consider that some massive, towering spider-queen sits somewhere in an equally massive cave, from which thousands of caves lead out to a mountain that must look like a gargantuan anthill from a distance. Then he adds in that the big spider is thinking of ways to catch ol’ Ben Davis, maybe for guidance looking into the mystic mirror-mirror-on-the-wall, who’ll die soonest of them all? It sounds ridiculous and horrible, but it doesn’t sound untrue. Ben might’ve been able to convince himself that even if this whole world does really exist and is not an illusion of some sort, these octalytes at least are not real, hold the rational explanation why not, thanks – but that was before he actually saw them himself. That just shattered any chance his brain had of putting its fingers in its ears and going la-la-la like a balking child.
Thus, temporarily defeated, Ben’s mind does the next best thing – it distracts him from the issue at hand.
“Wait a second.” he says, as something begins to dawn on him that remained just outside his grasp when he was under the tea’s influence under the tree. “You keep saying the sun and the moon are slowing down – but the sun doesn’t move. It’s the earth that moves.”
It occurs to Ben that he’s assuming this world’s universe is not so different from his own, but then again, this world isn’t so different, either. Maybe in one world there’s space shuttles and VCRs (and DVDs, he thinks in some kind of bitter joke) and in the other there’s talking birds and magic cloaks, but both had just the one moon, green grass, and a blue sky.
Wex, however, seems infinitely puzzled. “What are you talking about? What moving earth? We see the sun moving across the sky, don’t we? Maybe it’s different on your world – “
“But that’s the thing, it’s the same.” Ben says. He feels a little buzzed, maybe because he finally thinks he’s some use to the animals – he can set them straight on any flat earth-theories. “I know it seems like the sun moves, but that’s because the earth – the planet rotates. It’s actually the world moving around the sun, and the moon moving around the world. It’s not the sun and the moon that are slowing down – it’s the planet itself.”
As the words leave his mouth in an uninterrupted stream, Wex and Beene eye him with a glance that suggests they either think he’s mad, or that what he’s saying simply doesn’t make sense. Or maybe – and this seems to Ben like a good possibility – they believe what he’s saying because he’s still their Mechologist, talking about their problem, but they’re not understanding him yet.
But there’s something else that grows in Ben’s mind as he tries to explain it to them, and it comes from what the animals have called the Great Quake. If this world is really beginning to slow down its rotation, there’s not only nothing he can do about it – there’s going to be a lot bigger problems than long-term climate changes to think about. Try earthquakes and floods, volcanoes erupting, raging storms. I have to get out of here, thinks the small voice of Panic, creeping slowly forward from the back of Ben’s head. But that fills him with shame again, to think that he would abandon these creatures to their dying world without as much as a warning. Still, he thinks as he surveys the puzzled looks on the faces of Wex and Beene, what can I do? They don’t belong in my world, and nobody can do a thing to save theirs, so what can I do really?
Mercifully, the need to answer that question is taken from him immediately.
Somewhere, sounding awfully, awfully far away from them, a cat’s scream sounds.

[FS]

but both had just the one moon, green grass, and a blue sky

I knew I didn't get all of them. Can't edit it here, but I'll correct it.