Kahli first heard of Qauntimidas when she was just a little tauman, and her main hobbies were staring at clouds and divining what they were shaped like, skipping small pebbles across the lakeside with her big left foot, and catching burnbuggies (little insects that buzzed around with little flaming glass orbs attached to their posteriors) in glass jars.

It was in the context of a question, as it usually was when Quantimidas' legend was brought up to young tauman children.

"Why do so many people have systems, while people like me don't? Where do they come from?"

One popular theory was of course that the living wood was directly connected to systems, but often this wasn't observed to be the case. And, in fact, the best and almost only tangible explanation people in Nomachiato had regarding systems involved Quantimidas' influence on the wider cosmos.

The legend went that, long ago, back when the planet Nomachiato was still taking shape and growing into a place habitable for tauman life, eight great spirits descended from the Eons of Time and into the physical plane, making use of discarded matter from planets and stars to great large, corporeal forms. It was a lengthy, painful, and indeed agonizing process for the spirits, or so they said, and over the course of the time it take for those bodies to complete their incarnation, many planets were slowly starting to get to the point wherein they were ready for life to start growing on them. Many of them.

Each of the eight spirits, it was said, chose a quadrant of the available space torus, which they divided diplomatically into eight sections, and within it a cluster of life-bearing planets, to oversee as their own.

Now one thing to know about these corporeal spirits is that they were like kin to one another. Sure, they didn't always get along perfectly, but all in all they were cut from the same celestial cloth, so to speak. Even the designs of their corporeal forms, enormous, titan-like structures made out of every kind of bizarre material capable of sustaining a structure of tension were similar to one another almost as if by design.

Within each divided section of the space torus was a defined home point, a section that the great spirit that de-facto owned their little piece of the universe chose as their home. These homes were always radically different from one another, though in general the spirits usually chose a home base that was completely lifeless, uninhabited, and in fact reasonably impossible to inhabit in any near eon of time.

The reason for this was simple: the spirits had crafted for themselves enormous bodies and it was important for them, in their minds, to have the elbow room necessary to fully relax, and with that, to occasionally slumber. Oftentimes, this constituted an entire planet.

Sleep was different for these corporeal spirits. When they slept, their enormous bodies shut down and almost become inert matter once again, only lightly tied as if by a small, thin thread to the spirit that dwelled within. This was usually because the spirits used resting hours to once again travel through dimensions as spiritual entities, visiting their friends and family on the other side, if such things existed wherever the spirits had come from.

Usually, spirits slept in shifts and did it for about a century each. At first, everything was all well and good. One spirit would rest, then the next, and each time the spirits nearby would check in every once and a while to make sure their section of the space torus and all the worlds within it were doing quite well and good.

This went on well enough for about five centuries and then everything changed. But of course, the change had been brewing all along.

It all had to do with the strained relationship between Qauntimidas and Drafuska. See, Quantimidas was the oldest, wisest, and strongest spirit by far. Quantimidas knew the most, was the best, and had the most abundant section of the space torus by far - and it was often debated as to whether this section of the space torus was abundant because Quantimidas was given it out of favoritism, or whether Quantimidas had made it that way through sheer force of will. Either way, their section was known as the most harmonious, peaceful, and plentiful of all the sections of the space torus.

There was, of course, nothing wrong with this. It was wonderful for the many living beings who resided on planets in this section. But what everyone could ultimately agree on regarding Quantimidas' impact was that Quantimidas had clearly broken the norm on one key thing: they inhabited as their home a living planet.

The planet of Nomachiato.

The early tauman quickly grew to love and revere Quantimidas. Other spirits argued that Quantimidas resided on the planet specifically to stroke their corporeal-form-sized ego, which if it existed must have indeed been enormous. Quantimidas never had to want for a thing when they were staying on their home planet, for they were treated with the most lavish meals and offerings of food and drink that, impressively enough, measured up to the appetite of an enormous body several magnitudes larger than that of a normal bipedal entity. Sure, there had been a few wild cards that had brutally slaughtered a goat or two in Quantimidas' name before they requested it to cease, but afterwards all offerings were generally magnanimous. Most of the other spirits did not care much, and indeed some others developed smaller corporeal forms that allowed them to slip in and amongst the peoples on planets of their own section of the space torus, which was a sneakier yet still rewarding way to get some of this godly treatment.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Drafuska was not like most of the other spirits, however. Drafuska was the smallest and the weakest of all the spirits. As a result he inhabited the smallest and weakest corporeal form, which was still of course enormous compared to, say, a tauman. Drafuska inhabited what was generally agreed by the spirits to be the absolute worst section of the space torus. It was also right next to Quantimidas' section.

For five centuries, Drafuska bid his time, and waited for Quantimidas' turn to sleep to arrive. See, those two spirits beside the sleeper were tasked with a few things. The first key task was to of course watch over with careful eye what was going on their section of the space torus and, by the best means possible, keep the peace. But the second, as just as if not even more important task, was to wake the spirit back up.

The spirits, in constructing and then inhabiting their corporeal forms, had unwittingly weakened themselves. Their spiritual forms, while still strong and constant as each burning sun in their respective galaxy clusters, were limited by a finite amount of worldly energy.

The power needed to leave and enter a corporeal form was inexplicably immense. When the universe they inhabited was young, it was easy to draw energy from nearby nebula, supernova, and other celestial happenings that constantly generated large bursts of energy in close, confined spaces. However, as time wore on, everything had gotten infinitely bigger and further apart while also housing less of this volatile energy, and as such, changing forms was an intensive process. One spirit, Lethrushka, almost got herself trapped in a miniaturized version of her corporeal form specifically crafted for interacting with her local planets before realizing the cause was a weakness and lack of energy in the surrounding spacial universe.

So it was that Drafuska developed a scheme for a moment of calculated inaction when it came time to wake Quantimidas from their slumber. All Drafuska really did, from the other spirits' perspective, was say that he was struggling to muster the energy to help reactivate Quantimidas' corporeal form, and he got an extra decade to spend in that section of space torus. It was glorious. But then again came the time for trying to awaken Quantimidas, and oh, Drafuska tried so hard, but he just couldn't.

The other spirits were getting concerned. But Drafuska was determined to keep them from taking away what he saw as his best opportunity ever - a chance to grab a slice of what his kin spirit had that he wanted oh so badly. Drafuska concocted a deceptive tale, something to trick the other spirits into leaving him be to rule two sections of the space torus - the worst, his own, and the best, his kin Quantimidas'.

The explanation was lengthy and confusing to even the most astute of the other spirits, for in spite of Drafuska's awful weakness in comparison to the others, as well as his countless other shortcomings, he was a gifted wordsmith, and could craft a tale of deception so crude yet so effective that they had absolutely no choice but to hang on his every word.

Drafuska simply told the other spirits that he had awakened Quantimidas - and, in fact, that his earlier extra decade of ruling the section of Quantimidas' space torus was a result not of being unable to awaken Quantimidas, but instead a result of Quantimidas not wanting to wake up and return to their section of the universe. Drafuska had been covering for them in hopes that after a decade, Quantimidas would change their mind and come back.

But another decade passed as the spirits accepted Drafuska's story. None of them could see Quantimidas in spirit form due to the limited perception of their corporeal bodies. And so they had no real choice but to either believe their kin, or distrust Drafuska, and no one presently had had a reason to distrust one of their own - so they did not.

This went on for quite a long time, too long, so long that Drafuska never seemed to get his chance to leave his own corporeal form. And yet, he never really seemed to want to.

In the meantime, the world of Nomachiato and the tauman was suffering greatly while their spirit slept. They had depended greatly on their benevolent ruler. But as time passed, and pass it did, less and less did they think of Quantimidas, whereas Drafuska became almost a bit of a dark boogeyman, a dark enemy told of over hushed bonfires in hopes that he would never return, as the only recorded visit that he actually had on Nomachiato included the slaughter of millions of innocent tauman for seemingly no reason at all.

And so this was the story that danced around Kahli's head when Lloyd Gherkins addressed her and started talking about doomsdays and Quantimidas. Kahli had grown up being told that if she misbehaved, then Drafuska would come and skin her alive, and even though that obviously never happened, the fear still lived within her like a faint yet burning ember.

So Kahli immediately looked to this Lloyd person, this bizarre little alien, as but some sort of a bully come to dredge up old childhood fears. And when he finally shook her hand and asked her what the deal was with her stupid little unspeakable horror in the purse, and why she called it Froufrou, and why she thought it was the Harbinger of Doom, Kahli had more than enough to say back to him.