***

Sixth Stitch

All come from the century-old Great Needlework. All will return to it.

***

The world pulses. Ooze pressures against every hair of my fur. Release. Repeat.

It’s a primordial feeling, akin to a mother’s womb or a predator’s maw. To be part of something much greater than ourselves. To be on the verge of ending a life, or at the beginning of one.

My bones crack. My abdomen opens. My vital fluids mix with the viscous liquid. Blood red and honey yellow become torchvine orange.

The throbbing intensifies. Nectar floods my heart, my lungs, and my guts.

I run out of air. I take a deep breath. Sludge fills my throat, pierces my sinuses, and drills through my skull. I convulse in pain.

My spasm stops the liquid’s motion. Seconds pass. I float. Nothing.

A vibration accumulates on my neck. It travels on my back, gaining intensity. The wave crashes at the base of my tail. A current of tranquility streams through my mangled skin. The caress repeats.

The Nectar Pool is petting me.

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The slime’s movements resume. A gelatinous shell wraps around my brain. Porcupine quills enter my mind, and tinker with the flesh within. Visions assail my psyche.

A tiger jumps on a Risen male, and severs his neck. A Risen female places a long metallic device against a horse’s head, and bursts through his skull with a loud bang. A Risen foot slams down onto a cricket, crushing her. A pelican suffocates in black ooze, while a massive fortress approaches. It floats in a strange blue liquid — similar in all points to the Iron Sea, except by its color. Acolytes and Risen fight, bleed and die, possessed by the Calling.

I do not react. I do not mourn. All I know is that the Calling is misery, and that I must purge it from my body. The Pool taps against my shoulder. It awaits my decision. Die, or be Unified? I have chosen.

My skin dissolves. My organs leave their designated position, and float inside my ribcage, filled with nectar. Their flesh mesh together, forming a single spherical mass of body tissue — my essence of self, compacted into a vulnerable and malleable shape. The Pool rotates it around and moulds it by pinching carefully chosen pressure points. I am stretched, compressed and stroked until every fiber of my being has been prodded at least once.

The slime stops toying with my innards. A force rips my consciousness from the orb of flesh. I float away from the sphere, completely incorporeal. A canine’s skeleton drifts in the sludge, cleaned of all muscle.

A vacuum siphons the marrow out of the animal’s bones. The Pool eliminates the white substance, and returns with a metallic gel. It covers the skeleton with it, turning every piece into a cobalt-cast equivalent.

The ball of flesh clings between two reforged bones, and squeezes in between. The sphere floats upwards, while I descend to take its place. We cross paths, and become superimposed with each other.

I come inside the orb, and meet a jackal. It sniffs the air. It finds me. We exchange glares. Within his brown eyes, an expanse of golden brushes and dried trees unfolds. A boundless Hunting Room, where flesh tasted like flesh. A time where the Calling ruled above all. The beast shows me what I am leaving behind. It is too late for a change of heart. The canine nods, and dissolves into colored pixels.

My farewell complete, I enter the metal ribcage. The ball of flesh vanishes from view, lost in the nectar. Cobalt plating, similar to an armadillo’s shell, seals the gaps between the bones and locks me inside. I wander around my new body’s interior, free to move as I please within my Nectar-blood. This must be how the Forge-dweller children felt whenever they piloted their hovercrafts, safe inside their glass domes. They stuck their tongue out at the Cocoon’s walls, unafraid of the immense volume of air separating them from the Iron Sea’s polluted waters far below. What trickery had the Smiths invented, to allow the Risen to fly like this?

I choose to stand where it feels most natural: the head. I take inventory of my new physique. The Pool is clearly a master at its craft; I rejoice to possess a body faithful to the original.

I am Unified.