Ch: 136 Walking After Midnight
“I’m sorry, Gary… I didn’t know what was going on, until it was too late. Trust me, I’d rather not know where that slug slithered out from, if I could forget, I would.” Dannyl half apologized, half complained the thing away.
“Ok, Becky didn’t blab… I can’t even say you were snooping, you live here too, bro. The picture… that’s a little messed up.” He complained mildly.
“I have to admit… you really did capture the moment… Why does it say nightsoil terrors number four?” He demanded archly, now that his rage and humiliation had cooled to molten, boiling anger.
“Art operates in a narrative continuum, absent a subject or action, we have only a pretty picture. I can see publishing these as an oversized collection of colorful prints… perhaps on a glossy paper. The kind of thing one could leave out in the home to show good taste and class to visitors.” Dannyl had clearly been thinking about this for a while.
“I plan to call them ‘Tea Table Tomes’. Aside from that, I’ve been thinking on a picture book of our adventures, like the note I left you that time, the one you blew up and hung over the fireplace. It could be serialized monthly for the orphanage… might be fun… once I clean the story up for the kids.”
Gary nodded sagely, doing some rough figures in his less than fully reliable head. “Cheap ink, printed on foolscap and bound with a couple staples… Might sell well. Dannyl, you just invented comic books, you madman. But this picture… where are the other three?”
“I like that, ‘Cosmic Books’ that feels right.” Dannyl muttered, jotting that down in the notepad he carried everywhere now.
“I said ‘Comic Books’ not ‘Cosmic’. It’s a good idea, we’ll add that to the cult of Secrets book list. I’ll conjure some examples from my home for you to plagiarize… I mean, get inspired by. The silver age Batman books…” He mused, while a pile of slim, colorful booklets appeared on the bookshelf behind them.
“Where are the other pictures in the series?” Gary demanded again, taking a lesson from Becky.
“You saw number two, with the fig tree…” He muttered lamely. “I thought you liked that one.” He toddled off to his room down the hall and came back a few moments later with a pair of canvases.
The first was an exquisite diptych, featuring a cute, chubby, naked wildman with twigs and flowers in his matted hair and pubes.
In the smaller image, the lunatic, clad only in hair and stray plant life, was dancing around a fire, before an altar bearing an enormous, steaming turd.
The primary image featured the same bestial wildman, strangling a many headed serpent, whose multitude of necks all ended in leering, horrid masks of bronze. The tail of the beast sprouted from the same steaming altar pile, as in the smaller inset image. A small label pasted on the back read: The Glamorous Mage: Nightsoil Terrors, one.
The second painting depicted the same happy, cartoonish Gary. This time he was playing cats cradle with a loathsome worm, twining the brick red nasty between his fingers, directly over a bowl of steaming broth and a pair of chopsticks.
The table setting and garnishes for the horrid noodle soup in the making were crisp and delicious, right down to a glistening drop of water, on a cilantro leaf. This one was titled: The Fools Feast: Nightsoil Terrors, two.
“Very funny Dannyl. What did you title the tree picture?” He asked, with a thin, brittle smile.
“I call it ‘A Warrior’s Dignity’, I sent the original to Otho with Duke Julius, but I made copies, for him and for you too.” His very good friend replied, with a pleasant and open smile.
“Uhh huh. You don’t see how that could be a problem for me? Sending funny pictures of me to all your little friends?” He demanded, just a little miffed now.
“Relax, bro, it’s just a bit of fun, you don’t usually take yourself so seriously…” Dannyl took a soothing tone, speaking softly, as though to a startled child. “What harm could a silly drawing cause?”
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt…” He grumbled finally. “I just might wanna be taken seriously someday. Right now, I need food.”
#
Becky and Shai emerged from the baths, mildly concerned. The private baths were still filled with roundly pregnant villagers and elders, soaking up the warm swirling madness.
The public bath remained the domain of the kids’ new furry friends, with strict instructions to not feed any innocents through the waterfall into the beyond.
“Mayhap he sleeps upstairs? He did look tired. I’ll look. Ask Annie an the horses perhaps…”
Their plans fell through, when they stumbled into the art discussion in the common room.
“Gods… I’m sorry ye did see such, Becky. Dannyl, tis a shameful work of art, a beautiful disgrace.” Shai muttered, with Gary on her lap by the fire softly snoring.
When he woke up She shoveled a quart of stew down him and tucked him in the grotto to sleep it off.
#
He dipped past Thirp and Ducky with a smile and wave. “Be right back, need to stretch my legs.” He called, as he hopped the low wall separating his new orchards from the wild meadows and dark, tangled woods on his periphery.
He stepped lightly through the open wildlands and into the tangled game trails, he vanished silently into the foliage that was also part of himself.
Small life rustled and darted in the underbrush, appearing only as glimpses of fur, feathers, scales or chitin. Here in his backlot, where things ran a little wild, he was less himself, in the moment. Here, it was all about who he used to be, furtive, wild, focused on survival in a hostile world.
This was his sly, skulking, lurking-in-shadows self, where things he needed to do, got done without remorse or second thoughts. The part of himself that had allowed him to consume that vile creature in the first place; and the part of himself that resonated so strongly with what it had left behind.
There was no essence or taint of slime boy left in him, but that resonance still sounded in his more… questionable gifts.
That creeping, hungry predatory feeling around his edges lately, and especially among the townsfolk was no bueno. He settled down in a small clear patch, sitting on a tree stump that he willed into existing.
None of his instruments were real here, but this flute, his first creation in the mad world just beyond his closed, sleeping eyelids, it was close. He put it to his lips and let untamed, unguided notes trickle out. Just wandering up and down the musical landscape of his forest for a while was relaxing.
His own bird songs and insect noises joined in, reflections of the interconnectedness of all living things. That was the essence of the god of Beasts, the genetic and magical miracle of animate life and sentience. Across all the endless everything, even out where it swirled and clashed with the nothing at all, mortal life was persistent and pervasive. Where life was, so too was Beast.
“Hey buddy. Can we talk?”
“In this place, if you seek us, we can be found. We feel your uncertainty and distress, you wonder whether you are becoming a predator…” Beast’s soothing voice of soft wildlife noises floated gently by, easing his mind.
“All living things are touched by death, we consume the remnants of lives gone before us, we prey on other living beings, we are preyed upon, and eventually, surrender our matter back to the eternal soil.”
They whispered in chorus and sang their truth into his soul, from beyond all human understanding.
‘The things that your prey touched in you are not ‘evil’ or ‘good’, the question is how you will use such gifts and abilities. Will you walk in the sun, with my sweet Ivy?”
Gleaming sunbeams cut through the shady woods behind him, from the direction of the house. Radiant and bright, one golden shaft struck his shoulder, right where that slaver’s lance had lodged. Pleasant summertime warmth spread from his back, carrying the faint scents of blackberries and Shai’s skin warmed in the sunshine.
“Or shall you linger in the dark, seen only by the moon and stars as you pass? Shadows or light… or will you continue dancing on this razor’s edge?”
“It feels… wrong, like I could sneak my tendrils into their shadows and steal their mana and maybe even their lives… If I wanted to and was willing to work at it.” He shuddered, despite the growing, glowing warmth coming from behind him.
“So you could, if you wished to become such a one. I have children who exist in this way, they are not ‘evil’, are mundane parasites and predators ‘evil’, to your mind?” They whispered with a chuckle. “I see the joy with which you predate the ‘mudbugs, and ‘skeeters’... They too are my children, just as you are.”
“It’s not the same…” He began and was cut off by a throaty bullfrog chuckle.
“No, because you are sentient and aware. Were you a simple hunger for blood on wings, there would be no ‘moral implications’. You see that I have none, am I ‘evil’? I am dark and light… and the shadows beneath the leaves. Use your mind and your silly ‘morals’ if it pleases you, but you are, at least in part, this place of crawling, hungry, nibbling jaws.”
Slowly the presence of diffuse and encompassing everything faded, though the bright light remained, from over his shoulders.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Just remember, you are also the trees and fungi, all this life is you, past, present and future.” Beast whispered as they departed.
“Damn that guy is cool…” Gary muttered as he strolled back into the light, among the well groomed fruit trees and garden beds.
Up in his firmament, among the bubbles and ribbons, slowly resolving into constellations; something new glowed.
A single bright moon, brilliantly golden and shining. It lit his islands like a pleasant afternoon in early summer, making the drone of his big black bees even sleepier.
Maple was radiant, basking her leaves under the glow with obvious pleasure.
“Be not too pleased with yourself, deadman. This is your sweet ironmonger’s work, not yours. Your darkness was occluding her radiance, very poor form I must say.” She rustled her leaves at him, frustrating a few bees.
“Now someone has twitched that curtain back, letting some light into this dismal hole. Beast I suspect, I scent his touch on you, I must thank him when next he calls.”
“I notice you always call Beast ‘he’, I thought they were without gender…” He asked from his bench across the creek from Maple.
“No, foolish boy. Beast is all living entities, sentient or not, from slime molds, to advanced beings like dryads. As such he is all genders and none. He prefers the male pronoun as a generic catch all, since he is as old as life itself and can’t be arsed to worry about such things.”
She tutted and hummed at him in frustration. “You cannot misgender an entity older than any concept of gender, just take your best shot and he will be fine with it.”
“Uhh, thanks. I’ll see you around, Maple.” He headed inside, to have a long chat with Thirp and Ducky in the bath. He had some things to chew over.
“… spinning webs and ensnaring prey is not dishonorable, nor wrong, as long as your prey is not sentient and innocent. As for burgling a little mana… I think you will find they were willing donors to your little misadventure.” Thirp lounged in the bath in her more humanoid form, soaking up the sensation.
“Just as your friends were, when you summoned the house in the real world last time. We watched that with great interest.”
“That was an excellent use of your abilities…” Ducky chimed in, with a hideous floral shower cap, protecting his divine curls. “...you sipped just a little from each one, like a bee at a honeysuckle bush…” He giggled and smiled in childlike glee at the big man with the sour expression.
“It was charming, how delicate and careful you were. Even with that wretched slug in your…” He paused and shuddered with disgust. “Bowels… It’s not even a nice word. Don’t even get me started on your childish fixation on your… biological outputs. It’s just matter, boy.”
They dropped the shop talk when the kids and Shai appeared at bedtime. The kids and Becky ran off, to continue their music lessons in the playhouse with Cab, while Shai hovered over him.
“I’m fine, I had a chat with Beast out in the deep dark woods. Thirp and Ducky finished putting me straight a few minutes ago. I still don’t know what to make of Beast, there’s just so much going on and through all the time.”
He took a float, so Shai could play spinzies with him in the water.
“I hae only barely glimpsed Beast ever, here… I might wander in yer woods a mite. An ye don’t mind nor fret.” She muttered.
“You don’t need my permission or my ‘fretting’, just remember, it’s still all just our home.” He whispered as he woke slowly. “Early bedtime… early ris-...”
Gary faded away, leaving nary a ripple in the pool. “Fie.” She muttered while getting dressed. In this place she could simply will herself dry and clothed, yet that always felt wrong. The process had a soothing familiarity.
Anything familiar was a balm in these times. Even the human spider hybrid scuttling her way so alarmingly.
“Thirp, he hae just woke. Good evening sister!” She hugged her childhood nightmare with a fond sigh. “I would stroll in his woods and mayhap speak wi Beast, a mite.”
“Oh, I’ll accompany you, shall I? You seem unsure.” Thirp offered, with a soothing hug.
“Oo, ye hae been practicing that…” She murmured into the spider demigoddess’ warm, springtime scented fur.
“Some of my followers are human after all, this is their birthright, gifted to me.” She cooed softly, as her eight fingered hands scritched Shai’s scalp. “This power too is mine to wield.”
“Ahhhhhhhhh…”
When Shai could walk properly, they strolled and chatted, on their way into the woods and dark, looming forest.
“Yer touch and hug were… sensual? Enticing? Is this some new effect of yer form?” Shai asked quietly, as they crossed the weed strewn barrens.
“No, it is my followers, the humans I should say. They are spinners, weavers and seamstresses, they worship me in spun thread and tatted lace, particularly this ‘lingerie’ thing that weighs so heavily on Gary’s mind.” She sighed airily.
“My species does not link reproduction and pleasure the way yours does, but I have learnt much since coming here. I can be their goddess of naughty clothing, spun to ensnare a lover’s eye. Such spells, lures and traps are not unfamiliar territory to my kind.”
Watching her human friend change colors was always deeply interesting. There was no telling what might cause her to do so in any case. Thirp was content to carry on with this line of discussion, in furtherance of her human behavioral studies.
“...attracting a male is not so different from attracting prey, to my kind. The poor males are simple, short lived and mindless, bless their empty heads. Human males are not dissimilar, when aroused.”
She clacked her fangs in amusement, also in a way that reminded Shai that her friend had mobile and venomous mouth parts.
“So, there be a flimsies cult in Wheatford? Where might one find their observances?” She asked, slyly, while turning more exciting colors in the infrared spectrum.
“Oh yes, there are seven Contracted members, they have decided that is almost the correct number for their first coven. They are so intent on ritual and secrecy, it would be a shame to spoil their fun…” Thirp kept playing with her dear human mercilessly, all the way into the treeline.
“I would nae! Tis just so that I might steer Gary away, lest he form some filthy underwear business wi them.” She insisted… too vigorously.
“Let me say, if you go to the weaver’s guild, shopping for sheers and satin, ask for the eighth yard remnants bin, at the bottom, you might find an invitation.”
“There be summat afoot here Thirp…” Before she could finish airing her suspicions, the dark canopy and thick brambles closed around them.
Dark things lurked in the bushes and trees, furtive and hungry eyed. They skittered at the edge of her vision, making her skin crawl.
“Nothing of the kind my dear Shai…” Thirp cooed, seeming unaffected by the gloomy, cold forest of thorns and watching eyes.
“Their conclave is not fixated on any purient or unseemly goals, rather, they are a society of romantics, dedicated to cultivating and fostering lovematches among their fellow humans…” Her pace slowed to accommodate Shai, who seemed hesitant, suddenly.
“...rather than the more typical trade, political, financial or religious arrangements that seem to dominate your culture. Are you well?”
“Thirp, we are being watched… frae, everywhere. It be unsettling… I hae never felt such at home before.” She whispered hoarsely.
“These lovely tanglewoods are his bond with Beast and with me, as they remind me of my home… He wouldn't mind if I spun a little burrow here and popped over for a snack once in a while… just to keep my mandibles in the game.” She sang happily.
“We had these little treemonkeys back home… delicious, but smart and quick, so hard to catch…” She had begun moving in short hops and slow creeps, by instinct as she spoke.
“Oh, excuse me… these are some of the parts of him that do not resonate with you, my dear, like when ‘cold stabbing Gary’ or ‘crazed murderhobo Gary’ come out. You will find these places cold and alien, like his demolished temple to Morrigan on the outside.” Thirp took the shaken smith back inside, across the wastes and into the orchards.
“Aye, that be better, perhaps another day I will speak wi Beast here.” She moaned when the new moonglow hit her skin.
Thirp dispensed another of those divine hugs, pleasurable and soothing on a level beyond anything physical, the pure essence of acceptance and welcome.
“Despite how you felt in the darkness, you were perfectly safe, every watching eye, rending claw and venomous sting in that forest was him, thus harmless to you and yours. Go, play with your children.”
#
Gary was up early even by his standards, but he could feel normal sleep calling him away. Working on the empty emptiness of a hollow one’s ghost was exhausting. Binding the thing to the physical world was like sorting grains of sand by color, in the wind, with mittens on. Fortunately he had some things working in his favor. Without a guiding will or mind, the thing was chaos.
Chaos is not a stable foundation to build an entity on, add a little energy to a closed system and chaos falls apart. Entropy can’t stand a little western swing.
I stop to see a weepin' willow
Just a Cryin' on his pillow,
Maybe he's cryin' for me?
And as the skies turn gloomy,
Night winds whis-per to me,
I'm lone-some as I-I can be!
I go out walkin', after midnight…
“Always end on Patsy Cline if you can. If you’re lucky, you’ll understand what that means… someday.” He whispered to the project as he sealed it away in his cupboard of forbidden oddities and filth.
Back upstairs, Shai was alone in bed, blissfully asleep, toes tapping and hips gently rocking in her eternal dance. He shimmied into bed, finding her rhythm took only a moment. He secured the coveted ‘big spoon’ position, gleefully nestling himself to wake her with a nudge in her nethers when little Gary inevitably woke before he did.
He would invariably lie and deny in the most patently false terms, giving Shai the opportunity to enjoy fussing at him all day, or enjoy her wakeup call more immediately.
The former was fun, a verbal jousting match was always fun with his uninhibited lass… but the latter was more fun, with his uninhibited lass. Either way, he loved waking up with himself between her butcheeks.
‘Time to roll the dice…’ He thought as he drifted away, lost in the warmth and scent of her.
#
The poor lad tried so hard to be naughty, he just didn’t have the knack. She gently wiggled and squeezed, nudging and flexing until he was in place, before leaning back just far enough for her hair to tickle his nose…
…and there he was. Steady as a waterclock, hard as an old oak and already twitching along with his triphammer heartbeat.
Always steady, never changing, save when music played. Whether working out, fighting, making love, or summoning demons, he had always, always that slow steady beat. Just as he only gasped for breath when he felt like he should be winded.
Whatever else her boy was, his warmth was alive and vital, as were other parts she had plans for.
While he was still asleep, she dipped into his Pockets! for a tiny vial of sweet almond oil. Two tiny drops and she was comfortably playing with him in scandalous ways that couldn’t hurt anyone.
‘Nothing wrong with a little light tushie play.’ She thought to herself, while rubbing parts of herself, against warm and slippery parts of him.
#
“He must still be poorly, they are usually the first up, besides Tallum.” Ivy grumbled over her coffee. She was sitting gingerly on a donut shaped cushion Shai’d had Gary make for her a few weeks ago. That thing was worth its weight in silver.
“Where is Tallum? He wasn’t in the workshop.” Liam asked, looking around the common room, his words sounded slightly odd, a little thick and slow..
“I saw him headed for the market this morning, at dawn’s first light.” Nara muttered sleepily from a rafter high overhead. “He moves softly for one so large… though, his footfalls still shake the earth like thunder over a canyon.”
“The market? I hope he’s not buying any more ‘bargain meat’, I dumped that python into the third pool, it was starting to stink, worse.” She muttered, shifting on her cushion gingerly.
Small hands landed on Ivy’s shoulders from behind. “Tallum went off to the market all right, he’s feeling ‘As Fit As A Fiddle And Ready For Fun’, or so he said.” Dannyl sounded happy, really quite pleased about something.
“He scooted off, something about a special surprise. Say, that cushion looks bouncy, Ives.”
The young warrior had his hands on her shoulders, companionably like, while standing behind her chair. With a wicked chuckle he bounced her up and down on the pillow a few times, before running off.
Ivy was an Adventurer, she shed one silent tear of discomfort, but held her peace, while planning Dannyl’s ruin at a later date.
“Come along Ivy, I think a little girltime in the bath and some of that violet goo might do you some good.” Tawny sang, as she gently collected her suddenly fragile teammate. “I told you to establish a safe word…”
“I did, Our safe word was, ‘fuck me harder’, I though that was clever… at first.” The tiny blonde mage muttered happily. “Next safeword is gonna be ‘Just a little harder, please.’ that should work a treat.”
“I worry about you sometimes, Ivy. that thing is almost…” Tawny smiled and waved with her not helping Ivy arm.
“Shai, come help me, you have experience in this area…” She had that look and that walk too, though not as severely. Shai gave Ivy’s condition a glance and smiled.
The three women headed off to the baths, as Shai conjured a pink curtain, signaling lady time. “Liam’s been working on that flute skill…” Tawny whispered, just a little too loud in the echoing bath chamber. “...it’s amazing, and I can still walk…”
Tallum returned, with a big bag of coffee beans and some fresh sweet rolls, as the girls departed. The boys all reclined in postures of self satisfied leisure, until the girls were out of sight. “Dannyl, I hid some of Shai’s snowballs in the freeze, grab them for me and Tallum, please?”
“Damn you Gary, I think I sprained my jaw and the little web of flesh under my tongue is bleeding.” Liam complained bitterly, but he was grinning. “Now I understand that look she gets in her eye when she…” He coughed lightly and blushed.
Tallum smiled and nodded along, looking refreshed, happy and well rested. “Is that what that look is? I never knew you could just hand over control like that… It’s very… freeing, this sensation.”
“Yeah, you can totally steer the ship from below decks… it’s like playing improvisational jazz… just following and leading without rules, trading roles… just trust and a partner with a steady… I need that ice Dannyl!”
It was third bell and a lot of violet goo, before anyone was ready to sit a saddle or ride a boat bench.
#