I found something for Scia to eat.

Really, I thought it would take longer than it did, but all it took was to look. A simple glance through a couple distortions and there it was; all the food she could ever need.

Unfortunately, it’s inside the shards.

Thick but shallow strands of moss grow within the holes of the porous shards. And not just any of the holes; only those that carved in a way that there are walls not directly exposed to the outside. Considering how hard the gravel slams into each indent of the shards as it slides through the ever-fluid walls, it isn’t surprising nothing could survive on those parts. Really, the moss must be particularly hardy to live through the splash-back, regardless.

I’m happy to know we aren’t completely without option, but those massive shards still unnerve me… and I can’t figure out why. They are simply oversized formations of a crystalline-like rock. While it may be stronger than ranked stone, it is still stone; it can’t move.

A shard tumbles from the wall and slides through the ceiling.

Well, it can move, but it can’t attack directly. Not like a Titan. If it made up all the walls around, I would be concerned; a cave-in with the material of a shard would be disastrous. But if everything were made of these shards, cave-ins could never occur.

No, the real problem lay in how fast the shards leave open space. Their large size make them seem deceptively slow as they float from one churning wall to another, but there is only so much time to dive in and snatch up the moss and leave.

If I’m going to make an effort, I can’t have Scia with me. I can handle a little of the grinding stone. The small bat cannot.

I face Scia, trying to express my thoughts through my eyes. She needs to stay to the side while I retrieve her feast, not that I’m confident she’ll consider it as such. Scia stares back at me, her eyes wide and intent, but she doesn’t appear sad or hurt, so I take that as approval.

The tip of my tail wraps beneath her wings and lifts her off my scales. She doesn’t resist, but she also doesn’t try to fly under her own strength.

I rub her head. She tries to lean into the touch of my tail-tip, but I pull away and retract my hold. With a beat that seems like far too much effort for the tiny creature, Scia holds herself in the air. Has her laziness affected her strength, or is she just malingering? Each sweep of her wings is much heavier than they should be.

Suppressing the urge to tap my spine and allow her back on, I turn my attention to the the walls. My body slithers through a trio of bends where I can keep my tail ready to spring off myself in an instant.

A shard appears. Too fast and too far, I won’t reach it in time, so I wait for the next.

Scia watches on from nearby, clearly fussing. Her eyes never leave my form even if her ears dart around unhindered. She doesn’t blink to my side, which makes me slightly proud; she trusts that I’m no longer trying to leave her.

The next option breaches the wall, loose gravel flung everywhere. I snap forward before I can even register whether the shard has appropriately deep holes. This shard is moving from floor to ceiling, so it should give me enough time.

As I whip through a hole and a dozen bends in rapid succession, I choose my target. The curved end of a thick, smooth column is porous. A few of the holes in the shard contain that moss we want. In no time, I’m sliding inside the shard.

No time to waste. I wrap the tip of my tail around a patch of the growth, and tug. The moss slides out of my grip. I try again, this time curling as much of the short grass into a knot, and yank it out.

It doesn’t budge.

I’ve never come across a plant that can somehow handle my strength. It either tears, or the ground crumbles. But this moss refuses to move.

From the corner of my eye, I watch the shard edge toward the upper sea of flowing rock. There’s no time to waste. My body triples in width and I twist myself against the moss, grinding it away from the crystallised rock it grows from. My girth is too thick to grip the short plant, so I must rely on the ridges of my scales to shred them.

When enough of the moss clings to my body, I finally relent on my coiling labour. I’m not going to be able to avoid the grinding stone on my way out, which is unfortunate, but something I’ll just have to push through. I snap up a mouthful of the moss — nearly regurgitating from the foul taste — and move to rush out of the hole as the shard slides through the ceiling.

Before I can, the worried sound of Scia’s chirp hits my ears, piercing through all other sound. In an instant, my eyes find hers. Almost all spatial paths connecting us are blocked by the flow of liquid stone, but I can see her. I can see how her worried, fearful eyes follow me as I’m swallowed by the earth. I can see her decision clear on her face.

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No, Scia. Don’t.

It’s too late. She’s already created a spatial hole for herself. I try to shove the tip of my tail into the distortion to stop her, but I’m too large; it simply slides over the space instead of plugging it.

Scia appears. And I’m swallowed by rock.

Acting instantly, I curl my length to block the entrance, growing to a greater size to ward off the powerful flow of rock. It is only this act that saves Scia from being crushed beneath the explosion of earth. Even then, I can’t stop it all. Gravel shatters against the back of the hole we now find ourselves stranded.

The heavy pounding of rushing stone slams into my body, demanding its entry be granted with all the anger of a starving beast.

It is not easy to hold off, and until my body grows to fill all free space in the cavity, my scales are continually pounded by the unnatural force. Once I have grown, my scales do better to hold off the assault, but I’m not looking forward to seeing the scratch and raddled appearance they will no doubt have become.

I just shed too.

My glare falls on Scia, who is safely wrapped in the tight coil of my length. She hasn’t much space, but I cannot afford to shrink with the hard thrum of rock slamming away on the outside of this shard.

Scia has the decency to look ashamed. She wilts under my gaze; head lowered and ears drooping. I hiss at her. She knows she did wrong, but my heart is yet to slow.

Because of her, we’ve lost our safety. I cannot see through rock, so there is no way for me to tell exactly how much of the Other Side is caverns and how much is an ocean of rock. For all I know we could be stranded now that we’ve left those stoneless caverns.

But mostly, I’m frustrated because she threw herself into danger. And for no reason, too. I would have been fine. Now should be proof enough that I can handle the stone slamming against my scales, there was no need for her to join me.

I huff and spit out the moss I went through so much effort for, a bit wet, but otherwise still in the same condition as before. Between that mass and that which still clings to my scales, at least she won’t starve. There is a lot.

Another hiss escapes my mouth as I press my head down besides Scia. This is… less than ideal, but there’s nothing that can be done about it now. Scia dares to peek through her ears, before realising I’m no longer mad, and leans into my side.

The tight confinement of my body squeezed withing the small space leaves me with a tightness in my chest. My breaths come quickly, but it feels like I can’t get any air. It’s not the constriction that affects me. No, the tightness of the rock around my body is rather comfortable. Rather, it’s the blindness that gets to me.

I’ve never had my vision this enclosed. There are no bends within the cavity; the shard doesn’t allow it. I can see nothing beyond my own scales. Even the distortionless space hadn’t been this dark.

My world has narrowed to only the tight coils of my length, and Scia.

I catch my breath, sealing my jaw and force myself to calm. The pounding in my chest accelerates at first, as if refusing to comply, but after a dozen moments without a breath, it finally settles. This is nothing to fear. I may be blind, but that is nothing on my other concerns.

The grinding of earth over my exposed scales is a constant thrum now, but occasionally, I’ll feel a hard jab or crash; ranked stone. I’m susceptible like this, and I don’t like it. There is too little I know about the Other Side to find comfort in such a position.

It wasn’t hard to settle into a sort of acceptance of the situation, despite having arrived in the Other Side, but now I can feel that same overwhelming horror that I’d felt arriving here so long ago. Like the very world was crushing me.

Something strokes my snout, and I look down at Scia who pats my scales with her folded wing while looking up at me in concern.

I look away, realising how foolish I’m being. My breath escapes with a hiss and I yank my mind away from the undesirable thoughts. So what I’m a little blind? I’m not so weak that such minor inconvenience can affect me. The Other Side is as dangerous as its ever been. This slight setback won’t be the end of me. It won’t be the end of us. I won’t allow it.

A surge of energy floods through my body. I feel ready to strike out, overcome any obstacle we face, but moving is the last thing I want to do right now. So instead, while my body gains a burst of stamina, it has nowhere to go. The feeling makes me agitated, but at least it serves the purpose of draining my mind of those pointless pessimisms.

❖❖❖

Scia and I sit in the tight space between my scales for a long time. I’m not sure exactly how long, but it’s enough for Scia to chomp her way through most of the moss. Thankfully, she could actually eat it. I don’t know what I would have done had she found it as inedible as I had.

As time passes, the churning of earth becomes less constant, and comes along in bursts. Pulses through the earth shatter it along my scales with far greater power than before. The shard has taken us somewhere, and I’m not all that thrilled to find out where.

A heavy quake suddenly crashes through us. The entire shard we hide within jolts to the side, carried with the wave of rock that scrapes along my exposed scales.

That was not normal.

The rumbling earth pulses, but it’s never been that powerful before. I’m worried to look at the damage it might have done to my scales; the shattered pieces of ranked stone that sometimes filter through the rest of the rock unleashes a slight stinging pain through my back. I’ve been pierced. Hopefully, there won’t be another blow like that.

Our shard hits something. The constant motion of the massive formation jerks to a stop, lessening the weight of stone pressing into the wounds that now litter my scales. The relief only lasts a moment as the rock crashes back down a moment later. I hiss in frustration that all I can do is lay here and take it.

My hiss cuts off immediately, as something far louder thunders through the grinding stone. A roar. A vicious, deafening, Titanic howl cuts the gravel and shard to pierce through my core. The pressure it carries: impossible to ignore.

I know what this is.

I know what this is, and I wish we were anywhere else.