Lilijoy’s body stiffened, her breath stopped. Emerging around the reflecting green eyes, she could see the forms of three creatures, two enormous and one much smaller, less than half the size of the others. Her mind wrestled with the unfamiliar shape of the beasts and the darkness. As far as she could tell at least some of Timout’s description held true.

One of the large beasts was sitting on the ground, body curled. It might have been licking its back feet, but now it faced Lilijoy’s position, neck twisted unnaturally. The other two were standing on four legs, bodies stiff, their elongated faces pointing toward her. The large one, thankfully not quite as tall as Timout had described, was still much bigger that Lilijoy.

As she looked on, it began to emit a low, rumbling sound that settled deep in Lilijoy’s bowels. The light from above reflected from only one eye. Whether that was normal for these creatures she couldn’t guess.

The small Predator was the closest, its head cocked to one side, almost the same way Attaboy used to look when he was working out a problem in his head. Strange tendrils hung from its head and neck, and in a flash of insight, Lilijoy realized that these were matted lengths of hair, much like those Mooster possessed. Lilijoy had always been in awe of Mooster’s hair, as she and most members of their community had only patches of thin hair that broke off after a few inches.

The Mooster-hair beast, as Lilijoy couldn’t help thinking of it, looked up at her, took her measure, and came to a conclusion of some kind. It made an unexpectedly high-pitched burst of sound, almost like a cough, and began to slowly move along the edge of the Pile.

Lilijoy was paralyzed by fear, her bowels still held twisted by the low vibrations of the large Predator’s sound and the terrifying strangeness of the situation she had created for herself. The light from the sky dimmed and vanished as quickly as it had emerged, snapping her out of her trance. Not far away, she heard the light tinkling of disturbed shards falling.

With a sudden gasp of breath, and a sick feeling in her stomach, Lilijoy realized she had miscalculated badly, perhaps fatally. Perhaps the Piles would protect her from the large Predators, but the smaller Mooster-beast would be lighter on its feet and more nimble as it came for her.

Such was her panic, she nearly broke from the Piles to run blindly through the night, but she caught herself and instead slid down the mound on hands and knees, lucky to only pick up a few new scratches and lacerations on her way down. Running as carefully and lightly as she could, she retraced her way to the small clearing and stopped to catch her breath. Bent over, hands on knees, she retched several times, coughing up a few strands of thick fluid that caught in the wet rag over her mouth.

Lilijoy was no stranger to suffering, but she had never felt like this before. Her new cuts burned, and she could feel bits of shard still hanging from her knees and hands, partially embedded in her skin. A sudden burst of jangling shards was her only warning, then she was hit and knocked down with a speed and violence unlike anything she had ever experienced.

Beatings were nothing new to Lilijoy; when the Bros took it in their heads that she hadn’t been pulling her weight, they would come for her and knock her around. Except the beatings she received at their hands were slow and telegraphed.

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They wanted her to see each hit or kick coming.

Lilijoy didn’t know for sure, but she expected they were only using a portion of their strength, so as not to break her too badly. After a beating, she would lie there for a while, face bleeding, bones aching where they had kicked, but by the next day, she was usually able to hobble around and scavenge to try to prove her worth to them again.

This attack was nothing like that.

Before she could even react, she was on the ground and one of her arms was being jerked back and forth. It was noisy in her head, an explosion of sound and pain that merged together; she couldn’t distinguish the ringing from the violence of her impact with the ground, the sensation of flesh being torn and ripped, the noises from the beast, the grinding and crackling of breaking shards under their bodies. It all happened in a timeless instant.

Somehow, she got her legs together under the beast and lifted its wriggling body. Its jaw was still clamped around her forearm, savagely twisting and wrenching it back and forth. It was surprisingly light for its size, and she realized that the matted hair over its body made it look much bigger than it actually was.

Smaller it may have been, but Mooster-beast’s jaws were stronger than any grip Lilijoy had ever felt on her body, grinding the bones in her forearm together. With a surge of strength, she kicked out further with her legs and sent the beast’s body arcing over her head. Its jaws, still clamped on her arm, tore and twisted the muscles with the arc of the beast’s fall and her hand ended up over her head.

For an instant they both lay there on their backs, head to head, in a horrible parody of how Lilijoy and Attaboy used to lay on the warm ground to rest when the sky was not too bright for their eyes. They would stare up at the brown swirls above and hope to get a glimpse of a flying cross or triangle, while talking about nothing in particular. Now, all Lilijoy could see was the faintest glow above from the sun’s sickly sibling.

Stunned from falling on its back, the beast’s legs twitched in the air for another moment, and Lilijoy, beyond any rational thought, rolled over her shoulder and on to its body. Its legs kicked and clawed at her, but the impact of Lilijoy’s weight compressed its chest, driving the breath out of it again. Its teeth were still buried deeply in the red and white thing that had been her arm, and Lilijoy’s eyes locked with the beast’s just for a moment, sharing the life and death experience.

Then, with a sound more whimper than roar, Lilijoy opened her mouth wide and bit down through the fur around its eye, finding the edge of its eye socket and tearing at it with her remaining teeth. Lilijoy was missing many teeth, but it actually worked in her favor now, allowing her to penetrate deeply into the beast’s eye and cheek. She bit down as hard as she could, an unpleasant coppery taste filled her mouth.

She wondered briefly what had become of her rag.

Losing energy along with the blood of her arm, she resolved to end this. She released her teeth from the beast’s eye socket and slammed her forehead where she had just been biting. The matted hair softened the blow, so she did it several more times, each blow causing her vision to burst with light.

On the final blow she heard a distinct cracking sound, and she returned with teeth, rending and tearing at the fractured eye socket. Her universe narrowed to biting and pounding, biting and pounding. She was not aware when the Mooster-beast gave its last breath, or even when its jaws released her arm.

She only knew that she had to keep doing what she was doing forever, never to stop, never to relent, until finally blood loss and exhaustion claimed her and dragged her awareness to the dark.