NINE AND ONE
 
by Bitter
 
 
I have heard it said that the simplest disproof of an intelligent and loving creator is a cursory evaluation of the bottom of the Earth's ocean. There you may find creatures that baffle the landlocked human expectations of proper animal design: creatures whose bodies are filled with light-emitting diodes designed to snare prey, creatures whose composition strays upward of seventy percent teeth, and creatures whose flesh is entirely transparent. To witness the sheer multiplicity and alienness of the Earth's darkest depths would certainly shake anyone's conviction that so many bizarre and horrible things could be conceived by a single mind after a specific end purpose.
 
These things are nowhere near as bad as the things that the people who live in Ei Taita have to put up with on a daily basis.
 
For instance, consider the following scenario: a building in a densely-populated, early Industrial Revolution-era European-style city has, as they were prone to doing every so often, burst into flames. As might be expected, the local fire control agents hurry to the scene, locate the nearest fire plug, and attempt to remove the cap so they can attach a fire hose. Only, rather than the cap behaving itself and coming off as expected, the entire fire plug lets out a shriek that lands perfectly at the upper bound of human hearing, uproots itself, and flees while making vague threats to contact a lawyer. This is because it is not a fire plug at all, but a creature that looks uncannily like a fire plug and has, in all likelihood, suffered from this same misunderstanding a dozen times because it cannot be convinced that it should not sit motionless in the spots that fire plugs would normally be placed. And as if the situation needed to become any more bizarre, the firemen are spared the indignity of failing to find a fire plug in time because the fire itself has determined that the municipal buildings it was devouring weren't nearly as tasty as they had initially appeared, lost interest, and crept away to the nearest pub to get sloshed.
 
Such things are commonplace in the civilized regions of Ei Taita. The uncivilized regions of Ei Taita, naturally, are far worse. In fact, much of Ei Taita (which is a country rather than the greater world that contains it) is covered in wilderness, which the Ei Taitans define as "any place more than twenty feet from a building". When the first humans moved into Ei Taita and declared their intent to make it their own, Ei Taita took that as a challenge (some suspect that this is more than just a figure of speech). The Ei Taitans who do not have the good fortune or the good sense to live in the cities and therefore must buy their existence from the wilderness daily do not have permanent residences so much as they have homes that they recreate as many times as are necessary. Life for rural Ei Taitans is so difficult that one might reasonably question why they simply do not move back to the cities. For one thing, it could be convincingly argued that the cities are themselves a form of wilderness, and for another, Ei Taita has no roads. The Road-Eating Weevils see to that, and the Ei Taitans have yet to discover a proper remedy for them. As a result, what human settlements do exist in Ei Taita are largely self-sustaining and cut off from any and all contact with other such settlements. The wilds are simply too broad and too dangerous to traverse reliably, relegating just about everyone in rural Ei Taita to a life spent entirely in their place of birth.
 
As anyone of sound mind can tell you, this is stupendously boring.
 
So perhaps Erehdys can be forgiven for doing what she did on the first of her last days; namely, she defied all conventional wisdom and left the safe perimeter of her home village of Tylsa. Life in Tylsa was boring, had always been boring, and promised to be boring for the foreseeable future (at that time her days were mostly spent helping to mind the village's children and exchanging sincere if passionless pleasantries with her betrothed). So she found herself drawn to the outside; once, just once, she wanted to see what was beyond Tylsa. There were only so many times you could play patty-cake and only so many displays of eligibility one could stomach. Erehdys wanted to see the monsters that were said to lurk out in the wilderness. Lucky for her, then, since one was doing just that.
 
Admittedly, "lurk" may not have been the correct term. "Lurking" connotes a specific and malicious form of locomotion, and this particular creature had neither the gait nor the attitude to lurk properly. It might be better to say that it was "ambling", perhaps "shuffling". In any case, it lacked the energy and the motivation to do any serious lurking, and the root of both problems lay with the fact that it was Not Exactly Hungry. Anyone who has been Not Exactly Hungry can tell you that it is a horrible feeling, most likely to occur precisely at meal-time, in which you know you are supposed to be hungry but don't quite feel the need to eat just yet. It is a gustatory limbo that dampens the wit and stifles the will, and so the creature that Erehdys had no idea was dangerously near to her was slumping its way through the trees, wishing that it felt just a little bit emptier.
 
And so it happened that the two wanderers, one looking for anything and the other looking for less than it had, almost crossed paths. I say "almost" because if they had actually attempted to cross paths they would have crashed into one another, and both were attentive enough to realize that one of them was going to have to stop in order to avoid a collision. As luck would have it, both had the courtesy to yield for the other, allowing each of them to recognize for the first time that there was, in fact, someone else right next to them. Both Erehdys and the creature stood stock still and silent, appraising one another to determine what a more appropriate response might be.
 
Erehdys quickly took stock of what she could only wrongly assume was an Ei Taitan native. It was stranger than anything she'd ever seen, and she'd seen a Spiral-Eyed Naked Mole Rat's mating dance before. It stood a head and a half taller than Erehdys (herself a fairly tall Tylsan woman), or at least it appeared to; its entire body was black like ink and had no reflectivity that Erehdys could see, with the effect that it felt like a swatch of her vision had simply been removed. Fortunately, whatever black stuff it was made out of merely comprised most of its body, and not the entirity of it; the creature had a white, mask-like face that, thankfully, actually obeyed the light patterns Erehdys's eyes expected. Still, the comfort of having proper physics reasserted was entirely negated by what Erehdys saw on the creature's face: a single giant eyeball spanned its entire forehead, which would have made Erehdys's skin crawl on its own, leave alone the fact that the iris was black and the pupil, against all sense, was a bright red. That and the fact that the eyeball was turned toward her. If you've ever had someone stare at you, you know how disconcerting it can be; imagine how it must feel to have that much unsettling force concentrated down to a lone point of focus. Turning away from that sight, Erehdys got her next shock: the creature's nine arms. Five ran up one side, and four ran down the other, all in a row, as if the extra pairs (and one extra) had been attached at the wrong height before whoever had assembled the creature had gotten it right, then didn't have the energy to correct the misplaced sets, called it a day, and crept away to the nearest pub to get sloshed.
 
Compared to such a strange animal, Erehdys felt rather plain. She was, after all, only a human (a forgivable fault of the human mind caused her to assume that this appearance was in some way "normal"); her hair was a neutral brown, same as her eyes, and the sum total of her clothing (barring her unmentionables, which have regrettably now been mentioned) was a rather mundane canary-yellow muumuu and a haversack of useful things. Be it known that I do mean "muumuu" in the sense of a flowing, full-body garment as opposed to a cow. There are certain areas around Ei Taita where it is a rite of passage to spend a day strapped to a cow. Erehdys was not one of these people, so it would be ridiculous (more so than usual, at least) for her to be dressed in such a way. As was traditional in Ei Taita, she was barefoot; the Ei Taitans had nothing against footwear, really, it was just that not wearing shoes spared you from having to fend off a constant barrage of Shoe-Eating Weevils[*]. Plain as she was in her own estimation, the creature seemed to have taken an interest in her; at least, that was how she interpreted its body language. It was stock still, unmoving, expressionless.
 
Somewhere far in the distance, a bird chirped.
 
Just a little farther in the distance, there was a rubbery snap, followed by an abbreviated squawk, and an airy gulp.
 
The forest was silent again.
 
The creature leaned forward so slowly that Erehdys had no idea it was happening until something touched her forehead. It wasn't the creature's face; that was merely uncomfortably close to her own. It felt like two giant fingers were running through her hair. As if afraid she would break the situation by moving it too violently, Erehdys very slowly rolled her eyes up to look at what was touching her. Two antennae-like protrusions from the bizarre caterpillar's scruffy hair were shifting in alternating back-and-forth motions across the top of her head. Trying to maintain a positive outlook in the face of uncertain circumstances, Erehdys assumed that it was a greeting. The thing's pursed lips and intense stare spoke to the contrary, but perhaps it just didn't know how to smile.
 
"Hello," Erehdys replied.
 
The creature righted itself and immediately put all of Erehdys's fears to rest by smiling and waving at her. All five of the arms one side waggled at the same time in one giant, unified wave. Erehdys giggled involuntarily at the display. "Pleased to meet you," she said, curtsying slightly. The creature returned the gesture, only instead of crouching it slumped into itself. Its orange shorts never moved throughout the entire gesture; he simply squeezed into himself and tipped forward slightly. It was upon noticing the creature's attire that Erehdys came to a correct conclusion by the wrong means; namely, that the creature was male, because no proper lady would ever walk around in nothing but short pants. That was, in fact, a secondary requirement during the ritual of being strapped to a cow. Regardless, in that moment the creature became a "he" in Erehdys's eyes ever after, and the narrator finally gained the ability to use the proper pronoun.
 
"My name's Erehdys," Erehdys said, touching her sternum as she did so. "What's yours?" It did not occur to her that most things outside of Tylsa don't have names.
 
Fortunately, this one did, and unfortunately, he had no means of expressing it, at least not in any form he thought she'd understand. Stroking his chin with one hand (a feat which took far finer muscle control than you'd think), he lapsed into thought.
 
It finally occurred to Erehdys that she might have assumed more than was true. "Do you have a name?" she asked.
 
The creature nodded, still lost in thought.
 
"Can you speak?"
 
This time he nodded more enthusiastically. The creature reared back, held up one finger, inhaled deeply, and... pursed his lips. He'd just remembered that the word he was about to speak was one he'd learned to say in a very faraway land, and it was terribly unlikely that Erehdys would think it meant anything. Worse, it was entirely possible that she'd think it was his name, and "Stop Eating My Cow" wasn't a moniker he felt like going by. (The circumstances by which he learned this word are beyond the scope of this document, but an attentive reader may be able to ascertain some of the details on their own.) Only momentarily vexed, he went through the same routine-- same drawing back, same finger pointing, same inhalation, same sudden withdrawal. The next word he'd thought of was one of those tricky ones with about four different meanings, three perfectly innocuous and the fourth extremely rude; unfortunately, this was exactly the kind of situation where it could be taken the wrong way. Skipping ahead several steps, the creature went straight to the inhaling and choked. THAT word was extremely rude no matter who said it or when. The creature grit his teeth. Yes, of course he could speak. There was just nothing he could actually say.
 
Erehdys giggled. "That's all right, you don't have to if you don't want to," she said. "But I AM going to have to call you something." She appraised the creature for only a moment, then delivered her verdict. "How about 'Noin'?"
 
The creature instantly recoiled. Oddly enough, his lower body stayed put while his upper body telescoped away, and all the while his face assumed the sort of quizzical expression that requires two eyebrows but somehow managed it with only one. "Is that a bad name?" Erehdys asked. The creature shook his head, slowly reeling back into place. "It just seemed right," Erehdys said, "because you're nine and one, see? Nine arms, one eye. Nine-and-one. Noin."
 
It was the most preposterous thing the creature had ever heard, especially since that actually was his real name. But before he could dwell on this strange (and therefore normal by Ei Taitan standards) turn of events, Erehdys was speaking again. "So, where are you going?" she asked, demurring slightly. It was rude to inquire after other people's business, but in this case she had good cause. Noin responded as best he could by pointing every arm in a different direction. "Nowhere in particular?" Erehdys asked. Noin nodded. That was exactly what Erehdys wanted to hear. "May I come with you?" she said. Noin gave her a nine-armed shrug; Erehdys was practically crushed under the weight of the sheer indifference. Noin began to walk away in not quite exactly the direction he'd been going, and Erehdys quickly fell into step with him.
 
Noin's pace was easy to keep up with, and Erehdys actually found herself wanting to move a bit faster. The forest was quiet in a way that gave her the sort of nervous feeling that doesn't entirely register consciously. She was disquieted without knowing why, and furthermore hardly even knowing that she was on edge. So she spoke. She talked about her life in Tylsa, and how she had tired of her life there and decided to go adventuring (the tale was much longer in the telling). She talked about the things she had brought with her, all the imperishable foods and the tools that she thought might turn out to be useful and how she'd gotten it all (often, when the rightful owner wasn't looking). All the while, Noin listened to her with a pleasant but nonetheless disconcerting expression on his face. His eye was wide and his mouth was curled into a smile, but a dozen little subliminal signals were telling Erehdys that something was amiss; not necessarily wrong, but unexpected. Even as Noin's body squished and ambled beneath his head, his face remained in the same spot, framed at all times by some barely-moving strands of hair. His face floating alongside Erehdys's like a ghost, and that perfectly innocent nonhuman body language had her edging toward a panic. Subconsciously, she started babbling about the surroundings-- all the interesting things she'd heard about from the rare travelers who had passed through Tylsa that she wanted to see, and how few of them there actually seemed to be, and how that aligned perfectly with what the travelers had said about how most of the interesting things were very good at not being seen, either because they didn't want the things they wanted to eat to see them or because they didn't want to be seen by the things that were trying not to let them see them before they ate them.
 
It got to the point where Noin stopped listening to exactly what she was saying (which was hard enough to understand on its own, being in a language he had only had minimal contact with) and simply focus on the sound of her voice. It had a bit of a melodious ring to it, the slight errors in her cadence lending a poetic feeling to the words. It was sort of cute, in fact. Listening to her speak certainly beat watching the fronds[**] go by, and it wasn't long before the sky began its daily shift into the warmer color spectrum. (The exact mechanics that cause this to happen in Ei Taita and beyond are fascinating but irrelevant.) Erehdys suddenly became aware of the intense stiffness in her neck as Noin unceremoniously dropped out of the pace and plopped down into a sit. After staring into the giant red pupil for the last several hours, suddenly having to look in a different relative direction was a painful shock, albeit a welcome one. Now that Erehdys's mind was free to focus on other things, it discovered an ache in her feet, which stood to reason. She'd never spent so much time walking at once, and the next day, she realized, would probably involve even more. With that in mind, she quickly sat down next to Noin and curled her legs up on top of one another.
 
As Erehdys sat somewhere well beyond her reckoning, surrounded on all sides by towering trees and idle undergrowth that all swayed gently in a slow spring breeze, she learned something important, entirely too late. Namely, she discovered that the wilderness was even more boring than her village was. The village, at least, had people. There was at least the vague hope of finding something entertaining if nothing satisfactory was yet apparent. Here, though, there were just trees. And underbrush. And dirt. Of course, Erehdys did not come to this knowledge as immediately as the proximity of the narration would have you believe. The discovery dawned on her slowly as the sun tracked lower and lower in the sky, the minutes crawling away one by one to the nearest pub to get sloshed. The boredom she'd sought to escape drew near again. Necessity fortuitously drove several errant thoughts together, and Erehdys finally found herself desperate enough to play one of the old children's games, if only to pass the time. With a start, she remembered that she had someone else nearby and turned to Noin, who was at that moment lying on his back and watching a faraway red-winged butterfly brutally rip a blue-winged butterfly to pieces.
 
"Would you like to play a game?" Erehdys said. Noin wobbled upright and turned to her, smiling. He nodded, which caused Erehdys to break into a bright-eyed smile as well. There wasn't much light left in the day, but at least there would be something to do for what little time remained before dark. Disastrously, Erehdys elected to teach Noin the first game that came to mind. "Okay, we sit facing each other like this," she said, placing herself in front of Noin. "And you hold your hands out like this." Erehdys helds her hands out, slightly parted, palms down. Noin helpfully stacked up all nine of his hands, which stole a giggle from Erehdys. "Ah... well, which two are your favorite?" she said. Noin regarded them. Two on his left side started to wave. Again, Erehdys twittered. "No, no, pick one from each side." Noin gave the issue serious consideration, then submitted two nicely central hands. "Now," Erehdys said, resuming her explanation, "I put my hands like this..." She held them beneath Noin's, palms up. "Are you ready?" she said, causing Noin's eye to narrow in concentration.
 
WHAP! Quick as a flash, Erehdys whipped her hands around Noin's and brought them down, spanking his knuckles with such alarming force that Noin let out a "Whagh!" sound and clutched his hands to his chest, sending Erehdys a betrayed look. She returned an expression that was one part apology and one part satisfaction. "Now it's your turn," she said. She held her hands out, palms down, and grinned as Noin's eyebrow rose in understanding. Revenge! Eagerly, he placed his hands beneath hers. He rose and fell with a breath. Erehdys's eyes narrowed. And with agonizing slowness he brought his hands around, lifted them up, and dropped them through empty air. Erehdys had simply opened her hands up and let Noin's fall past. Noin gasped, and Erehdys chuckled. "You have to be quick," she said. "My turn again." Noin's lips curled as he placed his hands back in position.
 
WHAP! Noin didn't even manage to spare a single knuckle. Erehdys simply moved too quickly. And to anyone who knew Erehdys, it would be no surprise; she had been an expert at the game as a child and still played it from time to time with the new younglings that followed after her. But it was far too soon for Noin to give up, and he gave the counterattack another try. Again the slap was far too badly telegraphed to hit home. Shrinking into himself, he steadied for the
 
WHAP! came the refrain. It became a beat of beatings. Noin was determined to make some headway in the game and refused to back down, while Erehdys was starved for entertainment and had an endless patience for his attempts to deliver his comeuppance. Sadly, the comeuppance never came. Nightfall came at last, offering some relief to eight of Noin's nine hands. He'd decided to try his luck with the other pairs, but none of them were any quicker, nor any abler to dodge Erehdys's attack. In goodwill and all honesty, Erehdys said, "Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it," but Noin still rolled over away from her and couldn't be prodded into responding. Feeling like a genuine heel, Erehdys pulled a blanket out of her sack, curled up within in it, and sank into sleep before the cries of Ei Taita's nocturnal creatures could put the fear of the dark into her.
 
---
 
A hand slinked out of the darkness, rising up into a cramped and claustrophobic chamber.
 
On the other side of the chamber, another hand rose up to meet it.
 
The first arm's elbow dropped to the bottom and the hand that punctuated it curled into the shape of a C.
 
The other arm, in response, assumed the same position.
 
They clasped their palms together.
 
Twin strands of pure black flexed beneath the two hands, and antagonistic torques compressed them into one another.
 
The leading hand began to fall back.
 
The two of them rocked in the other direction; now the other hand was receding.
 
A sudden surge of strength in the second knocked the first dangerously close to the edge.
 
The first called forth the last of its power and smashed the second to the floor.
 
The second hand snapped its fingers, and the two become one with the darkness again.
 
---
 
The next day's walk saw the first real change of environment that Erehdys had seen in the entire trip, and indeed in her entire life. Ever since she was born, she had been surrounded by trees on flat land. So when the earth beneath her started to roll upward, it came as something of a shock to her. In fact, it was vaguely unsettling for a number of reasons. There was the simple fact that ground, in her mind, was not meant to go up. It was supposed to just keep on going in the same direction it always had. But, more importantly, the fact that the ground was rising meant that she and Noin had reached a landmark that she knew about: the mountains to the east. If you climbed up one of the trees in Ei Taita, as high as you could up the very tallest tree you could find, you might be able to see a series of giant green lumps on the horizon; a mountain range. If a Tylsan really put their mind to it, they might have determined just how large a thing would have to be to appear at such a range, but since the mountains were Over There, beyond who knew how many trees and monsters, Erehdys had never really given them any mind. Now their hugeness was readily apparent, and Erehdys had an entirely justifiable feeling of being terribly small by comparison. Fortunately, Noin seemed to have the same aversion as she did to walking up an incline, and their path abruptly arched to the south as a result.
 
Still, the issue of the mountains was going to have to be addressed eventually. Either the mountains would end, or she and Noin would. Fortunally, the struggle between the travelers and the mountain range was a less mortal one than that; as it turned out, a river cut its way through the range, conveniently lowering the ground to a traversable height (at least for Erehdys and Noin's tastes). As soon as they hit the river, they turned once again to the east and followed the river opposite its flow. The trees rose above them on either side; the chasm's walls were too steep for plants to grow on them and the surroundings quickly took on a pale brown hue. Sylvan as she was, Erehdys found this sudden chromatic shift nearly as disconcerting as the altitudinal one. The thing that kept her calm was Noin ahead of her; he toddled onward without so much as a glance behind him. Erehdys dearly hoped that he wasn't terribly offended by what had happened the night before, but the uncertainty was less terrifying than what might come of finding out. The possibility of being alone so far from home was yet another fearsome thing which Erehdys had never encountered before, and the fewer of those she had to face immediately, the better.
 
The two continued in silence and entirely undisturbed by the horrible monster buried underneath the pebbles that they had the misfortune of stepping on (it was a heavy sleeper). Eventually, the river began to bend. Its normal undulations had varied the amount of free shore space the entire way, but its latest twist carried it all the way to the gorge's walls. As Noin stopped, Erehdys calmly stepped into the water. When she noticed that the centipede was making no move to follow her, Erehdys turned back to look at him. "We'll have to swim across," she said. Noin's response was an immediate and emphatic head-shake. He pointed to what Erehdys had assumed was simply a continuation of the gorge wall, but there was an opening in the stone. It wasn't terribly broad, but it did seem to lead beneath the surface, and since Noin was already moving toward it Erehdys couldn't give voice to her apprehensions. Her options were either to follow Noin or to move on alone; with those for choices, she chose to stay with company.
 
As Erehdys approached the entrance to the cave, she saw Noin laying his palms up against the sides of the tunnel; it was thin enough that he could span the entire tunnel's width with his arms. For a moment, Erehdys was able to follow along after him, but the sunlight only reached a very short distance into the cave. Quickly, Erehdys rummaged a candle from her bag, struck a spark onto it from the cave wall with bit of flint, and shuffled onward after Noin. The candlelight was so dim that she could only barely make out Noin's shorts. She dreaded drawing Noin's attention, but the darkness (not to mention the prospect of finding her way by staring at Noin's butt) forced her hand. "Noin, I can hardly see," Erehdys said. Without stopping, Noin cast a loko[***] over his shoulder. Erehdys could see Noin's face as clearly as if the sun were shining on it; it had the same blaring whiteness despite the darkness of the cave. In fact, as the surroundings lapsed into shadow, his face became a disembodied visage floating silently in the still air. A grumpy disembodied visage at that.
 
Erehdys felt like she ought to apologize, but couldn't find the words. In reality, Noin's attitude wasn't entirely her fault. He hadn't slept well; despite the amount of time that had passed since he and Erehdys had first met, he was still Not Exactly Hungry. That was more frustrating than sore knuckles by far! Still, he had no way of telling Erehdys that, so she continued to assume that the reason for Noin's disaffected stare was her own behavior. And there was no way to avoid looking Noin in the eye-- without his face to focus on, she'd surely slam into a cave wall. Guilt piled up in her chest until its gravity pulled down her cheeks. As her expression turned more and more conscience-stricken, she saw a change coming over Noin's face. His lips pursed quiveringly, as if he were desperate not to laugh. Erehdys suddenly felt terribly foolish, and decided that if she were going to look like a fool, she ought to play the role well. She slumped into five times as much of a pout as she'd had before, and Noin burst into a whooping laugh that was itself so absurd that Erehdys immediately joined in. Suddenly thinking to herself that it was rude of Noin to make her think he hated her (however unintentionally), she stuck her tongue out at him and put on her best overly-infuriated look into her eyes. Noin retaliated with a garish fang-toothed smile. The only acceptable response to answering one extreme with another is to jump off the scale, so Erehdys crossed her eyes and let her tongue loll out. To this, Noin adopted a look of absolute horror. Erehdys could even see his pupil dilating and a little shiver going through his face. Not to be outdone, she tugged at her cheeks with her fingers, trying to distort her face into a sufficiently weird shape to match Noin's flexibility.
 
That was when she heard the growl.
 
Suddenly, Noin's terrified expression and the way it was becoming very small all of a sudden made much more sense. Erehdys had no idea what was behind her, but she certainly didn't want to find out even if she could! "Noin!" she shrieked, and burst into a run, sending the flimsy flame at the end of the candlestick into flickers. Right behind her, exactly where she had just been, she heard the sound of sharp ivory interlacing. Adrenaline skewered her heart and set her legs aflame. Ignoring the feeling of uneven stone beneath her feet, Erehdys ran for her life. Noin's face floated on ahead of her, framed on all sides by a bizarre slapping noise that whatever tiny percentage of Erehdys's mind could be spared for such trivialities realized was the sound of Noin's hands slapping against the cave walls. He was propelling himself on all eleven limbs. Even with that advantage, he was still backpedaling, leaving him just at a pace that Erehdys could keep. But it wasn't Noin's pace that was the problem, it was the one kept by the thing behind her! Every so often Erehdys heard a snap and a bite-- no other sound, only that-- farther and farther away. But, of course, there is no comfortable distance to have between you and a disembodied set of man-sized teeth, so Erehdys pounded on as quickly as she was able without even thinking of looking back. Finally, she saw Noin stop and shake. His face disappeared for a moment as he turned to look at what he'd bumped into. Erehdys just kept on running until she reached the same spot-- there was a rock wall. She heard scraping coming from above; Noin had already started climbing. Unthinking, Erehdys clawed at the wall herself, searching for any kind of foothold she could find. The first thing she grabbed had a squishy feel to it-- it was Noin's leg. Holding on for dear life, she scrabbled with both of her remaining limbs, trying not to slow Noin down. After a harrowing climb, they finally reached the top and lipped over onto flat land again. Panting, they listened as the snapping reached the wall below them. Erehdys had no idea what they would do if the thing, whatever it was, knew how to scale cliffs. But that concern was soon put at ease as the snapping receded into a side tunnel. The creature had gone off in another direction.
 
Erehdys looked to Noin, who also seemed short of breath. She smiled at him, and he smiled back.
 
Then his eye went wide again.
 
Noin said the word he saved for the worst occasions, and despite it being in a different language Erehdys understood it perfectly. There was a growl and a tremendous huff of breath. Erehdys's candle went "foop" and disappeared. Erehdys was already moving before the little whappity-whappity-whappity sound of Noin fleeing through some further cave could register as such. Never before had Erehdys strained her ears so hard; a single error, a moment's loss of orientation and the beast would be upon her. She felt her muumuu tear between her legs; though she was glad for the extra mobility she would much rather have had a cow to put between her and whatever it was behind her. She heard Noin banking away to the right; she leaned into the curve in the tunnel and only slightly lost her balance. Perhaps it was fatigue, perhaps it was a different monster, but no matter how hard she ran, she couldn't get this one to drop away like the other. It stayed right with her, always a missed step from having her in its jaws. She heard Noin go around another bend, and again she found her footing misplaced. She heard a growl, a snap, then a sudden tug and a tear. The teeth had missed her; they'd only snatched hold of the end of her muumuu-turned-dress. With renewed terror, she hurtled onward, around one more bend, and then suddenly she saw Noin's silhouette. They'd reached the end of the tunnel; they had only to step across the boundary. Hope piled onto fear and put a vigor into Erehdys the like of which she'd never felt. Noin disappeared into the light and then she barreled out into the woods herself.
 
She heard snapping behind her, trapped at the cave entrance. Stupidly, she stopped and turned back to see what their attacker looked like; it was much as she'd imagined it: a giant set of yellow-toothed jaws shaped like a bear-trap, covered over in gray fur. The jaws themselves were attached to a ball of gray fur with two glossy black eyes like a doll's. That was really all there was to the creature; it had no limbs to speak of. Oddly, as soon as that thought ran through her mind-- that it really wasn't so terrifying a thing-- the creature shrank. It let out a surprised cough and snapped at them, but made no move to leave the cave. It was harmless, Erehdys thought, and it shrank again. A puny little thing. It deflated again. It tried to snap at her, but its teeth no longer had enough size to make a good crunch. It just seemed pathetic. And so it shrank and shrank, until it was the size of a coin and couldn't make anything more than a sound like someone choking. "I don't think he'll be troubling us any more, Noin." Erehdys said. "Shall we go?" with a haughty laugh, she and Noin set back off into the woods, and the now-puny fuzzy gray thing crawled off to the nearest pub to get sloshed.
 
Erehdys and Noin put a comfortable distance between themselves and the cave. As it happened, they reconvened with the river on the other side of the mountain, and when it reached a spot where it pooled up in a nice, placid spring, Erehdys pounced on the opportunity to bathe away the sweat from the day's running. Noin was a perfect gentleman about it; when she told him not to look, he turned away, paced off, shut his eye, and buried his face in his palms. When Erehdys returned to him an hour later (she'd neglected to pack anything to dry herself with, so sunlight had had to suffice), he was still in the same exact position. For a moment, Erehdys thought he was asleep, but when she called his name he stood up and smiled at her quick as a snap. For a moment, Erehdys wondered how long he would have been still if she hadn't returned, then decided she didn't want to ponder the circumstances in which that might happen. The rest of the day passed uneventfully (for which Erehdys and Noin were quite thankful), and then continued on until the sun chose their stopping point as it had the day prior. Erehdys could happily have dropped off to sleep then and there, but Noin sat cross-legged next to her and held out his hands, palms-down, with a strange combination of eagerness and resignation on his face. He wanted to play the game, and Erehdys was baited into obliging him.
 
WHAP!
 
... WHAP!
 
... ... ... WHAP!
 
---
 
A hand arose from the darkness, asserting its shape from the surrounding walls.
 
Nearby, a sibling took form as well.
 
The one beckoned, the other gave a thumbs-up.
 
Each formed into a fist and shook at the other; once, twice, three times.
 
The two hands opened: one with its palm flat, the other with two fingers curled inward and the others in the shape of a V.
 
The one that played scissors shook its fist in triumph.
 
The other snapped its fingers.
 
As the victor receded, the vanquished held up its palm to stop it.
 
Hurriedly, it held up first two fingers, then three.
 
The other hand returned to the center.
 
Once, twice, thrice...
 
The first held out a fist, the other held out its scissors.
 
They reversed their roles; the one shook its fist and the other snapped its fingers.
 
The two hands leveled for the final showdown.
 
Once, twice, thrice...
 
Paper and cutters again.
 
Despite the extension, the result was unchanged.
 
The loser threw a symbol that was not part of the game.
 
---
 
In much the same way as it had been the preceding two days, the next day was quiet and unengaging right up until it wasn't. Truth be told, Erehdys was beginning to question her own judgment with regards to leaving Tylsa. She had learned two important facts in as many days: first, that adventures make for wonderful stories but terrible experiences, and second, that you never learn your lesson quite as soon as you need to. Home was on the other side of the mountains, and every step she took was another handful of feet further from where she belonged. And yet, she couldn't turn back now; she honestly doubted that she could make it back to Tylsa on her own and Noin was still aching from an evening of not moving his hands out of the way quick enough, which kept her from even considering asking him to take her back home. Besides, she'd probably look at anyone who proposed going back to the cave where they'd practically been bitten in half (twice) cock-eyed, and Noin had a lot more eye to cock than she did. So Erehdys found herself getting ever further from Tylsa, dutifully following the creature she dubiously considered to be her one remaining friend in the world.
 
Even this one comfort was soon to be threatened. As they traveled through the subtly different forests of the lands beyond the mountains, Erehdys noticed that the foliage seemed denser. The trees were the same distance apart, but the other plants, the shorter and smaller ones, were more numerous and closer together. Eventually, Noin was pushing boughs aside with all nine arms, and not long after that Erehdys was having to force her way through as well. Noin seemed to have no trouble navigating the hordes of low-hanging leaves, but Erehdys found herself having to battle for every step. Altogether too late, Erehdys finally said "Noin! Please, slow down, I can't--" A sudden realization cut her off. She couldn't hear Noin's movements any more. Nine hands pushing branches aside makes an awful lot of noise, and Erehdys couldn't hear any of it. She stopped and listened deliberately, but still couldn't hear anything.
 
"Noin?" she said.
 
There was no response.
 
"Noin!" she cried out. She plunged ahead, batting aside what leaves she could and ignoring the way the sharpened points on the end of the leaves tore at her skin and her clothes. "Noin!" she yelled again, but still there was no reply. He'd vanished, just like that.
 
Erehdys only briefly considered the possibility that he'd abandoned her. He'd disappeared so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that it couldn't have been intentional. There was something strange about the forest itself. Or, even more terrifying, there was something that was making her think that something was wrong with the forest. Whatever it was, Erehdys couldn't help but feel scared. Her one lifeline was gone; she was alone but for all the leaves. She couldn't think of anything in her traveling pack that might be useful. She was alone now, and the decision of how to save herself was hers alone to make. She could try to get out of the forest back the way she came, or she could plunge ahead and try to find Noin-- but the question remained of which direction was "forward". The sun had vanished behind the canopy and there was no moss on the tree trunks to navigate by. Every leaf looked the same, and they all pointed in such a chaotic mish-mash of directions that it was impossible to use any of them for a landmark. Bereft of any useful way to make a decision, Erehdys chose to go on straight ahead. If Noin was still ahead of her (for whatever arbitrary definition of "ahead" now applied), that was probably the best way to catch up with him.
 
Erehdys found herself losing track of time in that strange infinity of leaves. It wasn't that she couldn't tell how much time she had spent in there; it was that she could feel herself losing the sense of time. Past and future alike were fraying at the edges. Tylsa was a word with no meaning, and the future seemed impossibly distant when compared to the current reality of endless lostness. Erehdys knew that something was deeply wrong, but there was nothing she could do about it-- it felt as though she'd been lost since the beginning of time, and would remain lost until time at last came to a close. Nothing mattered but the lostness-- not Noin, not herself, not the strange and incomprehensible objects that she carried along in a knapsack whose purposes she could no longer articulate. It was all flushing away from her, siphoned off into an emptiness that was both everything and nothing.
 
Erehdys stopped. It took her a moment to realize why she had stopped. Erehdys discovered that she had stopped because the leaves had stopped, at least momentarily. There was something in her way. It was as though a drop of water twenty feet across had been dropped into the forest. Everything on the opposite end was distorted, as if the light were being refracted in an odd way. But it wasn't quite like water; the greenery on the other side was too blurry and indistinct. But before Erehdys could figure out exactly what it was she was looking at, the thing she was looking at looked at her.
 
Two giant, human-like eyeballs whirled from the opposite side of the blob, as if it were rotating. There was a jovial, if condescending mood in them. They seemed to think that Erehdys was somehow funny, as if there were something ridiculous in her appearance that she hadn't yet realized. There was no time to consider this, though. A divide opened up in the blob. It started to tilt back like it was on a hinge, unveiling a set of hooked, shark-like teeth on either side. Erehdys found herself oddly unsurprised by the revelation. What did startle her was what she saw beyond the teeth, or rather, what she did not. There was nothing beyond them. There was an absolute darkness behind them, deeper and purer than any mere absence of light. Almost immediately after the mouth opened, a wind kicked up, leading inside. Erehdys observed this all with a strange detachment; she knew that she ought to be terrified, but the thought was as murky as the plants on the other side of the monster. It meant to eat her, but she didn't care. It simply did not matter. She felt the torn halves of her muumuu fluttering in the breeze; she felt her feet starting to lose contact with the ground. If what happened next hadn't happened, she'd simply have let herself fall into the beast's maw.
 
Fortunately for Erehdys, the creature closed its mouth and frowned. Its eyes widened as if someone had slapped it on the ass. It went, "Whuhn?!" in a giant, reverberating bass voice and tried to turn to look at what was behind it. Something prevented it from turning. Suddenly, as if it were being sucked through a straw, the monster shrank. The shrinking halted for a moment, then resumed, then halted again-- as if the monster were being drunk away. It let out a horrible noise, its simplistic face twisted in indignation and letting warglharbling cries like a dog trying to snap a rabbit's neck. As the beast disappeared, Erehdys slowly regained herself and was at last able to focus on what was happening. She saw a dark figure on the other side of the creature, grasping at it with nine arms and pulling it in. Finally, the creature was small enough that Erehdys could make out her savior clearly. It was Noin.
 
With one arm, Noin pushed the last of the creature into his mouth and swallowed. He let out a noise like a belch in reverse-- a flatulent inhalation, like a hiccup gone on far too long. Erehdys ran to him, put her arms around him, and squeezed. It was easy to ignore the squishy texture of his skin and the fact that, for as much as he'd just taken in, he was no larger than he'd been before. Erehdys was happy to be alive. The peril she'd been in only registered now, as her sense of time had returned. In the midst of her embrace, Erehdys looked up at Noin. There was a strange look in his eye, one whose meaning Erehdys was unable to discern. If she had to put a name to it, she would have called it "desperate". Suddenly, Noin shoved her back and looked away.
 
"Noin?!" Erehdys said, surprised. As she stepped forward, he waved her off and clutched his belly. "Noin, are you okay?" Erehdys said. The centipede took several deep breaths, drew himself up, and nodded to Erehdys with a smile. He waved her on like a chauffeur, inviting her to lead the way out of that creepy place. Figuring that Noin would know best about himself, Erehdys gave his condition no further thought.
 
Noin, on the other hand, couldn't get the way he felt out of his head. He'd been Not Exactly Hungry for the past several days. When he'd seen Erehdys about to fall prey to the strange annihilator-beast, he'd been just hungry enough to consider using his stomach to vanquish it. But the monster had disappeared as soon as it had hit the bottom of his belly, taking with it the very memory of fullness. Noin had suddenly become Really Very Hungry. And he couldn't help but think back to the time two days ago when Erehdys had quite obligingly let him get the taste of her through his antennae. Distorted by his sudden hunger, he seemed to recall her being the most delicious thing in recent memory. But at the same time, she was friendly and innocent. It would be wrong to simply eat her, just like that, wouldn't it? But he was soooooo hungry...
 
And so Noin's mind raced in circles for the rest of the day. He and Erehdys finally extricated themselves from the stultifying brush just before sunset and pitched camp. Noin immediately rolled over on his side, away from Erehdys. When she tried to offer to play with him, he just shook his head. He couldn't bear to look at her. He was too tired to go find food of a different sort now; it would have to wait until the morning. With a vague sense of unease, Erehdys laid down to rest several feet away from Noin. Something was terribly wrong with him, and she had a feeling that she wouldn't be able to find out what it was in time to do anything about it.
 
---
 
In the darkness, a hand was clawing at the bottom.
 
It scraped with its nails, scratching like a cat at the surface.
 
Another hand rose up from the darkness.
 
The new arrival shook its finger at the other, scolding it for its behavior.
 
Ignoring the chastisement, the first hand continued to scratch.
 
The scolder made signs furiously at the troublesome hand.
 
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
 
Fed up, the disciplinarian reached over, grabbed the scratcher by the wrist, and pulled it away.
 
The scratcher went berserk and flailed around madly, breaking free of the other hand's grasp.
 
More hands appeared and grabbed at their rabid cohort, tugging at its arm and reaching for its fingers, but none of them could hold it down.
 
At last, the first hand to appear decided to match the strange one's ferocity. It reeled back, and...
 
WHAP!
 
All the hands went still.
 
All the hands slowly receded back into the darkness.
 
---
 
Erehdys awoke to a rather startling sight: Noin was sitting next to her, legs folded, two hands out.
 
"Noin?" Erehdys said. There was a strange look in his eye, an unsettling intensity to his stare. But he was smiling. "Good morning," Erehdys said cautiously. "Are you... feeling better?" Noin nodded slightly. He gave his forward hands a gentle shake. "It's a bit early for that, don't you think?" Erehdys replied. "We haven't even had breakfast..." Noin shook his hands again. Erehdys was still uncertain. "Noin... are you all right?" Noin nodded and shook his palms a third time. He would not be denied, it seemed. Erehdys finally relented. "Okay, then..." With that, she sat up and aligned herself with Noin.
 
Carefully, Erehdys put her palms below Noin's, facing up. She gained a reprieve from Noin's creepily vacant stare as he tilted his head down to watch their hands. Erehdys briefly wondered how long she could keep Noin waiting like that, but doubted it would change anything in the long run. So, poker-faced, she whipped her hands around Noin's.
 
WHAP!
 
...and as usual, he took the blow practically without even reacting. Erehdys laid her hands out for the return volley. Noin held his hands beneath hers. The same dreadful pause that Erehdys had inflicted on Noin he now returned to her. Perhaps he was trying to trick her, Erehdys thought to herself. A major part of the game was a mental aspect. If he couldn't win by pure speed, perhaps he'd discovered one of the game's little tricks...?
 
Noin coughed. It wasn't a large cough, just a quick "hck". Erehdys held her gaze down, not about to be taken in by such a simple diversion. In doing so, she missed Noin's real strategy. Two hands, made of the same dark stuff as the rest of him, whipped out of his mouth and slapped down on Erehdys's knuckles. Erehdys blinked. She looked up at Noin indignantly (she'd chastised him the last time they'd played before about using hands that weren't part of the game), then drew back in surprise when she saw where these new hands were coming from. She couldn't help but laugh, even if it was somewhat creepy. "That's quite a trick, Noin!" she said, glad that it wasn't as bad as she'd feared. "You got me." She tried to move her hands away, so she could set them up for the next round, but found that she couldn't. They were stuck to the new hands.
 
"Noin," Erehdys said. "I'm stuck." The two hands that were stuck to hers tugged backward, and Erehdys thought that Noin was trying to pull them apart. But there was no slack in the two thin arms that ran down Noin's throat-- he wasn't giving her her hands back. Erehdys tugged at her hands, but any bend she put in her arms just brought her closer to Noin. "Noin! Come on, this isn't funny," Erehdys said. The two hands, stuck to her own, pulled back into Noin's mouth. Immediately they were drenched in sticky, slimy saliva. Noin seemed to be drooling. "Noin! What are you--" Erehdys tried to speak, but she was cut off when the hands gave another tug and pulled her own arms down into the throat. "Noin!" Erehdys shouted. "S-stop it! Sto--" Another tug pulled her head into Noin's own. He was eating her alive! Erehdys screamed, but the sound only came out as a distant squeak as the next pull dropped her head into Noin's throat. It was all happening so quickly that Erehdys scarcely knew how to react. She'd never have thought that something her own size could swallow her so easily. Just as she thought to do something with her legs, she felt Noin's body twist around her own and heave her into the air. Her legs flailed to no avail; they only succeeded in scattering the torn parts of her muumuu over Noin's head. The centipede hardly took notice of that; all he was focused on was swallowing down the delicious girl. Noin's next gulp dropped Erehdys's head into a chamber that she could only assume was his stomach. It was hot and humid, and, more surprisingly, full of hands. Erehdys couldn't see, but she could feel dozens of playful fingers crawling around face. They found her shoulders and tugged her down, dragging her through the slimy confines of Noin's throat. As more of her fell in and the more hands got hold of her, the quicker she went down. In no time at all she was in up to her waist, and then a single collective heave-ho from all the hands in Noin's stomach brought her legs in one gulp.
 
Panic stole Erehdys's voice from her and quite nearly stole away her thoughts as well. Noin's stomach was utterly dark; she couldn't see a thing. There were some dull squishes, but only on the edge of her hearing; it didn't sound like what she thought a stomach would at all. The only thing she could feel was those hands, always moving around her body. Despite her reflexive kicking and thrashing, they stayed attached to her; they grabbed her wrists and her heels and molded her into a ball-like shape. There were too many of them to fight; if she shook off one, another would take its place. And while she was fighting the ones trying to restrain her, the others were doing something else. They were rubbing her-- with surprising gentleness. If the situation had been any different, Erehdys might even have liked it. But in the darkness and silence, she wanted nothing but to be out of there. She strained until her muscles ached, but the hands held her firmly in place. Erehdys felt her soaking muumuu come apart as some of the hands tore at it; her cheeks reddened at the indignity of it. But she did not have long to protest this sudden nakedness. The rubbing hands, the gentle ones (which were now in the majority) were spreading some kind of slime over her skin. A few weak shivers were all the protest Erehdys could manage. The strange stomach-hands had free reign over her body; no inch of her went uncovered, not even her more private parts. And wherever the goo went, Erehdys felt herself going numb. Little stripes of her body began to vanish; mostly her legs and arms at first, then her chest and her head. The numbness even crept into her thoughts; just like when she had been lost in the woods the day before, her mind felt fuzzy and dark. Just before she blacked out, Erehdys thought to herself that leaving Tysla had been a terrible mistake.
 
 
***
 
[*] Ei Taita's ecologists are watching the various Weevil species with dread, awaiting the day when they finally evolve a Clothes-Eating variety and the whole of human civilization is driven to nudism.
 
[**] I am, of course, referring to the trenchcoated tentacle-demons who happened to be flying overhead in a flock at the time. I apologize for any confusion this phrasing may have caused.
 
[***] Some may claim that this is a typo. However, a "loko" is, in fact, a subspecies of troll, undetectable by all modern means, that is created by grumpy looks. Being cast over people's shoulders is about as much fun as a loko ever has, especially since a fall from that height is immediately fatal.
 
 
Author's Comments:
 
This was an interesting challenge for me. I believe this is the first time I've ever had to work with such a specifically predefined character before; Noin has a dozen little quirks that I had to work around or work with. There was the issue of his personality, too, which is not well-known to me. I eventually decided to run with the following premise: Noin regards Erehdys the same way you or I would regard a chicken that suddenly got it into its head to follow us around. Perhaps it's cute, and it makes funny noises every so often, and you might even develop a certain attachedness to it if it hung around long enough, but if you're starving then there's no getting around the fact that you're a human and the bird is delicious.
 
The gray snapping creature in the caves has a bizarre property: it is as large as you think it is. This is why it makes its home in such a dark, cramped place: deprived of a sense of perspective, a well-timed growl echoing off the walls can make you think it's huge. Then it IS huge, and after that it remains huge because you think it's huge because it IS huge. But if, say, you managed to get a good lead on it and view it in better light, you see that it isn't as large as you thought it was, it gets smaller, and then it's terribly small because it IS small because you think it's small.
 
The transparent blob-monster is what I'd provisionally call an annihilator. They're immobile, but terrifying nonetheless: they are pure nothingness, wrapped up in a thin membrane of not-quite-substance. They survive by destroying matter; whatever they eat disappears forever, and thereby the annihilator continues existing because it's gained more nothing. Don't ask how this works; I don't even know. All I do know is that they're terribly smug about the whole thing; they seem to think they have a right to destroy everything they see. Ah, and furthermore, they're surrounded by a sort of aura of nihilism. If you wander into their "kill-zone", you start losing your more abstract senses-- your sense of self, of time, of direction, and motivation. They're pretty horrifying creatures overall, wouldn't you say? The worst part is that you can't really kill them. I mean, you can eat them, like Noin did, but that's something of a last-ditch effort, especially because you're filling your stomach with emptiness. You wind up less full than when you started! ...what a convenient plot device.