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ID: +eNZWZnn/qst/6243967#6261661
6/20/2025, 3:05:43 AM
ID: LfzRDkDq/qst/6244669#6261630
6/20/2025, 2:16:12 AM
>>6261629
It begins like a bubble, blown by the stony ‘lips’ of the service, filled with the earth’s own breath. A faded memory from your (well, Zith-Zi’s) youth comes back to you: traders from the Southlands, chewing sap-based substances and expanding like this. This one doesn’t pop, though, nor is it the off-white you remember; rather, what grows and grows, stretches and flows, is the pinkish-yellow of a northerly human’s skin. As it swells out of the crevice, you can even make out pores upon its surface, though nothing else: no eyes, no ears, no mouth, nor anything else. Eventually, the expansion stops, and it pops out, like a wad of featureless flesh.
It is roughly the shape of a potato. It is roughly the size of a warhorse.
“I think that’s our mark,” you note quietly.
“No shit, CZ,” your dangling sister comments.
The rolling thunder is coming rom the amorphous blob, which ripples and rolls. It wobbles to an for within the great dish of stone which forms the ledge of its cave, very nearly toppling from its perch once or twice. The fairies cry out as if in fear when it precariously perches at the edge, only to sing out in delight when it extends a pair of pig-hoofed legs, to push it back. Eventually, the hundun’s meandering orbit brings it to a stationary spot, and the thunderous rumble dies down until—in its new quietude—you recognize it for what it is:
Laughter.
“Very good! VEEEERY good!”
The words come directly into your mind, like those of the Nothic… Or, you suppose, those the Dark Goddess who spawned this thing’s ancient ancestors in antiquity.
“L'Nausura Valshar!” cry the fairy court, and begin to wheel around the great blob.
The hundun reaches out, extending tentacle-like protrusions which—at their extremity—grow hair, and develop texture and colour not its own. It offers benedictions, joyously received, with humanoid hands, with tiger paws, and with bird talons like the steppe-fairies’ own.
“My friends! My countrymen! Lend me your ears?”
“Nau!” they cry, in grinning refusal.
“No?” the hundun rumbles, angry in voice but not in emotion—not in what you feel roiling off it in waves, which is rather more jolly. “Then I guess I’ll just have to find my own!”
All at once, one ear sprouts up, then another, then another and another, like pimples upon the great round surface of the void organism: donkey ears, cat ears, dog ears, human ears, elf ears, GOBLIN ears, and the ears of a dozen other species you couldn’t catalogue if you had Martyn and a month to do so. The gyr-fairies shriek in delight at the routine, which seems almost practiced.
It begins like a bubble, blown by the stony ‘lips’ of the service, filled with the earth’s own breath. A faded memory from your (well, Zith-Zi’s) youth comes back to you: traders from the Southlands, chewing sap-based substances and expanding like this. This one doesn’t pop, though, nor is it the off-white you remember; rather, what grows and grows, stretches and flows, is the pinkish-yellow of a northerly human’s skin. As it swells out of the crevice, you can even make out pores upon its surface, though nothing else: no eyes, no ears, no mouth, nor anything else. Eventually, the expansion stops, and it pops out, like a wad of featureless flesh.
It is roughly the shape of a potato. It is roughly the size of a warhorse.
“I think that’s our mark,” you note quietly.
“No shit, CZ,” your dangling sister comments.
The rolling thunder is coming rom the amorphous blob, which ripples and rolls. It wobbles to an for within the great dish of stone which forms the ledge of its cave, very nearly toppling from its perch once or twice. The fairies cry out as if in fear when it precariously perches at the edge, only to sing out in delight when it extends a pair of pig-hoofed legs, to push it back. Eventually, the hundun’s meandering orbit brings it to a stationary spot, and the thunderous rumble dies down until—in its new quietude—you recognize it for what it is:
Laughter.
“Very good! VEEEERY good!”
The words come directly into your mind, like those of the Nothic… Or, you suppose, those the Dark Goddess who spawned this thing’s ancient ancestors in antiquity.
“L'Nausura Valshar!” cry the fairy court, and begin to wheel around the great blob.
The hundun reaches out, extending tentacle-like protrusions which—at their extremity—grow hair, and develop texture and colour not its own. It offers benedictions, joyously received, with humanoid hands, with tiger paws, and with bird talons like the steppe-fairies’ own.
“My friends! My countrymen! Lend me your ears?”
“Nau!” they cry, in grinning refusal.
“No?” the hundun rumbles, angry in voice but not in emotion—not in what you feel roiling off it in waves, which is rather more jolly. “Then I guess I’ll just have to find my own!”
All at once, one ear sprouts up, then another, then another and another, like pimples upon the great round surface of the void organism: donkey ears, cat ears, dog ears, human ears, elf ears, GOBLIN ears, and the ears of a dozen other species you couldn’t catalogue if you had Martyn and a month to do so. The gyr-fairies shriek in delight at the routine, which seems almost practiced.
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