{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/fiction/atdra/01",
  "path": "/posts/fiction/atdra/01",
  "publishedAt": "2019-10-07T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "At the eleventh eclipse, on last day of eternal summer, I decided I\nwould kill the high priestess of Avelt.\n\nFor this act, there were reasons and justifications --- of that I was\nassured.  But, I was told, I stood not to the task of understanding.\nNothing unusual for me --- it was to be expected, if anything.\n\nA sharp, final sound cut through my thoughts, flinching me, and what\nfollowed were fading noises which could, blasphemously, be called\nscurrying.  The communion was over, that was what it meant.  The god\nof death had departed.\n\nOn an inflating stalk, I rose.  Cartilage popped back into place,\nhappy that my polyp-like kneeling was over.  My feeler tentacles\nbrushed the cave dirt from my bell and I absorbed a breath.  I was\naverting the eyes circling my bell and when the wiggly rhopalia were\nfree, I saw once more.\n\n...Should have seen, rather.  In the engulfing darkness of the cave --\nbroken only by a single shaft of sun from its mouth --- all visuality\nwas reduced to mere suggestions.  The clear jelly-bodies of macrohydra\nfloated idly about as and darting wasps made feast.  Barnacles spread\nfervently around and wild coral claimed the linings of walls.\nEverywhere, worms crawled.\n\nAll this I knew, or guessed --- little of it was seen.  What I knew of\nthe cave and what was unknown, both were equally reduced to mere\nsilhouette and impression.\n\nLong ago, I had strobilated in a dark warm cave --- not this one, but\nthe qualia was the same.  And, as if in remembrance, the stalk holding\nme up slacked.  I can rest here; that was the feeling in words.\n\nWith all the reluctance of one interrupting a dream, I focused sharply\non the impressions which didn't neatly fit into that comfortable\nimage: I heard grunking and rattling; I felt the constant thrum of a\ngodheart; I smelt corpses in every single stage of decay.  Focusing on\nthose, I was jarred from my reverie.\n\nI straightened my stalk, killed the slack, and stood upright.  I had\ndecided I would kill the high priestess of Avelt, and I would.\n\nA grasper tentacle groped out for my sunshield and another had found\nmy travel bag and slung it around my bell and, having everything, I\nfell onto my graspers.\n\nIt took three of your four grasper tentacles to walk --- two if you\nhad practice, if you absolutely couldn't spare more.  I was a master\nof both.  It wasn't a point of pride.  With weight on my tentacles, my\nstalk curled inward, inverting into my bell.  Like that I crawled\naway, crawled toward that shaft of light.\n\nAnd then, I felt it as a tug, but only in my mind --- inward, opposite\nthe mouth, it was an urge to look, to glimpse.\n\nThere exist flowers, whose death-petals are visibly lined with swift\nspikes, and whose nectar is sweet and fain to attract little hydra\njellies to their end --- a temptation which even their weak will can\noft withstand.\n\nIf that which tugged my gaze were such a flower, then I am less than\neven the hydras.  But the greatest wills do still falter, and I dare\nthose who in my position would resist, I dare them be the first and\nonly to criticize my action.\n\nI unveiled my eyes, and looked.\n\nIt was a throne or shrine or portal, a sacred thing, and it rose up\nhigh and darkly exalted and crowned with wet spikes and it was the\ncenter and heart of the cave.  It had earlier known the presence of\nthe god of death --- of that I was assured.\n\nBrazenly, I leaned closer, breath tight in my bell.\n\nThose easily impressed would note first of all the corpse impaled on\nthe spikes, its mesoglea spilling out in rivulets, its gray membrane\nturning to leather, its long slender tresses ripped delicately out and\nall their cnidae dotting the ground, hollowed of their god-given\nspark.\n\nBut what else would one expect in the demesne of death?  Hardly a\nsurprise, that.\n\nNo, peering closer at the crowned thing, I saw perhaps shed quills or\nfeathers.  Perhaps the diggings of claws.  Perhaps a shadow, cast by a\nthing of such power that it lingered even after its caster had gone.\n\nPerhaps I shouldn't have looked.  Mortal eyes weren't to seek the form\nof gods.  It was proscribed.  It would be --- it was --- the highest\ndisrespect.  It would be maddening.  Of that we were assured.\n\nI drew my gaze away, and prayed a moment to that kind, general god of\neveryone, the god of knowing and certainty; I asked forgiveness for\nthis trespass.\n\nWas it a little thing, what I did?  Perhaps.  But for one such as\nmyself, even little trespasses ought to be measured and corrected.\n\nI'd fallen short in every area (of that, I was assured).  Piety I\ncould cling to.  Piety I could control.\n\nI absorbed a vast breath.\n\nBut I was a damned medusa already.\n\nOf that, I assured myself.\n\n- - -\n\nThe red sun aimed and struck true with such judgmental rays.  I saw a\ndumb macrohydra like floating blindly out of the cave, protectionless,\nand watched it start to dry and slightly wither not a cilia's width\noutside the embrace of shadows.\n\nMinutes later it was dead, and drifting to the ground, and still\ndrying.  It had been half my size, at least.  I might last a few\nmoments more.  Cnidarians had it hardest in the eternal summer.\n\nI looked.  Farther outside the mouth of the cave, on the ledge which\nsouthwardly wound into the distance and northwardly curved out of\nview, there was a shelled star crawling along its way.  On the aboral\ntop, multicolored ossicles like scales caught and parried blinding\nrays of sun.  Where its shell wasn't rendered unintelligibly bright,\nyou saw the design of the ossicles made a big plus sign shaped like a\ntarget.\n\nAn eager croak came north from around the curve and a frog with fangs\nwas bounding over here.  But its prey, the star, was swiftly snapping\nits rays snug into its shell.  The bright-skinned frog slapped down\nright beside it, and was disappointed.\n\nBefore the thing left, though, its departing jump flipped over the\nstar in its shell, like a petty little revenge.\n\nWith the frog gone, rays popped back out and waved and struggled, but\nwrithe as they might, they couldn't flip right the shelled star.\n\nA grasper tentacle --- my grasper tentacle --- was reaching out and\ngingerly lifting and flipping the shelled star right side up.  It went\nall still and timid then, but moments later, with my tentacle drawing\nback, the star was falling bottom first and flexing below it many\ntube-like podia like row upon wiggling row of walking grass.\n\nAnother tentacle was reaching for some tool in my bag and another\nstill was taking that tool by the handle and then throwing it.\n\nIn the middle of the star now, just aside one arm of the big plus\nsign, there was lodged the blade of a knife.\n\n...I had missed the target, that little plus sign shell marking, and I\ncringed.  My aim needed more practice.  Always needed more practice.\n\nThe star was screaming now, and my fourth and final tentacle now\nsnatched the knife and stabbed again and quieted the screams, putting\nout the misery.\n\nThe sun crept further across the blue sky, shaving slivers off the\nshadows.\n\nI fell back on my stalk, and tilted my bell and with three eyes stared\nup.  Opposite the cave mouth was the other canyon wall, the top only\njust visible from this angle.\n\nAnd beyond that was Avelt, and the sunspire, and at its top, the high\npriestess whom I would kill.\n\nBut for now, this canyon wall stood as my obstacle.\n\nI stowed the knife away.\n\n- - -\n\nMoments later I realized I was resting on my stalk again, immersed in\nmy thoughts again.  You aren't doing anything.  I straightened my\nstalk.\n\nRight now, I was rooted close enough to the exit of the death-odored\ncave that, with the heat of eternal summer reaching for me, I cooked\nslightly.  Or imagined I did.  Regardless, I was close enough to see\nthat the sun had gyred around the sky and was poised to peek into this\ncave before long.\n\nI could recite to you whole lists of reasons to rest here and\ncontemplate like this --- there was my plan to consider, now that I'd\ndecided I'd kill the high priestess of Avelt; there was the heat (even\non an eclipse day like today, the heat slightly melted you); then\nthere was the endeavor of climbing out of the canyon at all.\n\nThe last of those excuses rang truest of all.  Getting down here to\nthe cave mouth had been trouble, and that was getting down.  I\nprayed for elevation.\n\nI could have waited day-spans by this cave mouth.  But it wasn't as\nthough anyone had ever outwaited the sun, not in centuries.\n\nWhen you got stuck in a mental loop like this, it was never something\ninside you that broke you out, not really.\n\nA cloud passed in front of the sun.  Simple, yes.  But that shade cast\nover the canyon --- what could I say?  It enticed.  I appreciated\nshade.  Who didn't?\n\nIt was like a leap or inversion, taking to the air.  Gripping my\nsunshield in a grasper tentacle, I crouched and pushed off with my\nstalk even as it inverted back into me.\n\nQuickly, magic snapped through my cnida-tipped tresses and then\nflowed.  Even as the magic exuded from the cnidae, I felt it reflect\noff the ground and return as a gentle push upwards.  Slacken the flow,\njust a bit, and the push slackens.\n\nLike that, levitation.\n\nEquilibrium in this came naturally to others (....or else I was that\nmuch inferior), but for me I would correct and overcorrect, anxious\nfeeler tentacles waiting for that telling rise or fall of air that\nmeant the flow was just so slightly imbalanced.\n\nAwful, dreadful, exhausting.\n\nThis sort of treading levitation was a true headache of a technique --\nbut directed levitation, that was a little better.  I angled my\ncnidae, and the magic flowing from my tresses pushed me along.  Slowly\nat first --- it gave me time to lift my near-forgotten sunshield and,\nholding it between me and the light, I was spared a withering\naffliction when I breached into the sunlight.\n\n- - -\n\nFor the moment, I floated above the ledge jutting out from the canyon\nwall.  It had been big enough to land on when I'd leapt down from on\nhigh, but small enough that now I only trusted my wobbling levitation\nmoments b",
  "title": "And Thy Secret Fate Unfurls"
}