Shatter

::: subchapter I was alone. As I limped over the molten glass lake, only one set of footsteps cracked the crumbling skin. My heart floundered in my breast, still wracked even with the argument behind me. Salty, sour venom dewed on my fangs, my anger leaking out. My tail uncoiled from my leg, and I drew a shuddering breath, and bit back a cough. Every motion and habit stood salient in my awareness, with no one else and nothing else to distract me. The vog renewed its constrictions, so much darker now without the figure in bright-white leading me. I took another breath. I needed to dig up five more stones, prove to Hinte I could help her, and convince her to tell me the secret behind all this. Five stones. We had collected about seven or eight together. Could I collect so many more before we left the Berwem? I needed time, but how much? I fanned my frills, listening for a sound I hadn't heard since we left. In town, we measured time in rings. High up on one of tallest cliffs, in the timekeeper's belfry, they kept a massive glass carillon. It rang piercing and melodious, and rang fifty-four times a day. Four of those rings, the dawn rings and the dusk rings, sang the loudest. Ten of those rings sang loud too, loud enough to be heard deep in the cliffs by the sifters, the farmmasters, the patrolling guards and anyone else in the cliffs with or without a reason. The remaining rings, softer trills, had no such ambition; and you only heard them in the town. We called the louder rings 'long rings,' and the smaller ones 'short rings.' If you needed to talk about something lasting longer than a few heartbeats or tongueflicks, you measured it with rings. Two rings, three rings, half a ring⁠ ⁠---⁠ even a third of a ring. (Digrif used that last one all the time, but I didn't know why.) However they measured it, the town loathed using anything more descriptive than the plain, obtuse 'ring.' Yes, which ring is sometimes clear from context, but for me it never ever hurt to be precise. Why? Because I had floundered for the first cycle living here. What else could all this talk of rings have been but another example of the Grymri's frilly obsession with glass-working and metallurgy? So I dismissed it. And I had continued in my ignorance until Sinig-gyfar had lain me down and explained the system one day. I had blown the shop, the Llygaid Crwydro, a whole cowload of wet ash, a cowload that Mawrion-sofran told me to lash and lead back to the shop. But I had flown by the supplier two long rings after the ash had hardened and grown worthless. I almost lost my job that day. I never lost count of rings, big or little, after that. Stumbling over a crag brought me back to my senses with a gasp and a lightning strike pulse of my heart. I crouched, made my footing extra, extra secure and looked around, glaring at the vicious crags and spineless dustone skin. My gaze softened as it lifted and roamed around me, looking for something to anchor my mind in the lake, instead of wandering through my memories. I looked at the shrouded blotches of sunslight, which had already moved from their last position. Hinte had never told me when she planned for us to return. But we left town in the evening, three long rings before second dusk. The last proper long ring, reverberating through the cliffs around us, came vaguely on our way toward the lake; and on the tail of the first dusk ring, we'd flown down into the smoke and vog. Just one more would sound before the day alighted. I never lost count of rings. So, came the natural question, when should I find and reunite with Hinte? After the second dusk ring? It sounded good enough and maybe gave me enough time to sift five stones⁠ ⁠---⁠ if I worked fast. The task pressed down upon me like that, knitting itself into a tight knot in my belly. Starting forward again, I still eased the weight I placed on my injured foreleg. The tedium of marching over the Berwem gave me something to lose myself in, at least. Even if I could do without the dust and dirt in my foreclaws. Or the reeking vog burning my throat raw. Or the soreness settling into all of my limbs, but especially my forelegs, where the constant ripping away of glass felt like I didn't even have scales there anymore. I yelped when too much weight fell down on my injured foreleg. Without Hinte here, I could fly now. It would ease the strain on my legs. Should I? Flying took less time, put me in less danger, and I liked to fly. Hinte said it would tire me out, but unlike her, I would take breaks. Yet something she said echoed in my frills. "I need to feel the crysts." "Oh, really?" I said aloud. Hinte had fanned her frills to feel that annoying hum. It tasted so obvious! How else had she found all of those half-buried crysts? I fanned my frills, an imitation of that dark-green wiver. Five crysts. I could do this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Even after a while, my frills hadn't felt anything interesting. Only my amplified footfalls and the low, slow groan of the Berwem as the currents below distorted the skin. Time had passed with nothing to show for it. Did Hinte have some secret trick for finding out these stones? Sighing, coughing, I lifted my canteen to soothe my throat with another draught of alien coolness, and kissed the glass bottle. I should have brought a dozen more like it. Dressed in patriotic red and yellow cloth, the glass canteen stood tall and just wide enough I couldn't wrap my foot around it. I could empty two of them between one long ring and the next, or just one if I rationed, and you had to ration in the lake. I shook the thing. By now this second canteen had only a sixth left, maybe dozen or half again swallows. I did have one more of them, but it's been ten swallows since I left Hinte, and I'd never gone this long without anything happening before. What if I lowered my head really low as I walked? I had never seen Hinte do it, but it didn't sound so silly to me. Though when my fourth, or maybe my fifth attempt at it revealed a faint rumbling below me, my eyes cleared and I had to choke down a sigh for fear of coughing again. Doing it this way would only reveal stones sunken deep in the lake, out of reach. But... this was given me my only result since trying this gambit. After some shuffling around to find the start of the hum, and some extra pacing I stood close enough above it, so I made to grab it. Maybe it did lay too deep in the lake to grab, but I needed to find five crysts. I needed to try. I punched the ground. It broke with a sizzling crack. Three more punches opened a glowing hole in the skin. Prickling numbness once again enveloped my foreleg as I offered it to the lake. The molten maw swallowed me, first my claw, then my knee, then my upper leg⁠ ⁠---⁠ as far as I dared to reach. Toetips grazed the surface of the stone. Staring into that glowing maw, there was an echo of the sound of dustone slamming against my stomach. My eyes paled, and for just a moment, I again teetered on the edge of that maw, with a fiery line of pain running up my leg, breaths away from joining my lunch in the burning lake. Breathe, Kinri. My fist had clenched in the lake. I relaxed it. Just a little bit farther, just a few more lines of scales swallowed, and I still couldn't grasp the stone. But I wouldn't⁠ ⁠---⁠ couldn't⁠ ⁠---⁠ feed more of myself to the lake. I pulled my foreleg out, wiping the glaze from my leg without thinking. But I stopped and sighed: no point. I needed a plan to retrieve the stone. Could I reach in with both legs and wiggle it up? No, that could push it further down. If I had a stick or something, I could nudge or even pull it up. Hinte might have something like that. Anyone could think of it. Even if she didn't sift submerged stones. So, what angle was I not considering? All those ideas relied on bringing the stone closer to me. Could I bring myself closer to the stone? No, that sounded frilly. But no, they didn't only bring the stone closer to me, they also brought the stone closer to the surface. Could I bring the surface closer to the stone? My forefoot pressed down. The skin flexed. If I put more weight on, it would flex even more. "And if I fell onto it..." My wings spread. A leap, and several wing-beats had me in the air. When the vog blurred the ground below me, I stopped threshing. I plummeted. But I panicked, instinct animating my wings. My fall stopped a wing-beat above the ground. Rising to that height again, I steeled myself. I needed to stop wasting time! So I dropped myself mid-flap, as if to trick myself into falling. And it worked; I crashed against the dustone. The crash beat the breath out of me, and the ground hit my legs like a lightning bolt. I bent and gave, falling onto my belly, but too late to save my legs from the pain. I groaned. "This was a bad idea." The ground gave in its own way. The crash turned to a crater in the skin and then a wave rippling away from me. A massive crack filled my frills. It reverberated and echoed, the lake's own pained groan. Hinte had said something earlier about sound attracting monsters, hadn't she? As if the blow to my legs wasn't enough. The crash to the dustone ripped wide my hole. Around it, the skin was shattering into several smaller plates. My crater dipped below the molten sand, and now glass trickled in at the fringes. I reached into the widened mouth again, looking away. My knee had sunk in before I touched the stone. I grasped it then, while sliding the leg's pair in. As it emerged from the lake, the vibration doubled. I sat the stone on one of the floating plates, near its middle, before wiping my forelegs hard, and only removing the largest hunks of glass. My frills bristled at a distant crunch, but nothing emerged from the vog. The lake still groaned after my crash had upset the flow underneath, some of the plates still grinding together. They didn't sound like that,