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Four girls sat on top of a cliff, swinging their legs back and forth and watching the world get older, and them along with it.
“I can’t believe they let that happen,” said the oldest, who clutched a shovel in her left hand. Soft clods of dirt still seeped from its idle edge. “They starved to death, and they let it happen. And now WE’LL starve to death, and they’ll let that happen too. All they care about is their stupid houses and their stupid crops and their stupid roads and their stupid sticks-in-mud. If I had my way, I’d tear the whole thing up. I can’t believe they let that happen.”
“I can,” said the one in the middle. She stamped her umbrella against the ground; it was bonnie-blue, with a single button on top. “They don’t care. They never cared. ‘Oh, I’m sure they’re up there looking down on you,’ that’s the most they’ll say. As if the stars cared, as if the clouds cared. If I had MY way, I’d bring the whole thing down. As if they cared at all.”
The youngest sighed, dropping the stick she’d been fidgeting with. “You shouldn’t be so hard on them,” she whispered. “They do their best. They’re just soft, that’s all. Just soft and small. It can be very hard to be that way. I’m sure. If I had my way, I’d get them together and show them how to be. That’s what I’d do.”

There was another one, but they never asked her opinion on anything, so they didn’t.

***

There was a knock at the door, but it was more of a rattle. The knuckles doing the job were loose and jangly with nerves, and before the firm rat-TAT-TAT could happen it all just fell to pieces into a pell-mell clang-a-lang, so it was a real mercy that the door opened halfway through it and dropped the knocker inside the front hall.
The front hall was also the living room, and the kitchen, and the bedroom. But that’s okay, there was still space for two – after all, the knocker was only a little girl.
“What are, ten?” asked the owner of the house. “You’re pretty little to come all the way up here by yourself,” she said, which was pretty hypocritical since she was five foot six and built like barbed wire herself. “Don’t you know this hill is haunted? There’s ghosts afoot, and witches, and so on. Hell, I’m basically a witch. Why’d you come?”
The little girl tried to make words come out for a while, but she’d run a long ways and so the owner of the house sighed and got her a glass of cold water with too many ice cubes and an apple while she got back all the breath the trip had taken out of her.
“Monsters,” she said at last. “Monsters.”

The owner of the house listened for a while. It was a story with lots of gaps and stops that started in the middle and ended at the beginning before digressing into the end, but she kept nodding until it all nearly made sense to her. Which it almost did.
“Right,” she said. “And that’s a lot of trouble. And that’s why you’re up here talking to me, who’s basically a witch.”
“A good witch.”
“And you think I can fix this trouble for you and your family and everyone else.”
Nod.
The owner of the house considered this. “What’s your name?”
“Joy.”
“Right. Of course. Well, you can call me…hmm. Well, you CAN call me whatever you like. But try calling me Hope first. It’s easiest. Now, are you hungry? We’re going to start moving and not stop for a while, so you’d better not be hungry.”
Joy looked at the apple core, then looked at Hope’s barely-there belly and shrunken limbs.
“Oh, don’t give me that. Don’t give me THAT, either – keep ahold of it. And actually, take an ice cube too. Just put ‘em in your pocket.”
Joy was confused by this, but did as she was told. The ice cube was still freezing cold, and right away her left leg got goosebumps.
“No, no – not like that. Here, wrap it in this tissue. Now, I’m just barely forgetting something…oh. Right!”
She reached behind her door and pulled out an old, weather-beaten stick.
“Is that your magic wand?” asked Joy.
“No, but it sure makes hiking better,” said Hope.
That was better. And subsequently, they were gone.

The walk was shorter downhill; particularly riding on Hope’s shoulders. Her muscles were shrunken, but they seemed to slide effortlessly over her skeleton without ever needing to push and pull, and as she shuffled along she hummed in a tuneless sort of rhythm that seemed to propel her as much as her feet did.
But the flatter the ground got, the more Joy squirmed, and the more she winced at the distant rumbles.
“They’re coming,” she whispered. “They’re coming and they’re going to get us.”
“Don’t worry,” said Hope. “You’re with me. I’m the good witch, remember?”
“That’s all stories,” Joy said. “My mom told me stories, and none of them were real. This one isn’t real either. The monster’ll get us.”
“Cheer up,” said Hope. “There she is.”
And there she was, rounding the curve in the round and tearing up asphalt like it was soft snowflakes, mouth gaping wide open to split the earth like a plow the size of a building. Each of her teeth was the size of a shovel and the shape of a shovel and chunks of masonry and concrete and rebar dangled from her jaws like bloody gobbits. Fertile soil bled from her eyes and her face was a mass of mud and grins.
“Hello again sister Maggie, oldest and slowest” said Hope. “What are you doing here?”
The monster Magnitude laughed and it sounded like a sinkhole and smelled like rotting leaves. “I am FEASTING,” she said. “The things that walk on this earth offend me, and they will walk on it no longer. Now they will understand what it means to be hungry and alone, like I did when I was little.”
“Not a very nice meal,” said Hope mildly. “I’d spit that out if I were you. People live on it. People need it.”
“They haven’t used it properly, so they won’t use it at all,” said Magnitude. She reached out in front of her and picked up a hill in each hand and swallowed them, leaving Hope and Joy stuck on flat ground with nowhere to run. Then she smiled and came at them with a mouth like a steam engine.
“We’re going to die,” said Joy.
“Nah,” said Hope. “You’ve got that apple core I gave you, right? Throw it at her right now, and aim for the false tooth – she’s got a false tooth on her left side.”
Joy’s hands shook as she took out the apple core, and her vision blurred with tears as she stared at the oncoming jaws, and her arm trembled as she drew it back, but Hope’s hand guided hers as she made her toss, and the apple core travelled true – not straight – and smacked into a tooth that wasn’t a tooth at all, but an old, rusty shovel blade. It knocked it straight out and launched straight down Magnitude’s gullet, and she stopped in her tracks as if she’d been shot.
“YOU!” she shouted. “YOU!” And then she hiccupped. “YOU-“ she tried again, and then she coughed, and coughed, and coughed, and that was an end to talking, an end to everything, because an avalanche of apples came pouring out of her mouth, a flood of them, red and green and yellow and ripe and fresh. Then came branches, then roots, then leaves, and finally nothing at all was left of the road or the hills or Magnitude besides but a giant heap of confused apple trees.
“Good throw,” said Hope, and she patted Joy on the head smoothly. “Now let’s keep going.”

There was no more slope to fuel their steps – Joy now following behind, hand in hand – but Hope seemed to not miss it. Her skin seemed tighter somehow, less loose – there was roundness and firmness underlying it where before there’d been baggy bones. She stomped where she’d shuffled.
Joy felt a little better, but only a little, and as they came through the low valleys she grew whiter and whiter until she was nearly a wisp of mist.
“Don’t worry,” said Hope. “We’ve beaten one monster already. We can beat the rest.”
“That was just an accident and I almost did it wrong,” said Joy. “We’re going to fail. We’re going to fail, and they’ll get us. We’re going to-” and whatever other words she or Hope were going to say fell apart as the wind flew shrieking by in a panic, babbling to put a brook to shame, streaming for higher ground. Then the second monster came heaving up over the horizon, and the will to make the words flew away too. She was half as big as the first but seven times broader and taller, stretched thin and wispy over the sky: a clot of cumulus. Her long claws scraped up at the stars and her longer toenails scratched through the fog, ripping up air and murdering the breeze.
“Hello again Sister Missy, second oldest and most voracious,” said Hope. “What mischief are you making?”
The monster Mist loomed down, down, down, down and squinted until it could barely see the tiny people far below its toes. “I am taking away the dead of the stars,” she whispered, and the thunder in her belly took her words seven miles in all directions. “I am taking away the dull night and the uncaring day. The sky is my lunch and my dinner and it will provide everyone as much comfort as it did for me, when I was little.”
“That’s not very kind of you,” said Hope. “Like for like is no way to live.”
“I will show them all as much consideration as the stars did before,” said Mist. And she reached down slowly with one long, long hand and grabbed them.
At first, nothing happened but fog and bitter cold. But when Joy looked down, she saw the ground was far away and they were being lifted high into an empty sky.
“We’re going to fail,” she said, and misery filled her up as much as her apple had.
“Not now,” said Hope. “Do you have the ice cube I gave you?”
“Yes, but what good is it? She’s so big and it’s so little.”
“She’s not big at all,” said Hope. “Just broad. Take it in your hand just long enough to start it melting, then drop it into her button eye. You can do it.”
The ice cube was even colder than before, if possible, and it made the skin of Joy’s palm turn white and hard. But she clutched it as hard as she could – even if her muscles were stiff – and she sighted as best she could – even if the tears were in her eyes – and she dropped it where Hope pointed, and it sailed into the vortex of Mist’s eye and smacked against the little button-pupil with a sound like icebergs calving, bursting it to broken bits.
Mist screamed long, and the longer she screamed, the wider her mouth opened, and the wider her mouth opened, the more the sky spilled out, and the more the sky spilled out, the smaller she got, until finally all that was left was a grey scud that was washed away in the tide of the winds.
“That was well-done,” said Hope, picking pine-needles out of her arms – they’d landed in a bit of a mess and a lot of trees. “We’re nearly there.”

They crossed from dirt to gravel to asphalt again and into the land of concrete and steel and brick and plastic. The land of people packed tightly.
Joy ran in front. She didn’t look both ways before crossing the street. Hope didn’t reprimand her for this; she was nearly strolling herself, taking in the sights and chuckling to herself in her smooth, deep voice. Her stomps were a confident stride, and she stood so straight that she seemed closer to six foot than five.
“Don’t worry,” said Hope. “You’re nearly home.”
“You have no more tricks and the other monsters almost killed us and we’re not home at all,” said Joy. She was shivering like a leaf at the foot of a deer. “There’s nobody here at all.”
“That’s not true. They’re right here.”
It wasn’t Hope who said that. It sounded like chocolate bars, or a warm sunny dog’s belly, or a hug for your ears. It was a grandma and a mom and a dad and a brother and a sister all at once, and your best friend.
Joy darted behind Hope and clutched her hand like it was a lifejacket.
“Hello again, sister Mandy,” said Hope.
“Hello again, sister,” said the monster Mandible in a voice that made grown men calm and kindly. She was a little taller than Hope, and a little broader, but she had kind eyes. “How do you fare? You look so very thin these days.”
Hope looked down at herself, traced a finger over her hard, flat stomach. “No,” she said. “I’m doing alright for now. And what about you?”
Mandible smiled, and it was a warm, soft, calm smile, full of gentle humanity and red ruddy flesh. It stretched all across her face and between the gaps in every tooth. “I’m positively stuffed,” she said.
Hope frowned at that. “Not right,” she said.
“They did their best,” said Mandible evenly. “They did their very best, the poor small things. I have taken care of them; they weren’t to blame for our parents. Why, they couldn’t even help themselves. It was for their own good, you see.”
Hope’s knuckles were white on her walking stick.
“She killed everyone,” said Joy.
Mandible beamed at her. “Oh no my, “she said. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”
There was a clatter. Hope had dropped her walking stick, but she was still walking, straight at Mandible, fierce as an arrow. Not a word, but her hands were flexing.
Mandible didn’t say a word either. She just laughed, and laughed, and laughed. And at each moment, her mouth opened a little wider, until Hope was there.
And then Hope was gone.

Joy stood there, rooted and rootless. For some reason, she couldn’t stop looking at the walking stick. It was the only thing that made her feel safe.
“I can’t believe she brought that old thing,” sighed Mandible wetly. “I threw it away, you know. But she always did pick up our odds and ends, the strange thing. Sisters can be so unusual. Do you have any?”
Joy picked up the stick.
“Oh, of course you did,” said Mandible through the flesh of her mouth. “I can feel them in here.”
Joy looked at the stick.
Mandible was smiling again; she could feel it on the beck of her neck. The hot, humid pulse.
Joy ran.
Joy ran right up to Mandible, ran right up to that smile, each footstep a tiny battle waged and won.
And as the monster’s lips began to part, Joy thrust the stick between them, and straight into the waiting hand.
“Thank you,” said Hope.
Then she planted it.

There were hundreds of people inside, and a lot of them were hurt, and slow because of it. It took hours and hours, even with Hope lifting them out two at a time, a swing of the arms apiece.
But Mandible didn’t stop screaming.
Thousands, even. All lost, mostly homeless, only half-believing there was still a sky above their heads. And hungry. They barely had the energy to sit and wait; Joy ran to broken shops and dragged out cans and can openers, half-spoiled bread and produce.
But Mandible didn’t stop screaming.
At last Hope swung out a very small child – barely a baby, barely that – and looked down and down at the twisted, wizened whiteness that remained, all gnarls and wrinkled flesh.
“You can have that stick back now,” she said. And she kicked it, but only once, and not for her satisfaction.
Then she stretched her back, rolled her shoulders, and began to walk again.
“Stay,” said Joy. “We’re all lost. We don’t know what to do. We need help. We’re going to die.”
“You’ll be fine,” said Hope. “And moreso once I’ve gone. My sisters are defeated and won’t return, and I’ve got to leave before you can get better.”
“You’re strong,” said Joy. “And you’re smart. And we’re all weak and can’t do anything. Please, stay. Please, help.”
Hope stopped walking and poked Joy in the nose with one finger. She fell over.
“Feel that?” she said. “That’s you doing something.” She flexed one arm. “See that?” she said. “That’s your strength. You’ll be fine, as soon as I’m gone.”
Joy didn’t understand and didn’t need to say it.
“Me and my sisters,” said Hope, “we all starved when we were children, we all went hungry. We all had to find something to eat. And we all found consequences for that. They accepted that. I didn’t. And you? You have food. You have a home. And you have a family, somewhere in here. You’ll be fine.”
She held a hand over her stomach, and Joy saw it swell. “I can feel it in here.”
And then she turned and began to walk again, again. One step forward at a time, off into the growing dark.
By the time she was at the end of the block, she was only five foot six again.
By the time she was at the end of the street, she was shuffling again.

And by the time she passed out of sight, Joy felt that happy spark inside her body flickering again, and she knew that the last of the monsters was gone, and they would be alright.

It’s not that I didn’t try to swim, you understand. I tried very hard. I tried very hard for a long time. For a VERY long time. It felt like forever and it burned down through my arms and into my back and when it hurt too much to move and then to think I just stopped.
It can happen.
Now, it was what happened after that that began to convince me. When I sat there, swirling in the current, and I knew I couldn’t feel the rippling of my sleeves in the water. I couldn’t feel the cold anymore. I just felt heavy and full and tired. Do you know how you feel after a big meal? That overbloated exhaustion? The kind that makes sleep crawl in through every pore in your skin?
Imagine that, but never sleeping. That’s close to it. That’s what it feels like, sinking.

It was a fast current – a cold one, though of course I couldn’t tell that anymore – and it kept me upright and away, gave me time to see and watch the others. They were heavier than I was; kept on the trek downwards by boots and bags and bullets and they might’ve nodded to me, if they were as me. I think they were.
There were others, of course. They weren’t sinking. They had fins and frills and wide eyes that never shut and gasping, grasping mouths. I was repulsed at first, when they took their pounds of flesh. But then I saw how little it mattered, how useless the extra parts of me, of all of us were now. It was just weighing us up, holding us aloft in the current and jangling in indecision.
One by one, down they went. A salute to each of them, and a salute back. Imagined, of course. And then they were gone, and it was just me. I must not have been very tasty. I certainly hadn’t been, alive.

I can’t tell you how long or far my trip was. Down there it’s all twilight or midnight, wobbling over and under the line of light as the seafloor crawls up and down under your feet.
Sometimes I was swept above it by chance and the world was so painfully blue that it couldn’t be imagined on any painter’s pallet or living eye, a swallowing deepness that ate all detail of up and down, right and wrong, and didn’t even let fish-scales sparkle in it.
Sometimes I fell deeper, where my company had little lanterns on their brows and strange mouths too big to fit in their faces, faces that would’ve fit in my palms if I had them. I watched the snowflakes of rain fall from above, all the scraps and crumbs of the world flushed down, down, down with me and over me. Some of my own skin and flesh and bone always accompanied it, drifted downwards.
It’s a strange sight, but you get used to it once you understand it. Everything sinks. Even the little fish that swam up above me every now and then; I saw them sink. Even the fattest-bodied, full-blubbered whale slid down past me like the world’s biggest freight train, once enough of it had been picked off to let the bones ballast the carcass. Even the most magnificent ships; they sink too. I was never so lucky as to catch one in the motions, but I saw them pass overhead once in a rare while, and underfoot more often. Their bellies strained with the effort of keeping themselves afloat, and I would look at them and think of broken hulls and coral-encrusted cannons, and be sort of cheerily bemused at it.

Eventually, of course, you stop sinking. That’s just how it works, I thought. It’s certainly how it looks.
I brushed against the murk and mud where the weight of the water laid deepest, and what was left of me slid into it very comfortably, gliding through waves of silt that had lain there for… oh who knew. I didn’t.
When I came to a stop, the crabs came. They were very small but very diligent and they removed all of me that was noteworthy down to the last few specks. All that was left, all that I could tell, was stray flecks in sand and a few tatters that had been a coat that had been fibers and hide and metals once upon a time in a very small, very dry place. Quite unusual for the world.
I sat there, and I thought that I had finished. That I could close my eyes – my mind, at least – and consider myself complete. Sunk.
Instead, I slowed.

You can feel the world, at that pace. The deep breaths and slow tug of its magmatic muscles against its rocky skin. The heartbeat of its core. And the long pull dragging you down towards it, to merge lower and lower until you are wrapped up inside it.
There were bones beneath me, I knew this for a certainty more real than fact. They were older than I was capable of thinking. They had sunk.
There were bones before me, I knew that too. They were older still, and they were now stone.
There were bones before them on and on beyond thought, I imagined, but they were gone now. They had sunk farther still, out of the world and time and into them both, melted down below to make the world above.
This was good. This was proper. This was how it worked. And I, who had thought I had learned what I was for on my trip downwards, was content. Because this was how it could be, if that was how it should be.
Until just a moment ago.
There are still no days here, just moments.

But just a moment ago, I saw a shark. It looked happy.
No, not happy. Sharks do not do that, not really. But it was determined, very determined, in that special way that they and only they can be. Mouth just slightly ajar by dint of teeth, eyes set ready, body a twanging defiance of its own urge to sink.
That was a fine thing, but not a new thing. I had seen such sights since the moment I ceased to swim. What puzzled me was the moment after that moment. That moment just a moment ago. It is a hard time to explain and pin down because it was so peculiar.
Just now, I saw a stone that swam.

It was not a large stone. A rough chunk. I think it would’ve been big enough for me to carry, but I find it hard to think of what I was.
But it was moving in the water, wiggling with a force impossible to think of as the air-pockets of pumice, clearly trying very hard.
And it was working.

I sat here, half-buried in the mirk of ages, and I felt the world pulling me down, pulling everything above me down, and I knew that was how it was, and that was how it would be. And it was right to be that way.
But I had just seen a stone that swam.
I thought of the bones beneath me, the bones gone before, and I thought of the bones yet to float from above. I even thought of the quiet exhaustion I had stopped noticing, which was very difficult; like a fish trying to imagine water. I knew this was normal. I knew this was what should be.
But I had just seen a stone that swam.
Miles of water above me. Miles of silt beneath me. I had sunk so far, and I had so far yet to go.
But.

I was so very light now, so very threadbare. A skin-flake and a nub of once-bone too small to see, and a speck that had once been a brass button.
But it was still so very hard to bring myself up, to stir from my place. It had been such a long time since I had tried.

It’s still hard. It’s still so very hard. There is so much beneath me and so much above me, and all of it is falling down, always falling down.

But if even the oldest and heaviest thing in all the world can see something worth swimming for, I thought – I think – that there might be something yet to do.
It’s impossible to try forever. Perhaps I will try for a while.

The lurid red of the sunset sky vanished. A shadow blotted out the newborn stars. And from above, the merest limb of a force of unimaginable size descended with a thunderous mass that shook the world.

Andrew’s boot scuffed idly across the pavement, dragging dozens of lives with it, and then he was off the sidewalk onto the stoop and into his house, taking off his boots and briskly knocking them together to shake off the dirt and corpses.
He didn’t mean anything by it. They were just ants, and he’d had a bit of a bad day at work. There was this GUY. This GUY, man. If you knew him, you’d know what he meant, and you’d be sorry. Be happy. Be happy that you didn’t know this GUY.
Indoors was free of that sort of thing. It was rich in comfortable surfaces. It had beverages and foods. It had shining surfaces that told him things he liked.
Andrew went for the foods first. Nothing like foods after a long day of his. Especially when it contained that GUY.

A meal. Sustenance. After literally hours crawling across the endless ceiling searching desperately, at last it was at hand. He flitted down to it, avoiding the slow-moving mountain of a monster with ease. As he nabbed a stray crumb of cheese, a bizarre sight struck him and he froze in confusion: a square of indescribable size and colour had appeared in the corner of his compound eye.
And then it moved.

Whap.
About time that fly swatter paid off. Dollar-store crap but hey look the entertainment value alone was good for it. Except now there were fly guts on his counter. Well, he’d get them later. For now, he had a sandwich and a wonderfully public-domain copy of The Call of Cthulhu waiting on his Kindle. He was feeling too sophisticated for Netflix tonight. And besides, the story made him feel comfortable. He knew it like the back of his hand, like the seat of his favourite chair, like the walk to his house.

This was a good web. She had a good feeling about this web. There were flies up there, somewhere. She knew it. And they’d love this spot; it was redolent with tiny particles of decaying food. They’d flock to it like it was feces.
The air was her first hint. It felt…heavier somehow. Thick with humid heat.
There was a rumble, then a roar, and finally and very quickly, the vibration of her web’s strands snapping one after another.

Ugh. Spider. In his favourite chair no less. It was like the whole world was being that GUY today. Not fair at all.
He popped up the story and began.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of etc etc etc and so on and so on until For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern which was where Andrew always put down the story for a moment to have a quiet chuckle at how a man could hint at horrors beyond time and space and then have them be stoppable by being bonked on the head with a steamship manned by a single angry Norwegian. Even for a 1920s New Englander who spent half his life high as a kite on xenophobia, that was a bit much, wasn’t it? Truly, mankind was as ants before the Great Old Ones who worship the Elder Gods, whose motivations were unfathomable, whose goals were indescribable. Except, you know. The bit where all they were trying to do was wake up from a nap and clear the raccoons off the trash cans, and a bit of pluck and an outmoded junker of a transport could pop their noggins in.
Beyond time and space. Sounds good, but then you put it up a bit of ingenuity and can-do-it-ive-ness, and look what happens. Who gives up in the face of that? Those GUYS.
And that was the last coherent thought Andrew Kamp had before the floorboards lurched under his feet.

The first thing he did, of course, was sit up straight and back away. Well, that’s what he tried to do, before the webbing held him to the chair. He tried to scream, and his mouth was suddenly full of angry humming wings and spindly, buzzing bodies.
Then the floor gave away entirely under the persistent, furious might of a million tiny mandibles, and down he dropped.

Andrew wasn’t the only person who learned something that day.
That GUY learned that something was up after three consecutive missed shifts.
The police learned that the motives of the killer – assuming that this hadn’t been some sort of bizarre suicide – were unknowable. Unfathomable, even.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft learned that he’d been even more incorrect than he’d ever dreamed, on entirely new levels. But he was dead, so it didn’t help him much.
The arthropod population of Andrew Kamp’s home learned a valuable lesson about the inconceivable that humans had been persuading themselves to believe for a long time: that it wasn’t invulnerable. This was extremely applicable to their lives and they felt it was their responsibility to share it.
And shortly thereafter, the human population of the planet Earth learned something similar, with less pleasure and more screaming.
Even so, on the whole, it was a good Tuesday. From a certain, incomprehensible point of view.
It wasn’t squamous, though. More chitinous. He’d gotten that all wrong, too.

Once upon a time, there was some sediment, swirling in water and spiralling downwards. It accumulated in long, slow, thick blankets on the bottom of the sea and thickened and buried itself and eventually it got really, really packed firm. It wasn’t a complicated process, but it was a pretty long and boring one and there really wasn’t much more to it. Sorry.

Twice upon a time, there was a lot of dark, quiet nothings interspersed with UP. Imagine being snuggled underneath the world’s most massive blanket, except you didn’t have to come UP for air. But every now and then, a jerk and a shove and nudge. UP.

Thrice upon a time, something UP pale and clear seeped in around the warm dark edges UP until one UP day the weight was missing.

And a long time later – but not so long for a stone, even one that had once been silt – the shale woke up. It was pretty surprised about that. It had never been awake before.
“Wow,” it thought to itself, looking all around (rocks have ways of doing that without eyeballs, don’t worry). “What’s all THIS stuff? This is new. There’s air and light and a lot of complicated things I’ve never even heard of before. Better ask around. Hey, you! Over there! What’s going on up here? What’s with all the green stuff and pink stuff? Why’s the air full of oxygen?”
The passing farmer let the reins droop from his hands for a moment and repositioned his pipe nine or ten times. “Respiration,” he said at last.
“Pardon?”
“Folks took up respiration. That’s what we all do nowadays, in public or private, doesn’t even matter no more. Boys respire, girls respire, mice, birds, bees… everyone’s respiring. It’s very popular.”
“Oh,” said the shale. “Well, I’m not sure if I like it. It’s all…tingly.” It looked up to ask the farmer another question, but he was gone and dead and buried already and its stony heart sank a little bit deeper.
“Oh no,” it said. “Oh dear. I hope all that respiration didn’t do him in. He seemed so… well, not enthusiastic, but so ambivalent about it. Over there! Can you tell me why it’s so…sunny out?”
“The sun’s brightening up,” said the passing kid. “I learned that today. In a few billion years it’ll fry the whole planet.”
“Oh my,” said the shale. “Oh no. That’s…not good. That’s not that long either. Tell me, do you…” and then it realized the kid had grown up and moved away and it sighed in the tragic, rumbly way of stone.
“So fast,” it lamented. “So fast! I was content with being buried, and I was very happy in the water. But now I’m up here and things are changing too quickly. I want to go back home. You there! Can you take me home?”
The passing IT worker pulled over. “Hitchhiking’s illegal,” she said. “But what the hell. Where to?”
“Several hundred metres underground, please,” said the shale politely.
“Can’t,” said the IT worker. “There’s no mines around here and it’d take too long to dig a hole.”
“Oh!” said the shale. “Then the sea, if you please.”
“That’s a little ways too far for me,” she told it. “But I can take you partway there. Tell you what: I’ll drop you off near my work and you can hail a cab or something.”

The shale watched the landscape slide by for a moment, and then it was in the city and a man was trying to spraypaint it.
“Excuse me,” it said, “but do you have a cab?”
The artist jumped. “Shit! Sorry, sorry. You surprised me, that’s all. Most of the things I work on don’t talk much. No, sorry. No cab. But I know a guy.”
So the artist took the shale downtown to a bar where they looked for the guy but found drinks instead, and then to a pub where they looked for the guy but found drinks instead, and finally they went to a liquor store and were gently but firmly sent home and had drinks instead. When the shale woke up again it was face-down in an alleyway and its mouth tasted like the Precambrian.
“Ow,” it articulated, somewhat indistinctly. The sky was moving in an unfriendly sort of way and it didn’t like the way the buildings made it feel, so it wandered gently into traffic where a man in a pickup truck ran it over.
“Ow,” it repeated, this time a little more clearly. “I said ow once already. Why did you do that to me again?”
“Sorry about that,” said the driver. “Need a lift somewhere, buddy?”
“The sea, if it’s alright.”
“Sure. Heading that way anyways. What’s your musical preference?”
“What’s music?”

About half the drive was full of very complicated conversations on things like melody, rhythm, and harmony, and the other half was sort of pretty and the shale liked it very much. Then the truck’s tires crunched on dirt, gravel, and sand.
“Here we are there you go good luck,” said the driver. Then they vanished in a whirl of tires.
The shale stood on the beach, blinking its eyes (that it didn’t have). The sun was setting and the sea was wide and wild, waves burbling up no matter where it looked.
It gingerly dabbed its corner in the water, then was knocked over by a wave and dragged along fifty-six metres of coarse sand.
“This could be a problem,” it said.

Much, much later, the shale felt something very heavy on its back.
“Excuse me,” it said. “But I believe you’re standing on me.”
“Woops,” said the surfer. “Aw, sorry about that, no hard feelings eh?”
The shale considered itself.
“All my feelings are hard,” it admitted. “But that’s okay.”
“Good to hear. Whatcha doing?”
“I am going out to sea,” said the shale.
The surfer looked up and down the beach. “Nice day for it. So am I. Y’want a hand? I’ve got a spare board.”
“I don’t know what a board is but I accept your generous offer,” said the shale.
The explanations were complicated again. Everything was so complicated up here. But the shale nodded a lot and after a long time it was sliding over the smack and thud of the waves, smooth fiberglass beneath it. The wind whipped across its surface and whistled in the little fossilized sea-shell that was embedded in its side and the water seemed to be laughing all around it.
“This is very nice,” the shale told the surfer.
She yelled something and waved her arms around.
“I’m sorry?” asked the shale.
The surfer yelled louder and waved her arms with greater decisiveness.
“I really can’t hear you,” said the shale, as the shark popped up beneath it, mouth-first.

Unlike almost everything else in the shale’s journey, what happened next was familiar.
After all, it had done this once before.
“Just… maybe not so quickly,” it said to itself, as the blue wrapped around it and began to carry it down.
“Well, you’re awfully heavy,” said the shark. She was following the shale down, studying it with a curious night-black eye. “Sorry about before, you looked an awful lot like a sick sea lion. Why are you sinking so fast; haven’t you ever swum before?”
“I deposited,” said the shale. “This seems a lot quicker. I’m a little worried, if you must know.”
“I don’t disagree with that,” the shark said. “It’s pretty dark down there, and it gets lonely very deep. Why don’t you stay up here? Just swim back up.”
The shale wiggled itself with great vigor as it saw the shark doing, but it didn’t seem to accomplish all that much.
“Use your tail more,” advised the shark.
“I don’t have one,” the shale said.
“Well that’s your problem,” she said. “Really, you aren’t prepared at all, are you? What were you doing all this time?”
The shale considered what it had been doing.
“Sleeping, mostly,” it said. “And then pining.”
“Wastes of time both ways then,” the shark said.
“That’s not very sympathetic of you.”
“I’m a mother three times over,” said the shark. “That tends to wean you off sentiment and into the practical. And what you’re doing isn’t. Have you even thought about what you’ll do when you get down there? Why are you so eager to go?”
“Things change too quickly and I’m frightened,” said the shale.
The shark rolled her eyes at it, flashing their whites like a ghost. “Change too quickly? My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents were swimming in this water when you were still filtering down the water column. Maybe they were shaped a little differently, maybe they ate things I’d call strange, maybe the temperature wasn’t quite what it is now, maybe things weren’t quite the same at all. But there’s been some kind of ocean longer than you’ve been around, and there’s been sharks in it for longer than you too even if they weren’t quite me. Everything changes, but the shapes stay the same. What a waste of time to whine about!”
The shale felt sort of ashamed at this, and the little pit of guilt in its heart weighed it more quickly; unless it had just hit that point in the water column. “What can I do?” it suggested, miserably.
“Well, you can try a little harder to swim than THAT.”
The shale tried a little harder to swim than that. It wasn’t quite hard enough.
The shark sighed as only a fish can do, water gurgling and sploshing through gills as long as the sigher wishes it to last. “Well. I suppose I can give you a small bit of help. If you want it.” Her body was a faint blue-on-blue smear; the water was really quite dark now, and the shale was starting to grow alarmed at how much it was missing the strange, bright light.
“Please,” it asked. “I’m sorry I’ve been a bother, but please help me swim.”
The water swish, and the shark was beneath the shale, closer than she’d seemed, closer all along. “Alright,” she said, as she opened her mouth. “But just until you’re comfortable on your own, understood? Just until then.”
“I understand,” said the shale. “Thank yommff.”

It was dark again. That surprised the shale. The shark, like all the other people it had met in the world, seemed to be so soft and squishy that light should pour through them.
But it was a comfortable sort of dark.
“I was on my way to Australia,” the shark told it, all around it. “That’s plenty of time to learn at least how to cruise properly. So don’t fall asleep on me in there; this is school, not a free ride.”
The shale rustled affirmative, then it sat in the dark warmth and felt itself at home again. But this time, it was going somewhere. And afterwards…well.
Maybe there were more places to go in the world than up.

My grandma’s not so healthy these days. Nothing big, but lots of little things, if you get my meanings. Nothing quite holds together like it used to and that can get you down which means you should distract yourself with lots of hobbies and errands and so on.
Like gardening.
“Read this package,” she told me.
“That’s tomato seeds,” I told her.
“Read this package,” she told me.
“That’s canned tomatoes,” I told her.
“Read THIS package,” she said.
“That’s tomato ketchup,” I told her.
Grandma frowned. “I know I bought some other seeds in here somewhere. Or at least something that isn’t tomatoes. Or garlic.”
“Garlic’s good for you.”
“It makes me queasier than a bow-legged dog on a boat in the Baltic. You’d better not have let me get any or I’ll blow my top I swear. What’s this?”
“Tomato paste.”
She pulled out the last can in the grocery bag. “And this?”
“Kidney beans.”
“Hah, I knew I bought something that wasn’t tomatoes. I didn’t know they sold kidneys at the store, though.”
“Not kidneys. Kidney beans. You know, in a can.”
“You can use beans as kidneys? Well no-one told me that. What do we have a doctor for if he isn’t telling me that?”
“You can’t use beans as kidneys.”
“How do you know? You’re not even a doctor, so you’re not even fully wrong. Why don’t you put these on that shelf and get out of my way for a moment.”
I made my usual mistake and did what I was told and before I’d turned around again what had she done but opened herself up with her sharpest kitchen knife, clean as a whistle.
“Grandma!”
“Oh hush up and help me fit this bean in here. And go get my sewing kit, would you, dear?”
I ran to dial 911 instead, spent five minutes huffing and puffing around the house failing to find the phone, and ran back into the kitchen to ask grandma to find her finishing the stitches.
“Not a wink of help from you,” she said sourly. “Some grandchild. Some good you do me some days. First you’re not a doctor, then you don’t tell me doctors don’t know about kidney beans, then you go and leave me to fetch my own sewing kit. Don’t go asking for anything nice for your birthday this year, don’t you dare! Now give me a kiss and go home.”

Now I probably should’ve phoned the hospital after that. That’s what you should do, right? But grandma’s stitches were tight as a drum and she didn’t seem bothered and above all else I was a really phenomenal coward, so I didn’t do diddly. I did mention it to mom, though.
“Ah, well, you know your grandmother,” she said with a shrug. And that was that.

My grandma’s doing a bit better these days. A few sniffs and coughs and rattles like anyone else, but nothing that a few chores couldn’t keep your mind off.
Like going to the park.
“These are real good kidneys, you know. Better than the real deal. I haven’t had so much fun peeing since summer camp.”
“Kidney beans aren’t kidneys,” I told her.
“So you say, but what do you know? I bet I could out-piss any of these dogs.”
“Maybe that one,” I said. The animal I was pointing at was collapsed in the sun, squinting at the daylight and hiccoughing occasionally.
“Oh that’s a nice comparison to make. Real nice. I bet your mother told you to say that. She’d say you should say that sort of thing to me. Real nice. Look at that poor thing, it’s flat as a sack.”
The dog yalloped in a listless sort of way, then fell over further.
“Heartworms, I bet,” I said.
“What?”
“Heartworms. You know, worms in-”
“Its heart is made of worms?”
“No, there’s worms in-”
“Its chest? My, didn’t know worms came so sturdy. They always seemed too squishy for work like that. All I’ve got is a murmur, I should try worms instead. So they just wrap around it and squeeze, right? Like an octopus?”
“They don’t-” but it was too late because my grandma had been walking while she was talking – marching, really – and she was up to the dog and had her arm up to its elbow in the poor thing’s throat. It wurfed indignantly around her shoulder, but she scratched its ear with her free hand and it seemed to settle down and wag a little.
“Good girl, good girl,” she said. “Aha! Gotcha!” And out came her arm, a little damp, a little sticky, and clutching the most surprised-looking wad of heartworms I’d ever seen in my life at that point. “Now, pass me my purse, will you?”
I did as I was told, from a position of moral weakness. “Won’t there be a mess?” I inquired, timidly.
“Nonsense,” she said, rummaging around inside it. “I brought Kleenex. And my sewing kit, of course. Ah, THERE’S the knife!”

The operation didn’t seem to be a problem for her – she didn’t even use a park bench. But the stitching got a little tricky near the end, when the dogs kept trying to stick their noses inside the incision. I was too busy shoving them away and throwing sticks to protest, and also of course I was much too meek to anyways. Instead I made my way to my mom, who I informed of current events.
“Oh well, that’s just how your grandmother can be,” she said lugubriously. And that was that.

My grandma’s doing okay most of the time. She has her off days, but they’re rarer than not, and she can get herself over the humps with a bit of exercise.
Like going shopping. Or, well, trying to.
“This is a fine mess, this is,” she grumped as we waited outside the grocery store. “Such a lot of fuss over a whatever this is.”
“Contamination alert,” I told her.
“Oh, it can’t be that bad. I shop here all the time.”
“The fish was full of parasites.”
“Ah, who cares? I don’t even eat fish. Fish is for people with bad hearts, and mine is fit as a fiddle thanks to all those worms.”
“Heartworms don’t help your heart.”
“Easy for you to say, you’ve never tried it. I feel better than I have in years, and you seem awful sluggish and soft. Maybe some heartworms’d do you good. We should get you fish, at least. Oh, there it is.”
The fish was being wheeled out of the building by men in severely white clothing. There were gloves involved and everyone’s eyebrows were at half-mast.
“Well, let’s get a bit.”
“It’s infested, grandma. Full of flukes.”
“Full of what? The flu? You’ve had your shots, who cares.”
“Flukes. Not flu.”
“Fluke whats?”
“Liver flukes,” I said, and I realized my mistake before she even said “oh GOODY!” and scurried over to accost the nearest cart.
“I’m really sorry,” I said to the man with the gloves, who was trying and failing to talk. “We’ll just be going now don’t mind-”
“I DON’T NEED the fish,” she said, using volume as rhetoric. “I JUST NEED the liver flukes. Got it? He doesn’t get it. Here dear, can you-”
I snatched her purse out of her hands.
“My, that’s quick, no need to be so hasty. But thank you,” she said, pulling the knife out of her coat pocket. “I’ll really need both hands to get at my liver.”

It was hard to say if that time went so smoothly because she’d had more practice, or if it was thanks to the frantic and angry hand lent by the man with gloves, who was a dab hand at threading a needle even through latex layers.
“Such lovely cross-stitching too,” my grandma told him. “Who taught you?” He hadn’t told us.
I stood nearby and made helpful noises and eventually slunk home under the glare of a half-dozen health and safety officers, sure that I was being written into some lists somewhere that would impede any career I cared to name. The most I could do to console myself was to drop by my mom on the way home.
“Eh, there’s no helping it,” she told me calmly. “You know how your grandmother acts.” And that was that.

My grandma’s in good health these days, always sunny-side up and walking faster than me most places. And she goes to a lot of places now, always on the move to see something new, or visit something old that’d slipped out of her mind.
Like the zoo.
“They’re asleep,” she said dejectedly. “Look at them, they’re asleep. How can they be so tired? It’s barely noon!”
“They’re crocodiles,” I said. “Ectotherms. They soak up heat in the morning.”
“Ectoplasmic? They’re congested? Oh, I can sympathize, I really can. But how did they get that way if they weren’t smoking?”
“They weren’t smoking, grandma.”
“I hope not. I wouldn’t ever come here again if the keepers let the animals smoke. Maybe they are and you just don’t know it; here, look at this one, he’s all out of breath too.”
I squinted at the tiny, not-quite-brass plaque. “That’s a lungfish, grandma. It’s meant to be like that.”
“A well now!”
“No, a lungfisohforgoodness’ssakeputthatDOWN”
The crash of the rock and the tinkle of glass slid away under the howling wail of the security alarm, and all the will to shout scream protest or even sigh slid away from me as she reached into the tank with one hand and her purse with the other.
“Needle!” she commanded.

I’m still not sure how we got home that day without being arrested. We walked right past the security officers like they were furniture – grandma was still wiping off the lungfish slime from her hands, and didn’t look up, and I was too frightened to look anyone in the eye – and the police pulled into the parking lot as we left. I went home with the shakes six times over and in the morning I phoned in sick and phoned out mom.
“Not much to be done, with your grandmother,” she advised me. And that was that.

My grandma’s fit as a fiddle and exactly seventeen times as noisy and energetic. She’s been everywhere in the city at least twice and at most thrice. Now and then she stops by my house and berates me until I go out with her.
“You’re much too frail these days,” she told me severely, as she towed me into the grocery store. “Week arms, noodly legs, swimming head, lidded eyes, and I expect you still have a weak heart because we never got you that fish.”
I mumbled protest.
“Speak up and shut up,” she said, stalking down the aisles with a predatory eye. “Now we’re going to get you something to eat, something to wake up with.” Produce started to hurl itself at me, my fingers fumbled and grasped and bent as I strove to catch it.
“A good soup or stew or something,” grandma muttered. “Tomatoes and beans and potatoes and onions and celery and carrots and garlic and-”
She stopped. Then she turned around very slowly, and held up a small bulb next to my face.
“What’s this?” she asked.
I squinted at it, eyes wobbling and watery.
“Garlic?” I ventured.
“Oh,” she said. “I thought you said that.”
She blinked, then hiccupped. Then hiccupped again, louder and faster.
“Fuck.”

My grandma’s recovering with surprising speed, and the hospital’s really quite impressed. They’ve got enough material for five or six research papers. Grandma’s happy enough too, seeing as they’re already trying to sign her in as a surgeon.
And I guess I’m doing okay, too. The stew turned out alright, and I had enough extras for the family – minus grandma. I dropped off mom’s last night, along with some news from the hospital. She was happy to hear it, and seemed no more worried than she’d been when I’d stepped out of the grocery store last week to find her waiting there next to an already-summoned ambulance.
“Nothing to worry about,” she’d told me tranquilly. “You know your grandmother. Just not quite as well as I do.”

I am extensive, let me count the mes.

I am garments. I am cotton and polyester and rubber and denim, sewed and stitched and woven together by a hundred hands in ten giant factories that are also basically prison camps, all for a low, low overhead and many bruised and scarred heads. I am double-layered occasionally and I am wind-resistant when necessary. And let’s not even get into the dying of things. Ten thousand years ago agriculture was created and its penultimate product is my pants.

I am education. A truly staggering amount of informal knowledge swamping and surging over the bows of a tiny half-a-raft of essays piloted by the shipwrecked rubble of a salty-faced professor who is cursing at the wider world. They’re dragging as much information as they can carry, and it’s not enough, and it’s in danger of cutting loose. Centuries of boiling and puzzling and confusing and lying, all lost before it even reaches port and a willing ear. Huge shoals of pop culture lurk just beneath the prow; somewhere, an irrelevant earworm breaches itself and swamps a lecture in meaningless froth.

I am hunger. I eat pigs that ate crops that ate land that ate water and it was all transported on the back of a beast that ate oil. Which, itself, is plankton that time’s gotten indigestion all over. When my stomach rumbles, I open the fridge and chew up half the world. When my brain whines, I turn on a computer and rip open the other half like a recalcitrant orange. In both cases, I’m just speeding up the heat and cooking us all, but iced cream and iced poles are treats for children. Not our children, though. They’re getting scorching sea levels and tsunamis for Christmas to celebrate the birth of El Niño, read the E-manuel for further information and despair.

I am biology and sociology. Arising from a random chance of parents that are a random chance pairing that each resulted from a random chance pairing on and down and on and down until we’re all someone’s cousin, cousin. Won’t catch me calling on you at Thanksgiving though, thanks. Nobody can buy that many presents so we’ve all agreed to care about different things and people so we don’t go nuts for birthdays; the trouble is that we don’t seem to have much left to talk about anymore and well you know how opinionated people get about holidays and the next thing you know cousin Jeb’s blown out a blood vessel and it’s all over but the screaming.

I am housing. I am a roof over my head and the concept of a roof and the associated valuation of this within my given society, which means timber and mining and indoor dining and asphalt and foundations and cement and electricians and plumbers and mailboxes and setting garbage out where the foxes/can’t get it.
The raccoons will, though. Can’t stop the raccoons. They’re too much like us to ever be stopped properly. We won’t let that stop us though.
Can’t do much about the fish, mind you. Poor fish. All carbonated like yesterday’s ginger ale, flat and lifeless. Just like we like our landscapes. Suburban.

I am extensive. Every single thing I do and touch has ten thousand years of human history (bare minimum) and involves things being shuffled around tens of thousands of units of measurement that I don’t understand and undergoing processes I’ll never know to put them into places I never see to do things I don’t notice. I am looking out every window I’ve ever remembered and the view is one that has been carefully put together for me, just me, by accident by people I’ve never thought of in times and places that aren’t there anymore.
I am extensive. And so are you. All seven billion and counting of you.

It was a good dim grey evening of late fall-on-winter and it was a long walk from nowhere behind and a long walk to nowhere ahead when the little yellow light popped up next to the road.
Funny place for a light, I thought. Funny place. No buildings there yet, no homes. Just half-built suburbs, empty shells leaning on shells with gaping windows and unroofed foundations and garages that were just timber frames. Funny place to find any sort of light there. Loose plumbing pipes and empty unwired fuseboxes and no paint to be found for all the rice wine in America. All the workers had gone home already, left their butts and taken their cars. Funny place for a light after all the ashes had cooled off already.
So I walked up to the light on the last bits of my heels that didn’t ache and I knocked at the half-built door and they let me in.

There were there of them, all half-built themselves: a mother, a father, and a child, and they’d just been sitting down to supper. But it was no trouble, they said. No trouble. They could use another person at table anyways.
“Especially a nice full-bodied one like you,” the mother said. She was smiling, I think. It was hard to tell: she had no teeth and only half a lower jaw. No wounds, just gaps.
I told her it was no trouble and that I was happy to be here and it was a very nice house they had.
“It’s alright,” grunted the father. He toyed with his half-empty glass of water, twisting it between the three fingers of his left hand. “But I’ll be straight with you: it’s not what we would have wished for. It’s part of the deal.”
I wanted to ask about the deal, but he was distracted trying to swallow with a missing throat, and I was distracted by the child’s incessant drumming of the table, and the mother was distracted with scolding the child for incessantly drumming on the table, so it was all a wash and instead I focused on eating.
There was a half-glass of water, and half a baked potato, and a heel of bread. I ate some of all of them, to be polite. The child took my leftovers; it was a hungry little thing, and quick with a fork despite having only one arm and no eyes.

After dinner we sat down on two-legged three-legged stools in their living room, which had a roof but no ceiling, and they showed me their possessions and their pride.
“This belonged to my step-cousin-twice-removed’s half-aunt, before she was divorced,” said the father. He handed me a broken pipe; the stem was missing.
“And THIS was given to the family by someone who was very nearly our friend,” said the mother. She handed me a 500-piece jigsaw box that held 250 pieces.
I rattled the box experimentally and glanced at the child. It smiled, and waved a legless action figure triumphantly.
I told them I was very impressed that they were doing so well with so little.
“Oh, it’s no fuss, really,” said the mother. “You just have to remember that it’s half-full.”
“Oh, there’s nothing we can do about it anyways,” said the father. “It’s all half-empty, but that’s just how it is.”
We talked long into the night about uncertain and ephemeral things, like politics and tastes in food and whether or not things could get worse or better. Then, as the mother excused herself to visit the bathroom (which had no bath yet), I asked the father what the deal was.
“Oh,” he said. “That. Well, you know how much it costs for a house these days.”
I did.
“And you know how hard it is to get that sort of money these days.”
I did.
“So we put in half of it instead. Got a half-built house. And they said that was fine, but we’d have to do everything by halves as well. So we’re stuck like this.”
Really? For how long?
The father shrugged. “Until it’s finished.”
At that moment the mother returned and informed me that since it was so dark out and she half-thought she’d seen a coyote or two outside, perhaps I should stay the night.

I slept in a small room on short sheets and a couch, and I woke up to find some leftover breakfast waiting for me. Some eggs with no yolk and toast with no crusts and some skim milk. There was no butter, but there was plenty of margarine.
The mother was missing. “She’s at work,” the father explained. “Part-time, but it’s all we’ve got to get by on.”
The day was too humid and almost murky. We sat on the discarded lumber pallet that was the back deck and watched the child ride a saw horse, brandishing broken sticks at fearsome enemies like trees, dirt, birds, and the sky.
“It always does that,” the father said. He’d just finished brewing us some lukewarm tea in a shattered kettle that whined instead of whistled. It was a sluggish brown, but it tasted like grass.
“It’s made from grass,” he told me.

It was evening again after that. They had no afternoons there. The clouds hadn’t been installed yet.
“Same thing with weeks and months,” the mother explained to me. She’d been too tired to remove her Tim Hortons cap until she’d gotten home; it was hanging on the functional side of her chair. “It’s always a Tuesday here. Somewhere in November, I think. We don’t have a calendar.”
They did have one of those big sticks you make notches in to track days on, though; just like Robinson Crusoe. I checked along its length and sure enough, nothing but a long list of Tuesdays.
“What year is it?” I asked them.
The father pursed his lips: the only set in the family. “Does it matter?” he asked. “I think it was nineteen-ninety-nine when we moved in. It’ll stay that way until they’re finished.”
Dinner was half a pizza, cold in its box. Lots of leftovers, but the child ate them.

You can stay here if you want, they told me at breakfast.
I was a bit surprised to hear that.
You can stay here as long as you want to.
I was still surprised to hear that. But then I remembered that walk out there I’d been on and I decided no, no. That wasn’t anything to be in a rush for.
I could afford to sit down and let my time take itself.

I’m in the house next door these days. Well, it’s not much of a house. No roof, so I’m in the basement, and the plumbing, wiring, and paint aren’t in.
But at half-price it was a steal, and the neighbours are alright. And every half-built family needs a half-built family friend.
I’ve barely been here and already I fit right

Preface
Hello, and welcome to life on/in/around/near BPNTV-5, the latest in a long and proud line of intertransdimensional colonizations and definitely the first successful one*. We understand that homesteading is a complex, tricky, and sometimes mildly worrisome business, but humanity’s had seven hundred attempts at this so far so we’re all old hands at this, eh sport?
Still, a little kind advice and care never hurt anyone. Especially since statistics (which never lie!) tell us that 98.2% of Earth’s population has no idea how to use any of the advanced technology that’s been dumped next to you in a big pile just now. Most of which, we modestly suggest, is basically mandatory for your surviving the next thirty seconds.
Read on! Quickly.
*Success not displayed at actual size

1. Taking a breath.
Expand your chest cavity by means of your chest muscles and so on, intake air into your lungs, and let it back out. Continue to do so in a calm, steady manner while reading the rest of this manual, so as to prevent hyperventilation, hysteria, involuntary shrieking, and/or attracting mawbats*.
*For more information on mawbats, see section 6-1(b).

2. Windmill installation.
Obviously you’ll need this up within the next five minutes. The collapsible windmill you have been outfitted with is durable, weather-resistant, tamper-proof, and fits together mostly using a package of little round plastic pegs. Those are in a small red bag. If you can’t find it, we kindly recommend you go home by the fastest means available*.
Set the windmill up in a good spot, don’t just pop it up where it’s been dropped. A clear patch of ground will prevent curious local plants from consuming its guywires. A strategically-placed pile of rocks will keep it standing upright and steady no matter how desperately you claw and scream at its base. A lofty location will provide it with the best winds and give you the greatest likelihood of snaring stray bluntpigeons in its rotors, which are among the healthiest of BPNTV-5’s local fauna when administered intravenously**.
Once your windmill’s set up, be sure to plug it in or you won’t get any wind. Common error, don’t feel bad. For this you’ll need the supplied universal socket, which you can plug into anything that isn’t moving too fast to be caught.
*Statistical analysis of a random sample of Earth’s last 672 intertransdimensional colonizations suggests that in 83% of known cases the fast means available consists of ‘don’t get off the landing pad.’ Since we only issue this manual once you’ve left the strip, we must gently discourage you from attempting it.
**For more information on bluntpigeons, see section 6-1(a).

3. Hurricane fencing.
Now that your windmill’s ready and plugged in, you should put up the attached bales of hurricane fencing immediately because if you don’t you may stand a very small chance of being violently hurled several kilometers away by its initial boot test. Don’t panic, mind you; this stuff tangles something fierce if you’re rushed, and trust us, the only thing worse than being launched into a tree at escape velocity is being launched into a tree at escape velocity with chain-link mesh wedged into every single crevice and cranny of your body. Just go back to section 1 and reread its instructions if you feel pressured.
Just read quickly, okay?

4. Verbal fencing.
A task of equal if not greater importance is providing some means of passive protection against rogue wordsqualls coming thundering out from the grammatic haze. It is strongly recommended that each settler spend around oneish hours a day (threeish if the homestead is illegally enormous) pacing the edge of their property while reciting as complex a list of nouns, gerunds, vowels, and synonyms as possible. This will boost morale and probably maybe prevent you from waking up one day with half of your vocabulary blown sixteen thousand kilometers away into an obscure creole.

5. Digging a welp.
Now that your person is about as protected as it can be for the moment, you should have a moment to rest. And once you’re done that, it’s time to dig a welp so you can have some water I guess.
The leftmost, largest compartment of your Settler-Duffle™ contains a collapsible shovel. Decollapse it forcibly using whatever extremity you deem fit and then use the following guide to find your nearest source of underground dampness or something.
-Low-lying. You want dirt that looks like it thinks a hillock is too much effort. If possible, find a spot where anthills can’t be bothered to stand up straight.
-Soft. Digging in hard, rocky soil is difficult, arduous, and really who cares.
-Apathetic. You get the idea okay.
Once your welp is about as finished as you think it can get, just sort of stop. Or whatever. Yeah.

6. Local flora and fauna.
BPNTV-5, like all known transdimensional locales, is a hotspot of marvelous, beauteous, and vexatious wildlife and wildflowers. Less than 0.0003% of its estimated species diversity has been catalogued, but don’t let that put you off! You can still get yourself an edge over your indigenous competition by reading this quick-start mini-guidebook.
6-1: Fauna
The fauna
(a) Bluntpigeon. As we all know, nothing is more delicious than a fat, stupid, slow-moving domestic pigeon. The bluntpigeon is no exception to this rule, seeing as it tastes mostly like feet. The best way to consume a bluntpigeon is to puree it into a fine paste, ferment it for no less than six days, then administer the residue via syringe into a deep vein. This will not nourish you, but the result psychedelic effect will probably distract you from realizing you just injected yourself with fermented bluntpigeon.
(b) Mawbat. Smaller and more leathery than they appear, yet also far more hungry. Flocks vary in size from something like three to three thousand. Probably. For information on dealing with mawbats, see section 6-1(e)
(c) Murderluffagant. A useful source of naturally-occurring luffas, which are absolutely essential if you’re planning on staying during Vrick season and retaining all or any of your epidermis.
(d) Piquant. Imagine a pickle. Now imagine an ant. Now imagine them combining. With any luck that sequence of thoughts will have distracted and sated nearby piquants, thereby dissuading them from directly consuming your brain and leading them to tolerate you as a moderately useful host species.
(e) Opassum. The only known animal with a furry tail and naked body. Don’t give it any attention or it’ll never let off. Just ignore it.
(f) Rex. Be reassured, homesteader-to-be! Despite its intimidating name, this creature is no dinosaur. Technically speaking, it’s a novatheropod. For information on dealing with Rexes, see section 6-1(h).
(g) Those. Words fail us. They’ll fail you too. If you’re confronted with the things we’re talking about, you’ll know it. Just don’t do the. The thing. Don’t do it. Do the other thing.
(h) Vrick. Like a flea, but eighteen times as big and with extremely large teeth and four jaws and possibly eight serrated limbs. The footage we’ve retrieved was heavily damaged, and we’re not really sure. For information on dealing with Vricks, see section 6-1(j)
(i) Wumbats. If you encounter a wombat nest near your homestead, we strongly urge relocation. Although their sub-audible snoring may initially seem to be a soothing hum, prolonged exposure has been strongly correlated with total bowel failure.
(j) Ziggy. Here is some practical advice: leave. Continue leaving until the problem isn’t.
6-2: Flora.
Don’t give them any attention. It won’t stop them, but it WILL encourage them.

47-4. Performing basic maintenance on your fiber-optic electromagnetic hyperkinetic calcium-enriched iron-fortified hardened-steel rubber-coated hyper-malignant all-purpose grater and combination knife (fork packaged separately).
(a) Open the rotochamber using the splange, and insert the freshly-charged gigavoltaic needle (be sure your goggles are still firmly fastened to prevent vivid hallucinations).
(b) Once the charge is fully-transferred (look for the third glint on the odometer), stop for a moment. Repeat section 1, then section 38(q), then continue repeating them until the hissing stops.
(c) Using your windmaul, violently slam the upper hilt and blade apparatus until it looks like what you wished it looked like as opposed to what it currently looks like.
(d) Unwrap and enjoy!
(e) Don’t bring into contact with anything you plan to put in near or around your mouth within the next sixty months.

13. Measurement and mathematics.
You may have noticed by this time that the ruler and tape-measure included in your duffle appears to be numbered somewhat out-of-order. This is no mistake or shoddy subcontractor’s error; BPNTV-5 has been scientifically proven to have somewhat unorthodox mathematical rules. Four, for instance, is the same as five, unless they’re both next to a three. This can happen surprisingly often. The full scope of BPNTV-5’s logical and numerical problematics is, sadly, somewhat beyond the capacity of this manual to illustrate, but we will illuminate a few of the most common herein*.
1: Comes after 0.
3: Comes before 4.
2: 2 before 3 unless it’s a tree.
4: Shifty. Keep an eye on it.
5: Reliable yet insubstantial; cannot be kept indoors.
9: You can’t leave the 9 with the 7.
8: You can’t leave the 8 with the 9.
7: And you certainly can’t leave the 7 with either of them. How do you cross the river, and how many trips does it take?
12: Avoid at all costs.
17: Avoid at some costs.
6: Friendly yet complicated, seeing as it contains 3 2s 2 3s 6 1s and sometimes a 5 and a 1. This is to say nothing of the 4s.
20: You’re not allowed to think about 20.

*Curious homesteaders wishing to know more are encouraged to purchase the limited-edition folio compendium I Have No Math and I Must Scream, by (former) award-winning physicist and public intellectual Dr. Jill Fobbles.

20. A word from the editors.
As all previously-published editions of this manual have inevitably ended up a torn, bloodstained mass of pages beyond this point, this print has economically omitted all subsequent pages. Be safe and prosper!

It was just a few hours every night, when the dark was full and very little could be seen.
A few hours more than it had used to be. Still, there was no getting used to it. This gap in time where movement slowed and strangeness took its place. There were no means to understand it.
But what happened after… that was right. The return of realness.
Splashing. Waves. The sound of movement of water in air. Something glittering on the far side of an unresponsive, unseeing pupil. Light.

The sun rose and he was alive.

he, not He. Too old to be an it, but not the right time of year for He. Maybe it’d never be that time of year again; he was stiff in those parts, and not in the right way. Stiff in all his parts now, waking slowly, so very slowly, billowing back up from the bottom of his body and spreading out from the central stubby trunk to the four great paddle-flippers, coming alive as his heart stirred again.
One. Two. Three.
Ten beats per minute. Not that he knew what a minute was.
The blood reached his skull, and took its time filling it. The trouble wasn’t his brain, small as it was; the trouble was the sheer scale involved; his head was a quarter of his length, even if most of it was snout and teeth, teeth, teeth.
Once it had been teeth, teeth, teeth, teeth, teeth and more. Some of them were having trouble regrowing; still bent and broken in their sockets long after they should have been shed.
They chewed at the water, gently; the massive muscles powering them crawling over his skeleton. Quiet information began to seep in from his periphery, things his dulling eyes could never tell him: smells; the ripple of the currents; an alarmed flutter of fins.
The last drew an attention that had grown out of instinct and into habit. he spun – one of those movements that looked much slower than it was, spread over ten metres of reptile – and hauled himself forward with all four limbs, mouth snapping open with a speed that shrugged at water pressure.
It shut on blood, and for a moment he was almost full.

he was hungry, hungry all the time now. he remembered when he hadn’t been, in skips and starts. Long, long ago, when he was still growing quickly
he was always growing, even now
When he was very small and new – he was an it then, too young for anything – and it had found a strange thing in the water, smaller than it. it’d spun around and around and around it and nipped at its limbs until the spindly bony bits came free on one side and it could only turn in slow clumsy circles. Oh how it’d learned as it’d feinted and dodged. The play had only ended when the smell of blood grew too strong to ignore, and that was when it had learned that fish were food.

Good food. Good food. But he’d eaten it all already, and now he was hungry. Hungry all the time.
The stray scrap of blood spread over his scales as he slipped deeper in the water column, looking for stragglers of the nightly migration from bottom to top and back again. A hundred miles from shore, the only place to look was down.

It was cool down there, calmer. Bluer. he let his heart slow again as he tumbled down, and began, moment by moment, to grope at the vibrations of the currents.
There was food down there. Smaller than he was. Like everything else always had been, everything he’d ever seen.

Blood was darker down there too. Not that there was much. he bit and tore and swallowed and bit and tore and swallowed and somewhere this was a long time ago, when he was a He, the first season he’d been a He. Tearing and feeding beyond His means to build up bulk quickly, to show Himself, to meet a She.
He had done it, he thought. If he was thinking. The dark was slow and thick around him, and the memories moreso.

The sun rose and he was alive.

he was at the surface again, winched up by old instincts as much as thought. Maybe he’d fallen asleep down there. Maybe he was still asleep down there; but no. he was hungry, so very hungry. In his sleep he bit and fought but never felt the urge.
Not that urge.
Awake, it was as lost to him as hunger was in dreams. It had been a long time since He was. But so much longer since he’d seen a She.
Nearly as long as it’d been since he last duelled another He.
But time didn’t matter; the sunlight mattered. he was awake and he was near-shore and the water was filled with gliding, sporting little morsels. Not infants but too small to be subadults; juveniles. This was the edge of a nursery, the place where bay met blue and soon the long-throated little swimmers flitting about in here would be out and free and far away from him, growing older, growing bolder, nearly as long as he was – even if most of that was neck.
Not yet.
his jaws closed and they closed on more than water and there wasn’t more than time for a sharp squall before his teeth met and the flesh parted, cutting the juvenile in half, in head and torso.
he ignored the former and ate the latter and cruised away from the cries and the little fountain of blood and remembered when he’d done this the last time he’d done this; robbing the cradle of a cousin to fuel his own dreams. They might be his nearest relatives but they were not his kind. They were its, not hes and shes, definitely not Hes and Shes. They were the biggest meals he could have and he needed them because even if the pain was absent for now he could still feel the oncoming pang of that terrible, terrible hunger.

The sun rose and he was alive.

But the sun was dim.
he was far underwater. How had that happened? How had he happened? There wasn’t much breath left in him, and he had to move quickly to reclaim it, to suck in air above the blue in the cold sharp dry.
he shivered in his blubber, and not just from the chill; arthritis was creeping over him day by day now. No matter how fast he grew, it could grow faster.
But not as fast as that stabbing, groaning, endless hole in his stomach.
he was far away from shore, it was time to go down again, to drop himself out of sight and into mind and snout and smell and touch from a hundred metres. An ammonite or belemnite would be nice; there was no shell that his teeth could not puncture, that his jaws could not crush.
A nice ammonite. Yes. Or a squid. Yes.
One like the ones he’d devoured so many years ago, when he’d left his nursery. A soft, fat-bodied, older thing too slow to jet away in time. A quick lunge and a bite and it had been down his throat before he could think.
Chomp.
his teeth closed on empty water and old thoughts. Where was the squid?
he’d seen it. Where was it? It had been there, it had been real, as real as that horrible, endless pit inside him, and now it was gone. It was inside his mind. Food should not be inside his mind, it should be inside his mouth.
he came back to the surface slowly, with a hesitation that verged on timidness, and his creeping motion must have disguised him for he very nearly blundered into an animal with his snout. he spun back in alarm – but wait, it was small, so small – and then investigated. It was a peculiar thing, to be so much smaller than him, so very small. And such spindly bony little limbs. He nipped at one lightly and it came free with only a soft tug, he took its partner and watched in puzzlement as the strange thing spun in slow clumsy circles. He’d never seen anything quite like it. He’d never seen anything quite like it. But there was a good taste there, a familiar taste.
Blood. Yes

The sun rose and he was alive.

Thud.
One.

It was not dawn. It was midday. It was midday and that couldn’t be true. he woke at dawn. he always woke at dawn.

Thud.
Two.

There was a soft, fuzzy sensation in his rear flipper, bumping against the waking nerves. A tug. A pull. A shove.
Something was touching him.

Thud.
Three.

FourFiveSixSevenEightnineTEN

his jaws gaped, wrestled at nothing. Pops and creaks inside him as withered muscle stretched itself over old, long-cracked bones.
And as he turned, slowly but endlessly, he saw the source of the strangeness – a strange thing, a strange thing. It had a stub of a tail and four flippers and a long, long snout with teeth, teeth, teeth, teeth, teeth and more, and it spun in the water with a swiftness he couldn’t understand, only a little smaller than he was.
he couldn’t understand anything. But this he KNEW: he was hungry, so very hungry.
his jaws opened, and closed on scales.

The blood was slicked on his sides. Some of it was his.

he was full, though. So very, very full. And tired.
It had been a long
time
since he had been full
It made him think of before, when he was He and had seen so many of his kind.
And there had been so many of them, all of them small and safe in their nursery.
Swimming down the long coasts, the Hes and Shes.
Duels along the reefs, closed-mouthed.
And side-by-side, the long courtships.

But that had been a long time ago, in the daylight, and it was very dark now.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. SevenEight.
Nine.
*

The sun rose.

There were a whole bunch of them there all wandering along and after a while they got sort of tired and hungry and then someone said ‘hey, this place looks okay’ and that was where the problems started.
I mean, it wasn’t the place’s fault. It was pretty okay. A little blue narrow-mouthed bay with some rough and rocky headland above it, all watched over by stubby green foothills.
“We’re going to need some sort of plan,” they said. And they pointed at one person. “You’re the mayor.”
The mayor nodded. This was how this sort of thing happened. “The first thing we do,” said the mayor, “is we find the local natives.”
They looked around for a few minutes and they turned up one guy in a hammock.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hello,” they said to him. “Are you the local natives?”
The guy considered this. “Well, I moved in a couple weeks ago. So I guess? I’m not the first person to come here, but I’m the only one at the moment.”
“Good enough,” said the mayor. “Well, we’re staying here now. Got any tips?”
The guy in the hammock scratched himself. “Well, mind the mosquitoes. Don’t settle too close to the back of the bay; there’s all sorts of sandbars in it. The point’s prone to avalanching too, so don’t settle too FAR from the bay. And the hills aren’t so hot for growing crops, so-” and then he saw that they weren’t paying attention to him because they were all busy putting up houses, so he sighed and tucked himself deeper into his hammock and had a nap instead of talking.

They set up a town. Or a village. Hamlet. Semantics, really.
It was a fishing town. There was just one problem: the fishing was awful.
“Having trouble?” the guy in the hammock asked the mayor, who was visiting.
“A bit,” the mayor said. “Three boats got stuck today in the sandbars. A fourth capsized from laughing too hard. A fifth was overloaded trying to rescue them and almost sank. Then a sixth was in too big a hurry trying to get through and bonked into the fifth, tipping them both over.”
“Ouch,” said the guy in the hammock. “How many boats d’you have?”
“Six.”
“Ouch,” said the guy in the hammock.
“Listen,” said the mayor. “D’you think you could help? Just some advice, or something? We’d be very grateful for any help you could give. After all you’ve lived here for time immemorial.”
“About a month now.”
“Good enough.”
The guy in the hammock scratched himself. “Well, I could tell you a bit of a trick my grandma showed me, if you’d like.”
So he got out of his hammock and they followed him along to the mouth of the bay, where he stopped and got them to grab a few tree-trunks and get ready. Then he stood up right next to the water and stretched and shook himself.
“Man alive I am so tired,” he said. “My head’s heavy and my eyes are droopy and my legs are wobbly and I just want to have a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong nap.” And he opened his mouth up and yawned so wide his teeth nearly bit the nape of his neck, and because yawns are like that everyone else followed him. And right when everyone else was yawning fit to burst, there was a long slow sigh from the mouth of the bay as it yawned too, creaking wide, wide open.
“In in in hurry up hurry up hurry up” he said, and they hurried the logs into the water and hey, the mouth of the bay was wedged open at least twice as wide as it had before, stuck mid-yawn.
“That’ll do ‘till it wakes up later,” he told them. “But you’ve got to be careful about it, because-” but by then they’d all headed home to get their boats out, and so he retired with a sigh to his hammock.

They were getting loads of fish now. The boats bobbed in and out morning and evening and soon enough they were throwing up new homes and storehouses and docks and everything all over the bay, which got a bit inconvenient because of just one problem: rocks.
“You look upset again,” the guy in the hammock told the mayor, who’d come along to swap fish recipes.
“That’s my job,” said the mayor. “There’s rocks tumbling down off the headland day and night. We need to pick stones off that place to build fences and cellar walls and such but how can we do that when an errant sneeze knocks down someone’s house? It’s a mess and a conundrum and it’s the reason I spent the last week sleeping in a patch of poison ivy instead of my house.”
“I was going to ask you about that,” said the guy in the hammock.
“Know anything about how to avoid avalanches?” the mayor asked. “Please, I’m begging you here. Share your ancient wisdom.”
“I’m thirty-four,” said the guy in the hammock. “But I’ve got an idea or two. Well, maybe just one. Let me see.”
So he got out of his hammock and they all hiked up to the headland after him – being very careful where they stepped, so they only knocked over two houses on the way up. And they all stood on top of the headland above the mouth of the bay and he sat down.
“Pick a lot of ragweed,” he suggested to them. And they did so, sneezing all the way, and they only knocked down three more houses doing it, and they piled it up in front of him.
“Right,” he said. And then he sneezed. “Now stuff it into all the holes and crannies you can find.”
And they did that, and nothing happened. Then the headland sneezed and sneezed and SNEEZED, three times, knocking over ten houses each time, and then it whistled its way into a hard, clotted silence.
“Congested,” he told them. “It’ll stay put for now, so long as-” and he stopped talking because they were all heading downhill to rebuild their houses, and were mostly out of hearing already.

Their houses were big, and their boats too. They hauled in food day and night but their kids wouldn’t stop complaining and now and then you got bored of salted fish and so you took up your hoes and your rakes and your axes and you cleared out a patch of soil and you grew some ugly straggly things that weren’t quite onions.
“Do you know what this is?” the mayor asked the guy in the hammock.
The guy in the hammock poked it. “Well,” he said. “Don’t quote me or anything, but that’s very nearly an onion. Maybe.”
“And it’s all we’ve got to eat that doesn’t have fins,” the mayor complained. “Trying to grow anything here’s like pulling teeth; all the good soil on the foothills is spread thinner than jam on my aunt’s toast. It’s very unfortunate.”
“Tell me about it,” said the guy in the hammock. “Why have toast if you aren’t going to go heavy on the jam?”
“Please, please, please,” said the mayor. “Reveal your primeval knowledge born of a connection unto the land which none can understand.”
“Dunno,” said the guy in the hammock, “but I can try something if you’ve got enough feathers. You got feathers?”
“In pillows,” said the mayor.
“Best unpack ‘em.”
So they all did and they followed him up to the foothills and they pulled their feathers out and readied them.
“Now TICKLE,” he said.
And they tickled the foothills under every nook and cranny and rock and crevice until they couldn’t stop giggle and the ground itself rolled up under their feathers in a seizure of mirth, tumbling over itself to get away and squooshing all the soil into a nice little wrinkled valley.
“This’ll do for a little while,” he told them. “Just be sure not to-” he trailed off, because so were they. They had pillows to re-stuff and fields to re-till.

It was a busy place now. There was a broad, deep bay. There were firm strong cliffs. There were lush hills striped with fields.
There was a guy in a hammock. He was being evicted.
“It’s nothing personal,” said the mayor. “But you’re driving up property values.”
“I’m trying to tell you about that,” said the guy in the hammock. “If you’d just listen for a –”
“And your crazy rituals keep the neighborhood awake at night.”
“My snoring? I mean, I told you that-”
“Really, it’s not your fault, except for all the ways it is,” the mayor sighed. “It’s just your culture. Your primitive, unchanging culture from before the dawn of time.”
“Is this about my hammock? Listen, talking about ‘unchanging,’ there’s something that you really should know about-”
“So clear off,” said the mayor politely, and he went home to dinner.
The guy in the hammock considered this for a while, looking out over the landscape. He drummed his fingers on his knee and looked around and estimated. Then he guesstimated.
“Well,” he said. “I tried.”
Then he left so fast he didn’t even pack his hammock.

It was a new day. It was a good day. It was a day to send out the fleets, to build up to the skies, to bring in the harvest.
They stretched. They limbered up. And they got to work.
Now, three things happened that day.
First, the grandest and most enormous fishing boat yet made was set to the water.
Second, a great and wonderful lighthouse’s foundations were laid upon the brow of the headland.
Third, the first ox-drawn plows were finished and brought to field.
Then, three problems happened that day.
“What’s this?” they said. “The bay’s mouth is clogged with rotten old timber. What’s this doing here? We’d best clear it before it snags our keel.”
“What’s this?” they said. “The ground here is full of rotted old weeds. We’d best fill these holes before they crumble our foundation.”
“What’s this?” they said. “The soil here is so hillocky and wrinkled you’d think it was resting on an old man’s crowsfeet. We’d better smooth it.”

So they did. And did. And did.

Now, what happened next was very complicated from their perspective. But pretty simple from the landscape’s.
The mouth of the bay popped shut with a surprised snap.
The headland, its sinuses cleared, sneezed hard enough to rattle its pores out.
The foothills, with a sharp yelp, clenched themselves up.

They left very quickly after that, picking up what they could and moving on.
What a mistake, they agreed, as they headed over the wincing hills. What a mistake. How could they have picked such a terrible place to live? Next time would be different.
First, they needed a plan… And a mayor…