In the deep down stone where the darkness dwelt lived Gulp and the world. He took up quite a lot of it.
The world was very wet, slightly more than one Gulp-length in length, around two Gulp-lengths in width, and approximately six Gulp-lengths deep. The population of the world consisted of Gulp, the Things That Wiggled, and the Things That Wiggled On Rocks. They got along tolerably well with one another, though relations became strained every once in a while when Gulp had to eat, making his mealtimes something of a guilty (though thankfully rare) pleasure. The guilt vanished with sleep, which was good because that was easily the thing Gulp did the most. The world was small, but Gulp could imagine things much bigger, particularly when asleep. Once he’d imagined a pool three times deeper than all the world and twice as wide, a feat he’d never replicated since.
Most of his time that wasn’t spent dozing was spent not thinking. It was very difficult, but he managed. Too much time in your own head could make you go strange and odd, like the occasional one of the Things That Wiggled that would crawl right up into Gulp’s mouth as he was sleeping and cast itself inside. He never was sure why they did that, but it troubled him a little. They had so much that he didn’t (someone to talk to and live with, their strange business of scraping the Slimy Stuff from the rocks and eating it, their desperate avoidance of the Things That Wiggled On Rocks and their sharp needlebits), and seeing it all go to waste just didn’t seem right. All the same, it was nice to eat a meal that didn’t require any effort on his part.
Gulp wondered about dying sometimes, and how he would go about it. It didn’t seem too difficult for the Things, but there was nothing big enough to eat him in all the world and try as he might he just couldn’t see any other way.
The world was dark and cold, but Gulp didn’t really have anything to contrast those feelings against, so he didn’t mind all that much. Not only had he never seen light, he didn’t even know what it was, until that one strange moment (no days, no nights, only a long chain of moments stretching back on and on to Gulp’s origin, so far back that he couldn’t remember it at all) when a new and odd vibration came trembling from the place outside the world.
At first he thought it was a bit of rock falling. Sometimes that happened, outside the world. Four times it had even fallen into the world, and the second time it had clipped his frail and translucent back, giving him a nasty jolt and leaving a bruise that had taken far too long to fade away. But this was different; it kept going. Scrapes, shuffles, crunches, bumps, all rippling through the stone, into the world. All irregular, erratic, but with an underlying pattern and getting stronger by the moment. Something was happening up there, outside the world, far above Gulp where he rested at the bottom of six Gulp-lengths of wet world. He decided that he would have to go and investigate.
And so Gulp rose up from the depths on the strokes of his fins, slow and sure, past the colonies of the Things That Wiggled On Rocks and their prey, the Things That Wiggled, and their prey, the Slimy Stuff, and on and on and up and up, all the way up to the edge of the world, where the wet stopped and the strange place outside the world, the “dry” began. It made his skin prickle as he broke its surface, and he felt the unfamiliar chill of strange currents swimming across his back.
Something was there, that was for sure. He could feel deep, steady vibrations. There was a thing up there where no things should ever be, beyond the world itself; a moving thing, something so large that he could feel its very insides lurching forwards with organic implacability, something that made even the very largest of the Things That Wiggled on Rocks seem small. It moved again, and he felt the outside of the world vibrate with its motions in harmony, a presence so massive that the world itself responded to it…
…just like Gulp.
Thinking back on it all, that was probably the moment It happened. It was very mild at the start, of course, but there was no question needed: that was the origin, and It sprang from a very simple and startling thought that launched its way through Gulp’s man for parts unknown: there’s something else out there, outside the world, that’s like me. The shock came over him so strongly that it nearly stopped his swimming, leaving him wallowing uncertainly in midwater. So great was his surprise that he almost missed the next thing, as the vibrations neared and then halted, the tremors pausing as whatever-was-outside paused above the world, leaning over from who knew where.
There was something strange up there. Something new that Gulp…knew of, he didn’t know how. It was like feeling without feeling, touching without touching. It hurt a little, and made unfamiliar bits of his skull tingle and ache in strange ways, hitherto useless organs finding their footing at long last. He needed a word for it, the strange sensation that made murky shapes appear inside his mind, a mind that didn’t know what they were.
Light.
Yes, that would do.
The thing outside moved closer still, and Gulp flinched as he felt something break the surface of the world. The light was too harsh, too hard against his… eyes, and he feared that if it got any closer it would hurt. Perhaps that was what would kill him, or could kill him. But the pain stayed in his eyes, and the thing outside drew no closer. There was something it was holding inside the world that wasn’t part of itself, he saw. It didn’t feel like rock, but it definitely wasn’t flesh. Some small odd object that filled itself up with the world and was removed, then carried away on the echoes of fading rumblings, the sounds of the departing thing from outside the world.
No sooner had it left than Gulp broke his startled, wary inaction. He berated himself thoroughly inside his head as he sank downwards back towards his rest, tail twitching in agitation. For the first time in the ever-ongoing chain of moments that he was he’d met another thing like him, felt it appear on the edge of the world…and done nothing. He should’ve done something, shown himself at least – unmoving like that, there must’ve been no way for it to feel him. Gulp’s life had been all the same so far; the same perils, same guilt, the same pleasures, the same silence and pauses. Now he had a brand new regret: he’d seen the first exception from normality he’d ever known, and he’d wasted it. The despair and depression nearly overwhelmed him, and so he went to sleep, hoping that it would bring some respite.
It didn’t. He awoke still sorrowful and slightly hungry, and managed to eat an entire three of the Things That Wiggled without noticing before he stopped, which made him feel worse. Altogether Gulp was wallowing as much in self-pity as the world when he heard the same traces and tremors of movement again.
For a moment he thought it was his (very small and quiet) imagination again, but there it was: the shifting, the rumbling, the strangely predictable irregularity of the movement. The presence. And as he hurried to the surface, setting the world all a-froth in his churning wake, the first faint…glows… of that strange thing, light. The thing from outside was back.
Many things went through Gulp’s mind as he watched, all very quickly but without haste, in a sort of dreamy haze. There was all the time he wanted somehow, as he felt the thing from outside feel about with a pair of peculiar gripping things that weren’t quite part of it and snare a couple of the Things That Wiggled On Rocks and the Things That Wiggled, as well as a sizable scraping of the Slimy Stuff. He supposed that it was only fair to share the world with the only other thing like him, but he was a little distressed at how much it seemed to want to eat, and hoped that there would be enough left over for him to keep eating. He wasn’t sure what would happen then, but his stomach had always felt very odd after large gaps between meals, and the thought of a long series of moments all like that stretching onwards maybe forever made him balk.
Gulp examined his visitor more closely this time, the thing that was like him. Well, not quite like him. Outside the world dried his skin and when he poked his head out it made him grow dizzy and weak, and it didn’t seem to want to entire the world proper itself, only gingerly inserting its farther extremities and going about its matters businesslike. It was indeed around his own size, or a little smaller. The female Things That Wiggled were a little smaller than the males, did that mean it was female? Gulp didn’t think he was female himself, but he’d never had a chance or reason to wonder, alone as he was. Maybe it was female, maybe it was male. Did it matter? He didn’t think that the world had room in it for any more Gulps or things, and perhaps it was better that it was just the two of them.
The thing took her meals and left, but this time Gulp didn’t scold himself. She would be back, he was sure. Of course she would. Definitely. She had to. After all, how big was outside the world? Twice as large? Three times? She came from far enough away that he couldn’t feel it…perhaps even ten times larger? It must be awfully large and empty up there; Gulp felt sorry for her, and spent some whiles carefully herding Things That Wiggled upwards towards what had seemed to be the limits of her reach, bumping them with his snout. Perhaps she wasn’t after food, just company. She must be very lonely. Gulp knew the feeling. And began to again, very deeply.
After a long pause (in which Gulp remembered very little at all), a third time she came, a third time Gulp rose from the bottom of the world to rest at its very margins, slowly and surely using his strange eyes to see the light.
The thing from outside found his relocated Things That Wiggled very quickly, and began to pluck them from the world as surely and swiftly as before, holding them close to her bright light. They looked very odd in its strange illumination, quite unlike they felt to Gulp’s touch, and he peered as closely as he was able, lifting his head ever so slightly clear of the world, feeling the cold dry touch of outside on his skin once more, prickling his freshly-sensitive eyes. He twitched in discomfort, causing the world to splash around him, echoing sharply, and hr realized his mistake exactly too late.
The light spun to glare straight at him, he flinched backwards, sloshing even more loudly, and then thing outside lurched, slipped, made a strange cry (the loudest sound he’d ever heard, he realized through the shock), and smacked backwards onto the rock, rolling down the steep slope at the world’s edge and dropping down into it with a mighty splash. She nearly hit Gulp as she sank by him.
The thing was not attempting to swim, he saw, preferring instead to drop straight to the bottom of the world. He followed anxiously, questions filling his head and stumbling around in a panic, searching for any sign of movement. Her body still seemed to be working, but she wasn’t so much as twitching. Was she asleep? Why would she fall asleep like that? Little bubbles were coming out of her mouth – why were they doing that? How could she breathe with bits of outside the world inside her like that? Had she moved? No, that was the current.
The thing hit the rock at the bottom of the world, but gently. Gulp hovered over her anxiously, mind racing against itself. Her body was getting quieter, the bubbles were getting fewer. Was she going to die? If she was like him (but not quite like him at all, not at all, now that he could feel her closely – she was shaped wrong, shaped wrong in so many odd ways but she was the right size), was this how he could die? Was it that easy? To just stop moving, stop breathing, and shut down? Why was she doing this?
It was at that moment that Gulp’s head cleared and in a single brilliantly, harmfully bright moment realized It had happened, what It was, and what It wanted him to do.
First, he’d fallen in love.
Second, this was a shorter way to say that he cared about the thing from outside more than anything else he’d known about in all his chain of moments.
Third, sometimes love demands sacrifice.
The thoughts were discretely herded back into his mind as the revelations faded, now calm, orderly, and filled with absolute certainty. The thing didn’t mind the cold dry of the world above, the place he couldn’t go. The thing had never come down into the world before, and had seemed to avoid it, so maybe she couldn’t go there either. Maybe it was killing her. So she had to go up.
Gulp’s teeth were large and cruel, and his thoughts were vivid with the memories of those strange sad Things That Wiggled and how they threw themselves into it to die. He didn’t want the thing to die, so he couldn’t carry her that way. It took some quick and vicious wriggling, and the thing from outside flopped around alarmingly against the bottom of the world, but he managed to squirm his way underneath her as she half-floated. Gulp’s back was frail, but it was broad and flat and just large enough to hold her and all her weight as it pressed down on him, anxious to return to the bottom even as he strove to rise again, up to the edge of the world. The Things That Wiggled On Rocks squirmed in alarm at the turbulence his ascension left, each Gulp-length gained in height a thrashing, heaving, bone-bruising motion that left his fins aching.
Dryness prickled his back, the brightness of the fallen light filled his eyes and he knew he’d made it. Above him, the weight of the thing nearly doubled, buckling him low into the world and nearly submerging her again as he thrashed his flukes mightily, barely holding ground. The roar and tumult of his efforts filled his ears to bursting; it sounded as though the whole world was trying to upend itself.
The thing wasn’t awake, he could tell. There was no movement on his back, although he felt a jerking, heaving life within her still as she ejected bits of the world from her mouth, hacking loudly. She couldn’t move yet, and he was running out of both strength and the body to hold it in. Thin bones had snapped, and muscles that had never had to face strain were stretching past their limits. If he sank, she died, but he would sink, even if only as his frame crumpled under her mass. How could she be smaller than him and yet so heavy? The light winked at him from the shore, adding further pain to his efforts, and it was at that precise moment that it all fell together for him. Gulp gathered the last of his strength, turned to face the light, and shoved with all the force he could muster.
The rock touched his chin, his jaw, scraped along his belly painfully, and lurched its way along his body down to the very tip of his tail. The light bounced off one of his flippers, breaking it, and the thing from above rolled off alongside him, landing square on the stone outside the world.
There was still no respite from the weight: dry was all around him, burying him, weighing him down under his own flesh. Even his newfound vision was blurring with strain, and the sounds and feelings around him were strange, blunted by the dry, bereft of currents to carry him. It was because of this that he didn’t feel the other things until they were standing right next to him, over him. One came beside Gulp, light shining from its hand, and touched his side, a surprisingly light sensation amongst so much crushing pain. Another was at the side of the thing from outside, raising her up, helping her to wake. More of those strange loud sounds from them, from all three. More strange sounds, but Gulp was too tired to hear them. His eyes were wandering, and for the first time he felt and saw and heard the world from outside. It looked very small, over rock, under rock, surrounded by rock, and he could feel so much around him, even in the small soft bundle of sensations that were all that he had the energy to perceive.
It was then that Gulp learned his fourth and last thing about It, as he felt the thing from outside move on her own, to crouch besides him and look at him, eye to fading, half-blind eye. In the end, it’s worth it.
In the deep down stone where the darkness dwelt lived light and a very small world. It was wet, cold, and there was no truly proper way to measure it now, but she would make her best try at it.