SNAKEMOUTH

Putrefaction permeated the air long before we reached the shoreline. Desiccated on the surface, this portion of the sea lay rigid. Its inner mass seeped through cracks in its skin, moldering beneath the purple rays of the sun. I slid from my ashloper’s back to kneel by the edge of the sea. At the barest caress of my fingertips, the its flesh split. Dust puffed through. Deeper within, the sea hardened like stone.

Earlier, Snakemouth challenged us in its stilted, hollow tongue. “Ride the globulous sea’s edge, littorlings. Behold its carcass for yourself. Just like in the east.”

So we rode. 

He spoke gut-churning truth.

My clutch returned to the campsite, heads and hearts low. Oblivious, our offspring greeted us with abandon, and lifted our spirits for the moment. But Elder Deard discerned our distress. I read none of Snakemouth’s emotion; no one could, with its shiny orb for a face, a ribbed serpent dangling from the reflection where a mouth should be.

I steered my ‘loper to the lip of our familiar sea, as yet unblighted. It knelt to lap at its gelatinous surface secretions. Our bedmates brought us bowls of dew, scraped that morning, when the sweetest flavors sweated through.

My fellow scouts sat around the glowbrands, but I remained at edge of the sea. The lowering sun evoked a mosaic of colors to ripple across its skin; blues and greens across the black, with winks of reds, oranges, even golds. In the distance, the outlines of graceful skimmers dove from the sky. Their downward spiral ceased with extended wings, landing and sliding against the buoyant surface. Dew soaked their fur—nourishment to take back to their young, who suckled at the hairs.

Smooth and slick beneath my touch, the sea pulsed, quivered. Reassuring. Here lived a healthy sea. Though for how long?

My Esimed slid an arm around my shoulders. We tried to soothe our unspoken fears in each others’ embrace, the sea shuddering against our feet. My mate left me soon after to tend to our offspring, but my fears remained.

In the morning, my clutch scouted further along the blighted shore, then braved the hardened surface. Its desiccation stretched beyond our sight. By the time of fullsun we failed to reach the far end of sea-death. We bade Mid return, to convince Deard to halt and warn the clan to gather as much dew as possible before following. Or perhaps they remained where the globulous sea still trembled. We pressed on, walking our lopers.

Resolute, I would see how far this sea-death extended.

“We must turn back,” pleaded Kaelb.

“You go. I must continue.”

Mirg insisted, “We needn’t break taboo, Krad. Roll the bones. Let the Spirits choose.”

“The Spirits have chosen.” I could not convince them to do what consumed me. “Tell Esimed not to fear.” Kaelb and Mirg’s reluctance blasted me like a cough of stale wind, but better they both to returned.

The air itself stilled, cowering in fear of predation. For the first time since I erupted from my mother’s womb, I rode the sea’s edge alone. Dismounting, I squeezed a few drops on my ashloper’s eager tongue. It licked its face, recovering every last drop of moisture. I led the beast to a fleeting patch of bright yellow succulents, the only color to mar the expanse of grey-upon-grey.

While it fed, I stared across the expanse of necrotic sea. Skimmers in the distance extended their wings, catching high currents I did not feel on land. Diving creatures thrust their wings free at the last moment in perilous freefall, delaying their demise.

Several strange flyers among them alit upon high tips of a black silhouette. Slender blades of the shadow’s outline gutted the far horizon, spilling red across the sky. Those flyers flapped no wings—yet they moved. 

Sinking fingers into my loper’s thick beard, I vaulted onto its back and steered it toward the black shapes where the deviant skimmers set down. My ashloper hesitated at the edge of the sea, scuffing and snorting, reluctant to touch it. I urged it onward with a squeeze of my thighs. Its paws splayed flat upon the rigid surface. Stretching its willowy neck to the ground, it sniffed warily at the vast, hardening corpse, then proceeded.

I rode forever toward the bones, but the silhouette grew no larger. Those same aberrant skimmers arose from the shadow. More joined their companions in the sky. Spasms gripped my legs. The loper stopped, as confused as I. A bright aura surrounded the strange creatures’ rigid bodies. They hovered on the nothingness, unlike any creature of flesh. 

As one, they flashed through the sky, away from the spire, un-veering from their path.

Molten panic flared in my heart. I spun the ashloper and urged it to all speed.

But I arrived too late.

First I spied the smoke, curling high into the gray horizon. My loper faltered, spilling me into the dark sand and razor grasses. I urged it to stand, but the beast balked and I abandoned to run. I ran and ran until lava bloated my chest. Those rigid-winged flyers rose with a roar above where the campsite lay beyond the ashen dunes and hovered. Overcome with their aura of vibration I collapsed. My body vacated itself as though I were a squalling infant. The flyers flashed once more, then darted back toward the silhouette in the dying sea.

How long darkness claimed me, I fathomed not, but I rose from my filth, and staggered on until I reached the campsite.

Esimed, the other mates, our offspring… gone.

Kaelb, Mirg, Mid, all crucified. Deard gurgling blood.

And Snakemouth… empty. Its shiny orb face shattered. The serpent ripped away, cast aside. Beneath the broken reflection, no face at all. No body. Merely a shell. I picked Snakemouth out of the ashes, invoked its agonizing truth to sustain me before I placed it upon my own head and steered my ashloper toward my destiny—the black silhouette.

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Be sure to check out the other wonderful entries in this quarter’s Storytime Blog Hop.

• Ritual by Gina Fabio
• Truth Speaker by Barbara Lund
• A Furry Problem by Vanessa Wells
• The Final Verdict by Bill Bush
• The Boon by Juneta Key