Open Turgor

[Krava'quiloor]

​

tw: blood, gore, aliens
music: Miquella's Promise by Solas Composer

The grassy hill, the size of a carriage and then some, hummed low and arduous. A mournful sound, a painful sound, the wounded giant groaned, and shifted, shuddering and sending clumps of wettened fertile soil tumbling beneath the three pairs of its sturdy, stumpy legs.
Beneath the shroud of plants in an intricate pattern, and some sparse shrubbery that was mostly pretty on top, was a layered turtle shell. It billowed more, into a dome so large it could be a room in an of itself. Small pale stones lined the base of it between the segments - shielded eyes that could discern the light. Soft tendrils stirred under the soil, unable to shield the body from steel.
It was a huge, alien thing of uncommon parts, but it was a gentle thing that came to being once upon a time - whole.
It creaked and whined, called out for help in pleas that went unheard by those that saw it for what it was.

*

Everything on that small hidden meadow near the creek was coated in fine red ribbons and splatters. The grassy hill, the cliffs behind it, the earth, the water, the low leaf-covered branches of the trees and ferns in brilliant greens. Red flooded the senses, the mind. Rage. Someone else's primal, visceral, indignant fury and grief that unraveled into blind destruction.

It's been so long since she'd lost it like this. Hammers were pulsing in her skull, air burned the lungs, her chest felt like it was braced with tightening irons. She's gone so far. She's been through so much. Something snapped, cracked, popped out of junction in the worldly patience. She was not struggling to get it back.

Even as the fourth body hit the ground, she yelled at its quietened brain, at its distorted face, not paying any mind to anything but the outburst anymore. An odd array of coins slipped out from the to-be-hunter's purse - the leather bag got cleaved apart along with the gambeson and shirt from hipbone all the waist to the back side of the clavicle.

"You vile, repugnant ingrates! Spawn of the dying and diseased!" She was suffocating, voice grainy and thin. It didn't matter that the light has gone out of the eyes of her creed's assailant, the violent spike of injustice did not leave her heart, eating into the marrow of her spine with grief. "What self-important hubris gave you the right to attack my home?!"

Was she wounded? She did not know. Everything hurt. Everything was red. The hill giant was wounded heavily, and while another small creature skittered about in an attempt to help, it was not clear if she had enough in her, not material, but strength. She was not a warrior.
She screeched and stomped the unmoving face into the creek.
"We are not parts to trade for your dead metal wafers! What do we need to do for you to stop?!"

Months of work. Small cozy comfort of a new half-mind, half-home.
"You hypocrites! Never enough for you! Not enough to fix you, not enough to do no harm! Not enough to coddle your fragile selves! Not enough to adapt your social mores! Not enough, nothing enough!" Winded. She swayed, but stood her ground, long arms shortening to their usual lengths, keratin turning back into chromatophores, skin, bones, fingers. Her voice broke, but someone had to listen. The dead heard her no more than the living anyway. "You parasitic mold of a species! We will never be enough like you until we're you, and what an indignant bastardry to aspire to! Why did he regard you?! The most of you are worse than ringworms! You ruin everything you can't lord over, sell, or fuck!"

Her long white hair, thin and soft like spider silk, unraveled, hung in clumped up reddened icicles in her face.
Oh, everything hurt.

*

It was then that something moved in the corner of her mind's eye stretched unstable and thin over the surroundings. Someone else. Close enough.
Krava whimpered, giggled in utter exasperation, and lowered to one knee sinking into the creek. Her long, knotty fingers wrapped around the neck of the fresh body. The spine would make for a fine poking implement if she needed it. She was not going to fall here. Not before her wounded home. Not before her familiar. Because if she was not pretty enough, not noble enough, not palatable enough - the rest of her kith were of her true, unmasked creation. They would be doomed if she fell here.

"Come out and face my wrath! I know you're there! Show your face or show your steel!"

 

[Adem Bin Amra]

You know what happens to the weak that move alone. – An unhappy thought from the midsection.

Ribs may have been gone, but disagreements always came from the midline. Perhaps this new one would be known as Kidney with time. It throbbed in the right spot for it. And stones were a familiar ailment. Always seemed strange when you had to make a new name for an old problem. But Kidney if they were lucky, and Stone if they were not...well, that was old and reliable. Known.

But we are never alone – Shot back someone with a sense of humor.

Yet the mind was disentangled like their once braided beard. No one was focused enough to claim ownership. Everyone just grumbled. They did a lot of that lately.

They could not be sure why they were still alive after being taken. Seemed a strange thing. If you took for food or worse, you'd have finished and discarded the useless bits by now. If you took for coin, you'd have sold by now. It didn't make too much sense. And that thought kept them sane when everything felt unsafe. Woodsmoke sometimes thought of capture. And they could glimpse some uncomfortable truths.

It was him that told them those were sounds of battle. There were more who could recognize it, but his experience, even as a heretic, was the most applicable here.

Some of them new the voice that made those threats. Knew how to talk back in an accent the woods hadn't heard in a century or two. But do you even talk and reveal your exact position? To the thing worse than the ones that took? Fear didn't get a name, but it did get a vote, as the many voices aligned there.

And yet the commotion had stopped. Only quiet moments of anticipation left.

We are being stalked. – Everyone accepted thought as correct. Terrified people didn't need much convincing.

They could probably get free of their bonds and run away. Not faster. Too tired. Bound too long for that.

But freer.

Could never outrun that which killed the takers.

So they spoke, because what else was there?

„We don't have steel.“ They had...twine? Their arms were bound behind and the torso turned to barely flail the arms.
„We are...troubled.“ Was that the right word?

 

[Krava'quiloor]

"Lady..." hiss like the tremor of leaves in the breeze, carrying the scents. Carnage. Earth. Late-blooming apple trees. The cool stillness that was never truly still.
A silhouette detached itself from beside the hill-giant, straightening from bent legs and nervous glances barely up to her shoulder height. Red cloak loosely hugged its shoulders, fell in large folds that dragged across the grass.

The field of her thought cast like a storm cloud, rippled, rippled, rippled again, water in a pond. But nothing fell nor emerged. There was no clarity, no focus - until she caught the sound of that voice and held onto it like lifeline. Like prism light focusing, the ripples ceased, turned into steady undercurrents in the shared space. A shiver passed through the air. Tenderness. Life still had some semblance of a purpose beyond simply carrying along.

A not-elf managed to catch her breath, and the tides receded, then spread anew, no longer electrified and chaotic. They focused to the unusual source that spoke with one body. 'We'.
Kin?
Bait?
It spoke like a human.

She willed the corpse she was touching to shift, the fresh blood - to recede from her hair, her skin, her clothes. Mend. Nourish. Retreat. Straightened up, leaving the wet ground and the water of the creek as carnage dripped down and away from narrow tips of the boots. Head turned to the exact direction. Fingers hugged the trophy spinal column, and its bone melted, shedding muscle, changing form into a weapon.

In a few moments, she emerged, float-stepping rather than jumping down into the dry moat below and to the shade of a tree uprooted by the storm, where larger roots served to accommodate tethers.

A pristine wraith. Disheveled hair white as the clouds on a clear day. Eyes without pupils, green like the waves shone through by the unyielding sun. All of her was sharpened, lanky, angular, even the face framed by ears that felt like mockery of 'elven'. The yellow garments swayed around her form instead of wrapping around it with the movements. From the moments she emerged, she was looking at the figure.

The short glaive turned to be held at ease with both hands.
Thoughts focused, flowed around the subject of the study, touched like idle seaweed, passed through.
Fractions of emotions reached through the studious onslaught, all the same. Grief suppressed. Reticence. Bitter waves trying to find warmth by flowing to kin and back again, calmer in knowing them there. Familiarity. It was lighter, once, bright with curiosity and wonder and belonging. Before the slumber. Who knows how long ago there was hope to achieve what they have dreamt of.

What was this multitude in such a fragile sack?
"You are many," she concluded, out loud, voice distant, devoid of prior viciousness, "but not a choir. How come?"

 

[Adem Bin Amra]

They held many images in preparation. Something to match the sound and carnage. Pristinely clean wasn't a thing they'd readied for. And that was worse somehow. That this creature took the effort to clean itself up, or...but who was even capable of such a thing?

The elf...No. Not an elf. They'd been an elf. Balim still remembered it, even if it was hazy for the others. Woodsmoke forced thier nose to sniff. Plenty of copper upon the air, just not the newcomer. Their shoulders tensed, but it was futile. It was unwise to make fearsome enemies. More so when bound.

For all the voices that wanted to clamor when they wanted quiet, no one was coming forward to speak now. Perhaps that made them cowards. And perhaps that was acceptable.

„Choirs require harmony.“ Woodsmoke took charge as he normally did when others backed away. He was a heretic after all.

Thoughtthief? – Herra warned.

Unlikely – Adem rejected.

„Do you mind?“ He scooted their arms into full view. They'd been bound so long it was hard to feel powerful below the elbow.

That just wouldn't do. They were already shorter than useful. Crippled was a bridge too far.

We should run – no one claimed it, but many agreed.

And maybe they should. But, right now, they wouldn't get far.

So the feet knew not to move.

 

[Krava'quiloor]

"So they do," the entity agreed, feet finding ground firmly. The grip on the weapon would not relent, not for now.

A lilt of songbird like a laugh, not out loud, pure radiant sheen of humour in the air like a scent or a melody, glittering against perceptions like a babbling brook.

"I have no use for stealing the thoughts you scream so loudly." her head twitched slightly to the side, as if to demonstrate the chaotic orchestra of mostly unintelligible tones.
But the displeasure buzzed sharply and alarmingly, a wasp's wing-rattle, brackish-grey tint, drunkard dong's folly.

Eyes tracked over the rope-worn wrists.
Nose scrunched slightly at the scent of old sweat and more.
Are you strong of arm? I could use help, in exchange for your freedom.
The cool voice came as concepts, blooming at the edges of the mind instead of words.
Creed. Ally. Harmony.
An offering of peace. Budding potential, airs cool but meanings clear.

This was no more a dwarf than she was an elf. Some part of them, perhaps - or simply a semblance after the becoming.
She walked, the wispy frame tilting for an upward swipe. A frustrated downward saw. A few awkward motions, trying to avoid damage to the vessel of the other.
You remind me of a spirit-seer more than an artisan of my kind. What kind of hive are you?

 

[Adem Bin Amra]

Thoughtthief, then – many voices nodding.

It was rude then to think of thieve as such where they could hear. Much like it was to point out a visitor hadn't taken off his shoes prior to entering your home. That was a silent reprimand you reserved for your kin after the guests had left. So if they were to be stolen from, better to offer the words to the air, diminishing the loot between multiple takers.

Then the notelf did something strange. It gave thoughts back. A song outside the Song. Familiar rhythm, but not a note they recognized. The long line from Silmorael remained unbroken even as it grew long and tangled. But if not an elf, then what?

„These arms can do.“ Woodsmoke offered even if he thought little of the digits. Real warriors had stronger hands and longer reach. But it was lucky then, that this was not a task for warriors. The captors had been warriors, and the smell upon the mist told him how they fared.

The bound limbs swayed in pleading. He hated it, it was bellyshowing. But one didn't get to be a wolf all the time.

The creature felt even more unknown as it drew closer and cut the bonds. They struggled with undoing the last bits of separated twine. The stranger had probably not cut them beyond how raw the wrists already were.

„Spirit sssssseeer?“ they sucked at the cold air, shivering more from the pain of bonds removed.

Maybe that's what we are are to outsiders? – no one claimed it, but all knew.

Numb fingers rubbed at the wrists, causing further blood to spill. Didn't smell rotten yet. That was good.

How many are you? And what do you need done?

And they didn't dare to ask, but... How many are we?

 

[Krava'quiloor]

She floated onward, the link of minds like a gravitational pull for the other collective to move afterwards.
Instead of speech, came the image. Bodies. Fresh. Some didn't fully die yet. Clad in tough leathers and dead metal bits.
A mound on legs that looked like a grassy hill with... extra bits, allowing it to walk, an opening in its side. A turtle shell without a turtle in it. Living but not quite. Home. Carriage. Comfort.
She would compost the too-long dead and use the rest to repair - a proper recompense for what they did to her creation.

"We are the lost ten thousand, we are me and my seven, we are my elder and my kith. I am Krava'quiloor of the Ascended Creed."
A tidal shift, waters turning, churning before a spectator's shore, dawn that spurs on thought, few living and many dead moving forth anyway.
"You are forty."
Uncertainty. Discernment.
"More or less. Some are fractured. Some are dissolving into others. This is more than you can carry without losing, where are others of your kind?"

 

[Adem Bin Amra]

The flashes of the turtle-that-wasn't caused their step to wobble. It had been some time since sights had been strange to the point of disturbing. The projected comfort didn't feel like a blanket. It was instead an ocean that stirred with the desire to consume the nonswimmers. And any puddle above the knee was dangerous when your bravest soul could not paddle. Sometimes they wondered if he'd drowned.

Words were easier to move between creatures, they had a rhythm. Images seemed vulgar somehow, but how could you even sing of a turtle that wasn't. Perhaps the other creature was simply doing its?...their? best to bridge understanding.

Ten thousand barely contained their scoff. Surely a jest. Symbolic, perhaps. Minds tore at the seems at five. Grew paranoid at seven. But this... Kravaquilperson seemed more than a single entity. The acceptance of them being a cacophony of voices that failed to harmonize came too easily for an outsider. This creature likely belong to a choir of their own. Must be what the Creed was – even if his kind never sang of them. They were half in thought, of triumph that came from singing a tune new and clear enough that it birthed words that had never been when it hit them.

Forty.

Not five. Not seven. Forty.

Shame twisted them like the gravity of three quarrelling moons. Forty did not get to make a song. Forty did not get to go back home. Forty was...heresy. They would never achieve a second death. There would be no hands to shape their likeness for the third. When you'd transgressed this much, you were not allowed remembrance.

But home brought comfort even when you believed this same home would send you into Kaikias never to be heard again. Some songs were meant to be lost.

Images came easy in place of words. Vulgar as it was, it soothed.

Tall and jagged, sandstone barricades blended into their surroundings. Poor defenses when the rains came, but the rains were a rare guest this deep into the sands. The faceted teeth of rock hid a meandering passage no one had ever bothered to cobble. Even after this many generations, the elders were ruled by a fear that the one of the higher Houses would find them. The path slowly widened into a basin that held more water then their kind could ever use. Always colder than the sand allowed. Always green despite the lack of foliage within it. Many doorways edged the surrounding rocks, faces of worked stone for those that had earned the Third watching.

Rest. Place where the Song did anything but.

„We leak...sometimes.“ There should be more shame in being a faulty vessel, but it didn't come. Was the pitcher really at fault as it started overflowing?

„Where are your others?“

 

[Krava'quiloor]

Humans named things, and then, as individuals, sought to comprehend them more fully. The Creed sought to comprehend. The naming conventions were in the same vein - condensing the nature of an object into so many concepts - but nobody could convince Krava'quiloor that the Creed's were less efficient.
Hedgehogs have been one of the more memorable affronts to date. Who came up with that?

Ten thousand lost, came a reiteration like a judge's heavy hammer falling with one sharp, loud click that echoed in the skull afterwards. 'The seven should not be counted, either, as they have gone... and we do not know what became of them. The current present Creed is three. It is enough.' The not-dwarf made her seethe just a little with angry sadness, then calm down, pat it like an errant flame until it soothed into sootmarks.
Them three were the ones that ever mattered.

As she moved, floating between long, wide steps, she weighed the images in her own mind, turned them around like polished crystals, inspecting the details but not prying through the tethers deeper.
Interesting.
But unfamiliar. Strange. Why silence the hive?

"You leak," she uttered, out loud, but the sensory impressions accentuated the unpleasantness of the suggested course. "Trying to bring all them to a resting place, do I understand you?"

There was a pause as they exited onto a different meadow green... more red than green. Krava continued, the expression did not change. Men came to kill her because she was a beast to them. She answered them in kind.
The wounded travelling pod was by the cliff. No sign of the smaller being.
'I need the bodies that have not yet died. For repairs. Help me haul the ones that resonate towards the wound.' She pointed at a slash made by some kind of an enchanted halberd that cut too deeply into the pod's shell, through the grass and earth and shell proper and down to the fleshy parts and mucus underneath. 'You can then ride with us to the nearest town, if you want. We will show hospitality. Not many like us.'

 

[Adem Bin Amra]

Ten thousand lost had a bite to it. Here they were unraveling over forty songs they'd be snuffing out, and this creature had lost thousands. They tried to imagine how many voices this would be – and this was not in the realm of finger and abacus. This was the Houses coming and putting an end to Rest. If all their people earned the Second, it would still be less than ten thousand by far.

How did this creature keep moving? At some point pain must've been enough to where the end was no longer weakness, simply a rest for the legs too tired of wading the water that kept washing away names.

They couldn't even fathom ten thousand names. If the creature was honest, they couldn't even name their forty. But it wasn't always the bigger number that stung more. And when they thought about it – it made sense that Krava cared less for ten thousand, than the three or the seven which were still held...where?... in the creature's head? If that was a vessel, it was sealed tighter than their own jar. Perhaps something could be learned here.

„No song is lost forever.“ Unsure if they were saying it for their benefit or Krava's, but mantras were always soothing. That's why you repeated them. A soft brush evening the pictos until you could see more clearly.

The three that were enough did not sound encouraging, but they wouldn't point it out. Much like pointing out you'd been bitten by a snake did not make one unbitten. They would take stock. Remember, but quietly.

„No mortal vessel is fit to sing in this many voices.“ Perhaps a higher Keeper would have clearer understanding. But talking to one without causing banishment was a bleak prospect. „Sometimes time is lost.“ And sometimes it's more than time.

The voices kept switching between guilt of Adem and shame of Woodsmoke, duty of Amra and judgement of Balim. Neither Yira nor Sale hummed, which was regrettable. Those were the two who were owed passage. Everyone else was...owed less. But you didn't leave children to the duneshroud simply because they weren't yours.

The red of the clearing was easier to process than they thought. At least one of them had seen blood of battle before. Looked like redmoss of the far northern alcoves. Always tasted horribly, but could be grown almost entirely waterless.

Their grip still hadn't fully returned to Ademfingers, but the shoulders felt stiff enough. Their lower center would make the tasks of carrying easier. And there was some small justice in stealing the dead from the ground after they'd tried to steal the living.

„You will feed these to your turtle?“ They looked at the butchery, surprised it wasn't more terrifying. They wanted someone to start or curse, but all they felt was free.

 

[Krava'quiloor]

'The ones with living minds will mend the wound. The ones that are gone will be recycled, put them at the top where the four segments open, mind the plant and soil layers.'

An unspoken query, feeling more than phrase. Ability, other than storage? Function?

The not-elf drifted upward, step and not a jump leaving the form suspended in the air. Extended a hand. Flowers bloomed among the grass, and thin threads extended from the buds, connected to her fingertips. Eyes unfocused as the work begun.
'Not a turtle, a travelling pod. Carriage and horse both. Slow, sturdy... but made for comfort, not battle,' the speech-thought ended sourly, a tinge-twitch of moten hot hatred aimed at the innards splayed across the glen making its way through before it could be quenched.

'No mortal vessel? Hm. I have never tried to contain a river with a teacup, which is your situation. Do you have anywhere to offload the minds? Put them to sleep so they don't deteriorate? That should have been your first priority - minds don't do well in absence of bodies to ground in.' A chiding as leisurely as if they were discussing a bread not rising in the oven. An error in the recipe, not dozens people slowly, torturously disassociating. 'Do you have no fleshweavers where you come from, kith?'

 

[Adem Bin Amra]

Re cycle? They did not understand re cycle. Must've been the local word for burning. You could then use the ash to fertilize the soil and get something back from death. And instead of shambling corpses, you could grow moss instead. People may have complained about moss' horrible taste, but it never killed anyone...outside of the great incident of 274.

And they chose to focus on the words because of the part they understood.

Because Krava's turtle, or whatever it wanted to be called, only ate the living. You could dress it into silk, but the sand of truth would find its place in the discomfort. The poor fools cut open a mouth that would end up eating them all. Cleverer singers would've made a song of it. But it wasn't always good to be clever. Sometimes it was better to just be quiet.

Krava floating further up was an interesting sight. Definitely not light enough to float unassisted. Some form of buoyancy shroud perhaps? Some their elders liked that approach for hydroponics.

For a moment it felt like hate. But whether it was their own or the creature's, they couldn't say. Some scabs you didn't pick at.

They felt at the bodies for breath. Clutched the first corpse the air betrayed as their fingers struggled for grip and purchase. It would take some days before that fully returned. Shoulders were bone enough not to care. They looked up to the segments opening, and could feel someone inside cursing their stature. Getting the....dead all the way up would be a feat of mountaineering. The idea made them feel younger. It had been some time since they'd last scaled a crag.

„Offload the minds...“ The idea horrified. „You purposefully lose your songs?“ Seemed a barbaric practice. Was that how her others separated? And what was this business of more bodies? If they could just grow bodies like weeds, they'd all be a singular. There would be no need for Bin. Everyone would just be one. They sometimes told that legend to the children.

There were some in their caste who theorized that the songs of the lost never fully dimmed and instead become rattles of their dying places, and in time they'd all be rediscovered in melodies of ground and sky. At least half the quorum found that to be camelshit, but some nights they did wonder. It was a nice idea.

Perhaps there was more peace in being a Bin Rock than...whatever this was.

Fleshweaver sounded like a fancy name for a nightsinger. Suppose they were somewhat stressed. Perhaps tangled flesh could untangle the mind. It sounded crude, but so was a spade. Sometimes crude things were effective.

„We are unsure flesh has all the answers.“ Kith. They mouthed it wordless. Sounded like a lisp.

They looked around at how unharmed the creature was, and how harmed everything else remained.

„This has happened before?“

 

[Krava'quiloor]

Re-cycle.
Same parts that have become useless, make them useful in a different process.
No waste. Very efficient, indeed.
It would seem that the entity had different taboos when it came to handling the dead.

Many a chitinous wall have been erected with the right organs in quasi-life setups that specifically produced chitin, and then those apparatuses would, in turn, become fertilizer or food for something else - until the loss of mass, fungi, flesh, plant, was so minuscule that it did not matter. The dreadful efficiency in the face of having very little day to day unless it was built from the ground up through transmutation.

Krava'quiloor could feel the thought patterns like a discordant ringing of carved chimes tangling in the wind, shifting and turning to what was comfortable.

"Lose?" She seemed nonplussed by the notion. "No, we aren't supposed to lose them. But there are other ways to carry, so they sleep instead of scream and fight for control over the same body every waking moment," stick-fingers splayed like a fan of burial tablets, gesturing broadely at bin Amra's entire being. Rather impractical, she found it. Especially given the leaking cauldron overflowing. She wasn't the one to consider the aesthetics of losing something like that.

Because if some ideas stopped being held in the world, even by creatures in deep slumber, the world lost.

„We are unsure flesh has all the answers.“​

A shrug came in response.
It was more of a response than she was willing to humor about the sentiment.

„This has happened before?“​

"What, people trying to harm us?" She barely looked - the chorus of the not-dwarf was so loud that it registered their location and proximity with ease. "What about you?"

A shuffling crumble of rock splitting open, a low hum from somewhere up the top, where a chamber opened.
Krava floated down, touched one of the bodies, and, lifted with it, the flower attached to her hand lowering and rising alongside her on a vine.

A touch with an index finger, and flesh began to melt without rotting. Skin stretched like taffy, nervous tissue arranged itself in the open, dormant, until it begun to sink into the opened hollow, and some splashed down into some liquid below that smelled acrid.

The damaged side of the hill begun to grow back together, slowly, visibly from the inside out, stretching in tendrils and streaks of various tissue overlapping and reorganizing within the confines of the wound. Another low hum, this time with a meaning rolling idly over the mind - relief. Whatever the hill was, it was conscious enough to have the notion.

"How do you tell yourselves apart?"

 

[Adem Bin Amra]

Eyebrow raised and fingers dug into the palm. They'd caught themselves before they bit the lip. This body had been chewed enough.

But how did you explain the sins of silence to the unattuned?

There were few outsiders that could understand that madness was a small price to pay for the preservation of the Song. They didn't believe it even as the thought occurred – but that's what everyone was taught. Easier when it was a story. When you didn't have to tighten your grip over the already cracked glaze.

Those that preached silence were dangerous. They'd forget the voice of their mother.

They watched the body float up with ease and wondered if they were being tested somehow. If the creature could make anything float – what was the need of more hands? If everything could just float what were their own feet even for? Perhaps it was rude to float within their people. It definitely sounded impolite.

They could've talked of iron guts and steady wills, but Krava's touch had just melted a man. Despite their ideas of decorum, they took a step back. Hairs on their forearms inching up like spikes, aware of their own malleable nature. The onceflesh danced like shroudclay as it filled the wound and they could pledge they'd heard the notturtle's relief.

Did it think its own thoughts or those of the melted? It wasn't a thought you dared entertain.

„There are too many for harm to be a stranger.“ What would've been a smile in better times still showed some teeth between the tufts of beard.

„Not always able to tell.“ That wasn't fully true. As they grasped the wrongsided braid, they wondered whether it was Balim to blame.

„Some are feelings.“ Were feelings. Other hand hovered at the hanging rib, where rage used to live. „Some are smells.“ Nostrils flared even with no smoke to parse. „Some are food you hate but... crave.“ They thought of roasted hazels and how wasteful growing them was. A pursuit for the affluent.

„Some refuse to be known.“ Which was painful to acknowledge.

The moment proved too long. Doubt formed words.

„Why help us?“ Why help...material?

 

[Krava'quiloor]

'You think of yourself so little? Or should I not defend myself because you think so? I mend the wounds humans cause with their incessant violence. Better still, no undead will rise and wander to cause further harm where I pass. I do not worship the decay that poisons, and I know so many ways that years of such humans being hopped up on one potion or the other would poison more than just the ground.'

She looked from the mound where she took a leisurely, lax-legged sprawl, grass filling the spaces around the bend. Head turned, hands stayed in place, guiding the contour. The accommodating resonance was weakening somewhat. She'd seen enough bull-headed.

'We do not like killing. There is value in every mind that is whole. But we will not roll over in the face of violence. We will not waste what is left after. I will not reiterate it another time.'

She did not deign with answer through outer speech for a while. Only when the lower layer of the travel pod had knit, and grown the beginnings of ablative shell the color of rock, did she sigh.
"I was hoping for a kindred mind, keen to know."

'The doctrine dictates we aid the lost hiveless and give them purpose through taking part in function of the Creed - but not against their will. If you want to collect... songs... from them, do so now, while I rest. You are free to leave.'

She lay down on the mossy grass at the giant's top, soft and warm with the steady multi-chambered heartbeat of a complex structure. It did not have a soft belly. It was regrowing a door. Arms and legs splayed like a starfish.
That thing was bent on seeing her as a threat or judging her, and its arrogance reminded her of Cazadores. Still, it was free to leave, and her resonance, massive and flowing wide, as well as the vibrations of her carriage, were hiding Lock's smaller body very well.