SSCS 02: Installment 9 of 32
How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
This is Installment 9 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
Previously…
“Gran-Tom? I ask your humblest apologies.” The words spilled themselves out, like the ritual they shouldn’t be but were, and Mina’s knees bent the rest of the way, down to the rough, stone ground, and her head tipped back and to the side, exposing the length of her throat. She was allowed to keep her eyes open and stare to the horizon, but not to turn her head to look anywhere specific. She couldn’t check to see what the flying kraken thought of all this, or even Hedwin. She couldn’t move, except for the shudder that passed over the whole of her skin when she remembered just how quickly said kraken had sighted its last meal and snatched it up.
…How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
Installment 9: 19.0612-0613
There came a scuffle from the side. The scent of roses was very, very strong now, a thick layer of sweet, and Mina thought maybe by this point Hedwin might very well be getting bowed down too, just by the smell.
Or maybe it was the Other One for him, as well? Mina had thought this forced compulsion, without even words to drive it, was a special torture reserved just for her – in fact, she thought the Other One had said so once or twice – but maybe it was a liar. She’d always been alone all those other times.
“Mina, what are you doing!” – Hedwin’s hoarse whisper came from off to her left. Not where Hedwin had been a moment before. The scuffle must actually have been him dodging around one of the spire rocks to hide. “Don’t just stand there. It’s looking right at you.”
Mina was not standing at all, and, around the tangles of fear and revulsion, there was still just enough of her normal mind left to be very cross with Hedwin over the difference.
But then the kraken screamed again, and she shuddered, hard – though this time it sounded more like a sound that was meant to rip your skin off rather than grind into your bones. And it went on so long. Mina, still kneeling with her eyes fixed out to sea and her throat exposed, was almost surprised not to feel blood dripping out of her ears and running sticky tracks down her neck. She wanted to reach a hand up to check. But when the sound finally stopped, leaving the air around her feeling almost hollow, she realized a shadow had fallen over her face from a direction she couldn’t quite see.
The Other One. Quickly, Mina cast her eyes downward, feeling that shadow like claws on her back. The last words it had pulled from her had been abject apology, and resisting the part only ever made things so much worse.
Then, gently, a weight came to rest on the exposed side of Mina’s neck, the Other One touching her, still staying where Mina couldn’t see. Next, a slow, soft stroke downward toward her throat, the touch turning faintly sharper as Gran-Tom’s claws were let to curl in. Mina couldn’t even guess what Hedwin was thinking now. Probably he just saw gran-Tom, standing over her acolyte, maybe even as though the old priestess was protecting her. Around the compulsion, bile tried to burn up the back of Mina’s throat.