Panultima (Scene Four) By Schuyler Cyr

Previous Scene:
http://pastebin.com/W6PRqXu4

Those eyes.
Those horrible swaying alien eyes.
Those awful bisected oblong eyes.

Their cumulative senses of self began to reconcile in the moment they saw each other.

His face.
His face was the strangest thing of all, entirely slimy, with a short curtain of tendrils waving down from its cyan snout.
His face was so strangely incongruous, flat, long, fishy, and with a pale, fleshy, almost translucent hide wrapping it all into the most uncomfortable looking creature.

Different enough to be tipped into unease, but just familiar enough to be stopped short of outright fear.
The truth and implications of simultaneously seeing within and without of each other’s bodies finally settled firmly within their minds.

That was when the sensation began. The fear, the panic, the confusion, and most certainly of all, the discomfort.
They stared into each other; the thoughts and responses of every moment were innumerable. Countless impossible questions bubbled up and popped away with obvious answers inside each overwhelming instant.

Their skins crawled as a blink came in perfect unison. They reeled, and vomited together in the sheerest shock to ever shake their respective senses of individuality.

Ikkabod sobbed at all the unbidden imagery:
There was a time and place for spawning, and every male with half a mind spawned as hard as he could whenever he passed by his local egg groves.
Mannouar jellyfish tasted exactly as squelchy and translucent as they looked.
There was no feeling quite as satisfying as the look of a fully mesmerized bedcrawler’s eyes just as it drifted into tonguing range.

Glaucus gurgled for all the unintelligible memories:
Harmony had always been sensitive, but anybody would’ve cried all night if they had been forgotten with their brother on the town cart for half a day.
He had never understood the reason he had to take his sisters to play outside whenever his father’s friends in the strange clothes came to talk, but he always knew from his mother’s grim expression, it must have been a serious one.
Kenji’s family may have been mainlanders, but his aunts still made the best damn cucumber kimchi in the city.

They rallied from their visions and discovered that the uneasy sensations weren’t as intense when they looked away from each other, and as their sights diverged so did their thoughts:
The rock still pinned his tail down and it was starting to go numb.
The fungi’s trailing illumination made the indiscernible depths of this cave all the more pronounced, and the possibilities of what that darkness could hold began to loom large.
The tall awkward creature was right to worry. Every hatchling knew how territorial cave beasts could be, straying any deeper into the mountain would be suicide.
That slimy thing was looking at him again.

And as Ikkabod turned back towards him, the surreal reeling resumed along with their reciprocated attentions. Glaucus flinched away, turning back to his weighty gray restraint.
That rock…
Ikkabod, imbued with a flare of frustration that was not his own, moved into action far more suddenly than his body was ready to. Stumbling forward, his eyes flashing with a sudden deep shade of violet, Ikkabod’s body flung itself against the boulder just as Glaucus began to wriggle in the opposite direction. Glaucus darted out into the center of the cave and stopped, poised and deliberate, while Ikkabod rolled off the side of the tipping stone and crashed hurriedly onto the floor once again. Before he could bring his head up from the dirt, Ikkabod saw himself lying face down, felt a surge of bitter concentration, and considered the thoughts he could feel considering him. The monster was up to something. He moved to right himself and face the beast, but just as it came into view the flash of violet light returned, persisting this time as his gaze snapped back to the dirt before him.  Ikkabod struggled against his own body, straining to move his head upwards. His eyes began to inch up towards the cave wall until the oppressive violet tint burned into a hot red hue and every muscle in his body became rigid. Ikkabod was helpless as he watched. He watched the corner of the cave wall, fixed before him. He watched himself, stiff and bent over the floor, as he began to shrink back slowly. The clatter of small stones ricocheting around them as Ikkabod’s body continued to drift down and away before swinging off to the side as Glaucus turned and the clearing of the cave mouth came into view. Relief swept over Ikkabod, unbidden and inexplicable, as Glaucus felt an encouraging breeze dancing across his back accompanied by the damp promising scent of well ventilated underbrush. The red back-light dominating Ikkabod’s vision cooled minutely back towards a more violet tint. Glaucus began shuffling down into the clearing. Ikkabod’s finger twitched and his eyes began to swivel. Glaucus slithered towards the jungle; away from the rubble pile, through the soft caps and rustling grass, past the coral bushes and into the slumped body of the whelp he had taken the night before. The meat was probably still good.
“Harmony!” Ikkabod collapsed, gasping for the breath he hadn’t even realized he’d lost. Then he was on his feet in a blinding flash of green before the cryptic color-coded light dissipated entirely. As he flung himself towards the light of the cave mouth and began climbing, his mind was filled with the rushing sensations of stalks, branches, and chutes brushing past him in a hurried whirl of heavy dragging movement. His sister was gone. Ikkabod lay sprawled at the top of the rubble pile panting as he stared out at the trail of depressed shrubbery which wound away into the darkness of the jungle depths.
“No..” He whispered, righting himself atop the hill and raising his trembling fist towards the foliage. “You’re not eating my sister you slimy asshole!”
Fortunately, nobody present noticed that the inadvertent imagery of of his statement had somewhat diminished the dramatic flare he may have been going for, not even Ikkabod himself. For he was too busy concentrating every last modicum of willpower he possessed towards the absconding animal, remembering the paralyzing sensations he had experienced moments ago, and forcing them upon the creature, abandoning himself in the fervor of the moment.
Ikkabod saw the animal’s cerata cease their wriggling through it’s own disorientingly discolored vision. It seized and slid, momentum carrying it straight into a tangle of clathrus netting. The alien perspective crashed and jerked until it came to rest, staring sideways out through the strangely vibrant latticework towards an awfully familiar huddled lump of flesh and cloth. Harmony stirred, and as she did Ikkabod’s left arm and leg flung themselves out from his side as his mind was met with sudden resistance. Ikkabod, beginning to understand his newfound relationship with this carnivorous terror, pushed back, tightening his own extremities towards his chest as he focused on nothing but direct and absolute restraint.
Glaucus was stuck. He continued to fight back against his remote captor, straining his mind for movement in quick aggressive bursts as he had before. But each time the results became more and more subdued. The pale walker was clearly acclimating to their new condition better than he had anticipated. So it was that, after going hungry for a third night in a row, Glaucus watched helplessly as that tiny walker rose to its shaky little feet. It turned and stared at Glaucus, eyes glowing brighter than ever with that now all too familiar light.
Harmony, run! Thought Ikkabod.
“Hworglorblub!” Gurgled Glaucus.
The child started, backed away slowly, then turned and disappeared into the thick shroud of the jungle. It was the second time Glaucus was forced to watch as his would-be meal escaped from right underneath him. None of his clutch-mates would go hunting with him any more, he had never once found a mate, and now here he was bonded to a walker, watching his only prey that week scurry off looking just as desperate as he felt. No. Not again. Not like this.
Ikkabod was beginning to wonder what direction his sister had run off in and whether or not he actually stood a chance of finding her, or Vira for that matter, when suddenly he found himself flailing bodily about the clearing. He had let his concentration slip, and the monster had evidently given up on any specific attempt at agency and had resorted to thrashing both of their bodies into violent discord. And evidently, it was working. As Ikkabod struggled to catch himself throughout his rapid rising, stumbling, and falling, he lost track of the animal’s perceptions. An impression of spongy netting coming loose. A vague sensation of verticality accompanied by the rippling texture of mushroom stalk running down his abdomen. Then it was gone. The feelings were too fleeting, the movements too foreign, and the imagery too distorted to make sense of. There was still no denying the near constant stream of information flashing through Ikkabod’s mind, but it had become to fast and strange to make sense of. A feeling of nausea crept over him and he forced himself to refocus his own circumstance.
 He was afraid, in a jungle, alone; if he had bothered to wholeheartedly consider the dynamic he was experiencing with this wild animal, he might have been screaming. But in that moment all Ikkabod knew was that he needed to find someone, and he needed to get as far from that unthinkable creature as possible.

Previous Scene:
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