Scylla comeback (WIP!)

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Feno of Atalanta—a celebrated pre-Octratic Gillian philosopher—once postulated that it was impossible to walk the road from Atalanta to Thesus because the path could be split into halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and so on into microscopic infinity—the natural conclusion being movement itself was an illusion.

Aner the messenger knew of this postulation. He thought it was several sixteenths short of a trireme-load of centaurshit. He had traveled the road between Atalanta and Thesus many times, as did his father and his father’s father and—much like Feno’s Postulation—you could halve your way down the roots of the family tree until you found a time where the road between Atalanta and Thesus didn’t exist yet. But even without a road to divide into microscopic bits they still managed to travel between Atalanta and Thesus with their precious cargo of words.

It was a lot more difficult back then, not only because of a lack of a road but also because they still carved things down on slate slabs at that point. Very heavy, slate.

Though grateful and admiring of his ancestors for the trials (and trails) they faced, Aner had to admit he was even more grateful to live in a time and place with well-maintained roads to travel on. Gone were the days of trekking across wild Anteterranean forests that tore your chiton and rugged cliff trails with sandy rock that snicked the soles of your sandals. Instead he enjoyed dusty, pebbled roads that wound through the natural landscape the way a snake winds through cobblestones—feeding through the path of least resistance. It offered trips more pleasant to experience if not as fun to regale at the taverna the following week.

Aner wasn’t much of a drinker in the first place so having a road to walk on was pluses all the way as far as he was concerned. He especially liked walking along the last seaside stretch on the approach to Thesus. To his left, the navy expanse of the Eeshaen Sea¬—speckled crystal with sunshine from sun god Halos and stroked white by wave crests blown by the winds of sea god Trident. To his right, the brush-tufted Cliffs of Cyclose¬—wrinkled, sandy-orange and cracked like the smiling face of his grandmother (Shaydees rest her soul). And straight up ahead the city of Thesus—the jumbled collection of white roads and whiter buildings splotched across the seaside cliffs like one giant conglomerate of seagull shit, or so it is usually described by the rivaling city state of Theneta. But Theneta is a city of philosophers and pederasts (many one and the same) so no one paid their similes much mind.

No, it didn’t look like a mess of seagull gunk to Aner. To him the white, sandy buildings gave the impression of a thin pile of sun-bleached sand dollars and cuttlebones, much like the ones he would collect off the beach at Atalanta. Grandmother used to say that sand dollars were Trident’s way of giving back to Gillia for all the lives lost tussling with his harsh windy seas. It was bogus of course, like Feno’s Postulation was bogus, but it was a different kind of bogus. Bogus for a child—to make their little growing worlds seem a bit more bright and fantastical. At least until they got older and realized that—with all the centaurs, minotaurs, and hydras stomping around—the world was a bit too damn fantastical already.

Besides, anyone past the age of four would see that a couple dozen sea urchin skeletons were not really valid compensation for a lost human life.

But yes, that was another plus to add to the modern road between Atalanta and Thesus. Regular hoplite patrols and frequent banishing totems set along the roadside kept it nearly free from rabid beasts of the fantastical. And that was a pretty big plus. Nothing ruins a messenger’s day quite like a 20-foot serpent head the size of a Gillian siege ram striking out of the overgrowth and swallowing him up faster than he can say ‘BY BOLTIFREX’S STATICY BEARD!’

Keen eyes would notice the ‘nearly’ before ‘free from rabid beasts.’ That was the one thing Aner did not like about the final seaside stretch to Thesus: a siren had taken up residence there. This was bad because a siren doesn’t need to get close to a roadway to snatch up a traveler. Only their song has to get close, and no matter how many totems you smash into the ground or hoplites you put on patrol or mashes of cotton and beeswax you jam into your ears, a siren’s song will reach you.

It was said that no man who had ever heard a single note of their music had ever been seen again.

It was also said that you couldn’t travel between Atalanta and Thesus because the distance could be halved into infinity.

Aner knew both were hooey and centaurshit respectively. He had traveled the road since he was a sand dollar-collecting tot and he had heard this particular siren’s song—a gentle melodic plucking of a lyre—at least ten times now; the siren had taken up residency alongside the final seaside stretch five trips ago. And here he was, still strolling along and still being seen again by his fellow Gillians.

Today would be his eleventh time hearing the lyre.

Today would be his first time hearing the song.

The sun was high and bright but the clouds were large and many. They crawled across the blue with the kind slowness that gave Aner long stretches of world-encompassing shade and coolness mixed in with the salt-tang sea breeze blowing in from the Eeshaen to his left. From his right came the occasional rustle of reedy cliff brush. Behind him rose a subtle haze of dust stirred up by his sandaled footfalls. And to the front the glorious sand dollar-white expanse of Thesus grew in his vision as he made his final approach. It was a good day.

The lyre started just as the cliffs fell away into the rolling hills preceding the rural outskirts of the city. It felt slow and tentative but genuine and gentle—not the second-guessed notes of a shy amateur, but the strict melodic choice of an old pro.

Aner ignored it. Eleven trips ago the music had stopped him in his tracks for a solid half-minute. But by then he had been an old pro in terms of traveling alone. He had heard the stories. He had listened to the warnings. By the time he heard that beautiful plucking for the fifth time he was convinced that the stories and warnings, though probably truthful, were a little hyperbolic. He had lost count of how many notes of that song had slipped in hopeful through one ear and fell dejected out of the other, but it was definitely more than one.

Hooey. Total hooey.

Now, instead of stopping in his tracks Aner just smiled and switched the strap of his messenger satchel from left shoulder to right, rubbing the freed shoulder through his chlamys to ease out the soreness. To be fair it was fair music, but it wasn’t the kind he was going to investigate after hearing stories of disappearing men.

And for some reason it was always men. Never women.

Aner reached a little roadside tangle of olive trees. By then the music reached its peak in volume—must have been coming from deeper within. But it wasn’t just distance. The sea breeze seemed to have died down, leaving Aner’s ears free of the deep staccato warble of the winds flowing past his lobes. Nothing to get in the way of those plucked notes flowing into his head now. Even his footfalls seemed to have subconsciously muted themselves—no more scraping, no more scattering pebbles, no more soft papery wack of his scroll-filled messenger bag banging against his hip. Just music; his whole world was a world of lyre.

Still he walked on, ready to pass right by the tree tangle from which the melody came.

Then the singing started.

If there had been any doubt about the composition being second-guessed or strict choice, the addition of the player’s voice obliterated that doubt the same way it obliterated Aner’s mental defenses. The halting notes followed by streams of melody turned from a mood of tentativeness to a throe of longing by the addition of a singer; her silken, airy voice flowed with the kind of beautiful dignity that comes from pleading for emotional gain rather than material gain.

And it was a her. By Boltifrex’s electric leer, it was a her. Aner stopped right in his tracks; how could he possibly move with such a crushing vice around his heart. To ignore such a voice—such a song—would be no better than murder in the first degree. Someone needed help. Someone needed his help. He would be the one to sooth that soft, singing voice that seemed to be on the cusp of becoming a wail—such was the amount of loneliness that seeped from the weaving, flowing words like the tears that were most certainly seeping from the singer’s eyes.

Aner shook his head. Or at least tried to shake it. His eyes were still locked on the shady arch made by the thick wavy branches of the olive trees. His body still pointed towards Thesus. All he had to do was start walking. If he could just take one step, the next would be easier, and the next would be twice as easy, and so on and so forth until the ease had reached a point of sprinting infinity. Just one step.

A single note.

Never seen again.

Aner turned his body. He closed his eyes as if to blink but he left them closed. With his sight gone his entire world became the song.

He could make excuses. He could say he was just going to take a look. No harm in keeping your distance and seeing the someone behind the singing, right? Or he could say he would just take one step forward, just enough to add one step’s-worth of clarity and volume to the song. But one step would become two. Two steps would become four. Four steps would become eight. By the sixteenth step the clarity and volume would go far beyond being Aner’s entire world—it would be his entire mind as well, leaving him completely at the mercy of whatever was waiting for him at the end of the 32nd step.

So Aner didn’t bother with excuses. He just excused himself from the road and walked into the grove beyond, listing and swaying like a shade fresh into the underworld.

It took only several seconds of walking to realize that calling the place a grove was a misnomer. The olive trees were too regular in their placement; their fat, squat, braided trunks threw up bushy branches skyward in a way that left a shady avenue—speckled with leaf-filtered sunlight—leading down towards the origin of the singing. Not only that, there were also a few interspersed trees that looked like giant overgrown bushes with leaves bigger than a man’s palm: fig trees. This was no grove; it was an orchard.

Only time would tell if the owner and the singer were one and the same… if the owner was still in the realm of the living. Even with totems and patrols along the road, starting an orchard this far away from Thesus’s walls was as stupid as wearing a blood-red-rare poncho of giant sliced mutton and sprinting towards the nearest labyrinth.

Aner was having similar but more focused thoughts: ‘Would a siren even own an orchard? Would a siren even LOOK like something that would own an orchard?’

They were good thoughts and they finally gave him pause. Even though he was swaying along at a pace that was somewhere between leisurely and mobile-catatonia, it felt like he had to dig his heels into the mulch rustling beneath him to stop—as if he had been moving along at a dead sprint.

Though he had stopped moving, the singing continued on. Not slower. Not faster. As ethereal and hypnotic as ever.
He closed his eyes. Opened them. Tried to shake his head. Couldn’t. And because he couldn’t, he clearly saw the three figures bursting out of a fig tree down the way.

They were dogs. But—with a horror that was dulled to near-boredom by the singing—Aner realized they were wolves. They had to be. No dog should have silver-gray fur that matted and coarse and peppered with mulch and leaves. No dog should be able to move that fast and with such threatening purpose—the three of them streaking through the shade like they were fueled by something you would never want to shake too hard. No dog should be that big…

All three of them closed the space between the fig tree and Aner within half-seconds, trailing two dozens of droplets of spittle between them along the way. And as soon as they drew near, they made on final bounding pounce...

…and showed him they meant no harm at all.

The first skidded to a halt and gave a gruff “ruff!” of greeting before planting its snout on the ground between its forepaws and wagging its rear in the air along with its tail. Its pale-gold eyes looked up at Aner—pupils wide with instant-met fondness.

The second kept its energy going, following through with its final bound and pulling a comfortable circuit ‘round and around Aner, giving off a gentle, friendly bark every time it completed a lap.

The final one went into what was probably the lupine equivalent of a power slide and came right up to Aner, snuffling one of his hands before going into a friendly pant and sliding up behind him. The wolf nudged against his legs, urging him forward, and when that didn’t work it came to his front and snagged the hem of his chiton in its snout and tried to tug him along.

Throughout all of the lupine shenanigans, the siren sang and played on, though—if one listened very hard—a hint of amusement snuck through her tone.

Alright. So they were dogs. Or maybe it would’ve been more accurate to call them overgrown puppies—the special kind of dog with a one-in-a-million owner that didn’t teach them how to grow up; they just taught them how not to yip and howl and gnash their teeth at strangers.

And if they had an owner like that…

Aner smiled. He didn’t feel very wary any more. After adjusting his satchel and tapping his sandals back into a comfortable position, he let the chiton-tugging dog lead him down the orchard avenue towards the singing. Their two barking cohorts danced along and around them all down the way.

In time, Aner’s compliance seemed to satisfy the tug-dog and he joined the others in just being Aner’s hyperactive honor guard. This left Aner free to round a bend and clear a last line of trees into a clearing. While the three dogs broke away and bounded over to their owner, Aner just gaped like a fish kicked in the papilla.
He had expected to find a cottage, a two-story, a plantation-bordering-on-estate at the very most—anything between hopelessly rinky-dink and marginally hoity-toity.

What he found looked like it had been dragged down from the deific suburbs of Mount Oligarchus itself.

It was a pool. But it wasn’t the typical Gillian rural pool: a three-way child birthed by sluice gates, cheap ceramic, and a troupe of wine-drunk bumpkin contractors. No, this pool was the pedigree child of Archimedes , blinding-white marble, and the coordinated hand of Boltifrex himself. A giant flat flower of marble bloomed out of the earth—spreading white pedals around an oval rink of pure water that glittered cyan in the afternoon sun. On each end of the pool—which was large enough to float a small fishing sloop—were stand-alone, shady verandas with roofs held up by marble columns. But what really gave the entire construction a godly, otherworldly feel was how spotless it was. This was not the kind of locale where you would find entire teams of groundskeepers and horticulturists. Yet here was a great expanse of marble and tile out in the wild country with not a speck of weed poking up through a crack or an invasive creeper snaking its way up a column or a fleet of dead leaves floating on the pool’s surface.

Spotless.

Absolutely spotless.

A slice from Mount Oligarchus itself.

Aner strolled towards the construct, mesmerized. He was so enamored he lost track of the singing. Only when it stopped did he realize it was still there… at least, still there a few moments ago. He looked towards one of the shaded verandas not ten steps away—the source of the sudden silence—and gaped like a fish with its head chopped off.

In the many, happy years of his life that followed, Aner would always look back on that moment and chuckled over the fact that the very first thing he noticed about the siren was her hair: a shoulder-length, wavy, homely mess of golden-orange locks that gently glinted in the sun as if she had just soaked them underneath a waterfall.

Why was this worth a chuckle, years and years down the line?

Because he noticed that before he noticed she had the lower body of an octopus.

That was misleading though.

During the lazy afternoons of his boyhood when he collected those sun-bleached sand dollars and cuttlebones, he sometimes walked through the rocky fringe of the beach and explored the pools left behind at low tide. Sometimes he would find an octopus trapped between the pools, caught unawares by the lowering waters. They dried and died in the Anteterranean heat, the beautiful and graceful definition of their bodies lost on land—reduced to sagging, flattening, mucus-like blobs. Being as sheltered as he was they were the saddest sights Aner saw in his youth. At least until he grew enough courage to pick up those slimy messes and toss them into the nearest pool.

The tentacles Aner saw sprouting from beneath the siren’s towel-like skirt had as much in common with a land-bound octopus’s tentacles as a sand dollar has in common with sea god Trident’s pocket change. Sure they had suction-cups and a maroon, glistening texture to them, but they didn’t sag, run, or dribble. They kept a powerful solid form. They seemed perfectly at ease in the Anteterranean heat, and—if the happy panting was any indication—they were really good at giving a dog head-scritches.

“Hello.”

Aner started. Right. There was a human attached to those tentacles. A human in shape at least. He swallowed and looked up, gaze sliding past her lyre and meager swimwear before sizing up her face. Then Aner had to avert his eyes when he found her’s just too damn blue and piercing to look at. Boltifrex save him, you could poke your eye out on a gaze that piercing.

But, even with his averted eyes, he could see that the sharpness of her eyes was nothing compared to the softness of her smile. He turned back, his neck jittering a bit along the way like a clockwork automaton with sand in its gears, but he turned back and offered a sheepish smile of his own.

He opened his mouth and then…

Closed it.

He frowned.

Maybe it was because he had spent long enough without the siren’s song flowing in one ear and out the other—flossing his brain like there was something heavy stuck between its wrinkles—but suddenly the doubts were coming back. She looked harmless. Shaydees, she looked beautiful and harmless. And when you have three puppies the size of well-fed wolves lounging around you with three lolling tongues worth of happiness between them, it might be safe to assume their owner is just as happy and harmless.

But you know what else looks beautiful and harmless? Sea anemones. Aner had explored enough tide pools to know that you don’t touch a sea anemone unless you want to have one sour afternoon.

Aner looked down at the octopus half again. If anything cutting out the human element would make his sense of danger a bit keener, but even down south things were peaceful. Her tentacles didn’t whip or wriggle in menacing flourish around her. In fact only two were moving at all—both petting or stroking her dogs. The other feelers curled beneath, giving her a comfortable seat against one of the pillars holding up the shady veranda.

No. Beautiful and harmless. And with a little bit of self-conscious surprise, Aner found himself thinking that her octopus half was nearly as beautiful as her human half.

That rose questions he really didn’t like to think about.

“It’s rude to stare.”

Aner snapped his eyes back up. “I just never seen a woman with legs like that before.” He thought for a moment, mulling over how crass a phrase that was before adding “like an octopus’s.”

Good. Now it just sounded weird instead of crass.

Judging from the heartiness of her giggle the siren wasn’t put off. It was a really nice close-lipped giggle too, like what seagulls might sound like if they didn’t sound absolutely horrible. “I’m sure you haven’t,” she said, “but what makes you think they’re octopus tentacles?”

“Because”—Aner flicked his eyes down to double check—“there’s eight of them.”

No giggle this time, but her smile widened a smidge. “Good eyes.”

“Not really. Doesn’t take a hawk-eye to tell between an ant and a spider.”

“What?”

“You know, two extra legs. Just instead of six and eight it’s eight and ten.”

“Oh. I see.”

A pause. And to Aner’s consternation it felt a bit uncomfortable to him. He had just been lured into what could be the domicile of a murderous, singing seductress and he was treating it like a shaky first date at the Atalanta Gardens. And to make matters worse, the siren seemed to be taking things in stride—still lounging back with that Boltifrex-damned soft smile as she cradled her lyre with her human arms and stroked her dogs with her octopus arms.

‘Maybe,’ he thought, ‘I could make this less awkward by getting the Shaydees out of here...’

It seemed like a reasonable plan. With legs as tense as his were at the moment he might have sprang to it, but—either from serendipity or plain old malicious telepathy—the siren did something that kept him stock still.

“Did you like my song?” she asked, gently strumming out a chord on her lyre. Though she ran her delicate fingers along the strings, she may as well have been running them along the notches in his spine—such was the pleasing, tingly shock that went up his back when he heard the lyre that close. It kept him right in place and made the truth fall out of his mouth like loose dentures:

“Well the strings were very good but gods, your singing is I think the prettiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

No smidge this time; the siren’s smile became as wide and curvy as her lyre. “Thank you. It’s nice to know I’ve managed to perfect something after… wait, let’s make a game of it: how long do you think I’ve been in this lovely world?”

Aner stared but tried to make it a polite stare. She really was a beauty and he couldn’t help but take advantage of a question that gave him an excuse to look her over once more: the brilliant hair, the lithe but curvy body, those eyes you could get lost in faster than a Kreechian labyrinth.

Roll all those features into a ball, heft it in your hands a bit, subtract three years to be polite and you get…

“I’d put you at twenty three.”

That squeaky giggle again. “That was a trick question, actually. I’ve only been in this world for half a month, but as for my age I’m twenty seven.”

Aner stared and it wasn’t very polite. “You’ve only been in this world… hope I’m not being rude here, but you must be from someplace far away from Gillia or the An’neranian in general ‘cause around here we don’t call countries ‘worlds.’”

“Oh no,” the siren said, shaking her head, “I mean exactly as I say. My tentacles haven’t slithered atop this earth for more than a month.”

“So what, you’re saying you’re not from Geo?”

“If Geo is the name of this planet, then that is exactly what I am saying.”

A chill passed over Aner. But then he realized it was just an errant sea breeze paired with one of the many fat lazy clouds passing across the sun above, leaving everything in the cool muted blue-gray of shade.

In truth he was intrigued—especially since she seemed to be implying that Geo was a wandering body instead of a proper world in the center of the universe.

“How?” he said.

The siren smiled, and the sun came back with her. “I’d love to explain, but are we really going into our life stories without knowing each other’s names?” She extended a hand. “Mine is Scylla.”

Aner looked at her hand. Looked back at her face. He shrugged, in the same motion shifting his messenger satchel from right to left so he could offer his own hand. “Aner,” he said, stepping forward.

When he was just about to grasp her hand in his, one of her tentacles slithered up and tenderly wrapped around his palm instead. The hairs on Aner’s legs, arms, neck, and chest stood up. If the lyre’s chord was a finger up his spine, the squishy caress of Scylla’s tentacle was a kiss right on the tip of his unmentionable. He was in total euphoric shock, frozen in place and completely at the mercy of her silky, squishy touch. The thick limb coiled about his hand—not squeezing, but twisting around and running its tickly little suckers about his skin like she was feeling out a tactile map of his hand.

After what seemed like an eternity of coy toying, Scylla’s tentacle withdrew, but not before using a sucker to give one last parting smooch to the back of Aner’s hand like a noblewoman’s kiss.

It took a while for him to drift back down to Geo; there seemed to be a bit of traffic between the ground and cloud θ. When he finally did feel level ground beneath his feet he realized that Scylla was laughing. She was laughing so hard she had to hug her lyre to keep from dropping it. Her tentacles wriggled along with her laughter—so much so that her dogs were chasing and nipping at the wriggling feelers with so much playful energy that Aner couldn’t help but chuckle along with.

“Oh my gracious Poseidon, I’m sorry,” she said, “but I just couldn’t help myself and the look on your face and the way the little hairs on your hands tickled me and…” She fell into a fresh burst of titters, perhaps encouraged by Aner’s own sheepish smile and lamb-ish chuckles. “I’m sorry if I scared you, Aner,” she added after she had laughed herself dry.

“Y’just surprised me is all,” he said. He noticed how much sweet, friendly emphasis she had put on his name. He did his best to keep down his blush. His best was not enough.

But who in Shaydees was Poseidon?

“I’m sorry,” she said again, “it’s just that where I come from most people are used to people like me and I wanted to…” She blushed a bit. She actually blushed. “I just wanted to see how someone without a frame of reference would react. Silly, isn’t it?”

Aner nodded. “A little, yeah.”

Scylla offered him her first frown. “You’re not supposed to agree with people when they say things like that.”

“Sorry, didn’t get the scroll about it.” When the frown didn’t go away Aner hastily added “I mean, there was nothing wrong with it—Shaydees, it actually felt pretty goo—”

A little too hastily.

“It d-didn’t feel bad,” Aner said, turning a shade of red that would’ve driven a Minotaur mad.

It seemed Scylla wasn’t going to follow her own brand of social niceties, because she definitely wasn’t pretending she didn’t hear his truthful slip-up; her smile was back with not just a vengeance, but a vendetta.

“Come out of the sun, Aner; you’re sweating. Let’s go somewhere cooler and more comfortable. It seems you have a lot to say about my tentacles.”

“No I don’t,” Aner said, again a little too hastily. And despite his words his eyes were drawn back down to her octopus half as she raised herself from her seat at the pillar.

And then he realized he really did have a lot to say about those slithering limbs.

It was truly fascinating seeing them move—seeing how they managed to propel her along dry land so effortlessly. In the back of his mind Aner had wondered how she dealt with surfaces as smooth as the marble she strolled across while she moved deeper into the veranda. It turned out she could twist her tentacles in a kind of corkscrew motion as she slid along, making sure that the suckerless halves of her tentacles were all that touched the ground; there was not a single soft pop of a sucker accidentally catching.

Scylla looked like she had been born in the water, but she moved like she had grown up on land.

“You’re staring again, Aner,” she said in singsong.

“No I wasn’t.” If only Aner’s walking pace was as hasty as his words, he would be held in much higher regard as a messenger.

Scylla just giggled and continued moving into the veranda, her three dogs panting along at her heels. Or whatever constituted as an octopus’s heels.

Aner seized on the distraction as he followed along. “Your boys are well-behaved. What breed? I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“They’re girls, actually,” Scylla said. She pointed a tentacle at each of them in turn: “Cher, Berr, and Buss. As for their breed, I never really cared enough to find out. Some kind of lovable mutt I’m sure. I’m more concerned with the lovable part.” She plopped down on a chair by a table, tucking her lyre into her curling tentacles before waving towards a chair opposite. “Make yourself comfortable Aner.”

“Sure thanks.” Aner sat down himself, leaving his messenger satchel at his feet and adjusting both so the dogs could find comfortable lay-down spots beneath and around the table. The table and chairs both had that nostalgic, wispy, curvy look of true Gillian antique, and the polished wood creaked with a homely squeak as he settled himself in. On the table were a bowl of figs and a small, ornate stoppered jar beside.

“Help yourself,” Scylla said, nudging the bowl closer to him. In doing so, Aner noticed the coral-pink, circular markings: fist-sized and evenly stamped down her arm. Stylized suckers, he guessed. He’d have to ask about them later.

“Thanks.” He picked out a juicy-looking fig and gave it an appraisal while saying: “So you have no clue at all about their breed? Not a guess?”

“Why do you ask?” Scylla said, sitting back and folding her hands in her tentacle lap.

“When you spend as much time in the An’neranian wilderness as me you get to seeing a lot of kinds of wolf and wild dog. Tell the truth I’ve been trekking along country roads for more’n half my life—Shaydees, probably most of it—but I’ve never seen anything as big and mean-looking as these girls.” He took half the fig into his mouth, chewing it up and gesturing to show he wasn’t done. Once he swallowed he said: “But they only look mean. Tell another truth I’ve seen Alopekis more ill-tempered than these darlings. These are delicious by the way. From the orchard?” He popped the other half into his mouth and savored the juicy taste and seedy texture. Perfectly ripe.

Scylla nodded. “From this very one, yes. I’m pleased you like them, but you know what pleases me even more?”

“What?” Aner said as he reached for another fig.

“That you like my tentacles too.”

Aner lost his grip on the fig; it bounced off the table and ended up near the snout of one of the resting dogs. She promptly fulfilled her favorite and oldest duty of man’s best friend: living garbage disposal.

“I never said I liked them,” Aner said. He picked up a replacement fig from the bowl.

Scylla just smiled, leaned forward and propped her elbows on the table —interlocking her fingers and letting her chin rest on the bridge. “Aner, even if you were mute as a butterfly, the face you made when I gave you that tentacle-shake—why, you looked as if you had just been pecked on the cheek by your childhood sweetheart. And if I were honest, I wouldn’t mind being that sweetheart, Aner.”

“Oh come off,” Aner said, “you barely know me. Shouldn’t be making judgment this soon.”