Kin of Jörmungandr

I slide through the bend, moss in mouth, and arrive next to Scia. She flaps once before landing on my head, snatching up her meal from the jaw that ripped it from its home.

While she chews through the strands, I spit out whatever remains. I know she likes it, but to me, it tastes horrid. Just by it touching the roof of my mouth does the urge to regurgitate rise in me. By shoving my head into the stone, I wash away some of the taste, but it lingers.

Next time, I’ll be going back to the original method of using my body.

I lower my eyes to the end of my tail. A few sleeps and a shed skin has really helped it heal, but it still looks horrible. Particularly so on my smaller body. It aches, but no longer impedes my movement, which is a blessing.

We soon arrive back at our temporary home. The rend has remained longer than expected, and has made for a great place to rest amongst this consistently dangerous landscape. Without it, I doubt I could have remained conscious long.

When I’d woken the first time, Scia had been ravenous. I can only assume that my rest lasted far longer than usual, especially with how much that first rest had recovered my energy and closed up my wound. The cut hadn’t been fixed, of course, but my ribs realigned and it no longer looked like my tail was about to fall off.

As soon as I was healthy enough to shrink, I shoved my head through the rend. There was no land just out of sight as I’d hoped. No; only the vastness of the abyss. Gravity’s ever-present grip snatched the gravel that flowed through and swallowed it into the distant emptiness.

If there were other bends or holes beyond, I might not have even hesitated, as it would have given me a better opportunity to get back to the warped tunnels than the Other Side could ever hope to give.

But there wasn’t a single distortion. The rend appeared in space entirely desolate of others of its kind. If we dove through, we’d be stuck in a freefall far worse than the Titan’s tear.

Still, despite our current situation, things have been going well. The rend has yet to collapse, and nothing else has jumped out ready to eat us. Scia’s got food, and I have a place to sleep.

Really, all I could ask for — besides a way out of this place — is a meal for myself. But I can still hold off for a few dozen sleeps.

We’ve spent most our time searching for a path, but as I’m unwilling to stray too far from this rend lest the world collapse behind me and block us from returning to the only place I can rest.

Once I’m fully recovered, I intend to head out again on our search, but until then, it’s better to remain close to home.

The two of us twirl through a ring of bends. Content to just relax for some time where the grinding earth cannot reach us, I wait for Scia to chew through her meal. The tough grass takes her a while to break up. Not that I expect it to be easy to chew, considering how tightly it clings to the Titan’s bones. Still, the smack of her lips and the intent focus are enough to tell just how much she enjoys the plant, despite the challenge.

Chewing is such an odd action. So many creatures do it, but if they only tried to swallow their food whole, they would realise how much easier it is. Most of the time, eating prey my way is so much cleaner than how some beasts rip and tear into the carcasses of other creatures.

Moss of all things should go down her throat without difficulty, so I don’t understand why she still chews. Each little bite wets her lips with the juices held within, only for her tongue to dart out and lick it up before a single drop can fall. She couldn’t lose those drops if she just gulped it down.

Despite the nonnecessity of chewing, I can’t help but find her actions cute.

Something so simple as mincing grass with her teeth has me so enraptured. Maybe it’s just how completely focused she is on the task of ripping into her food, or her lack of care for the constant change of gravity, but I cannot look away. All I can do is spin and languidly watch her enjoy herself.

Eventually, she finishes. Scia chirps, satisfied, and turns to look me in the eye. I take that as a request to return to our search, and fall out of the spatial loop. There was no real need to wait for her — Scia eats fine whether I’m moving or not — but I’ve learnt to relax while I can after my brush with death.

Our current situation is safe. That may seem contradictory considering the unavoidable grinding earth that could easily crush us if we were to be swallowed, but the slight stability gifted by the rend allows us to survive despite everything.

We survived Titans. I survived a wound from a being that would struggle to fit in the cavern of the Ōmukade and Nareau. We have already survived on the Other Side for a while now, and I now want to calm down and relish our life we have done so much to cling to.

Scia and I will recover our strength while we can. After everything, we need to be prepared when we finally move on. I cannot assume we will find another place to rest. So before we set out on our search for a way back, I want my wound fully healed. That may take a few rests, but as long as the rend doesn’t collapse on us, it is achievable.

We still don’t know what awaits us back in the warped tunnels. I can only hope that there is a place to return to. The earthquakes that had rocked the amber barrier and destabilised all distortions were most likely the result of a Titan. But a Titan had already gone through my former home, and while it had destroyed everything important to me, it had left much of the warped tunnels untouched. Was this time the same? Is there still a place to return?

No point concerning myself. If such a scenario turns true, then, well, the abyss is always an option. A horrible, terrifying prospect, but still an option.

I cannot survive long term on the Other Side. There is no prey to hunt and while the moss appeases Scia, I can hardly sustain myself the same way. I need the warm, bloody flesh of other creatures to live. With no life smaller than the pseudo-Titan, starvation is all that awaits me here. Maybe… maybe is there something more suited to my stomach in the abyss. Until I’m desperate though, our chances are better searching the Other Side.

Ready for a long, yet casual search — one I have low expectations for — I shrink ever so slightly more. Before the wound along my extremity spreads enough to become obstructive, I stop. The thinner I can make myself, the more bends I can take advantage of, and I’m still far from my smallest.

We’ve barely passed the first cavern when I find Scia making some odd gestures. She bows her head, eyes closed and ears flat. I watch her curiously, but don’t stop swimming through the air. Scia is focusing heavily on something. With her ears pressed against her head, it can’t be something she hears, so I keep an eye on her as we move, curious.

The space around Scia wrinkles ever so slightly. It is similar to the way her kin folded space to make a small pocket for themselves, but this is different. Not so direct. Her intense focus makes it clear this is her doing, although it isn’t all that clear what.

The wrinkles intensify and, ever so subtly, Scia shrinks.

I stare unthinkingly, forgetting to slide through the next bend and fall into gravity’s embrace for a moment before I recover. The effect of the wrinkle is inferior, but it is similar to the way my body naturally alters its size. Scia continues to shrink. Only by her hair’s length, but it is noticeable.

Her eyes snap open, and she chirps happily; obviously proud of her effort. Unfortunately for the little bat, her jubilant attitude breaks her concentration and the spatial wrinkle snaps back into place, returning her original size. Scia notices immediately, and her joy flips to depression.

Did she… just imitate my ability to shift size?

The way she did so is obviously different from mine — space doesn’t wrinkle when I shrink — but the effect is the same. Never did I expect the sciacylch’s manipulation of space to be this extensive, but here we are; Scia is trying to learn to do what I thought only I could do.

I still have to focus on threading bends, so I can’t pat her. Instead, I hiss a deep rumble through my chest to help Scia out of her depression.

She happily melts into the feeling. Her attitude snapping back quickly. Almost too quickly. I shake off the suspicion as she leaps back into her effort to shrink. Why she would want to shrink when she’s already so tiny, I don’t know. The only reason that makes sense — and pleases me substantially — is she wants to imitate me.

I hiss again. This time calling her attention as I grow and shrink my body with slow, yet deliberate motions. If showing her how I do it helps her, then I’m all for the effort. She chirps and her ears flick at the sounds as they bounce back, but considering she tries the same method of wrinkling space, she mustn’t have gotten the best image of how I do it.

Now that I think about it, how do I do it?

After watching Scia’s kin fold space, I realised there are more things to perceive if I just know what to look for, but I’ve never noticed any odd changes in space with the change of my body.

I grow slightly. Not enough to be unable to flow through the caverns, but still a substantial change to allow a proper analysing of how my body shifts.

Unfortunately, I can’t spot any difference then every other time I’ve looked. My size just… changes. The major difference between what I do and what Scia is trying, is that my body seems to physically change with the alteration of size. My wound remains the same size, regardless the length of my body; only healthy bone and scale seemingly disappearing as my mass drops.

The way my body changes leaves no changes in the surrounding space, while Scia’s method relies on such. It’s almost like the space of my length is decoupled from that of everything else… but that doesn’t make much sense. How can there be multiple layers of space? I can see the spatial fabric easily, and while it weaves in on itself, there is only one sheet.

Regardless, Scia wants to be more like me. How could I do anything but encourage that? As we swim through the caverns looking for a rend, I do all I can to figure out how to improve her methods.