He lay bonded to the darkness by molten chains, his arms singed and a foreign mind clawing, dragging at his soul. His stomach went clammy with blood’s pulse. Maanta was alone, not knowing where, but alone.
Then two nova white eyes glared at him, and a chill breath rippled upon his neck.
“Come to me,” the words of a foreign being scathed within his mind. “Come and be adorned.”
Maanta would not reply, could not reply.
A chain ripped through his back and ribs, catching in the boney cage. Blood spurted from the wound, and pain reverberated through the whole of him. His chest split, splattering the nova eyes with deep red blood fizzling as the two substances met.
The world faded to rippled aquatic daylight.
It was a dream. Thank Gelu, it was a dream.
Archa’s smooth gray nose bobbed Maanta’s side in anxiousness as he awakened, sending him spiraling gently to an open float amongst the cove dwelling.
Vaulting against the back shale wall, Maanta disrobed his seaweed night-sheet and swam with cupped webbed fingertips toward a collection of small fish eggs he’d gathered a few days before. They browned quickly over a cracked malta shell’s molten fluids, and would serve as a delicious daylight meal with their mesh of tangy saltiness and the sweetness of flora saps.
Archa devoured hers as Maanta scrubbed his pale body with sea salts, using his ankle fins to spin close to a suction vent in the ceiling of his cove. The vent spread a humming sensation over his skin as it cleaned him.
He dressed in whale leather, instructed Archa to stay put, and dipped through the window of his East Shale Wall home.