CHAPTER NINE

With once more a great effort, the dwarf hoisted himself over the hole’s lip and up onto bare, slanted shingle. The dwarf at once began sliding down the slant of the steeple, his large hands palming at only smooth warmth. Waspig peaked past the hole to find his master very nearly gone. The dwarf seemed not able to deliver much needed air to his lungs. And then his slide slowed to nothing as the roof flattened out. The dwarf set his face against iron. He discontinued his lay only when Waspig shot its breath onto its master’s stout arms. So he sat himself up proper besides the beast and took in the new world around him.

Trees tall and narrow--algae green--formed a natural barrier atop cliff faces far higher than the church’s tip. They held tight together allowing sunlight only above their cone heads. The dwarf and his pet rested atop a building quite close not only to one of these cliffs but a bountiful river that ran down and besides, its waterfall pouring out of what he could not understand to be anything other than the remains of a massive hatched egg nestled in the earth, its roof gone to history. And this was one direction. Its opposite watched the last light of the day dance on an ocean no more than two a walk to; before it, the appearance of civilization; before that, plains only occasionally dotted with tree. All this simmered with mystery a great ways down and quite far away. The dwarf’s natural realization of his future in foraging could not be shaken, his dwarfen guts growling loud. Whether dinner would plate in the evening weighed on his mind gravely, and no amount of fur stroking soothed the dwarf far given to his anxiousness.

A tree brought him here away from his world--why? And was he being offered now a chance, or was the dwarf thought to die in his hole? Why the transformation, a process even now continuing the lingerings of ache. Vexxed, he laid himself with his back against the iron, his eyes on the stars. These seemed not dissimilar to his own nor did the moon that rose above cones. He thought again of the moon he observed earlier--perhaps it was no moon at all for its surface had gleamed with earth-like blues, its sole patch otherwise likely land--indeed, the dwarf had observed the neighboring planet Draque. But stewing in ignorance, his imagination wrestled with such unbelievable concepts and met its match. The dwarf’s hand that soothed his pet slowed. He fell asleep.

A boy’s father scolded him for having strayed out too far and too long. Moss and web wrapped itself around bruised filth, the boy an erect ragdoll. His father furiously exercised his tobacco lined lungs, justified anger beating his son down into the earth. He--the son--became swallowed up by it, no pocket of air unmolested by the dirt of his farm. Further he slid, struggling feebly unable to resist the transformation that forced itself upon his body. Beyond the definition of dwarf, the boy’s legs shot out and burst with fur akin to Waspig. His cheeks sprout hair, then his nose, his brow, forehead, until even the boy’s very eyes gave birth to locks. He forced his hairy mouth open to scream to the delight of dirt pounding formerly on the locked door, his lungs violently filled with the taste of tilled earth.

Shooting his eyes open, the dwarf realized at once his tumble, the distance between he and his peacefully sleeping pet widening. He slid on the steeple’s second slanted set of shingle and off, plunging straight down into what the dwarf would swear be, in those fleeting moments, a rather large egg.

The shell gave in to the dwarf’s weight, he crashing down through its ceiling and into a viscous liquid slow to accept its new prize. He spat what contents entered him in a coughing fit, struggling to stand--unable. He settled eventually for his back being against the curvature flanking. And in the middle of this roundness dripped a large mass, beads running down its newly formed fur, fresh eyes black and unmistakably animated. The creature gazed down at its first prey in a way immediately conveyed, the dwarf slipping to retain his position meanwhile. The beast’s feathers slicked sickeningly and long shook suddenly spattering against the walls and the dwarf’s beard, he once again reduced to hacking.

But it did not wait for the dwarf to recover. The chick screeched, lunging.