After a couple of moonhours, he bumped again into a cluster of those strange luminescent lumps. Were they dangerous or safe? He stood watching them for a few moments, then threw a stone in their midst. Nothing happened, so he walked up to them cautiously.
When it was just a few steps away, the first thing he noticed was that the surface of the lumps wasn't as smooth as it looked from afar, but was in fact grainier, thicker, tougher and covered with fine vertical veins that wrapped their bodies in a tight-fitting spiral. They didn't look threatening, but Aarvo still didn't feel at ease.
"So... Here we are" he said too loudly "just me and you, you and me, two weird things in an even weirder place..."
He broke off. Why did he say he was weird? He wasn't weird: the only weird, disturbing thing was this place, the moonhair and these things that seemed to look at him without eyes, everything in fact except him — he was the normal one. He shook his head. He had probably only said that to make these things feel more at ease. It was a shame these floating lumps didn't seem to appreciate his thoughtfulness.
"Anyway" he croaked, clearing his voice "I promise I won't hurt you, Okay? It'd be nice if you did the same." He stepped forward and stretched his hand towards the nearest lump, but when his fingers were at a head's distance, it bent away. Aarvo had become so accustomed to how moonhair avoided him that he had forgotten how strange it was. The bright lump, it appeared, behaved in the exact same way — not very sociable.
"All right" he said "don't freak out now" and flashed his hands forward, grabbing it. He kept it at a distance for a while, ready for a nasty surprise, but the lump didn't put up a fight.
Aarvo relaxed, put it under his arm, and began to study it with his free hand. He caressed the groove between two veins, feeling the smooth and tough surface that yielded slightly under his touch. Pushing deeper, he felt more tension, as if there was a second layer inside. He carefully placed the tip of his sharp fingers against the outer shell and drew a line, but to his amazement he couldn't cut through. Weird! His fingers had always been able to slice any type of rock, but couldn't even scratch such a soft and yielding material? He shrugged.
"Who's weird now, uh!?" He tapped the glowing lump and it bounced away. When it came back, Aarvo slapped it with the back of the hand. The lump, tied as it was to a thread of moonhair, flew in an arc toward the ground and bounced back again. Aarvo dodged it and punched it.
"Do you really think you can get me that easily!?"
Faster and faster, he dodged, hit and trotted around the glowing lump in a game he had invented on the spot. It had been a long time since he had so much fun.
He kept playing for a good half moonhour, then seized the lump in mid-ether and gave it a thank-you pat. Now he liked it a lot and wanted to take it with him on his adventure.
He knelt down, took hold of the base of the moon hair and pulled, but it didn't budge at ll. Apparently, it was as hard and tough as the peel of the lump itself and anchored in the ground deeper than it seemed. He grabbed the thread of moonhair with both hands and pulled again. He groaned with the effort, but despite his tremendous strength, it remained firmly stuck in the ground.
Aarvo started feeling magma rising to his head. It couldn't be! He was strong, he could cut rocks with his hands, level mountains, lift huge boulders, and couldn't pull a thread of this ghostly moonhair off the ground!? No way!
In a frenzy of anger and pride, he tugged, jerked, kicked, sliced, trampled and fought with the moonhair for a good moonhour, but the glowing, supple thread didn't give way a thumb.
Mad with rage, Aarvo threw himself on the moonhair and bit it savagely. Almost immediately, he felt a hissing in his mouth and the thread melted on his tongue, releasing a disgusting bitter taste.
Aarvo spat out a blue, muddy blob of molten moonhair that crystallized almost instantly in the icy cold of night in space. He studied the cut thread in his hand and saw that the severed end had become vitrified too. He hit it with his finger and the crystals shattered, leaving a clean cut.
"Ha!" he growled with satisfaction "You thought you fooled me, huh? Ha!"
Victorious despite the horrible taste in his mouth, he took his glowing lump and climbed the nearby mountain to take a look at his new surroundings. During his ascent, he noticed something different in the landscape below: an opening in the expanse of moonhair, a depression as dark as night itself surrounded by luminescent threads and without sickwalkers in sight. It didn't look like an impact crater caused by a boulder of deep space, but rather a hole dug by something huge. A monster?
'They nested inside me, under my skin...'
Aarvo looked away with a shiver and continued his ascent. When he reached the top of the mountain, he discovered he was standing on the crown of a huge crater. Moonhair spread thick almost to the inner edge and then gave way to bare rock and dust.
He stepped forward and peered through the blanket of darkness at his feet, but couldn't see anything. Out of curiosity, he dropped his glowing lump and stood watching.
For a few moments, it fell through the dense darkness, barely brightening the walls of the crater. Then, as it approached a bend at a great distance towards the bottom, its light brushed something enormous.
Aarvo stuck his head out a little more and suddenly something with too many eyes took shape in the ghostly light, something with gigantic, brutal jaws and a swollen body with too many legs folded onto themselves, ready to spring.
Aarvo screamed in terror and blanked out.
When he came to, he was already far away and running at breakneck speed, looking for a safe hiding place. At any moment, he expected the huge monster to appear at his heels and pounce on him. He spotted a stack of bare boulders, which stood out like pools of darkness against the glow of the moonhair, and hurried to hide among their shadows where his black body could disappear.
At any moment, he expected the monster to jump on him. He wanted to run home, to the near side, but he was too far away now, too far out into the open. He had gotten himself into an awful mess, an enormous mess with black eyes and horrible jaws that was going to rip him to shreds! He stretched his ears to hear the approach of those gigantic and creepy legs, squatting under the swollen and horrible body, ready to pounce...
Moonminutes went by, then moonhours.
Day came and flooded everything with light.
Aarvo retreated even deeper into the shadows between the rocks. Around him the expanse of moonhair began to heat up more and more. The buzz they gave off at night became several tones louder, more raucous, pressing monotonously against him from every corner.
Aarvo fought the urge to close his eyes. The sweet forgetfulness of sleep called to him, but he pushed it away frightened by the image of the monster on its way to find him. He could see it now, already he saw it rising through the moonhair, its black body standing out against the blinding white all around like the dead blood of Lissa that sprang from a wound to flood everything with darkness and death...
Aarvo woke up with a start and realized with a shiver that he had fallen asleep without knowing. The light was different now: lower, almost near sunset. The heat had gone and... And he was alone, no monster in sight, no trace of it all around, nothing.
He felt better now, rested, his mind clearer and calmer. He was sure the monster had seen him, but why hadn't it come after him then? Not that he felt like complaining: he was more than happy to be alive and he intended to stay that way for as long as possible, but why hadn't the monster come chasing after him?
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