Eight Hungry Eyes

The age as we know it had long since faded into dust and ash. Humans roamed the faded wastes of continents whose names had been long forgotten. Little grows and even fewer animals scavenge the barren dirt. In some dark corner of this grim planet, a small human girl has caught the attention of something twisted by decades of shadow and radiation.

She is Agawei, her village lies miles from the ruins she is forbidden to enter but enters anyway. Her mother is sick, a blight has already claimed many of the elders and the young. The men speak of leaving, and the women worry, and Agawei’s mother lays dying. Her father had entered the veil two summers before and she would be damned to the pit if she let her mother join him yet.

Within the ruins, a gathering of giant spears stuck in the ground with many openings, there are many things. There are demons and fruit and ghosts, small suns and things that the village has no name for. There is one spear that stands out from the others, it is white as bone and it holds many beds. Within this spear the village claims are cures for all sickness', a single bite from the apple of the golden tree at the spears center would cure any ailment. However, the elders had always warned in their stories, however the tree is guarded by the black serpent. A monstrous woman who ate her children and was cursed by the gods.

Agawei had made it to the white spear, she had crept her way into the forbidden ruins, avoiding many dangers both living and not, and had slipped into the shadow of the quiet, dusty place. There had been no bird song, there were no stray grasses or weeds winding their way through the old worlds walls. This place felt cold, and empty, and deeply interested in filling that emptiness. The air made Agawei's neck tingle, everything in her was begging her to run but her feet stayed their path. She shivered in the darkness and pulled the small stone knife from her belt. It was meager protection against the things watching her, but it made her feel brave enough to dive deeper through the entrails of the spear. Her path split this way and that, and soon she had no idea where she'd come from or where the center could be.

Something skittered across the floor behind her.

She snapped around to find only darkness.

The sound came again from behind her.

Agawei whipped around as her legs trembled beneath her, her blood ran cold as she spied two yellow eyes in the darkness, floating far above her. Another set of eyes opened and another until a cluster of eight eyes stared down at her. Something wet splashed onto the floor, and left thin trails from just below the things eyes. It salivated at the sight of her small heart beating faster than a birds wings in her chest. In the village, Agawei was known for very few good things. She was a bad child, they said, always disappearing when chores needed to be done, nowhere to be found. They used an old world word; magician. How Agawei wished she could make herself disappear from under the serpents gaze.

Instead she ran.

The floor was cold but solid beneath her feet, and the ceiling was just as solid underneath the serpents. A dozen legs clattered behind the eyes, its body still shrouded by the darkness for which Agawei was glad. She lost her way in the maze of ruins and it was only by a miracle that she happened to glance one way at the right time to see the watery rays of daylight spill through an open doorway. She doubled back as quickly as she could and barreled through the doorway just as the serpents hot breath caressed the back of her neck.

The girl rolled into sunlight, into grass and then into shade. When she came to a stop she was on her back, staring up at the grey sky through the golden leaves of a tree. Agawei knew that she had to move, that the monster was just seconds away from eating her up, but she was frozen by the feeling against her shoulders, scratching her arms and under her palms.

Grass. Real, genuine grass.

The village had told many stories about before, when grass had been everywhere and there'd been enough for plenty of animals to eat. She sat up and ran her fingers through the bright green strands poking through the ruddy brown soil. The monster had not eaten her yet. It cowered in the doorway, its eyes fixed on her but unable to approach. It stuck a leg through the doorway only to recoil and screech as its skin boiled and bubbled in the sunlight.

The girl had time. She was in the center of the spear, and the sun would not abandon her for a few hours.

She looked back at the tree and marveled at its canopy. She'd seen trees before, but none so full of life as the one that stretched up before her. It's boughs were decorated with leaves the colors of fire, and thick, round fruit weighed down its branches. One had pulled its branch so far down with its weight that Agawei only had to reach up to pluck it. It was heavy, and fuzzy to the touch. She smiled to herself, then stuck her tongue out at the monster. She'd won. She took out a piece of cloth from her pocket and wrapped up the fruit before tying it to her belt.

The center was small enough that some of the tree's branches scraped the walls and reached over the top of the spear. Not keen on heading back into the domain of the serpent, the girl began to climb. She climbed and climbed until her arms and legs burned with the effort and her lungs begged her for rest but she refused. Her mother lay dying in the village, hungry for the cure the girl had. Agawei did not stop until she could pull herself off of the branches and onto the top of the spear. There she caught her breath, grinning from ear to ear. She couldn't wait to tell the village, to tell her tale of danger and courage at the evening fire. She pulled herself to her feet and hurried to the other side, she would have to be careful getting down, she reasoned. It would be a much more intense climb than the tree had been.

So engrossed in her thoughts was the girl that she did not see the ground beneath her feet, did not see its looseness. Its lack of strength. Nor had she heard the quiet clicking of the serpents feet as it stalked her from below. It happened so fast.

A crack, a gasp, the sound of strong, inhuman hands grabbing and pulling. And pulling and pulling. The wet pulling, tearing, slurping. The sounds of hunger sated.

The village would never know, the mother would die, and the men would leave with their women into the unforgiving maw of the barren, starving world.