Page 45 of The Shape of Monsters
“My history and record, you mean.”
“Yes. You’ve always been well known for your… fundamentalism.”
Lyric does not grimace. He’s aware of his reputation and never minded it before. Starting now would define hypocrisy. “But you still asked.”
“Yes.”
With a firm nod, Lyric stands up. He pulls on his boots and makes for the door.
“Wait.” Iriset grabs his wrist. “What are you doing?”
Lyric only looks at her.
“You’re going to ask the Moon-Eater for mercy. Unbelievable.” Iriset’s eyes boggle and she laughs. “I’m coming with you.”
Lyric’s step hitches and he considers telling her no, but that tone in her voice is not only confident, but almost like she approves. She thinks he’s doing the right thing. Maybe for the first time ever.
So Lyric nods and keeps going, then a few paces later stops again. “Do you know the way?”
Iriset laughs at him, rather meanly this time, but she takes his hand—his hand, not his wrist—and Lyric likes it so much.
Iriset takes him unerringly back to the strange glass-and-silver tower’s inner courtyard where he first met the Moon-Eater. The Pit. Lyric walks down the broad steps beside her, eyes on the outrageous exhibition of glittering design and wealth before him. Long, low tables display so much… stuff… Lyric can hardly take it in: Cloth and paper, tools, paints. Parts of plants and animals, from leaves and stripped bark to bone and antlers. Mounds of flowers both formed from soft leather and vividly alive in pots of water. People kneel at various stations, chatting and sharing brushes and glue and nets. Attendants in their violet skirts and hair fans move throughout, bringing food and drink.
The air glimmers with beads of light, long shimmering strands of something like mirrored silk, or rain stuck in time. Graffiti butterflies with wingspans the length of Lyric’s outstretched arms float high above, tiny rainbow scales dripping off their wings with every slow beat, scattering like falling petals before they dissipate into thin puffs of smoke.
On the wide daybed the Moon-Eater used as a throne their first day, Eliri the Adept Hand sleeps, legs curled up and her head propped on pillows, surrounded by mountains of iridescent blue-green silks, curling around and around…
No, Lyric slowly realizes what he’s looking at is a massive snake coiled around the platform and throne, its scallop-scaled nose resting beside Eliri’s feet. Its eyes are closed, and fangs cut out of its jaw inboth directions, pressing indentations into the lipless mouth. Cerulean fringes grow down its spine, long, delicate, and sinuous, drifting slowly in the air as if the snake naps at the bottom of a lake.
“You’re here,” someone says, and Lyric tears his gaze from the massive creature.
A feminine-forward person stands very close to Iriset, silver-haired with eyes of obsidian in an otherwise unremarkable tan face. The sharp glare it throws Lyric is enough evidence to prove it’s the numen, who fairly despises Lyric.
“Everyone is so lively so early,” Iriset says, looking up at the drifting butterflies.
“It’s a festival day,” the numen says, giving a sinuous shrug. “Why do you keep going back to him?”
Iriset frowns and doesn’t let go of Lyric’s hand. “Never, is that the Moon-Eater?” She indicates the giant snake.
Never snorts. “Such grand names go to his head.”
Lyric walks toward the snake. He ignores all the looks and movement surrounding him as best he can. As they approach, Eliri cracks open an eye and stretches her foot to nudge the armored cheek of the giant snake. It takes a deep breath, ribs expanding down the entire length of the massive body in a long ripple, then it sighs and opens spherical eyes the deep milky blue of sea opals.
The snake watches Lyric’s approach, and when he stops before the dais with Iriset at his side, the Moon-Eater slinks his head up.
“Moon-Eater,” Lyric says, “I want to keep the chimera in your garden. Her name is Setka.”
Iriset makes a soft noise of disbelief for an unknown reason. Lyric does his best to hold the Moon-Eater’s vast gaze. He doesn’t move, but Eliri sits up, finger-combing her short hair. She’s staring at Lyric, too.
“Please,” Lyric adds, realizing he hadn’t asked mercy but demanded it.
The scales of the sea snake ripple again, and this time contract in an excruciating visual until the Moon-Eater sits in a human shape with his legs crossed and his elbows leaned against his knees. It is a human shape, but everything else is like a fish: green, blue, black scales in stripes, with bugged black eyes and long tendril-like fins branching and swaying away from his head. His hands are webbed and clawed, and he’s wearing only a loose robe barely tied.
“Ah,” Iriset says, letting go of Lyric. “What happens to the mass?” There’s a high edge to her voice, almost hysterical.
The Moon-Eater blinks inner eyelids at her. Then he shrugs. In a weird voice, and in Old Sarenpet, he says, “Eliri, what happens to the weight of a large form when this god becomes small again?”
Eliri says, “When the red god is larger than the god’s most common form, the god pulls power from the world around, and Eliri believes it’s not transformation of other… weight… into the new form, but the god’s form expanding and contracting in unknowable ways. The usual resistance of flesh expands beyond the boundaries that designers and philosophers understand, because the red god is a god, not human.”
