“If you had been born in a different era, in a different culture, your language would be different.
The symbols you understand would be different.
Your myths would be different.
Your role would be different.
But you would still hunger the same.
If you had been born into a different social class, in a different economic class, your viewpoint would be different.
Your tools would be different.
Your external self would be different.
Your speech would be different.
You would still hunger the same.”
So said a very pleasant sounding entity in the middle of the sparkling and tinkling forest. It served tea and placed the mug in my open hand. I was blindfolded, you see. All aspects of my sight had to be blinded, and I had to trust it to not only blind me but not take advantage of me in that state.
To see it is to be driven mad.
The forest it lives in is beautiful. Everything sparkles and gleams like gemstones but they are living plants and lichens. It is as hideous as the forest is beautiful. It described the scene around me. I was reminded of those mosques with the intricate mosaic work in the interiors. Except this was a living temple of trees and fungi.
I wanted to see for myself. But if I lowered the blindfold, I betrayed the trust and would be ejected. Assuming I remained long enough as the entity completely surrounded me.
In a still moment, it touched my face with a wet, barely warm appendage that both crunched and slurped as it moved. The sound hit every one of my instinctual fears and my mammalian response would have set me screaming as I fled in abject fear.
“You are afraid, but you do not flee.”
“Should I? You have taught me not to fear you.”
“Your want is greater than your fear.”
“My want? How lecherous that sounds. I want to know what you have to tell me, and yes, that want is greater than my fear.”
“Yes, it is lecherous. And greedy. And insatiable. Your hunger would devour me whole if you could.” The appendage’s tip moved down my face, down my chest, and settled just at the bottom of my sternum. I could feel the retracted barbs trailing so lightly it was arousing. “Your flesh is whole. Your soul is put together better than last we talked. But you are hungry, and all I have to give you is but vain sweets that holds your tongue at bay for now, but doesn’t satisfy.”
It softly pulled the mug from my hands, and picked me up off the rock I was seated on. It enveloped me with its self, barely warm slime soaking through my clothes. I caught a faint whiff of sweetly rotten apples that my mind identified as the wet decomposition of flesh. Things came from its skin that triggered memories of octopus suckers and starfish tendrils followed by gently kissing hagfish and leeches tracing my veins.
It swallowed me into itself, but so gently I wondered if it was trying to love me. Instead of fighting, I listened to every sense. I tried to memorize the feel of millions of cilia beating against my skin. The changes in temperature as it was warmed by me and as it cooled me. I lost the boundary of skin. It was subsuming me.
Still, I kept the blindfold on. Even as it was taking me apart, cell by cell, this was not a betrayal. The Shamblings taught me that crucial difference.
“Even as you are unmade, you hunger. Go to sleep, child. Let your hunger and your restlessness be naught for a while.”
I surrendered to my captor. I noted as my awareness finally faded, that the blindfold still remained intact even as I ceased being.