Thus Eats-The-Unfortunate Will Become a Friend to Those-Who-Are-We
Flash Fiction Month 2023, Day 6
Challenge #3: Write a story that includes no human characters, and that features a beast or pet type character.
Tac! In this telling you will be Stirs-The-Silt in the seventy-hundredth counting-of-tides. Your progenitor will be Five-Times-Tyrant who at the commencement will be already laid to the deep place. It will be the tide of when-the-sky-is-glass and there will be clashing of limbs because Five-Times-Tyrant’s rule is long and your generation will be many. Thus Speaks-In-Tyrant’s-Stead will lay down a wise drumming-we-obey.
╟ Speaks-In-Tyrant’s-Stead ╫ Tac! If who-takes-power is decided by clashing of limbs then there will be chaos: only a ruin will be left to claim. I decide that you will not clash with each other. Instead, a different trial: all progeny-of-tyrant will leave City-Of-Plenty and clash with Wastes-Of-Hunger. In your absence, not-tyrant’s-progeny will prepare for your return: who-takes-power will be whoever brings back the greatest prize by when-the-sky-breaks-into-pieces. ╢
You will feel fear then.
╟ Stirs-The-Silt ╫ What if we are soon-to-moult? Wastes-Of-Hunger is a danger even when with-skin-whole. ╢
╟ Chews-The-Unworthy ╫ Then scuttle quick and return with a small prize. Why should we accommodate those-not-chosen? Who-takes-power is decided by fates as much as feats. ╢
Chews-The-Unworthy will be moulted-last-tide, and will not be troubled by your fears.
You will go to where-food-is and clash fiercely for cakes-of-meal, though already your hide will be splitting. You will carry the provisions in your hindmost legs because all nets will already be taken. You will leave City-Of-Plenty with two eyes on the sky, and before the first when-light-hides you will see Carves-The-Burrow carried off by gives-no-warning, limbs spilling from its maw.
Thus you will claim a net, and twelve more cakes-of-meal inside.
You will trust that gives-no-warning will not come for you, partly because it will be already sated and partly because eats-the-unfortunate will have your scent. They will be gathering. They will dart at you from where-eyes-cannot-turn. You will find a crevice and you will hide, and you will climb forth from your skin.
And you will know that the provisions you have claimed will not last until it grows anew.
You will bury yourself to hide your scent but eats-the-unfortunate will have massed into a swarm. Their tendrils will stretch into the crevice and lick at your eyes. They will snatch at your net filled with cakes-of-meal and you will risk them grasping you to snatch it back. They will circle and grow hungry, and their hunger will be your salvation.
Watching the sky and the stretching tendrils, you will see eats-the-unfortunate swim overhead carrying hides-in-shell. Eats-the-unfortunate has soft limbs, and though it will be a danger to you while you are just-now-moulted, it will struggle to break a shell.
You will drum to it.
╟ Stirs-The-Silt ╫ Bring it to me. ╢
╟ Stirs-The-Silt ╫ Bring it to me. ╢
Eats-the-unfortunate will not understand, but it will be hungry. It will turn hides-in-shell in its mouth, seeking an opening, and it will remain close to the crevice, seeking you.
╟ Stirs-The-Silt ╫ Bring it to me. ╢
By pure coincidence, eats-the-unfortunate will drop hides-in-shell. You will throw half a cake-of-meal to it in return.
You will crush hides-in-shell and devour the flesh within. There will be more inside than in one cake-of-meal. You will ponder its weight and the counting-of-lights until your hide is grown, and you will see a hope-in-hopelessness.
Soon eats-the-unfortunate will swim overhead bearing hides-in-shell again, and you will drum once more.
╟ Stirs-The-Silt ╫ Bring it to me. ╢
╟ Stirs-The-Silt ╫ Bring it to me. ╢
By accident or design, eats-the-unfortunate will drop hides-in-shell to you, and you will throw a morsel to it.
You will do this many times. Soon the tendrils will not reach for you: they will wait eagerly for cake-of-meal. And when the net is empty, you will share the flesh of hides-in-shell.
Even before your new hide is hardened, you will find that you can leave the crevice: eats-the-unfortunate will not harry you.
In this state you will return to City-Of-Plenty, as cracks spread across the sky. Eats-the-unfortunate will follow you once more, but this time not where-eyes-cannot-turn. This time they will gambol and cluster, and when they dart towards you it will be bearing hard-shelled delicacies that you share.
When you arrive there will be a drumming and not-tyrant’s-progeny will be afraid.
╟ Speaks-In-Tyrant’s-Stead ╫ Tac! How is it you come here thus, not-long-moulted and with-barren-limbs, pursued by eats-the-unfortunate? Why bring you no prize? ╢
╟ Stirs-The-Silt ╫ Eats-the-unfortunate is my prize. ╢
╟ Chews-The-Unworthy ╫ Tac! This prize is a calamity! ╢
You will drum then to eats-the-unfortunate.
╟ Stirs-The-Silt ╫ Bring it to me. ╢
Eats-the-unfortunate will scatter. Then, after a time, they will return with hides-in-shell in great quantity.
╟ Chews-The-Unworthy ╫ These are scraps! I found remains of behemoth-on-high that will feed those-who-are-we for tides-without-number. ╢
╟ Speaks-In-Tyrant’s-Stead ╫ But how many of those-who-are-we would be lost to gives-no-warning in claiming the flesh? ╢
To this Chews-The-Unworthy will have no answer.
And so your prize will be recognised, and so Speaks-In-Tyrant’s-Stead will make you who-takes-power, and so Wastes-Of-Hunger will be made a garden.
Thus eats-the-unfortunate will become a friend to those-who-are-we.
If you’ve enjoyed this story, you can find my work from previous Flash Fiction Months collected in these books:
Damon L. Wakes 
I *really* like what you did with this one. This challenge put me back a good long while, but you took it and did something excellent with it.
Oh, wow – thanks! I wasn’t 100% sure about this one since it ended up fairly hard to read, so it’s great to know you like the result. The challenges that prompt something completely off the wall are a big part of why I’ve stuck with FFM all these years.
What makes it hard to read also makes it so fascinating. You captured the feel of a foreign language with foreign (to us) concepts really well; the way they have compound words for concepts we need a whole phrase for, the way they use different words for similar concepts because their life is so different – e.g. how they “drum” instead of “speaking”, because they don’t have lips and vocal chords but use their pincers (or maybe legs?) to communicate, or how they have a different way of measuring time and space because of course our land-based ways don’t make much sense under water.
I also like the way you changed storytelling conventions – it reads like this is a story that a present-day descendant of this people tells to a young hatchling to teach them about the past, but in their culture, you don’t say “once upon a time, there was…”, you put the listener into the story by making the protagonist “you”. And telling it in the future tense seems to hint at a cultural conception too – maybe a more circular concept of time? What was will be, and what will be has already been? Or maybe a strong belief in the inevitability of fate? As I said, it’s fascinating.
Also love the little “tac!” flourishes. Is that when they click their pincers loudly, to lend more importance to their words? Kinda like a judge pounding the gavel, or someone tapping their glass before giving a toast.
It’s so good to see that all that came across – and that you’ve put such thought into it! You’re spot-on about the drumming: I didn’t have a particularly specific idea about what it physically involved, but wanted something that suggested communication that wasn’t talking. It was also intended to be a story about the past told in future tense: something along the lines of “So I’m going down the street, right? And then I see my friend…” (where we’d use present tense to describe events that actually happened in the past). I didn’t think of it being prompted by the expectation that the past would repeat itself, but that’s a neat idea. I was aiming more for a storytelling convention that starts by explaining the premise (here’s when it’s set and who you’ll have to imagine yourself as) and then just sort of keeps going in that fashion. I did imagine “Tac!” being a sort of sudden click, and was aiming specifically for something roughly along the same lines as the “Hwæt” that appears at the beginning of Beowulf.