For a time she stopped watching them, too exhausted to do otherwise, but curiosity reasserted itself and she came back to her hidey-hole, back to her blankets, watching. Very late, choking on the taste of them, she wakened from restless sleep. Two she later identified as Diagonal Red and Speckled Purple had returned alone and were moving through the vacant camp. After making colors at one another several times, they separated, one stopping at the seaward edge of the camp, the other stopping on the inland side. There they poised themselves, turned on their sides, settled onto the soil, and extended three or four appendages on each side, these tentacles becoming longer and longer, wider and wider, creeping along the edges of the camp, surrounding it, until at last the tips approached one another and touched.
From her carefully dug hole on the hill, Snark could see down into this squat cylinder of alien flesh, five hundred paces across. The outer surface was shaggy. The inside was bare and shiny. She watched fascinated as colors developed upon the bare bellies of the participants, then moved sideways onto the appendages, moving right to left, onto the other creature, color succeeding color, shape succeeding shape, an unending flow of luminescence, now bright, now dark, now vivid, now pale, flowing uninterruptedly from the bare flesh of Diagonal Red across the appendages to the bare flesh of Speckled Purple, thence around onto Diagonal Red once more, a slowly whirling vortex of color and movement. She didn’t need glasses to see it. It was perfectly visible without!
Despite the strangling taste, the strangeness of the sight, something teased at Snark’s mind, something she should see, should understand. She strained, trying to think, what was it? Something … something …
Then it was over. The two shapes darkened, the appendages separated, curled into tentacle shapes, shrank languidly back to their usual size. The central creatures rose like shaggy, bulbous balloons and moved away. Propelled, Snark told herself, by thought. Or wish. Or by something else, somewhere else.
A few moments later the taste vanished. Snark scraped her tongue, rinsed her mouth with water from her canteen, spat repeatedly, getting rid of it. What had she just watched? What kind of ceremony? Oh, to be a Fastigat right now! Able to sense whatever emotion had been present, whatever those two immensities had been feeling!
Something solemn, she thought. Some color litany, some ritual observance. Or perhaps they had been mating!
If so, why would they pick a human encampment to mate around? No. It had more the sense of a ritual. Sacrifice, maybe? Explaining to their weird gods that they had wiped out a few dozen humans as required by their religion?
Again something teased at her mind. Something she should know! She held very still, hoping it would come to her. It did not. Merely that teasing sensation, something she should hold on to and could not get hold of!
Ah, well. Let it go for tonight. She hid her night-eye device once more, picked up her canteen, and trudged down the hill toward the moor paths to the sea. The stars told her it was still some hours until morning. Still some hours to stay hidden in. She had not known them to come twice on one night, but this evening’s exercise indicated how little she really knew.
The way seemed longer than usual. When she dropped into the cave at last, she was in a mood of weary indifference. She wanted to live, but not much. What she really wanted to do was understand these creatures, but what she had seen tonight was unintelligible. Perhaps they would remain unintelligible.
She stripped off her clothes and laid them in a pile at the back of the cave. Tomorrow would be wash day. She pulled other clothing from her sack and put it on. She always slept fully dressed except for her boots. One never knew when one might have to move quickly. She checked the emergency pack by the entry hole. Water. Food. Medical supplies. A change of clothing.
“Now I lay me,” she told herself, curling into her blankets, knees to chest, one arm cradling her head. “Now I lay me.” Outside the surf repeated sea words, over and over. Shush. Soof. Fwoosh. Again and again.
She dreamed. She was walking on the moor, coming to the cave by the sea, but she was not alone. Someone held her by the hand.
“We must go very carefully,” the someone said. “Try not to go the same way too often. Not to make a trail, you understand?”
Snark jerked her chin resolutely, saying she understood. Things could follow trails. She had to be careful, or the things would get her.
They came to the edge of the cliff. “Hold on tight,” said the someone.
Snark’s arms were locked around the person’s neck, her legs around the person’s waist. The person leapt, and Snark’s stomach came up into her throat the way it always did. Then they were swinging, swinging, then the hole was there, and they were in.
“Home is where the heart is,” said someone, kissing Snark. “Home is where my girl is.”
Snark looked up at the person….
Color flowing, blotches flowing, making a pattern …
The person held her tightly, patting her on the back.
Bright and dim, pale and vivid, colors on the huge fleshy barrier. Shaggy skin outside, bare skin inside …
The person smiled.
Shapelessness became shape. Shades flowed into one another. Blotches and colors combined to make a face on the body of an alien monster, a huge face that moved and spoke and smiled and called her by name!
“Sweetheart,” the mouth said. “Love.”
Her mother’s face!
Snark’s cry went out over the sea like the cry of a wounded animal, totally alone, infinitely sorrowful.
“Mother,” she cried. “Oh, Mother, Mother, come back to me!”
Night on Dinadh. In the leasehold, Lutha and the two Fastigats had had their evening meal. We had packed the last few things we intended to take with us. Then Leelson insisted that everyone lie down and get
