FALAHA'S JOURNEY: A Spacegirl's Account in Three Movements

Episode #81

Shaamta was the first to react, grabbing Dorgu and me before we all drifted apart. Snapped out of initial shock and forgetting to be scared, I created another, thicker bubble before darkness devoured us. Fresh cracks immediately appeared on its surface, but it was still holding out. I tripled my energy output, strengthening the bubble, and created another one inside of the failing one.

"I think he found out you'd tricked him," Shaamta said. "He's far from pleased now."

"That's one thing I'm not going to apologize for!" I replied. "We have to get to him before he takes over my body completely and eats you. That's what he is trying to do!"

Since it came to this, brute force was the only way through the defenses now. The energy flow expanded, turning our safety bubble into a raging fireball. The changes happening within me were so hungry for more and I could easily lose control of the flow, killing us all. Taking this risk felt so electric.

"Prepare for a crash landing, Yajur-i-Sangu," I commanded, speeding up the bubble.

"You sure learn fast!" Shaamta seemed quite excited. Dorgu had worn a permanent frown on his face since the bubble scare a while ago.

I shrugged. "That's how we small people survive."

Faster, fiercer, stronger, the bubble finally burst through the thick time fold, shining like a golden creature in the sea of darkness.

"What was that?" Dorgu asked.

"Where?" Shaamta and I turned our heads, and saw Yajur pointing somewhere to the right.

"There, again." He stuck his clawed finger into bubble's now transparent wall.

Dorgu was right, there was a speck of light, moving, flowing through the darkness. So we changed course to follow the object.

Upon our close approach we discovered a bunch of shining white strings spanning from somewhere deep in this abyss. In the soft light of my luminescent sphere they were sparkling like ropes made of diamonds.

"What's this? Seaweed?" Yajur asked. In the mind of the Maok undersea adventure wasn't anything new.

"So, which way? Up? Down?" Shaamta turned to me.

"Down, maybe." 'Up' and 'down' were quite relative here, though.

We followed the string down until it ended. There was nothing at the end of this strange object, and we found nothing else in the region making a few circles in the vicinity of the string.

Shaamta and Dorgu sighed. "Let's try the opposite end," the Sangu said.

Again, we followed the string, rising higher and higher. Soon the darkness slowly lifted, illuminated by a faint shining, and after a while we saw a magnificent sight: a whole forest of shining diamond strings, stretching down from somewhere. We maneuvered through its dense populations, trying to figure where the borders of this huge 'forest' were, until we found the 'edge'.

Rising even higher up, the forest of strings ended in a wide, smooth, and dark surface. Higher still there was a small grove of greyish, shorter strings; those weren't shining however. Beyond that was a valley, and a thin barrier of black strings.

Wait a minute...

Suddenly, the whole structure moved, spreading away from us to all sides, and revealing a black hole, surrounded by an interlacement of fiber structures that appeared purple in color, or so it looked in this light. The black hole below us narrowed, fibers' purple color changing to crystal blue.

It was then we came to realize what was this thing—a giant eye.

There we were, staring in the eye of Somg himself.