Foramina in the Accretion

Quott gave the dice a vigorous shake. Tossed them. Watched.

Immeasurable were the algorithms of the universe that select the appropriate drag and surface density, culminating the orientation of choice; impending movements deriving definition from bygone kinetics transferred ceaselessly onward in a chain reaction whose catalyzing point, billions of years expanded, are now the precipitants of moment. This moment. And now the dice were at rest.

Those numerical dimples facing upward, convexed, then swelling further, became piercing barbs. Hidge Quincel, his knees in the dust, hands fettered, looked up and in his eyes the stars were captured behind a rind of frost as from the firmament he drew their luster as does a codger upon a pipe imbibe a mellow weed.

'They are your numbers, are they not?' put Quott into the windy pause.

It had been some time since last Hidge was afforded a pull from the water skin. His reply was as cracked as the surrounding hardpan. 'It is through your cruelty that all concealment is arrayed before the fire. But from me you cannot conceal the death that kindled the flame. My end is the slime you dam behind your grin.' He would not look at Quott and thus sully the starlit Golconda his mind had secreted to trammel for which none but he could reticulate an entropy. 'Ooze, you blank flea of the soil. Sup upon that which shall never be your ocean.'

Whereupon Quott, having gleaned the final vestiges of satisfaction from Hidge's despair, grabbed the back of his mop of scraggly, dark hair and propelled his face earthward. The spikes which had not slowed in their growth and had tapered to points each the width of an atom, skewered Hidge's eyes, brain, skull. Quott yanked his hand free. Two punctures beaded blood: one below his thumb; the other in the last joint of his pinky.

Hidge's flesh took on a corpse's pallor, his body visibly shriveling as night came on and the scorpions woke. It took the better part of an hour during which Quott periodically inspected his hand. When the corpse was a desiccated husk, Quott flung it aside and, assuring himself the barbs were receded, gathered up the dice, stowing them in a leather pouch. He gave his hat's brim a tug against the gathering storm and was gone with the first upraised note of the coyote's howl.