When a living creature falls asleep, small seeds fall from their nose and mouth and grow into dream-plants that sprout delicious dream-fruit. 

Human dreams are the juiciest and most nutritious of all, and few people know this better than Kainma. An orphan who spent the first twelve years of her life surviving mainly off of animal dream-plants while living in a complex cave network, Kainma decides to go to the Surface to seek a better life after a terrible tragedy. She finds a happier life after being taken in by a thief named Su and his family, but when Su’s mysterious past comes back to haunt him, Kainma and her new friends and family find themselves embroiled in a terrifying mystery that takes them to some of the darkest places in the Caves…and the mind. 

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Trigger/Content warnings: On-page: Blood, stabbing, physical violence, arrests and being imprisoned, earthquakes, death, animal death, dead bodies, body horror, traumatic flashbacks, depression and anxiety.

Referenced/discussed: Child abuse, child death.

Implied: mild suicidal ideation.

Please be aware that while the conflict between Nocturnals and humans is inspired by, and very similar to, issues in real human society, it is notably different in many ways due to the fantasy setting and is not meant to be seen as a direct parallel to real life conflicts. 

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Excerpt:

Prologue

Everybody has secrets. Secrets are a side effect of life. But where some people have tiny earthwormlike secrets-harmless, perhaps even useful things wriggling around in their hearts, some people have massive tapeworm-secrets living inside them. These secrets aren’t good for much, they do almost nothing but steal energy, time, morals and sometimes bits of one’s soul. But they’re worth keeping around because when extracted, they are the perfect bait for big fish.

Big fish such as Judge Nai of the town of Naralaky. Tapeworm-secrets were her business and everyone knew it, even if they didn’t know she was a judge. Her dark brown eyes were often narrowed beneath her furrowed black brows, her thin lips turned often downward. Her lips only really moved upwards in a smile-a true, loving smile-when she was in the presence of her wife, which was only really in the privacy of their shared home. A shame, really, since Judge Nai was a beautiful woman, and her showstopping smile was the final touch that made her look radiant. She was plump, with brown skin and long black hair that she rarely tied back, letting it flow freely down her back, it shone in perfect unison with her jeweled rings and polished red judge robes. Her hands were neat and clean, and it was easy to imagine that she would slice open her prisoners and extract their tapeworm-secrets with terrifying precision and calm, then wash her hands of the mess and call it a day.

There was a time when no one in Naralaky could imagine her doing such a thing, but the times had changed. She was a woman now, a woman with a town to protect.

And protecting the town meant dealing with the prisoners.

Naralaky had enjoyed the safety of a low crime rate for many, many years. But ever since a deeply unfortunate...incident about a year or so back, the crime rate had begun to creep up a little.

Now, Naralaky had a violent prisoner in its jail for the first time in over a decade.

The lone guard posted at the jail door gave her a curt nod as she opened the heavy door for her.

Naralaky’s position nestled among desert mountains meant that buildings of heavy stone like the jail grew to be agonizingly stuffy. As she made her way through the dark hallways, past empty cells, sweat was already gathering a little on her brow. She stupidly wished this place had more windows and fresh air, but if it did, it wouldn’t be a jail at all.

She stopped in front of a cell where a person sat.

In the distance, the guard slammed the door shut with a terrifying thud that reverberated through the whole building, but did nothing to rouse the prisoner slumped against the far wall of the cell.

The judge walked up to the cell bars and cleared her throat.

The prisoner remained as limp as a discarded ragdoll.

She cleared her throat once more.

Still nothing.

“Excuse me, the judge would like to speak with you now.”

The judge leaned closer to inspect the prisoner for any signs of life.

The prisoner was a scrawny woman in stained brown clothes whose age was almost impossible to determine. Her bruised face was wrinkled and her shoulder-length hair was pure gray, but those could’ve been the result of a stressful life spent evading the law.

A tattoo of a coyote stood out boldly against her pale, sweating forearm. Her already white skin had lost an unhealthy amount of color, a result of her ancestry, living in the shadows, and the infected-looking wound on her left leg.

She did not appear to be breathing. The judge couldn’t even make out a twitch in the nostrils of her small narrow nose.

Time for an unfortunate last resort.

The judge walked over to the empty cell across from the one occupied by the prisoner, opened it, picked up the empty waste bucket, walked back up to the prisoner’s cell, and slammed the wooden bucket against the cell bars with a grunt.

The prisoner jolted awake with a yelp.

The judge smirked a little at the stunned look on her face.

“I’ve seen children play dead better than you.” It was a lie, but the anger that flashed across the prisoner’s face was very real, and that made the judge’s smirk grow.

The prisoner sighed and rolled her eyes like an annoyed teenager. “Fine. Let’s get this over with. No, I will not tell you anything. No, I do not know anything about whatever harebrained scheme you think I’m involved with. No, none of my plans involved your weird little town. No, I don’t want to be executed. Happy?”

The judge raised her eyebrows.

“What, you don’t think I haven’t been imprisoned before? I’ve been doing this job longer than you’ve been alive.”

That caught the judge’s attention. “What is your job, precisely?”

“What makes you think I’ll tell you?”

“I’ll tell the guards to withhold your food and water until you tell me.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Am I?” The judge raised an eyebrow.

The prisoner fell silent, scowling. The judge could see how much she had been sweating.

The judge took a step away from the cell and turned, preparing to walk away.

“Wait, wait!” she yelped. “Wait.”

The judge turned around slowly. “Yes?”

“Fine, I’ll talk. I don’t feel like dying of thirst today.” She snarled. Then she took a deep breath and smoothed her features into grim acceptance. “Come here.”

The judge obeyed the command of her prisoner, the first time that had ever happened.

“So, your town’s got a bit of a nasty history, doesn’t it?” The prisoner pointed to the east, indicating the door to the jail and the wider world. “Loads of Nocturnals living in those mountains and caves close by. Where most people would accept the creatures as their neighbors, you try to forcibly isolate yourself from them. Is it true that the citizens of Naralaky themselves forced the local dreameaters to live in the underground caves all those decades ago? No, I doubt that’s true. This town’s too small to have that much influence. But my point still stands.”

“What is your point? What does this have to do with your arrest?”

“I’m getting to it. Sheesh, you young people, so impatient.”

“Anyway, now you’re building a wall around the whole town...? To keep Nocturnals and even other humans out? Strange idea, but who am I to stop you? Uh, anyway, back to what this has to do with my arrest. “

“I’ve been going through a tough time financially. My- my business partner passed a while ago. Natural causes. Ever since then, it’s been really difficult to get consistent customers and keep my business afloat. I used to be able to find consistent work in one area, but recently I’ve had to travel. For work.”

“Looking for work?” The Judge ventured.

“For work.” The prisoner said firmly, not elaborating. “Recently, my line of work led me to passing through Naralaky. Which is how we ended up unfortunately crossing paths.”

“You were arrested for violently attempting to steal a necklace.”

“Violently? All I did was threaten to break the lady’s bones! I’m starting to realize why you want the wall so badly. You people are too fragile to survive in the wider world.”

The judge ignored that. At least I have more information now.

“I will ask you once more: what is your work, and why did it call you to pass through our town?”

The prisoner scowled.

Then she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Her hand moved to the hip of her wounded leg. Then she spoke with the finality of someone testing deep and dangerous waters.

“My job is slitting people’s throats.”

The judge froze.

“Is that so?”

“Why would I tell a lie that would get me an even harsher sentence?”

“So you planned to kill someone in Naralaky?”

“No. I was just passing through. But my last client didn’t pay much, so when I saw that necklace I couldn’t help myself.”

A hint of regret and self-loathing slipped into the prisoner’s tone. She moved her jaw around a little, as if weighing the words in her mouth before she said them.

“If my business partner were here, she’d rightfully be angry with me. She’d be nagging my ear off about this. ‘Letting yourself get caught because of a necklace of all things? Really, Marsamella, really?’ she always said really twice when she was mad.”

“Your name is Marsamella?”

The prisoner froze, her eyes bulging as if she’d suddenly realized she’d swallowed a live bird. “No.”

The lie was so obvious she wanted to laugh. Instead she shook her head.

“Another mistake your business partner would berate you for, it seems.”

“Yeah. She was a real thinker. Thought all the time. I know technically everyone thinks all the time, but she was just one of those people who spends hours thinking her thoughts and doing so in a way that made them seem important. Always made her seem like she’d thought everything through. I never learned from her. Never learned how to think, or how to pretend to think. And now I’m in jail over a necklace.”

A long and peculiar silence stretched out between them, filled with the understanding of grief.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” The judge said, surprised by her own words and how genuinely she meant them.

Marsamella said nothing, looking at the floor. Her jaw was clenched.

Perhaps the grief clouding her judgment led to her arrest. She thought, and just like that, the spell was broken. They were no longer a person grieving and a person trying to comfort, but a judge standing in front of a prisoner.

She cleared her throat. For some reason, Marsamella took this as a cue to keep talking instead of to shut up.

“She didn’t fight Death when Death came for her. I think that’s because she recognized her face. All assassins are warned to look away from the flickers of Death’s face you see, but my business partner didn’t look away as often as she should have. She says she fell in love a little with Death, from what she saw.” She sighed. “It was so sappy. Just like her. She got all the softness in the family. Sucked it all out of our mother. But make no mistake, she could slide that blade right over someone’s throat like nobody’s business. She would sneak up behind you just like Death. Was she trying to emulate and impress her lover? Who knows. Who knows.”

“Did she tell you what Death looked like?” Goosebumps were now prickling over the judge’s skin in spite of the oppressive heat of the building.

“She said Death looks like the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen. Her beauty is so intoxicating nobody can look away.” Marsamella chuckled a little. “I fought her a bit on that. You know, cause if nobody can look away from Death’s beautiful face, then how come vampires can be brought back from the dead by another vampire? She never answered my question. And now she never will.”

“Well, you will get to find out for yourself soon enough.”

“You’re going to execute me?” Marsamella didn’t sound that surprised.

“No.”

Then the judge turned around and left.

“Why didn’t you execute her?” Leeva, the judge’s wife asked, surprised.

“Her story of Death reminded me of-of an old childhood tale a friend once told me.” her gaze hardened. “And judging by the state of the wound on her leg, Death will come for her soon enough.”

“Good gods.”

Death did not come soon. Death abstained, taking Her sweet time, allowing Marsamella to struggle upright and begin playing with the lock keeping her cell shut. Death waited, allowing Marsamella to successfully pick the lock with a sneer. Death watched as Marsamella crawled painstakingly slowly out of her cell under the cover of darkness, using her skills honed by years of assassinating to sneak past the snoring guards. Death got a little closer, but still did not touch her, as she snapped the branch off of a scraggly tree and used it as a walking stick to keep weight off of her bad leg as she snuck through the streets of the sleeping town. Death listened to the music of Marsamella’s weakening body: the fierce drumbeats of her pulse and footsteps, the violin-screech of her ragged wheezes, the occasional gurgle from her guts, as she doggedly made her way towards the mountains and hills. Death crept a little closer, becoming more energized, as Marsamella, by some miracle, made her way up a mountain and into the mouth of a cave.

Both Marsamella and Death made their way underground, taking deep breaths of the familiar air. They were both known down here. Marsamella had a handful of friends. Death did not. Death was both reviled and revered in this place. She was seen this way everywhere, but especially in the realm of vampires.

There were not many vampires gathered here now, mostly just dreameaters. Vampires and dreameaters shared an almost symbiotic relationship, a result of their shared nocturnal nature.

Where are the vampires? I need a vampire. Marsamella thought.

But there were none as far as she could see, almost like they were repelled by her. They probably were, wary of her infected stink.

“Are you all right?” A breathy male voice asked. It was a dreameater man. He looked perfectly human, save for his massive eyes, strange and sharp teeth, and the fact that he seemed to be able to walk while hardly making a sound.

“Where can I find a vampire?” She rasped. Her voice sounded hideous, even to her own ears.

He took a step back, alarmed. “Uhhh, try over there?” he pointed to the west, towards a tunnel.

“Thanks.”

“Do you need help?”

“I’m fine.” she grunted.

“Really, it’s kind of far, I can help you-”

“I don’t need help.”

She didn’t hear what he said after that, what he shouted to her back as she walked away. She couldn’t focus on many noises anymore, but she did register the sound of footsteps trailing very closely behind hers. It was odd, given that her limp was forcing her to go so slowly, and yet the person behind her had an even and strong gait. They should have been passing her.

And yet they stayed behind her, following her like a dog.

“How did you get those bruises?” An unfamiliar voice asked. She knew it was the person behind her, because the voice came from behind her. And from her left. And from her right. And from in front of her too.

Man, she needed to find those vampires and their tunnels, or else she was done for.

How long was this godsdamn tunnel?

“How did you get those bruises?” the voice asked again. It was a woman’s voice. For a split second she thought she felt a cold finger grazing the swollen skin of her bruised cheek.

“Leave me alone.”

“Did you get them in a fight? As a killer for hire, you must’ve gotten into a lot of fights.”

“I did.” she said in response to both statements. 

“Did you win?”

“Yeah. I sent that wretched, good-for-nothing fool running away screaming.”

“You’re lying.”

Marsamella was lying. She’d been the one to run away screaming from that fight. But she’d left her marks. Oh yes, she’d left her mark. They’d regret crossing her. They’d never forget her, never.

“Of all the people you want to remember you, why them?” The voice asked, as pleasantly curious as if they were inquiring about her favorite foods. The combination of the question and the tone made Marsamella uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t explain.

Or maybe that was because she was beginning to get a pounding headache.

“I want them to remember me ‘cause I hurt them. I want them to think of me and remember pain.”

“A lot of people remember you this way, you know.”

“Good. That’s what we always wanted to do, me and Euliry. That’s my sister.” Marsamella started to feel her sentences falling apart, her thoughts becoming blurry, flickery.

How long was this godsdamned tunnel? She thought again.

“This tunnel is not very long, but you are walking very slowly due to your injuries. It will take some time for you to reach your desired destination. We have plenty of time to talk.” The voice was still calm and pleasant.

Marsamella smiled. “You wanna keep talking to me?”

“Only if you want to keep talking.”

“So polite. Nobody’s ever flirted with me this politely before.”

The voice laughed. A rapid, ragged noise that sounded almost like an imitation of a sob. Huh-hu-huh. It was certainly not a sound someone made in the middle of normal (possibly flirtatious) conversation.

Well, Marsamella had always preferred her partners as weird as she was.

She opened her mouth to speak, but the voice cut her off, continuing in a smooth and calm voice.

“You really are a lot like your sister. She flirted with me all the time.”

The voice was a lot closer now.

Marsamella wiped some sweat out of her eyes, and found her companion was now standing next to her.

Even out of the corner of Marsamella’s eye, she could see that she was beautiful.

“I can see why my sister flirted with you. You’re-you’re-yeah.”

The woman laughed again, more of a giggle this time. Still a strange, rapid, sound.

“I miss her.” Marsamella said, feeling the familiar pain beginning to well up inside her.

“I know. She misses you too.”

“I miss her for all the right reasons and all the wrong ones.”

“The wrong ones?”

“Without her, I can’t do anything. I lost two fights and got arrested since she died. Nobody wants to hire me. When they want to hire The Slitter Sisters to do their killing, they want The Slitter Sisters. They don’t want just one sister, some injured loser named Marsamella. Marsamella! Would you hire a killer named Marsamella?”

“I don’t need to hire anybody. I take all the lives myself.”

Marsamella tried to hide the fact that she swooned a little. Both because of her injuries, and her growing feelings for this woman.

“And,” the other woman continued. “I have found, in my experience, that people tend to vastly underestimate what they perceive to be innocent or weak.” she shook her head. “Some people have such myopic views of the world. Weak, strong, smart, stupid, cruel, caring...it’s all a mix, and forever changing. You are all forever changing.”

“Isn’t that the truth.” Marsamella paused. “Once I was strong, now I am weak. Once I was loved, now I am lonely.”

“I can change that.” the woman said. She took two striding footsteps. Then she was in front of her, leaning close. She was so close she could’ve kissed Marsamella’s lips.

They were the same height, she now realized. Staring into her blue eyes-no. Brown eyes. No, green eyes. Wait, hazel eyes? Whatever. Staring into her opponent’s eyes, she realized-

She realized-

Her knees grew weak.

“Getting nervous, Marsamella? That’s all right. Everyone is nervous their first time.”

She was nervous. Terribly nervous, but at the same time terribly calm.

The woman’s lips were beautiful. Marsamella couldn’t tell you what they looked like, but they were the most beautiful, kissable lips she’d ever seen in her long life. She knew she would never see lips-or a woman this beautiful- ever again.

She closed her eyes.

She leaned forward.

The woman reacted slowly. She placed her hands on Marsamella’s shoulders. Her hands were cold.

“Can I open my eyes?” Marsamella whispered. “Can I see you, just one last time?”

“Of course.”

Marsamella opened her eyes. The woman’s face was mind-meltingly beautiful, even though she didn’t have one anymore.

“My gods.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“I know.”

She understood why Euliry claimed to have fallen in love with Death now. She understood a lot of things now.

“Close your eyes and kiss me, my beautiful Marsamella.”

Marsamella, never one to refuse an invitation from a beautiful woman, obeyed.

The Local Death sighed, exhaling Marsamella’s soul to let her journey to the hereafter. They sighed again, letting Their physical form loosen at the seams. Having a physical form to touch the living with was fun, sometimes, She enjoyed being seen as something the living called androgynous but enjoyed being seen as something called a woman even more. But either way, it couldn’t last.

Which was a bit of a tragedy, seeing as this area was so interesting, especially to a young Death like Herself.

I suppose all Deaths feel that way about their assigned areas. They thought. The world was far too large and ancient for a single embodiment of Death to handle all souls, so every significantly large enough portion of land was given a Death every few centuries. Sometimes two or more Deaths were even given to the same place in the event of extreme tragedies.

While the tragedies that took place here were not as extreme as, say, the giant boulder that fell from the sky and killed all the giant lizards several millennia ago (that had happened before The Local Death had even been conceived, but the event still fascinated them. They sometimes wondered what it was like to be a Death during those times, collecting the souls of those creatures); but they were still tragedies.

They would grow less sensitive towards these tragedies as the decades went on and She became as neutral and uninterested in the living as Their elders. But until that day, They would love to observe the living.

As a Death, They knew all the ways every single living thing in Her area would meet their end, and all the near-death experiences they would have along the way (and the actual-but temporary-deaths they would have, in the case of vampires). The near-death experiences and brushes with death fascinated Them the most. With dying, there was nothing really left but the hereafter. But a near-death experience, or a death that was not permanent? Now that was interesting.

She reached out, probing all the living things in these caves and on the Surface, seeing all the ways They would touch them. An almost fatal fall, old age, an accident caused by a contraption that hasn’t been invented yet, heart attack, falling rock, stroke, infection, and-oh.

There were three of them, no, more, all fated to have an extremely unique brush with death. A vampire (or multiple, She wasn’t sure), had already died and had already set things in motion.

Well. I cannot wait for this to play out.

Chapter 1

Kainma

Kainma felt her lungs burning with held breath and her toes burning from supporting her full weight. Breathing and walking normally were risks, the sounds and vibrations would alert Her Majesty too easily.

All Caves were dark (obviously), but this one almost unnervingly so. It had no torches, no campfires of moss, not even large clusters of fungi or glowworms. The only light was from a tiny mushroom on the wall. Thankfully, it was enough to see the ruby by.

Ah, the ruby. The gigantic, hideous, perfect, wonderful, terrifying ruby.

Really, it was just a rock. A shiny rock Her Majesty had clawed out of a Cave Wall, it was even still crusted with chunks of gray stone in some places. But to Surface people, it would guarantee her a place among them. Maybe even a comfortable place.

The ruby (being just a rock) didn’t know any of that, it just sat there. It stayed passive as she lifted her chisel to it and began to tensely chip away at it.

It broke almost too easily, and Kainma could have whooped with delight. Soon she was surrounded by fragments of glowing ruby glowing in the mushroom-light like scattered embers. When her bare toes were covered with ruby-dust and ruby shards, she kicked them off and began collecting them.

For a split second, Kainma imagined the faces of her parents and aunts and uncles when she told them she was going to the surface, and the thought made her instinctively shake her head as it would never happen. Neither of her parents had had very many siblings, so when they started dying off of natural causes one by one, it didn’t take long for her parents to be the only ones left. Then when the fever outbreak happened, it didn’t take long for both of her parents to sink until Kainma herself was the only one left. Now she was going to the Surface and they would never know about it.

Wait, that’s not true.

Do I have time to...all right, I’ll do it really quickly.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and started praying to the only people who could send a message to her family for her.

The Color People.

There were many names for the Color People: The Ghosts, the Beginners, The Flyers, the Flying People. But Kainma liked the name Color People the best. Because that was what they were, colorful. Almost as colorful as dreams.

No one was sure who the Color People were, and no one could ever ask them. All anyone was sure of was that once, a long time ago, long before even the queen was born over two centuries ago, the Color People painted colorful pictures on some of the walls of the deep caves. Colorful handprints that reached almost to the ceiling; drawings of fantastical creatures that no one was sure were real. Some of their belongings still remained, like bowls, making people believe they still lingered and could pass on messages to the dead.

Dear Color People,

Hello, it’s me, Kainma. Do you remember me? The last time I talked to you I was really angry at you, because my parents had died just hours before and I was angry at anything and everything. I don’t think you killed them. I’m sorry I was so angry.

You probably don’t remember me. You’ve probably gotten hundreds of angry people over the years. We probably all bleed together in your eyes. But I don’t care if this prayer is original. I just need you to hear it.

Please help me get out of here safely. 

Thank you.

She opened her eyes.

She didn’t physically have her parents, or anyone, really, but she had two bags, one of clothing, belongings, fruit, water; and another of ruby shards, a chisel for the shards, and the desire to go to the Surface.

It was...complicated. She’d been born underground and for the first eleven years of her life she thought she’d live out her life and die here too. But over the years, she’d smelled the air from the surface that blew in through cracks, how fresh and dry it seemed. During climbtime, when the cave walls became covered with the plants that sprouted from the dreams of sleeping burrowing animals, she saw glimpses of things in the fruit she ate from the plants. Massive things. Frightening things. Beautiful things. Great things.

So when conditions would sometimes sour underground-too little dream-fruit to eat, disease outbreaks, contempt for the queen, it was no wonder why some dreameaters chose to go above ground. Most of them went with friends of family, or went because of friends and family, but Kainma was an anomaly, planning to go alone. It was stupid, yeah, but she’d even once caught a trace of a saying in a dream-fruit she ate: When you’ve hit rock bottom, there’s no place to go but up.

She was an orphan in an underground cave. She was probably both literally and figuratively a lot deeper than this rock bottom they spoke of.

She heaved the bags over her shoulders and began to walk.

She hadn’t even left the Caves yet and she was already lost.

This was off to a great start.

Deep breaths Kainma, she told herself. Look around. Feel around.

All right.

She cleared her mind, probing for the presence of other minds nearby. There were several, a good distance away from her, to the west. They were well-guarded, so she couldn’t sense any of their thoughts.

Closer to her, and getting closer, was a young mind shielded with weaker defenses. His mental walls had holes, were trembling in some places, and he seemed to be making efforts to reinforce them, and make his way down the tunnel. He seemed annoyed but not actively hostile.

The tunnel. I should check the tunnel walls and see where I am.

There was plenty of writing on these cave walls, most notably, a giant scrawled sign scored into the stone.

←–VAMPIRES DEN

She was approaching the main caves where vampires made their homes alongside the pools of magic water that could help turn a corpse into a vampire. Decades ago this place had been called the den, but a lot of vampires developed complicated feelings towards it due to its animalistic association. Somebody had scratched out the word den on the sign several years ago and nobody had bothered to fix it, not wanting to risk digging too deeply into the stone and causing irreparable damage. Now it just gave the sense that if one went left they’d find vampires.

And judging by the fact that a young vampire seemed to be approaching her now, the sign was correct.

She guessed he was about twelve or thirteen, maybe even fourteen at the oldest, so he was close to her age but not her height, he was about a head taller than her. His skin was the healthy brown she associated with surface dwellers. Where his skin was dark, his hair was light, a yellowish color so pale it was almost white. His pale clothing was simple and lightweight, like hers. His gait was uneven, and he had the fingertips of his left hand pressed to the wall of the cave as if to steady himself or help find his way.

“Excuse me,” she asked. “How knowledgeable are you about the surface?”

He froze, his fingers in the middle of the sentence I kissed a girl here, his eyes widening and then lighting up. “The surface was my home! I-I c-can t-tell y-you almost anything about i-it!” His stutter seemed to either be worsened or caused by the fangs in his mouth that he was clearly still getting used to. Spittle would fly out of his mouth at random times as he spoke, and he kept covering his mouth or jerking his head away from her.

“Oh, please do! I’m heading up there right now.”

“Oh! So, um, there are a lot of things you should be prepared for up there.” He fell into contemplative silence for a moment. “What d-do y-you already kn-know?”

“Um, I’ve heard of something called the sun, and I know the sky, uh, changes, and there’s lots of animals and people up there. And their money system is a little different.”

“I-is that i-it?”

“I think so.”

“Okay. Brace yourself. S-sunlight’s hot. Picture the light of a torch or f-fire m-multiplied by a thousand, and coming from a giant hovering orb in the s-sky that y-you cannot look at. The s-sun moves. The b-beginning of the day is dawn. That’s when the sun rises. S-slowly. The s-sky turns from dark to light blue. Then it is morning. Then the s-sun moves highest, to the center of the sky, and s-stays there f-for a wh-little bit. Then the sun lowers i-itself in the opposite direction, and the s-sky grows dark again. That is a day.”

He could be lying to her. It sounded ludicrous. Giant moving, glowing orb in the sky? But it could explain the strange things she’d caught snippets of in dream-fruits, and explained some of the very old sayings she’d heard tossed around here and there. The crack of dawn. High noon. She started to nod. Surface people must’ve kept time by the sun, like how cave dwellers kept time by the massive mechanical clock in the queen’s throne room that sent out massive, reverberating gongs every hour.

“How does it move? What happens when it goes away?”

“S-slow down. I don’t know what the sun is or how it m-moves. All I know is the s-stuff I told you. Oh, and sometimes it gets blocked by clouds. Clouds are these floating things in the sky th-that m-move with the w-wind. Sometimes water falls from the clouds, th-that’s c-called rain. It’s not dangerous, but s-sometimes so much water falls it makes places f-flood.”

A droplet of water fell from the condensation-coated cave ceiling. He pointed a thin finger at it. “Like that. But on a m-massive scale.”

“Are clouds and the sun alive?”

“...no.” He sounded a little unsure though.

“Then how do they move?”

“Clouds f-float in the air, I don’t know. Oh, and I almost forgot to warn you about night.”

“Night?”

“When the sun sets, it goes below the horizon, to a place we cannot see. Then the whole world is dark. There are just tiny flecks of light in the s-sky-those are called stars. It is b-beautiful and p-peaceful, but also dangerous. Because that’s when c-criminals and d-dangerous people come out, when they think no one can see them. So be careful.”

“Sun, stars, clouds, and night. This is all so confusing! How do you Surface people do it? Do you just wake up every morning prepared for that day to be the day the sun burns you or the clouds flood your town? How do you all not go crazy with fear?”

“I c-could ask y-you the same question. Do you all just wake up every day-if you know it is a day at all-ready for today to be the day an earthquake collapses the cave and crushes you all? And when that d-does not happen, there is just n-no change? How do you all not go c-crazy with b-boredom?”

“Fair point.”

“Though I guess being down here m-might've driven y-you c-crazy, huh?” He said weakly, gesturing at her bags. “S-sorry, that was rude.”

“It’s fine.”

Crazy. She’d never heard that before. She sensed, probing hesitantly around the holes in his mental walls, that crazy meant mentally different, mentally unwell. Interesting. It was definitely a word coined by humans or vampires, who could not sense the inner workings of minds and dreams like her kind could.

“Uh, g-good luck.” He said earnestly. “You going u-up there alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Be v-very careful.” His face darkened. “It’s d-dangerous up there.”

“What do I have to be the most worried about?”

“Um.” He rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. She sensed a lot of activity in his mind, whirring like the gears of Her Majesty’s giant clock. She caught flickers of things she barely understood. The vague outline of a scowling person’s face. The burning light of the sun. An eerie wailing sound that made her skin prickle with goosebumps. She’d heard that sound after once accidentally eating a nightmare fruit that burned her throat. The dreaming animal had associated the sound with death.

“Be p-prepared for the environment. Do y-you have water? As much water as you can?”

“Yes.”

“Get w-water. As much of it as you c-can carry before you l-leave. You have food?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

Something else flickered in his mind, something hot and dark, something that the rest of his mind flinched away from, like it was pulling itself away from the sight of something diseased lest the infection spread. It created the eerie but not uncommon sensation that the fabric of his mind had torn itself a little, cutting away the hot, dark thing and trying to keep it separated from everything else.

She swallowed. She should probably tell him his mental walls had weakened enough for her to sense that, lest he embarrass himself.

“I know you can e-eat dream f-fruit and read minds and all th-that.” He said, shifting himself uncomfortably. “But b-be v-very careful of who you t-trust.”

“I already know that.” She said. Just because being able to sense minds was incredibly common in these caves didn’t mean there were no liars and cutthroats. All children were warned away from the deepest depths of the habitable caves, where certain vampires hid from the law. Sometimes these vam pires would travel up to the higher cave levels and try to lure healthy young people back down to the lower levels with promises of anything their hearts desired, only to trap them and use them as their personal blood buffet, drinking their blood until their drained and dry corpses were either hidden or hauled and abandoned on an upper level. Because these people were often stripped of their identities and too drained of blood to turn into a vampire, it was difficult to punish those who had killed them.

So, she was already well aware of the fact that not everyone could be trusted blindly.

“Stay alert, k-keep your s-supplies s-safe, trust few p-people, and you should be fine. The s-surface isn’t all terrible,” He said, as if he hadn’t just warned her that it was incredibly dangerous and filled with untrustworthy people. “Good luck,” he said again.

“Thank you so much for all your help.” She said, nodding to him. He nodded back, and continued walking down the dark tunnel to wherever it was he was going.

Even though there were a handful of tunnels that led to the surface, they weren’t always used very often. Nobody really needed to go up to the surface; Kainma had spent twelve years never once needing to leave.

Until now.

This particular tunnel was narrower than most, but as long as she didn’t panic, she could convince herself it wasn’t suffocatingly small.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic, Kainma.  She hooked her firm, claw-tipped fingers into the ledges of the tunnel and began to climb, balancing the bags on her back. As long as you don’t panic, everything will be completely fine.

She panicked.

She wasn’t sure exactly when it started. Was it when she started to smell the difference in the air? Was it when she felt it gradually get warmer? Was it when her hand, slick with sweat, almost lost its place? Did all of these things occur at the same time? She would never know for certain, because in that split second, the only certain thing was fear. Choking, blinding fear that made her freeze and latch onto the wall for a solid minute, as if trying to avoid the watchful eye of a circling predator, then start scaling the wall as fast as she possibly could.

The air was very different now. It was warmer and more full of light than ever.