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| - Freddie Jones tramped over spongy ground with a gun in one hand and a split stick in the other. He was making enough noise to scare off any wild thing within a half mile radius, but he didn’t have a damn to give; the sun was shining in a raw blue sky, and Freddie was waist-deep in reminiscence. Reminiscence, in this case, took the form of sawgrass and mud, the staples of Freddie’s sweaty boyhood. Marriage had driven Freddie and the swamps apart, and business made the afternoon sun a stranger. But today was for seizing— seizing and then shooting, right through its flat reptilian skull. One thousand dollars were waiting for the man who bagged the longest python, and fifteen hundred for the hunter who could kill the most. A snake shot into two pieces was acceptable; three was suspect. Freddie didn’t need to splice his snakes together— he had a secret. Not two days earlier, he’d spotted one of the scaly bastards sliding across the asphalt into the preserve that backed his local gas-n-go, and he’d be damned if it wasn’t the longest snake he’d ever seen. After two hours of prodding logs and stones, the would-be hunter had uncovered three sluggish king snakes and more black racers than he’d bothered to count. Sweat ran down his neck and back and the sound of the highway was the only confirmation that he hadn’t been swallowed whole by brown and green wilderness. Freddie was crouching in the sand, cursing the fire ants that had raided his left boot, when he caught a glimpse of something smooth and blotchy. The blotches moved, glinting in the sun. The undulation of scaly skin over muscle was unmistakable, and Freddie nearly tripped over his feet to cut a path through the brush. He could see a tapered tail, now, but the animal was outpacing him. Slicing and scrambling, heedless of cut shins, he pursued the creature's end half until he saw it curve abruptly to the left. It stopped moving, and so did Freddie— winded, heart thumping in his ears. He realized that he was shaking, violently, sweat dancing over his forearms. For a moment, he was certain that he had given himself a heart attack by running through the sand with the recklessness of a younger man. Blinking at the ground with a hand over his heart, he could see that the sand was shifting, too. The earth beneath his feet was trembling. In the same instant, not fifty miles distant, a weather station was sending a coded signal to a secluded facility on the East Coast. Research Sector-09 received the untimely alert that SCP-1108 was manifesting over Tampa. Aerial observation confirmed that the anomaly was significantly larger than previous manifestations, and growing. Office windows vibrated with the sound of thunder, and children shrieked when the classroom lights flickered. Half a country away, a hunter heard the same thunder. He grabbed his son by the jacket collar and tried to haul him out of the way of a buck with antlers that spread like a sycamore. Low-lying branches couldn’t snag the proud head— only snapped, showering splinters, as the beast carved a trail of wreckage through the woods. The thunder that sounded from the depths of the sea was too faint for human ears. But along the New England shore, seventeen pairs of binoculars caught a flash of white, before their tour boat was crushed by a skyscraper’s weight of barnacled flesh. No tourists or hikers had ventured far enough afield to see the strangely bulging earth in South Dakota's Black Hills. Alone, surrounded by locusts and prairie grass, the ancient bear-king pawed his way toward the sunlight. He lumbered out of the dirt and collapsed, panting like a hatched chick. His curving teeth were longer than a grown man's arm, and the fur and skin that once stretched over his bones had long since rotted. The beast shook off his old flesh like dust and reared upon two legs. The lightning recognized his roar, and raced to join him. In a similar wilderness, a tumble of rocks that had once been a mountain shook itself and groaned. The commuters on the highway looked toward the horizon to see the hunched back of a massive buffalo. In Texas, the cacti contorted themselves to make a path for the queen of armadillos. The bullfrogs hollered in the Louisiana swamps, drowning out the screams of boaters caught up in the paws of a hollow-eyed raccoon. A panther scream split the quiet of California vineyards, sprawling mansions enveloped by its shadow, and every sky was blotched with nervous clouds of grackles, blackbirds, pigeons, starlings. Freddie Jones was deaf to this great revival, too busy trying to keep his footing. The tremor passed almost as soon as it had begun, and Freddie glanced up to see that his prize python had not stirred an inch. If anything, there seemed to be more of it. He could make out its patterned back more clearly, and began making his way sideways along its length, guessing at the location of the head. He took six steps, moving loudly and awkwardly through wire grass and saw palmetto. The tawny body stretched on and on. He took a step back, and another, trying to scope out its size, when the whole length gave a great shudder. Freddie glanced behind him and saw brown blotches in the brush. He turned, and turned again, and found himself surrounded by the same gleaming pattern, peeking through sand and greenery. There was no way to tell where the python began and where it ended. He raised his gun and shot at one broad side, which seemed, impossibly, to have swollen to the girth of a horse. The crack of the gun echoed over the swamp, but the scales slid on unblemished. Freddie gaped, too astonished to shout. His gaze was so fixed on the body growing thicker and longer in a loop around him, that he never saw the great flat head that was rising above the trees— not until it dipped to cover the sun. The yellow eyes never met the watering grey ones, nor did the creature pay much heed to what flora and fauna were crushed beneath its coils. A tree-sized tongue flicked once, twice, and the beast turned to make its way toward the sea.
- I woke up to see sunlight filtering through the high crack in the rocky ceiling. “Well, I see you are finally awake,” Lazuli meowed from the corner of the den. Her fur was neatly groomed and shining, her face ready. “I am,” I mewed, scrambling up. I shook out my fur and gave a few quick licks to my chest. “What can we do today?” “We need to try the other passages,” Lazuli explained. “One of them ought to lead us to something. If it does then we have nothing to lose.” “All right, then.” I padded to one of the shining pools and took a long drink. Suddenly an image flashed through the water. I abruptly stopped lapping and stared at the rippling surface. A cat stood in the midst of a battle, floating above the chaos, her head adorned with sparkling blue jewels. With a thrust of her paw light output from her body, until the glimmering yellow filled the entire pool. Then water turned black and dull once more. “L-Lazuli…?” I stammered. “I saw something…in the water.” Lazuli turned to me, her eyes glinting in the dim light from the ceiling. Somehow the description I’d stammered reminded me of Lazuli herself. “What? How?” “I don’t know!” I meowed. “What was it?” “It…it might be a Viewing,” Lazuli meowed doubtfully. “You know what it is?” I mewed, surprised. “Maybe you didn’t have it,” Lazuli hastily argued, ignoring me. “Maybe it was just a trick of the light, or something.” “Oh no, I did see it, sure as sure,” I mewed. “Tell me more about them. Viewings.” “Oh, I suppose…” Lazuli sat down wearily. “On the earth, one cat each eon is chosen. They are trusted.” “Trusted?” I asked. “What for?” “Trusted,” Lazuli agreed. “They are given all the power in the world. They can gift the world with light or hide it in shadows and dark. This cat may allow the rains to pour from the heavens or let sun toast the barren ground. Yes, this cat is trusted. They are trusted not to overuse this power or undermine it.” “So, they have the whole…world in their paws?” I whispered. “Then what does this have to do with me? And how can a mere Viewing mean I have power?” “You don’t,” Lazuli snapped. “Don’t skip to conclusions. A few cats in between get Stirrings, which show the beginnings of the Trust. Stirrings include small things like what you’ve experienced yourself, such as the Viewings. This is but a few cats between the Trust eons, and all of them do not receive anything more than a Stirring before they expire.” “How do you know all of this?” I asked dubiously. Everything she had told me was only just seeping into my mind, and all of it was frightening. For the first time since I had met her, Lazuli seemed nervous. “A-as I said, sources,” she stuttered. She turned her nose up. “I should never have shared this with you. Please get ready, we must depart soon.” My head a turmoil of confusion, I turned back to the pool and stared. Give me more, please! But the pool remained empty and calm, yet dark and mysterious. It’s only a Stirring, Wintergreen. It’ll go away in a hustle. I followed Lazuli out of the little niche in the stone wall we had crafted into a den and into the main cave. “The far tunnel is where we’d come out of yesterday,” Lazuli explained. “I have lived there all my life, it is very small with few branches. We must try all of the other ones. Follow me.” “Okay,” I meowed. Lazuli padded across the huge cave with the seemingly endless ceiling. I recognized the damp-looking spot in the corner as where I had left my rabbit. One of these tunnels is the exit for sure. I just hope we find it fast. The blue-gray she-cat had already entered the old tunnel where she had spent her life. I relied on the muffled sound of her paw steps to trail after her. “So, Lazuli,” I began. “If you’ve lived under here all your life, why didn’t you care to explore? Why didn’t you begin looking through any of the other tunnels? Maybe you could have found the exit.” “I can’t,” Lazuli replied. “Believe me, I’ve tried. None of the exits work.” “What do you mean they don’t work?” I made sure I leaped the chasm before entering her den. “I mean, they just don’t work. I’ve looked through them inside and out.” Lazuli swiftly ran to the far end of the huge space and dug through small niches in the wall, apparently looking for something. She came back with a satchel, the large oak leaf repeatedly tied over with strands of tough grass. Lazuli wrapped it around her flank, looping it until it was firmly attached. “I was hoping you would change something. Perhaps we shall find something different.” “And how can I change anything?” Lazuli stared at me. “You don’t understand. I can’t expect you ever will. But let me tell you something, Wintergreen—change is on its way. I can see it in the light, taste it in the water. And I am hoping you are that change.” Suddenly a slow breeze picked up around us, pricking our fur. The intensity quickened until, at last, the wind was howling and moaning, and the columns of stone around us started creaking. The tranquil pool of water around us were now slapping against the dip in which it was held. "Evacuate, quick!" Lazuli shrieked back at me. She raced ahead, leaping most of the cave in one stride. I ran after, confusion clouding my thoughts. Is this the same as what happened yesterday? What is happening? Lazuli stopped only as we reached the main cave. I tried to talk to her, but she slapped her tail over my mouth and stared intently at the cave. The moaning ceased, only as a low rumble covered it. I stared into the darkness, until an avalanche of noise erupted from the tunnel. Dust clouded up, and the walls inverted on themselves and collapsed. The ceiling cracked, grit and dirt pouring from above. The peace settled once more, this time ominous. The vines clinging to the edges of the walls sprung down, the ruckus spilling on the floor. I spat out Lazuli's fur from my mouth and stared at her. "W-what was that?" I whispered. Lazuli could not rip her gaze from the rubble. "It is happening," she whispered, her blue gaze wide and unmoving. "It has come." "What has come?" I asked persistantly. "We must flee." Lazuli gazed up at the ceiling, at the small cracks snaking its way across. "We are feeding the power. The longer we stay, the stronger it will grow." "What's happening, Lazuli?" I hissed. "What has come? You must tell me!" "Stay strong, Wintergreen," Lazuli turned, her gaze burning into mine. "For when the time comes, it is clear they are coming for you."
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