Pendulous and paper thin is the nature of their skin.
Seven generations came to rise and then to pass in the time since the last of any villagers from Shahalavane ventured past the trunk of the giant alabaster tree. The massive and unknowable aged Trucovee marked the boundary of safety in Lahaysa Vale, the thick and ancient copse of forest stretched the visible horizon at the northiest edge of their small and peaceful settlement.
Unmatching any skin but more akin to candle wax, sheenful, sloughy, dribble dripping from their bones, colored darkly, algae slick in the shade of midnight black.
For over two centuries the Shahalavanian Shamans, the seven keepers of history shared the warnings of the things that lurked within The Vale beyond the Trucovee Tree
Stillness, stillness all around
Go no further in The Vale from the boundary and heed the song it sings of the dangers better left unseen.
The tenuous accord by the Shahalavanians
The Seven Shamans at the Temple of Sight live devout and unnaturally long lives amongst their many servants, each with aspirations to rise to the respected station as Seven themselves. They serve these men and women, the village’s religious leaders, healers and knowledge keepers within the darkness. Cleverly locked inside, a lightless and endless maze of corridors, alcovous and small passthrough doorways that open up into massive high-ceilinged chambers each with specific purposes: history, architecture, healing and more. All traversed by memory and feel for all spaces within were lighttightly dark and sealed within the temple’s windowless walls of stone.
Beyond the place we shall not pass winds the slowly moving waters of the Blackrush Creek. Many creatures lurk beyond the bounds. One a daylight hateling...the thing a moonlightkin.
Of one of the histories passed from Shaman to Shaman and then as knowledge spread as warningspeak is the lore of these, The Muckleshings, who lurk in the hours that follow the time when sunlight has retired to sleep:
Slitherly they clim and climb from the depths of Blackrush Creek, clivingly they cliv their claws into the slimy shore with sharply muckcrusted fingers and feet.
Within the viscous opacious beneth, the Muckleshings await the daylight’s travel be put to rest. Always wakeful they watch, eyes waterlogged and greased betwixt the sleege and betweeth the greft and sometimes within the knottily tangled tress of reeds and weeds they stay until of the sunlight naught is left.
Never coffincased but like clockwork lowered groundward and welly rustified habits known by all due to overusage over time, daily it returns to the same ground from which it will arise as though it never died but time after time after time the Muckleshings wait and lie and hide because today will be the same. It has always habisized to arise from the ashes of it's death to burn hard and bright until it burns out and it dies and when the time for its suicide is growing nye it always lies where it's known to lie and is whereby lowered one link by one link at a time on its own bespoken, personalized, graveyard chains.
So with loathsome toleraze they simply know this to be so the way they know the way the current flows. Without momentary doubt that things might change they wait, and wait, and wait. They do this because the wait is never waste. The vile glow of the horribus gliving that enslaves them to lie in wait is known to always flix away and always fade.
Not one among them specuwastes the energizment of anxies believing that today might be the day the blorrid thing somehow forgets and skips the act that it loves best.
And yet, the Muckleshings stir not at the very moment the thing is finally laid within the confines of its predictable and ever punctual grave, instead of stirring they are resigned to serenely wait. They wait and wait and wait.
Hours pass and pass and pass. Only once the world, bade to be blind has devoured the decayed and brittle bones of any possible remaining light, at this time and only at this time they begin to stir as if dead things bade return to life…only in the pitchous starkly darkly lack of light do the Muckleshings finally choose to arise from viscous water’s pollutious oplite to cleave and clum and crim and claw to the height of mudsuck squelchy ground overlooking the slowly perpetuous flowing place where they wait until the daylight daily drowns.
Let Me Know What You Think...
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How did the invented, slippery language affect your reading...did it slow you down, pull you in, or make things feel unstable?
When the final light fades and the Muckleshings rise, what do you imagine happens next...what do you think something like this would do if they found a villager had ventured past the Trucovee Tree?
