July

Issue 46

"Hello, stranger.  We don't often see deepfellows up here.  May I ask your name?" Duel asked, flashing the question in bright, polite colors across his body.  But only on the side closest to the little stranger, who was a mere foot long from the top of his head to the tip of his eight sucker-lined arms.  Duel kept his own eight arms fairly still, only moving enough to keep his position alongside the stranger.  Duel didn't want to appear rude.  

Wavering patches of light danced in the water around the two of them, but did not reach very far into the deepwater trench below them.  Duel guessed that the stranger’s home was somewhere in that trench, and that the stranger had been churned up to this level by some unnatural current.

The deepfellow remained in his peculiar defensive stance.  When Duel had first spotted the crimson stranger, he'd noticed the odd cape that webbed each of the stranger's eight arms together, leaving only the tips free.  Duel had had only a moment to wonder what the cape was for when the deepfellow turned himself inside out, pulling the cape up over his head.  The inside of the cape was black as the deepest waters, and covered with spines, which made the stranger look particularly unwholesome and inedible.  Not that Duel would have eaten one of the People in any case-but he could see why the Maker had gifted this deepfellow in such a way.

Duel wondered if the stranger had even seen the question-after all, the deepfellow's true-eyes were now safely hidden inside the cape, and Duel had no way of knowing whether the Maker had given the creature any half-eyes.  But then the exposed armtips began to flash: not with colors but with light.