Just what IS that thing?

[Rance]

Instead of skin, his fingers found dirt. Instead of tendon, they tore into hairy roots sprawled just beneath the surface of the snow. He tilted his head around, wheeled, those gnarled, bladed fingers slicing gashes in the ice and slush, his bent elbows jutting out to his sides.

Maxwell spoke so much. The words did not seem to stop, pouring out of him like refuse. The boything's fragile mind tried to pick them apart like one might drag meat off an animal's bone, but he choked on the knuckles, got the splinters caught between his teeth, so--

So, then, and you'll excuse my lack of

--he could not swallow them down or even begin to register what was even being said. The vinechild squatted with a purpose over Mary's unconsciously body, his jagged fingertips hanging over her, never once even dipping to touch more than they should. Protecting her. Keeping her safe. Shielding her from these sour poison-words rattling out of the--

legendary and the winner of many contests real and

--man's lips; the boy thought his skin was covered in oil, dripping--

memory is immaculate, and thus, even though I have nothing to

--because with Maxwell's constant words came memories, burning in his guts and spine and brain, until he could restrain them no more. He thrust his head to the side, away from Mary, away from everything, and half-covered his mouth with a bladed finger as a glut of blackened mud--

as Mary sleeps, answer me this. Are the eyes and the fingers because

--came spilling from his mouth, a rotten-leaf glut that he vomited to the ground, sour, wrong, bad stew coming right back out of him from the recesses of his veins and the marrow in his bones. A cleansing. A ridding of the graveyards in his brain to make room for thought, reason, some kind of--

wish a hundred wishes everyday

--chivalry.

"I w-...will eat your tongue," the boy threatened, as he reached down with those whitespider fingers, trying to clench them underneath Mary's elbows, tightening his grip around her arms, her sleeves, anything. They could have pierced her flesh, but they did not -- he wielded them with a careful, cautious precision, as if she were made out of glass. "I D-...Did them s-...so the Spring could come, b-...because it is my birthday.

"It is m-...my birthday and I want t-...to get born."

He knew nothing about universes, and dreadfully little about wishes. Perhaps somewhere, Maxwell's analysis held truth, but not here. Not with memories soaking into the ground and eyes growing in the little babies sprouting amid the cattails.

The boything wrapped his arms around Mary, clutching her up in a seated position against him as if she were a dressmaker's mannequin. With his sharp eyes staring at Maxwell-- the same eyes that had been growing in the lake's tulips -- he started dragging Mary back, back, toward the woodline, toward safety.

"Get away from us," the boy snarled. "G-...get away from her. You will h-...hurt her if you keep t-...talking like that."

[Maxwell]

"Nonsense my unfortunate, deformed ignoramus!" The bespectacled scholar huffed at Phlynn, still dusting himself off. "Why, if Mary listened to me even three times more out of ten, her life would be more fulfilling, productive and intrinsically worthy by a factor of elevenfold! And that's just Mary. I can only imagine what we might accomplish, you and I, my dear peculiarity if you would just listen to my guidance instead of throwing a fit and babbling nonsensically. Why I dare say we might have a royal title between us. I'd have it, of course, but you'd be provided with sweetmeats and viscera or whatever it is you gnaw upon. Nuts and berries perhaps? A plentiful cornucopia for all of us! And if the governor listened more, then.."

But Phlynn had said something else in there. "Your birthday? No, no, no. First of all, by examining the dots on your tongue using one of my magnification lenses, which, might I add, is a far more scientific use of a tongue than ripping it out or whatever you were blathering about, I would be able to derive your age within a margin of, oh, a hundred an thirty five days. Speaking of Miss Mary Ford, I told her I could do it for her as well," his voice had gotten more nasally, more put out, "but she called it bad manners to scientifically derive a woman's age and began to repeatedly batter me upon the left shoulder with a pouch. And she said that *I* had bad manners. The audacity! I'll have you know that my manners are exemplary. Why, my former tutor, Barclus Andaros, known in four provinces as the finest tutor ever to be provided to a younger son of a fine family, once said that if there was an award for good manners, that of all of his current students, I would surely be in contention to be nominated for consideration! High praise, might I say, even if I was his only student at the time."

"No, no, no. I do think that you're not figuring out your birthday at all. You'd only need one or two of those eyeballs for that, and a finger or two. Certainly not an bushel of them. Really, if you begin to grow things in such a harvest, it should be ears and not eyes." And here he'd look at the Phlynn creature expectantly, before breaking up in laughter at his own joke.

[Rance]

Maxwell spoke of merits and success. Maxwell rambled of honored past-bestowed and to-be-bestowed. He went on about manners both bad and exemplary. Did he know that the boything knew nothing of any of it? That half the rambling scholar's words were as unique as blood upon a battlefield, as unique as dirt on the hems of a farmer's trousers. It was all the same. It made no sense. It made no sense.

Only when Maxwell dissolved into laughter -- he was not talking anymore, a relief, that -- did the boy stop dragging Mary's unconscious form backwards through the mud, the branches of the trees around them hanging like heads bowed for the deceased.

"I am t-...taking her," the boything said, his arms underneath Mary's, his bladed fingers sprawled like a prison across the woman's stomach and chest. He held her as if she were a precious bauble, his wild, eyes shining over her shoulder. "Y-...You are mad, brain f-...full of rattlebones, rattlebones. Why did you come f-...for me. Why?"

His rotten, mud-stink breath was like crawling ice along the side of Mary's cheek. Her skin was poison in his nose. His black, stalactite teeth could have slivered through her skin, found the soft meat, pulled the strings out of her, but--

"You t-...touch my little babies," the vineboy said, grinning, angling one of his stretched, wax-like fingers underneath Mary's chin, its point pressing against her collarbone. A threat. "Ears t-...to ears."

Because if Maxwell was talking about ears, so could he.

[Maxwell]

"Why did we come for you?" Was this a hostage situation? a moment before, the creature known as Phlynn had been claiming to protect her from Maxwell's words. Perhaps he was just protecting her from himself and what reaction he may have TO those words. Of course all of it was completely ridiculous. "Why, my dear monstrosity, we came in search of truth! The only search that matters. The voyage and the destination are all the same. Eyes open. Ears pert. Nose sniffing and tongue ever flicking like a snake of all the old stories imparting the wisdom of the ancients!" To help drive the point home, the scholar tried to flick his tongue a few times, serpentine. Mainly he managed to get his chin slightly damp.

Oh look, they had made it back to a talk of ears. "Now stop that. You're hardly going to hurt Mary and I'm hardly going to hurt your menagerie of the grotesque. Do have her back by dinner, though. She's a better sketcher than I and I'd like for her to take some of that down." He waved back to the woods. "Terrible table manners though. Keep that in mind if you have her to dinner. Also, rather stringy and of bad breeding. Unsettled humors. Not tasty at all. Keep THAT in mind if you have her for dinner. It was as if she was raised on a farm really." He huffed and waved, eyes pleasantly distant.

[Rance]

"I w-...would never hurt a lady; I would n-...never!"

This, an insistent shout, a one solid thing from the boy who knew, recalled, and kept in mind so very little. A hint of honor, loyalty, chivalry. He had gutted creatures greater and smaller than himself, had killed and devoured beasts that might make most men soil themselves just in the initial encounter. The boy who grew eyes and fingers had standards, however, and even as he watched Maxwell flicker his tongue like a serpent's, he wondered, what are his, what are his--

For a man must always have standards, rules, laws by which to abide; that was what made a man something different than an animal.

"C-...come for whatever you wanted, do not hurt my babies," he demanded, a fragile arm wrapped around Mary from behind, cradling her chin and neck as if he were holding her as his hostage. "Do not c-...call me m-...monster-osiddy," a staggering lack of command over the word, "because I am Cries-to-Flowers. I am, I am!"

Maxwell was a creature of scholarly insight and academic madness. The boything was of lesser stuff, cobbled together from blood and memories, a creature of instinct, a vomitous, bone-fingered wrong in the grand scheme of nature. And he was crying. Large, quivering tears that stained his cheeks like black blood, sliding down to splash in Mary's hair as, with adamant refusal, he said, "I am n-...not monster-osiddy. I swear."

But Maxwell did not give chase -- yet -- so, with Mary snared in his arms, the near-naked child gripped her body against him. Like the slaving ant with no limit to its strength, he sought to drag the unconscious girl back into the woods with him, stealing her away, no promise made as to when she might return.

Or if.