Entanglement

We will tell it to you, as it was told to us, and as you must tell to those not yet here:

The faint smell of fire and smoke always alerted us, and we would scatter to the smallest spaces, to our safe hides, to look out from the security of the unseen. Light would descend once more into our realm, at first a faint glow, but soon growing into unseeable brilliance. We would watch the light approach, and settle upon the ground, and watched for the form that we knew would appear within it. Sometimes it was the Small One, sometimes it was the Large One, and sometimes it was even the Largest One.

On good nights, the Small One looked down upon us, baring her teeth, as was her custom. She was many times larger than us, but of Those Who Are Not Us But Above Us, she was the smallest, and so we called her Small One. We left the safety of our darkness and were welcomed into her light, upon the soft, pale folds of her ever-changing skin. She called out with a sound that we knew meant food. We chittered in response, praising and imploring her with our forepaws in the air. We could smell it now, around the smoke, around her own powerful scent.

The Small One produced from within her folds a familiar staple, some of it hard and the rest of it soft but all soaked with the same moisture and capacity for filling us. Yet, it carried with it a powerful, unfamiliar scent. We snatched it up eagerly – visits were always too far apart – and some of us fought over the white food. Many of us retreated some distance to enjoy it in solitude, while those who had known her the longest sat happily upon the Small One and ate her gift there. When we were finished, she produced from her folds that same powerful scent, and gave each of us one by one a small crumb of something strong, dark, and delicious. Meat, we knew it, but what meat we knew not. It did not taste like us, nor of Smaller Us or any Not Us we had ever eaten.

Sometimes she carried a different scent, not meat or any kind of food, and we would wonder at it but never know what it was. You will learn this scent, too, in time.

We savoured our meat, and pleaded for more, but more did not come. The scent was stuck in our benevolent guardian's folds, and we searched and dug about, poking within her in a way that made her cry out shrilly. We played with her, and upon her. We washed upon her and we washed her. Some of us slept peacefully against her.

A cry would often sound down from above, deep and thunderous. It was the cry of the Largest One, and we knew it meant an end. Many of us scattered at the sound, and those few who didn't were quickly dismissed by the Small One. She righted in a way that we could not for long, and commenced the ritual of grooming her many folds. Once groomed, she left us, taking her light with her. We were in the dark again, and had to wait for our eyes to remember how to see before we could take to our home.

We lived our lives in privacy and dark, interrupted occasionally by visits from above. Some were benevolent visits of the Small One, much-anticipated and greatly-welcomed, yet others were less benevolent, or for a purpose we did not understand, and so we hid and waited for our darkness to return. We scavenged food where we could, often having to work hard to get it, but after a visit from the Small One, we did not work. We played, or we rested. Work would come later.

We slept together, in several small piles, our bodies pressed together into heated, comforting masses. It was good to know that we weren't alone while we slept, and rarely did we all sleep at once. Occasionally, one of us would lie apart from the others, and never wake again.

The Small One found just such an ever-sleeping one, and collected it away with her. We often ate the unwaking, if we had to, or else pushed them away from our safety-holes and left them to be eaten by something else. After this, we always left them out for the Small One to collect, the only thanks we could offer for her provision, guardianship, and company. What value they held for her, we did not know, nor have any way of asking. Clearly, she did not want for food.

Generations passed this way, and we slept ourselves away until none of us waking could recall being unable to fit in the Small One's large forepaw. Many other things were different in the stories, too. The thunder of Largest One, well-known and oft-feared in our tales, never roared over us, and we often wondered at a new sound if perhaps that was he. Even Small One was different, though she continued her guardianship over us. She was, perhaps, larger now, or else superseded in smallness by another: for there was now a new smallest member of Those Who Are Not Us But Above Us, and we called it Smallest One. Smallest One was mewling and thick-pawed, it did not make the same cries as the others and yet it bore their shape, in a rudimentary way. Small One would bring it down into our realm from time to time, for us to touch and smell, and watch it move about. Small One would never let Smallest One to stray too far from her, and always brought it up and back into her ever-changing folds when it became too adventurous.

Soon, it was Smallest One who descended in the aura of light to produce food from her pale folds. Not always, but sometimes. Her movements mirrored those in the old tales of Small One, from before any of us awake could remember, and for the first time we wondered if Small One was as eternal as we had always believed.

A terrible illness struck, brought forth by a newer member of us, who had burrowed or fallen in the manner so many of us had found our way to this sanctuary. Those of us too ill to move, or wash, slept together in their own bundle, and few ever woke again. We carried them out in silent parade, night by night, and lay them side-by-side in the space reserved for such things. It was four nights before the Small One returned to us, and by then the illness had passed and half our number were laid out for her.

She cooed and cried out over their sleeping forms, and collected each with care and great deliberation. One by one they vanished into her wondrous folds, and she ascended as though she herself had taken ill.

The very next night, the Smallest One descended into our realm with the scent of fire and food. Behind her descended the Small One, carrying with her a strange and yet familiar odour. Smallest One produced from her pale folds more food than we had ever seen at once, a feast so large we could not eat it all. Many flavours here, some new and some familiar, some sweet and wet, some dry and staple. Even the coveted taste of meat, the kind of meat we only tasted when the paradoxical Small Ones provided it.

When we had finished hiding what remained of our feast, private stashes to be pilfered and shared by all, we watched as Small One and Smallest One chattered together. Small One marked the ground around her light, with significant care and in a manner that took a lot of time, until she finally finished and ascended, leaving her light behind with the Smallest One. When she returned, she carried a large box. Our small-large guardians chattered yet more, they bared their teeth, and Small One opened the box. It smelled of us, and of meat, and of the illness. We did not know what this meant, but we were afraid. We did not know why were were afraid or what we feared, only that instinct told us to feel fear.

Small One produced from this box the unwaking, and set each of them down with care upon the ground. They formed a splayed grouping near her light, but she was not done. Next, she pulled from the box more of the unwaking, those who had slept for too long and had become food. Finally, she pulled out bundles of bones, which hung together limply and clattered noisily as she moved. These, she laid out, too, and finally set the box aside.

Some of us recognised the bones as those that come from within us, and together we understood that Small One had created a great ring of the eternally-asleep, heads pointed outwards. She removed her light from the centre, grabbed the tail of each of us that would never awaken, and pulled until every tail, flesh or bone or anywhere between those two states, met in a perfect spiral.

She pulled a pouch from the box, and threw its contents about, and we knew that that was the familiar and unfamiliar smell. She carried the scent down with her at times, it was often stuck to her forepaws, or the food she gave us, but we did not know what it was. We did not know what it was then, as she tossed it in the air and over the unwaking and over those of us still waking. She sprinkled it liberally upon her own head, and upon the head of Smallest One. She cried out, and moved as if to play or climb, but there was nothing to climb and no-one to play with save Smallest One, who mimicked her.

Their cries were loud and deep and rhythmic. The sound undulated within us, and as one we undulated with it, knowing without understanding that there was a pattern to the sound, like the spiral of tails, and that the pattern must be followed. We cried out with it, matching it, and watched as the unwaking woke.

Their eyes blinked open and their paws twitched beneath them, and they rose, and we rose with them, for we were they and they were us. Small One cried louder and undulated with the sound, her coloured skin flapping madly, her forepaws raised to the air to implore as we implored her for food, and Smallest One implored with her, and weimplored with her, and they implored with her. The unwaking rose up, with their eyes bright and their noses in the air, and they were no longer unwaking. They were more than they, and they were more than us, for they were many and one, their perfect spiral of tails bound in their new awakening.

We bowed down, noses to the floor, and Smallest One and Small One bowed down, too, and the undulation ceased.

We understood, then, that life would never be the same, and we understand now why the Small One gave us this gift.