The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [177]
“I’m not so certain of that,” Bari announced to Her Highness, “of any of that. In fact, I believe everything you’re about is full of shit. And you’re about to see what I mean. Are you ready? All right, then. There’s something further I’d like to show you....”
***
Within the instant of the next heartbeat, they and the terrace and the entire diner’s side outskirts along down the embankment and the expanse beyond were engulfed by a tidal wave immersion of bright light, its beams trickling off in stardust fragments upon every object of substance its light revealed, like pixie dust trails, like an onslaught of luminous fairies cast down from heaven in a pitcher’s throw from a gargantuan stellar god.
The splendid aurora caught Salvatia and Scratch both likewise off guard like two deer in the middle of a peaceful night’s highway startled by a sixteen-wheeler’s high beams.
Bari remained calm and passive; Melony was too intensely preoccupied by her own pain to take notice.
From out of the tomb-like hush of the moment proceeding the advent of light there emerged an invasion of dozens of little people, spilling over from every direction of the encompassing railing and into the patio, dozens and then dozens more; it was a pandemonium of fetal-like, bare-skinned humanoids of varying shapes and sizes and statures, albeit not a one of them stood taller than four feet in height, no shorter than two.
Resembling naked children they flooded the terrace, encircling the tables, alien grey entities sexless but for undeterminable organs at their groins which for some could have been unmistakably female if they’d only hold still for a view. Their eyes were bulbous and teardrop-shaped and fathomless, double in proportionate size to any Everborn regressed so far as Scratch or Andrew. The dimensions of their heads were expanded, hairless and well-rounded, sleek and smooth, their stunted mouths near-lipless like those of their Everborn counterparts.
Beyond about all two hundred of them and beyond the diner terrace rested a spectacular vision, a colossal cylindrical metallic dome covering the expanse of terrain in the chasm of the diner’s rear canyon. Corralled between the foot of the terrace embankment and the forest of trees to its rear, the space craft, as it was, brilliant in all its glory, stood situated upon four extended metal landing legs embedded into the earth below it. The untarnished silver of its surface reflected all its surroundings the way a carnival funhouse mirror would, yet it was this reflective dome which emitted the bright light consuming all.
“It’s the Watchers....they’ve found us!” Scratch observed, enlightened and very much afraid.
“You’re right about that,” Bari acknowledged. Then, to Salvatia, she said, “I do apologize, but your blessed sisters could not make it this evening. What, with the Watchers here and all, and with what was coming down, they made an about-face and dispersed, leaving your stupid ass here to fend for yourself....”
“You adulterous whore!” Salvatia roared. “You set me up!”
“You set yourself up,” said Bari. “Don’t worry, it was all meant to be.”
Salvatia struggled for another word but could not find one, nor could she conceive one thought to give rise to another, as a congress of Watchers surrounded her and subdued her. By the very touch of their multitude of tenuous hands and outstretched fingers upon the now-coppery flesh of her upper torso, Salvatia grew rapidly pacified as though subjected to the tranquility of an anesthetic secreted into her system by some magical means.
The Watchers closed in about her, embracing her, violating the decreasing tempest of invisible air currents below her waist with their intrusive bodies and hands. Collectively, the foray reached their hands beneath her, into the air currents and up into her, inside of her, fingers probing and digging upwards