It’s a long and hard ride through the dense void of the Shit. But the beats of the giant worm’s hearts are steadfast. You feel at ease inside the animal’s flesh. The regular rumblings, the sloshing peristaltics—they’re soothing, time-dissolving. So you swim, content; and you burrow, and you crawl, through the endless and desolate loam.

The cartilage coffin squeezes you tightly, as it breathes in tune with the mighty waves of segmental contraction. Used to be that the sensation of live-burial could hook its jaws at any inopportune time. Make you panicky. Make you draw too much from one of the worm’s slimy vessels, get airsick. A fluctuation in the Shit might then spell dizziness, hallucinations. Happened to all riders, sooner or later—so they found ways to blunt themselves. Maybe knock down a tonic or two, or smoke unrefined frass. 

Not you. Don't need it. Not any more. 

The compass twitches against your chest. It’s found a new pole. That’d be, what, the ninth shunt? 

Getting close to Ochre, then.

?

The worm slips into the cave town. You slip out of the worm.

Ochre’s gaslamps and luminous fungi burn prodigiously, but the city isn’t keen on sharing its light. Only the dregs of it reaches the skirts to wash the stable in a pallid grey.

Echoes are harder to hoard: Yeah—that’s the hustle and bustle of the main winding, for sure. And below it all, the simmering undercurrent of violence. You think you don't miss it. 

You watch the stable boy disconnect the cargotrail and then fumble at the worm’s prostomium. The boy jumps when you snort. “You won’t find a ring. No spurs in the coffin neither.”

He furrows his brow. “But how d’you steer?”

You show the boy. You clasp your hand over his, pressing them both against the worm's bristled skin. 

“Now,” you say. “Tell her—be polite, mind—to go coil in the pit. Think it. See it happen in your mind.”  

A deep creaking reverberates from within the giant animal. And then she moves, and the earth with her. The boy can’t contain his wide-eyed wonder. “Did you see that, Mrs? Did you?”

You tussle his hair. Good-natured kid. His changeover ought to be gentle.

“Remember this. Pain is a blunt tool. It mars the material.”

The boy thinks about this. He shoots you a troubled look. 

“You’re a settler, aren’t you?”

You nod.

“You shouldn’t be here. Aphodine doesn’t like settlers.”

“Who’s Aphodine?”

“Suppose she’s the new sheriff,” the boy says, frowning at Ochre. “Since she went and killed the old one.”

?

The yeaskey goes down quickly, as does the turn of events.

The tension latches onto the inside of the saloon's belly like a parasitoid. It grows, displacing the out-of-tune playing of music and cards. Everyone feels it—something’s gonna burst. And no-one wants to be part of the viscera, so the Shell's patrons turn deaf and mute. Except for the frass-smokers, who habitually shroud the stale air in spirals of purple smoke and prose from another plane.

“I said,” the woman repeats, “look at me when I talk to you.”

The blotchy fire in her eyes tell of the overuse of poorly refined lightdrops. She keeps doing them, the photosensitivity is gonna burn a hole in her soul. But then, she doesn’t strike you as the forward-thinking type. Her fingers incessantly tease one of the dartsacs hanging from her belt. The weapon convulses eagerly. “What’re you doing here, wormfucker?”

“Need new airstones. The miasma's real bad. We've some choice mushroom to trade, if you’re—”

“Do I look like a fuckin’ peddler?” She taps her chest, the iron star chiming hollowly. “I’m the law. D’you know what that makes you?”

Silence.

“Alright,” you say. The sound of the barstool scraping against the floor is deafening. “May your days be damp, sheriff. I’d best—” 

Aphodine’s grip is strong, cruel. She pulls you from the Shell, throwing you into the dirty winding outside that’s yielded itself for the prospect of violence. You crash into an oblivious fatling grub, startling it. It thunders away, emitting knife-sharp gurglings. 

It's just you and Aphodine. And all of Ochre, watching from the shadows.

The woman manipulates her dartsacs with a degree of proficiency that’s liable to be infamous. She teases the tips of the bony love darts, cruelly barbed, from the pressure glands. “Pretty, aren’t they? Pa bred ‘em hisself.”

One of the ‘sacs lands with a bubbly whimper in the dirt at your feet.

“We don’t want to do this,” you say.

“And there it is,” Aphodine says. She raises her voice for the unseen crowd: “Ya’ll hear that? We, we, we. Fuckin’ creepy.”

She spits on the ground.  “I know what you are, wormfucker. Gettin’ into people’s heads.” She spits. “Yeah. I know.”

“Please. We have mushroom, juicy fruiting bodies—”

“Shut the fuck up. Pick it up.”

The heft is simple. The wriggling intimate and known. A previous life pushes to the topsoil. You contemplate it calmly, and you think you could leave it in the ground. But you walk the steps.

And you wait the wait. 

Until you and Aphodine reach that blink of each other's eye.

Your speed is inhuman. The realisation reaches Aphodine long after your dart does. 

She falls. 

You smile a smile that won’t live long enough to grow, but you can't help it. You just find it damn funny—that Aphodine’s dartsac accidentally releases when she lands on it, the dart finding you and

it pushes into your eye, into your brain

it scrapes against the back of your skull, your mind

your thoughts burst

onto the ground

you’re broken 

not again, don't want to go back

but

grab it and pull

scoop yourself from the ground

it’s fine

after all, there’re so many of you

you knit, you mend the flesh

all of you will permeate

permeate and rebuild

oh, you don’t need you, not really. But you want you anyway.

You love you. Before you met you, you were just meat—you didn’t even know you were miserable and alone, like all the other wretches of Ochre. Now you’re a vector of thought. 

Now you’re complete. You’re mended.

You drop the gory dart on the ground as you bend down. You scoop up some squirming pieces of you that haven’t yet burrowed down in the regression of disconnect. You push them into the absence in your face, dirt and blood spilling down your cheek. It’s fine.

Aphodine’s sitting on the ground. White-faced, she stares at the iron star in her shaking hands. 

Your dart is buried dead center in its heart. Barely nicked any skin.

“May your days be damp,” you say.

?

You slip into the worm. The worm slips out of Ochre. 

You leave the cargotrail. Someone will claim the egg-infused mushroom harvest. Your gift to the unloved. Maybe the good-natured boy. It would be fitting.

Love will disseminate.