Then, with the volume and force of a locomotive’s horn, it roared, sending me cowering to the ground. When it stopped, I opened my eyes and gingerly removed my palms from my ears. A new message came then, barely audible, now that my attention was total. Gone is the Bloom of God.

“Okay... How do you get it back?”

Like a breeze that sifts through reeds, the creature answered, Find the Chime, the Note of Jecca.

I put my hands out beseechingly, stood slowly, spoke quietly, “I will do everything I can to help you find what you are looking for.” I glanced to Patton, who cradled Pickles. “But… we really have to go to the bathroom. We need to eat and drink. Maybe if we had some food, I’d be able to think more clearly. Do you guys do that? Eat and drink?” I mouthed my words, over-enunciating them like my mom when she tells her housekeepers to “por favor no necessario dust the Precious Moments figurines.”

Seams on either side of the creature’s shovel-like head pulled apart, creating a pair of almond-shaped openings. Eyes – or more accurately, eye analogs. I had no way of telling if they served a purpose beyond providing me with a more familiar interface with which to communicate. It “looked” down at me, and then back toward a phalanx of individuals who had coalesced and now loomed in the haze.

A section of the membrane around us melted, creating an opening. I backed away. Patton sat straight down on his butt tube.

The figure stomped heavily into our space and knelt, then reached for my umbilicals, lifting them with a finger-thing. It tapped the floor. Two small holes opened from which pairs of black tubing flopped out beside my feet.

Eyes – the only label that came to mind for them – gestured for me to connect the ends.

What were they, feeding tubes, maybe? “Which one is which? Are they food or water or… or–” Eyes brushed me aside, then pointed to the longest tube at my stomach and presented the rightmost floor tube, then mimed pushing them together. Next, they directed a thick finger toward my behind, picked up the left floor tube and pointed to a glyph on the floor. I didn’t understand it, but guessed it was Scythin for shitter.

They thrust the left tube closer and pointed at my ass again.

“I got it, I got it,” I said, trying to keep my eye on the tube since it was inconveniently identical to the first. “Right goes with right, left goes with ass. Got that, Patton?” God forbid we crossed the tubes.

Eyes dropped the tube, and then turned to go.

“Hey!” I said, grasping at the bundle of smaller tubes protruding from my belly button. “What are these for?”

A whisper came as Eyes left the enclosure for the mists.

“What’d they say?” asked Patton.

“Ugh,” I groaned. “’Research’.”