Something big is trapped inside it, they told her. Poison and horror and pain. It comes out when you pull the ring. It burns! And then they showed her the pictures again that she didn’t want to see, and she started to sing, but the silbercows didn’t go away, they just kept pressing the pictures into her mind. The ocean torn apart with a terrible light. The noise and the shaking, and silbercows crying, and everything gone. Stop, she cried, please.

It’s not safe to keep that thing near you as a treasure, they told her.

Not safe? Should I take it somewhere else? she asked, noticing that, ever so slowly, the silbercows were backing away.

If you do, they told her, wherever you take it won’t be safe.

Should I throw it on land?

No! That could kill humans!

Should I bury it under the ground?

Maybe, they said doubtfully. But what if the water uncovers it again, and someone pulls the ring?

But then what can I do? cried the creature. I have to keep it near me, and guard it! I have to keep it safe!

The silbercows, who were still backing away, told her that it could never be safe. Then they told her that they had to go away now, because they couldn’t be near it.

Then, to her amazement, they turned and fled.

—

Finally, the creature had what she wanted. Solitude.

The ocean floor spread out around her, quiet and dark, and life was how it had used to be.

Except now, when the creature held her Storyworld to one of her eyes and looked inside it, she remembered that the silbercows had wanted to talk about who the two bodies were. Why they were there. The creature still didn’t want to know those things. But it had changed her Storyworld, that there were stories connected to it that she didn’t know.

And when she lifted her ringed tentacle to the brighter water above, admiring its sparkle, she missed the silbercows trying to press upon her the story of the sad human who’d lost it. When someone tried to press a story on you, you needed to be able to refuse. But it was also nice to know that the story would be there again for you another day, if you changed your mind. If you were ready.

The creature was lonely, for the first time.

She began to play games in her mind, invent fantasies, of ways to make the scary egg treasure go away, so that the silbercows could come back. Not come back often, but visit sometimes.

Eventually her fantasies turned into ideas, which she studied and revised, until one day, her ideas became a plan.