Pouches and the Glow Roach Forest

“No creature so repugnant could be anything other than a predator.” 

Arax’s head swam side to side in the cool dusk air, staying behind the tall roots of the strange trees. He refused to lose sight of the thing, keeping it in the stereoscope of his swaying gaze. 

“I don’t know,” Jori said, his head still but partially hidden, “it doesn’t look dangerous to me.” 

The creature in the grass clearing lurched and bobbled toward the river and its crystalline current, the same river that Arax and Jori had been following for what seemed like weeks. The new creature’s head was of ridiculous proportion, a chubby globe plopped atop round folds making up arms and legs. It crawled, dragging the cloth sack enveloping its lower half through the grass. 

“I think it’s kind of cute, Arax,” Jori said. “Those cheeks - you don’t want to just sniff them?” 

“Vemon pouches,” Arax said. “I guarantee it. The non-winged beasts are universally creatures of malice and deceit. Relying on tricks and poisons rather than strength. The codex is unambiguous as to — ” 

“I think you might be overreacting,” Jori said. 

“We are in an unfamiliar realm,” Arax said. “Lost for a number of days we cannot know, as these wretched and unfamiliar stars speak of neither time nor direction. Following a river without end, through impossible fauna, toward a future as aimless as it surely is treacherous, and you wish me to be anything but cautious? Jori, for once, might the most common of sensibilities be shared between us?” 

“We share plenty,” Jori said. He swung his neck back toward Arax and ceded control of their legs. Arax always insisted on being in charge of walking 

“A curse then,” Arax said, “that all the impulses which might doom us are found just beyond your neck.” 

Jori stretches his wing wide, itching it against the jagged tree bark. Arax knew he made it loud on purpose, just to bother him. 

“For once, our path is certain,” Arax said. “We must strike first.” He brought their body low to the grass and slithered forward. 

The beast, yet to see them, reached out at a reed. It lost it’s balance and toppled into the dirt. A shrill, warbling wail blubbered up, bursting from its open and shockingly-toothless mouth. 

“By Ort’s scales!” Arax shouted. “It has unleashed a psionic attack!” 

Arax unhinged his jaw and aimed tri-layer fangs at the infant. He lunged, flickering tongue tasting an odor most foul on the approach. 

“Stop!” Jori’s neck blocked the strike path, hovering between Arax’s open mouth and the crying thing. 

Arax swung their body, rotating to find an angle of attack, but Jori kept his own head in orbit around the would-be prey. 

“Look at it, Arax! It’s nothing!” 

Arax kept his mouth poised, prepared to lunge at the first sign of movement. This abomination would surely realize the opportunity offered to it by Jori’s belligerent foolishness.

It did not attack. It did not cast poisonous sprays, even as wet streaks tumbled over its fat, scaleless face. Those eyes, far too large, reflected the light of a single glow-roach. 

Jori approached slowly, resting his head on the ground, scale-lengths away, sniffing. The creature jumped at the gust but calmed its wails. Its open paw, plump and devoid of claws, extended.

“Careful, Jori, it may — “ 

The hand landed on Jori’s snout. Either a snarl or a smile spread on the creature’s face. It cooed like one of the morning flock from home, then made a stuttering, breathy noise. 

“Traveler,” Jori said, nudging forward. “Please. Are you of this realm? Do you know where we are? Or how we might return home?” 

“Duh-duh,” it said, halting and lisped. It raised its hands to the orange sky as it spoke. 

“Duh-duh,” Jori repeated back. 

The thing clapped its hands once and snarled again. 

“I do not recognize the dialect,” Arax said, keeping his neck curled and head far back as their body would allow. “It must be native to this wretched place. That, or a dialect so ancient that not even our codex keeps its record.” 

“It doesn’t look like anything else we’ve seen here,” Jori said. 

“Bah buh,” it said, looking up at them. 

“I think it called you ‘Bah,’” Jori said. 

“Then that would make you ‘Buh,’” Arax said. 

Jori straightened his neck upward and spread their wings wide. “I am Jori, and this Arax. We are of the Sixth lineage of the Vox’nari nest and sons of Ort. We are travelers, scientists, explorers, students. We most pleased to meet you, traveler. What is your name?” 

The small thing stared up at them, bobbing gently side to side as though it had succeeded in entering the river, or was following a current of its own. It did not speak. 

“Perhaps it has no name,” Jori said. 

“All things must have names,” Arax said. 

“Then I will instill him the name ‘Pouches,’” Jori said. “For his cheeks look to be pouches and he hides his tail within a pouch at his legs.” 

The thing now deemed “Pouches” unleashed a fresh coo at this bastardized naming ceremony. 

Arax whipped his head side to side, raising high and surveying the field. The water lapped gently beside them. Darkness grew, and the unsettling ritual of this place began. Punctuating the dark air were pinprick lights atop the backs of small, winged beasts. 

“The spark beetles are coming out again,” Jori said with all the casualness of a half-wit. 

“We must leave,”” Arax said. Jori never saw the utility in a name that conveys meaning. Glow-roach was far superior a descriptor, and what Arax would write of in the codex on their return. “Find camp before we are overwhelmed by these creatures.” 

“Across how many nights have we seen them,” Jori said, “with no harm? Nothing here has ever hurt us.” 

“How thrilled then the danger will be when it arrives on the back of your complacency,” Arax said, dodging the slow-moving flight of the green-glowing pests. “There is no trust to be had for creatures which rob the sky of its starlight.” 

Jori swept his mouth across the ground, collecting a tangle of tall grass and spiral weeds. He pressed it onto their back, between their shoulder spines, until the clump was packed and steady. 

“Jori, what — “ 

Before Arax could protest or protect, Jori had gripped Pouches by his brown tail-sack and moved to set him on the impromptu nest. 

“No!” Arax said, walking and zigzagging beneath the swaying small one whose chortles and chirps rang as a clear alarm. “You would invite your cataclysm to our body!” 

“Hold still,” Jori said between clenched teeth. 

Arax tried to squirm but could not outmaneuver the neck which could not help but follow. Jori wrestled him for control of their legs and succeeded in slowing them enough to drop the infant into the spot. 

Arax moaned and hissed. “We are defiled by our vulnerability.”

“Arax, please,” Jori said, smoothly ceding control of their feet once again. “Pouches might help us get home.” 

“If the den you wish for,” Arax said, “is an early grave, then this creature may very well guide us there.” 

“I’ve yet to see any of your ideas work,” Jori said. 

Arax snorted but would not pick this fight. They needed a camp, and were flying far behind the settling dark. There was no telling what threats would seize on this, their first failure to secure station before nightfall. They would prioritize camp, and only then discuss their next move. 

And should a threat emerge tonight, at least they had new bait with which to distract it. 

#

Arax crushed the speckled violet beneath their foot. This new breed of flower, which they had found an ocean’s worth this morning, obliterated easily. The plants smelled of something desperately familiar, yet Arax could not put a claw as to what it was. It filled their chest with a scent that ached of home, though, and this was as much a clue to their return as anything. In a land that bled strangeness, even a shadow of familiarity must be a clue toward returning. 

Jori watched as Arax worked, letting him freely use their body to scoop up and squish bundle after bundle of the new flowers until a heap of weeping mush sat before them. 

Pouches sat on the dirt in the clearing created by Arax’s harvest. It brought a fruit to its mouth, ripping flesh off. Fruit juice soaked its maw and ran down its chest. In this, Arax saw the first glimpse of familiarity to the dragons from home. It was not endearing, but it was at least a step away from repulsive and disturbing. 

Unlike the night prior, which had been full of horrors wrought by the unpredictable outbursts of Pouches. Its sleep was fragmented with constant motion and gurgles, none of which Pouches was content to keep to itself. Tiny slaps and kicks peppered Arax’s night and this morning he wondered if he had indeed been poisoned without realizing, for his mind fogged and his body ached. 

Pouches, unsatisfied for having sapped their strength overnight, shrieked and screamed for hours this morning, without purpose or pause. Jori had tried everything they could think of, but no amount of fish set before Pouches or rocky dens in which to rest seemed to quiet it. Thinking that perhaps it needed to sun unobstructed, Jori had removed its cover-sack to real dual horrors. First, that it had no tail. None. A fact which spat in nature’s face and would be ridiculed if ever attempted to be entered into the codex. Yet the second realization was worse, that the creature did in fact possess a capacity for venom. However, it seemed incapable or unlearned in directing it, instead only harming its own hind. It required many dips into the running river to cleanse the poison from Pouches’ body, and longer to purge its sack. Arax insisted that Jori replace the cover, for he could not bear the deformities to be out in the open. Only once Jori offered a fruit to Pouches did the crying finally abate. Arax would not have been dismayed were the fruit to turn out poison. So far it seemed not to be. 

“You’ve succeeded in making a mess,” Jori said, eyeing the pile of flower debris. “But I don’t see how it’ll get us home.” 

“There is no sense to this realm’s alchemy,” Arax said, packing the flower remnants into a tight ball. “We fly blindly on currents that promise no destination. All we can do is try.” 

“It seems like we keep trying the same thing,” Jori said, looking back at Pouches. 

“In learning what fails,” Arax said, “we grow closer to that which will not.” 

Jori was correct, that every attempt thus far had been met with failure. They had uprooted forests to find the roots connecting tree to tree, no apparent mechanism for extracting nutrient - only growing into the next iteration. They tunneled through mountains and shattered crimson jewels beneath foot and flame. They had flown high without new vantage and swam as far beneath the bottomless river surface as they could tolerate. Arax had incinerated stone walls, shred leagues of species of fern, and flower, and tree. Nothing yielded result or effect. This place was constant in its indifference. Offering only stagnation and futility. 

Arax spit a tight, blue flame into the center of the flower pulp clump. The ignition was slow, creeping around the orb. Thin, gray smoke trickled from the flame’s edge. The instant the smoke rose to meet his head, recognition stormed Arax. In the form of a long-gone memory. Before their wings had thickened or his hind teeth erupted. Curled against smooth slate in their youth den, shivering uncontrolled in spite of the summer heat. A fire in front of them that paled in comparison to the fever inside. Their mother, proud and glistening, wrapped her tail around them such that each of their heads could rest on its end. 

“Your fire is coming in,” she’d whispered in a lullaby that told a story. “I know it hurts, darlings, and it will pass. Your fire gives you warmth as much as it burns.” 

Arax remembered watching her place a branch, dark with violet blossoms, into the fire. The smell - so similar to the one filling him up now - smoothed his rigors and let him drift into a fitful sleep. 

Jori must have been remembering something similar, Arax realized, for he’d stopped his idle motion and chatter to stare at the burning pile while looking far past it. 

Silently, the pile extinguished, the smoke dissipating. They were no closer to returning to their land. 

Frustration and anger released their reigns on rage and Arax reached his head to the sky, inhaling this unwelcome, foreign air so that he might roar at an uncaring sky. But, just as the cry was at the cusp of release, he stopped. 

Below him, near the dirt, a small hand pressed itself into his leg. It supported a wobbling Pouches who extended its free hand upward toward Arax. Be it by accident or not, a final piece of fruit rested in that small, sticky hand.

Arax leaned in. The fruit’s smell, as sickly sweet as it was, was overrun by the odd scent of Pouches himself. Arax had no name for what that smell was, but thought it akin to a warm rock in the sun. He licked up the fruit piece.

“Bah.” Pouches said, before settling onto the ground and closing its eyes. Stomach pressed against Arax’s foot, head resting on his toe.

Arax stared, as baffled by this creature as he was by this realm. 

“We’ll find a way home,” Jori said. 

Arax did not have anything to say back. 

#

Night crept up on them again, as it was prone to do so long as Pouches was in tow. They’d flown over the flower field for hours before deciding it may be endless. Unsure of what the fields offered at night, and needing somewhere they could forage for shelter, they’d returned to the river bank. Pouches had consumed a formidable amount of fruit through the day, and was so sticky that they lost most of the nest to his skin when Jori picked him up. The rinse in the river took twice as long as before, but Pouches offered blissfully little resistance. 

The first glow-roach blinked into existence just as Jori finished shaking Pouches’ bottom sack dry. Tendrils of dread worked their way up Arax. 

“I am sorry, Jori,” Arax said. 

“For what?” Jori said, wrangling Pouches back into the sack. 

“I have hunted for revelation and found not even its trail,” Arax said. “No matter what we pry open, incinerate, crush, or dissect there is nothing. No clue or hint to a pathway home. This realm holds its secrets in places I do not know to look.” 

Pouches crawled in an erratic path toward the glow-roach hovering near the grass, cooing at the green luminance. 

“I do not think I can get us home,” Arax said. 

Jori laid his neck on the bank, and Arax followed with their body. They lay like that for many minutes, watching Pouches clamor and chortle. 

“How do you think Pouches survived this long?” Jori said. “It seems so…aimless.” 

“I have wondered the same.” 

More green, tiny lights rode along buzzing wings They seemed to cascade off one another until the entire bank glowed. 

“Do you want to go?” Jori said. 

Pouches raised up a hand, catching an unsuspecting glow-roach in the back. It bobbed away in the air, neither it nor Pouches seeming injured from the collision. 

“No,” Arax sighed. “The ground here is soft, and the rest needed. I…you are right. These have never hurt us.”

Pouches fell forward at the apex of an overly-ambitious reach, rolling onto the grass. A whimpering, weak cry tested itself. Its eyes wetted and collected light in the reflection. Arax braced for the scream. Instead, Pouches reached up one finger. A single glow-roach landed on the finger. Pouches sat upright, smiling and giggling at the glow holding tight. 

“Arax…” 

Jori stared upward. The concern in his voice jolted Arax upright, tense and looking for whatever threat had finally caught up to them. 

The sky was a sea of light. Glow-roaches descended from high, flowing in streams like a tributaries toward the river below. Thousands, millions of them casting a light nearly brighter than this realm’s daystar. 

“So many spark beetles,” Jori said, each word drawn out in awe. 

Even if they wanted to run, there was nowhere to go. Cords of green light surrounded them, criss-crossing into a moving net that might as well have been a wall. 

“Pouches!” Jori shouted, lunging forward. Arax caught their motion, frozen in uncertain fear. Jori’s neck stretched, but too far to reach.

Pouches sat upright, arms held skyward, head back. Hundreds of glow-roaches dotted those plump, rounded arms. Pouches swayed in their current, smiling wide and huffing in a noise which sounded…joyous. Not pained. 

The swirl of green glow behind Pouches grew brighter, until the space between the tiny, flying wings rippled. An image coalesced, seen as though a reflection in water. A dwelling. Next to it were creatures of Pouches’ kind, but larger. Running. 

“Duh-duh,” Pouches said. Pointing not at that scene, but behind Jori’s head. 

Arax turned to see a rippling, quivering surface of the same type, but gazing out over familiar fields of stone and ivy. Faint, on the back of the wind, the sound of flapping. 

The shimmer behind Pouches inched forward. Arax felt warmer wind on his hind leg, on the tips of their wings, and knew the same forward creep moved behind them. 

Pouches reached a clawless hand in their direction, opening and closing in the air. 

“Farewell, small traveler,” Jori said, lying his head down at Pouches’ level. 

“Bah buh,” Pouches said, still smiling big.