Fandom: The mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, specifically 'The Dunwich Horror'
Title: This gem of a world
Pairing: Lavinia Whateley/Yog Sothoth
Rating: T
Wordcount 832
Disclaimer: I have no idea who owns the copyright to any of this, but it isn't me. I'm just playing in the sandbox, as usual.
Warnings: purple prose. Lack of explicit tentacles (feel free to imagine as many as you like, doing whatever you want them to do).
***
It had many names, in many worlds. It knew the sound of them all; in the staccato clicks of the Yithians; in the subtle dance of colours across chameleonic submarine skin; in electromagnetic signals tingling between fungoid semi-vegetable intellects. But the one which made itself apparent in the crucial, restless moment of Its imprisonment, was transmitted in simple acoustic waves from the vocal apparatus of one hominid into the void: Yog Sothoth.
A shudder of light; the faint crackle of electrical discharge. A rip emerged in the quark-thin sheen that separated realities, torn by the sound of Its name at just the right juncture in space and time. Slowly at first, then with gathering velocity, the Words poured in accompanied by a faint drizzle of rain.
The opening was small, but the Words nibbled at the edges, consuming only slightly faster than the sheen could repair itself. Yog Sothoth looked with eyes newly formed. A head became visible, crinkled and strung all over with filaments. A male. His vocalisations were hoarse, and he made no attempt at song, but the words were loud and strong, and did not waver even as Yog Sothoth eased a minute aspect of Its Self through the rip between realities, partly visible in the sporadic light of the electrical storm and Its own pale phosphorescence.
Here, on a wind-whipped hilltop in some verdant, wet land, amid a circle of worn, grey stones, time was a palpable force. It was a rushing sensation, as of something passing by that should in all sensible planes be held still. But the discomfort of this reality was secondary to the intense and wonderful – and brief, oh so brief in this place where time ipassed/i and was not subject to Its whim – sensation of freedom.
Unevenly straddling realities - one appendage dangled into the time-cursed, alien dimension, Its remaining bulk pressed ineffectually on the edges of the Word-nibbled rip - Yog Sothoth cast around for the vessel. Clothed in carbon and calcium, sheathed in muscle and keratin, the vessel pulsed with its own tiny lifebeat. So small and so horribly fragile, but probably the best that could emerge from the current denizens of this world.
The vessel raised her head. Her pupils darted this way and that, tracing lines of light that flowed on and through and around the many forms of Its manifestation. Her lips curled upwards at the edges, and she reached out with her bare, white hands. Sentient, then, and informed; that was all for the better.
Manipulation of matter was a precise art. Just the right combination of proteins, the right arrangement of molecules. No margin for error. Too much of one thing, too little of another, and there would be no way to reclaim this gem of a world and pull it back into the caress of a whole and proper reality. Without fertilization, without unhindered gestation, there might never be another chance to scour this glorious molten world of the organic plague which spread across its landmasses and throughout its oceans, and render it habitable once again.
Ironic that two such small proponents of that organic plague would choose to bring about their own and their fellows' destruction. They saw the truth, It supposed, where others in their small selfish ways could not.
What the vessel perceived could never be predicted. This one was silent, biting on the inside of her lip, limbs tense, but not even close to struggling. Shrouded in light, she was intimate witness to the melding of material from two separate realities, but the degree to which she was aware of the mechanics, of the process, was questionable.
There were no witnesses, just the source of the Words - his genetic material so similar to the vessel's that they must be kin. A lack of witnesses meant reduced danger to the new lives, a lesson learnt slowly and painfully on other worlds and in other times.
Finally, it was done. The Words petered out, their corrosive efforts quickly reversed. The rip began to close.
The vessel stood, her kinsman's hand around her arm. She clasped her abdomen, but what the gesture portended was unclear. Yog Sothoth retreated; It had done all that It could.
Its consciousness again settled within the safe comfort of Its prison, Yog Sothoth perceived the strange new link between here and the reality wherein Its young would grow and thrive. It was as though a tether bound the two planes, keeping them close. A good thing, it would enable a certain degree of observation under the right conditions. But there was something off, a discordant, bubbling hiss like the escape of pressurised gasses through vents in some distant sea floor. Yog Sothoth shifted uncomfortably, and shuddered at the grating intrusion of time, the new necessity for patience.
Tethered, yes. Until the young came of age, and the universe could be put to rights.
Nothing more to do now but wait.