THERE IS A SORT of emptiness that fills things just as well as solidity. A zero must circle something and fill a space to aid numerologists in want of a digit.
'We are missing someone?' Sister Tinker Flosstooth said, eyes sharply evaluating mistiness that refused to solidify into regularity.
'Speak for yourself,' came a comfortable reply.
'I am,' Flosstooth quickly countered and frowned at the space where for one brief moment a sense of presence had lingered, then melted away like a change of mood.
'Always dissipating, that one,' another voice added a reassuring detail.
'Nevertheless, matters do not engender malingering. What say you Merryhop? Anything good to lighten the mood as we go forward? I note you are due a sojourn in the merry land of Arbornica.'
Those with eyes to see and could see with them, despite the strangeness all around, turned their collective gaze upon a jauntily swathed figure who had remained silent since the tasks in hand were portioned out by mysterious agencies that would bear no scrutiny.
'Spiders,' was all Sister Tinker Merryhop said with a leaden-toned voice of distaste.
'Ah,' someone sympathised. 'The jumping ones can be fun, especially when they miss their aim.'
'I'll bear that in mind. No time like the present, whatever that might be,' Merryhop said and waved her varnished staff at swirls of vapour before she wandered through a maze of light and energy and found herself amid the sinister forests of the legendary land of Arbornica. 'Oh joy,' she added as she pondered her next move.
Moon spiders.
It had a nice sound to it, if one could interchange meaning, perhaps by turning spiders into cakes with pale pink topping.
Cakes though, no matter how one looked at them, could never be persuaded to swarm.
Scooping up a spider trapped in some slippery bath and sending it on its scuttling way seemed a good deed in the eyes of some, especially spiders themselves. Were they grateful? Would they ensure a plague of boring beetles cease to drill holes in precious tomes in search of digestible knowledge?
Yes. They would.
It had been Tinker Dozen's idea to engender a sense of kindness and reciprocity among the gloomy folk of Arbornica some decades back. As his name suggested, he liked to work in multiples, but sometimes such manipulations could get out of hand. Population control was a tricky business at the best of times. Population explosions were a different order of chaos all together.
In this particular Summer Pause, seriously sultry in such a climate as Arbornica was heir to, matters were multiplying indeed.
Sister Tinker Merryhop shivered as she pondered the rippling shadows of a land where darkness was merely another word for reality.