The Irken and the Pendulum Ch 17

A deep frown had embedded itself on the Irken's face, and he reached up a hand once more to rub at his forehead. He stared down at the faded carpet, and the loose thread he'd been picking relentlessly at for at least the last four-and-a-half minutes. The ugly, frayed little head of the synthetic worm leered up at him, and to this point had not yielded to his plucking. It was reflective of his own mind, he'd decided. Zim had been puzzling quietly over the omniscient headache, shared for some reason between he and the human who had just recently withdrawn his companionship to go and feast his weak eyes on the primitive writings of his ancestors or whatever. Zim had learned to manipulate human languages - most of them - to his own advantage, but he wasn't a big stickler for layers and layers of tiny, flat, printed text. The few books in the library he'd managed to read properly held only mild fascination, if any. Sometimes it brought entertainment to read about the many preaching, hopes and dreams of humanity. Emphasis on sometimes.

Pluck. Hard as Zim tried, he could not pull out that small tapeworm of a memory that might lead him to some clue. It had driven itself into a hole in his mind and peered an ugly, shadowed face out at him. It contained something of interest. The sliver of a past date, a name. Perhaps. If only he could find a way to lure it out if it's corner. If it was a memory, it must be from a long time ago. His PAK had lost access to it.

The erratic frequencies were still pounding on his antennae, but he had given up on trying to cover them. Instead he'd tried listening; stretching outward a little with his antennae before retracting them again, trying to probe without experiencing a sensory shutdown by accident.

A horrendous noise tore through the ether and sent black spots careening into his vision. Swiftly, Zim turned toward the door, an enraged hiss bubbling forth, only to see that the human boy had returned.

I'm back, Zim!" Dib announced his arrival with a little too much elation, though only over having found a favourite childhood book to occupy his time. Upon being presented with a keen set of teeth - but no grin of welcome - he stopped in his tracks, looking with an affronted expression at the ruffled Irken. He was splayed in an odd recumbent position, his arms draped over a favoured cushion, legs tucked underneath him. He reminded Dib of a sphinx. An angry one.  

"Geez, what?!" An ever-faithful pain in his head nudged its way into his mind. Oh.

"Look, I'm sorry you have a sore head. I do too, and it's not like I caused it, or anything!" He spread his free arm in a helpless gesture, before trudging back to the wall to sit down awkwardly, elation fading. He pulled the thick hardcover book into his lap, almost cradling it defensively as he faced away from the offensively grumpy alien.

Said alien watched Dib and the book, snarl fading, though a liquid heat stung behind his eyes to replace it, mindful of the shock his antennae had received. Zim shoved it roughly into the corner of his mind.

Dib's mood had regressed to a subdued puzzlement. He'd rightfully disclaimed responsibility for Zim's headache. But what was causing it? if it'd just been him, Dib could have passed it off as simply dehydration or something like that. How could that affect both of them simultaneously? More importantly, what could? Having an avid interest for unexplained phenomenon, the young investigator was likely to ponder this for as long as he felt the desire to do so.

Zim had reverted his attention to poking at something on the floor, his expression eerily blank. Several moments dragged on, before he asked, with little interest, "What are you reading?"

Dib looked down at the cover, having temporarily forgotten. "Well, I haven't started yet. But it's basically a book of monster stories I used to love when I was younger. Just some light entertainment."

Zim's antennae rose cautiously. "Monsters?"

"Yeah. I'll read some aloud, if you want to hear it."

The Irken showed neither interest or disinterest to this propostion. He had succeeded in pulling loose what appeared to be a thread from the carpet, and was examining it intently. Unsure how to take this, Dib began to read, in a quiet voice. The familiar text quickly absorbed his attention, frazzled thoughts becoming merely background noise as he listened absently to his own voice repeating the words.

Some time later - either several minutes or half an hour - a shadow fell over the reader. It was only a soft shadow, and fixated on the book, he at first didn't take notice of it. It gradually slipped into his conscious and lingered at the edge of it, neither committing or retreating out of notice. Silent breathing was felt over his shoulder, and Dib gave a very small, barely noticeable shudder. At least there was no purring. He continued reading, wordlessly accepting the company.

As he prepared to flip another page, a slender, taloned finger snaked out, pressing the paper so it could not turn.

"Zim doesn't recognize this word." He sounded a touch indignant, but it was overlaid with curiosity. Dib peered at the word the finger was indicating, and smiled a little. Clearly the alien wasn't familiar with mythological terms.

"It reads 'Jormungand.'" He explained.

"Your-what?"

"Jormungand." Dib repeated. "In Norse mythology there was supposedly a huge serpent that encircled the world, having to eat its own tail to avoid falling off because of its ever-increasing size." Zim muttered something about physics that the boy didn't quite catch.

'I see. And this snake-thing was called... 'your-mun-gand?'"

"Close enough." Dib nodded.

 "Hmm..." The alien resumed with his pensive face, giving the impression he was troubled. The serpentine thread danced erratically in his hands, toyed with and coiled repeatedly around his fingers. Dib thought he heard a 'no' muttered.

"I... Zim... would not like to hear more of this." Zim waved his hand in an uncertain gesture at the book, and then at its reader. "Yes. Um. Cease with your reading. "

'Oh... okay." Dib looked down at the open book, wondering what Zim wasn't enjoying about it. Of course, it could just be that he didn't appreciate listening to Dib's voice. "I'll read in my head, though, if that's fine." 

Zim gave a vague nod, "Do as you wish," before shuffling back to his own cushion. Story time had evidently ended for him.

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The daylight crept minute by minute from the stagnant room, throwing pigmented rays across the line from the single exterior window that allowed light into the nook shared by Zim and Dib. Dib watched the deep orange wash crawling steadily back, retreating before the shadowy promise of night, before rising to move to the window. Bracing his hands on the smooth-worn windowsill, he watched the light slip behind the skyscrapers that stood like gloomy sentries beyond the long open stretch of the wheat field. Watching the sun set over the field and the city sprawling behind it was indeed an awe-inspiring sight, however, Dib was waiting for the moon. He had predicted some days before that it would be rising early tonight - and wasn't he in the perfect place to watch it? Out of the city's grip, there was still light pollution, but the sky was still considerably clearer. He'd be able to see the stark, pitted celestial disc reflect the dying light of his planet's star. Orange moons were always cool.

As the sun's powerful influence degraded to a mere glow on the horizon, Dib moved around to the far side of the building, carefully, steering clear of bookfalls and rats. He reached a window with a decent view with little light to spare - the meager illumination that had given its subjects a slightly unusual tinge - to see the very, very slight promise of new light emerging over the hill. Soft natural light, not the hard, scathing rays of a nearby star, or even the dirty, yet somehow beautiful reflection off smog in the sky.

 It was... now that he was able to see it... not the moonlight he had come expecting to see.

 Moonlight could be a soft illumination or a blazing, blinding white depending on where and how you looked at it. This was... not quite either. It was sickly, strange, and - Dib was stuck for how else to describe it - foreign. Not foreign as in the glitter of distant galaxies or even the flamboyant, spectral colours of nebulas, spied frequently through his father's telescope. In truth, it was just barely different from usual. Perhaps there was some kind of satellite interfering with the atmosphere and its light filter. Or perhaps his brain had succumbed to fatigue. In any case, it didn't seem to affect his sight of the moon so much as... well, it just made him feel strange. He couldn't quite place how the moonlight was off, but it was. Dropping his eyes to the horizon, Dib widened them, staring. What was that? He'd never known auroras to come this far south, so...

The skywatcher shivered, a fearful chill overhanging what was left of his desire to watch the night. The night leered and sneered. It had shut itself away from Dib and put up a sombre poster to deter him. He felt unwelcome here - tiredness crept into him, and the hand gripping the cold, firm wood of the sill slipped. He yawned, vision blurring, and the small pang of a headache threatening. There was nothing to do but return to bed. Rather, what he was now calling 'bed'. It was all in an attempt to ward off the homesickness that had been quietly building up, and had now, finally, reached the backs of his eyes.

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Where the meager light from outside did not reach, a shape tossed fitfully before rising and clumsily detaching itself from the shadows. Eyes, reflecting two blood-coloured moons, fixed on a prone shape tucked away in the crook of an overturned chair. The book was turned over, claws tracing over the sharp indentations on the cover, before their owner retreated gingerly back to his corner, the book in hand. He opened it swiftly, flicking through the pages faster than most humans would do. Dim spotlights roamed the black script, flitting past some words and at times pausing in confusion over a new term his AI refused to translate.

As the baleful moon slunk ever farther across a frozen autumn sky, Zim's finger scratched listlessly across another bleak yellowed page - and now came to a definite halt, tapping slowly and erratically. From the silence rose a ponderous murmur. Zim read the singular word over and over, slower to put it into context than those more familiar with fictional writing might. He flipped to the contents page. Found the word repeated there. Tried to process it again, miniature cables humming, dials ticking over, and finally, a link was suggested. The reader spoke the alien term out slowly to himself, sliding his slender tongue into the word it was not made to pronounce. At last, with a drawn-out, grinding shriek of abused technology, his faulty PAK grudgingly registered a match.

Zim drew back from the book, blinking in the fitful light as his mind and 'spooch raced a marathon. A wry serpent of a thought had finally reared its head, as his PAK sputtered and its synapses slowed to a normal pace. Grunting with bewilderment over the realization, he now had an educated idea of the what. Sort of. All he needed was the why.

Bracing his hands firmly on the same windowsill an innocent, unsuspecting human had earlier that same night, the Irken thrust his head out to stare with bitten-back nostalgia at the eerie night. His lekku were killing him, and he laid them flat, trying to stop them from flicking as frantically as they had begun to.