Wrapped in his blanket beside the campfire, Ehomba’s left leg twitched restively.
* * * *
Ahlitah was dizzy. Not from chasing his tail, which when absolutely convinced no one and nothing else was watching he would occasionally do to relieve unrelenting boredom, but from trying to maintain an alien and utterly unaccustomed posture. With each step he took, no matter how short and cautious, he was convinced, absolutely certain, that he was going to fall over. Yet despite his fear and misgivings, he did not.
By all that ran and crawled and swam and flew, what had happened to his other pair of legs?
And his eyes. And his ears, and his nose! Though he could see adequately, the acuity of vision he usually enjoyed had been replaced by a pale, fuzzy imitation of normal sight. Objects located more than a short distance away were unidentifiable. Anything at a reasonable distance blended invisibly into the landscape or the horizon. Furthermore, it was as if he were gazing through a steady downpour. Colors were washed out or absent entirely. It was horrible: He felt half blinded.
Nothing was audible except that which was in his immediate vicinity. The familiar panoply of distant sounds, the constant susurration of animate life, was entirely absent. It was as if the world had suddenly gone silent. There were noises and the echoes of movement close by, but nothing else. No complaining insects, no scuttling lizards or slithering snakes, no chirping birds. The wing-beats of dragonets no longer whispered in his ears, and the delectable murmur of prey animals cropping grass was sorely wanting.