Hasa wasn’t taking any chances. You didn’t get many in the Viisiiviisii. Rising, he surveyed the scenery that surrounded their unexpectedly luxurious place of rest. Though his vision was not as acute as Jemunu-jah’s, it was unusually sharp for a human. Years of experience had contributed to a heightening of his senses. It was one of the main reasons he was still alive.
There was definitely something out there, and it definitely had its eyes on them. If they were eyes in the normal sense, he reflected. Several difficult-to-classify inhabitants of the Viisiiviisii exhibited some remarkable adaptations to light. A number of them were able to perceive shadowing and movement with the aid of sophisticated organic instrumentalities that could not properly be called eyes.
The air was filled with the calls and cries of unseen creatures that rose above the patter of falling rain and the drip-drip of individual droplets wending their way downward from the tips of leaves and fungi. The sounds made by the concealed were sharp and clear, designed to be discernible above, or rather through, even a substantial downpour. Through the trees flashed something with the sheen of polished ivory, trailing feathers or filaments that were tipped with luminescent gold. They might constitute the tail of some fantastic flying organism, the bright metallic appendages designed to attract potential mates. Or they might be a mimic protruding from the mouth of something large and hungry, designed to attract the potential mates of another creature with a false tail similar in color and shape. Eat, mate, live, die. That was life in the Viisiiviisii.