Sailing Ether Tides

Sailing Ether Tides

Ch: 46 …And The Man In The Moon

Gary Ward woke from a terrible, unremembered nightmare, his head throbbing and his mouth, nose, eyes and ears plugged with some kind of clear, silvery snot that tasted vaguely salty…

“Gross.” He croaked, finding himself naked and alone in an unfamiliar forest. “Where the fuck am I?” He demanded softly as he got up out of a shallow crater shaped like his own body.

Dense forest surrounded him, as far as he could see. Not the light, breezy upland woods of Foresthome, this was a close packed, fern drenched, moss engulfed, old growth forest untouched by man’s workings in… who could really say?

He spent a moment wondering what the fuck a ‘Foresthome’ was and where the hell he’d found himself...

The sun was low on the horizon… or maybe just coming up, if this was a morning chill creeping over his bare skin. Even less encouraging, the upper branches were festooned with spider webs, stretching off in an orderly net as far as the eye could see.

No dusty, tattered cobwebs or manky, bundled corpses littered the area, so he wasn’t in anything’s actual lair… unless it was smart.

He spent a few moments more, considering where that kind of certain knowledge could have come from. Last thing he remembered, he’d been riding his bike home to his inn by the river in Wheatford… He shook his head wildly in an attempt to clear the fog. Even his name was hazy and indistinct…

‘Barry? Gary? Wheatford? Home?’

Those thoughts swirled madly in his head as he slowly realized he was standing up straight… His crippled leg and back were not shrieking at him to hunch back over lr fall down… that was super weird… and felt absolutely right.

“What’s this? A primate of some kind?” A musical voice sang from a shady bough high above.

“Who interrupts my meditations with a tasty treat? Who brought me a snack?” She asked, scuttling down the tree on six of her shiny black legs.

Two forelimbs held a harp made of animal bones, strung with silver threads of spidersilk, played and manipulated by her pedipalps, which drew his gaze to her long, gleaming black fangs. Her shiny, black body bore the red hourglass of a widow, bringing an even larger lump into his throat.

“Come out, suitor, I’ve already feasted on my mate, we can have a chat, share this morsel and then you can decide whether to join him in my egg bundle.” She sang sweetly, while crawling his way.

Nearly four feet tall at the apex of her abdomen, she was at least twice his mass and a very terrifying figure of menace, as she edged closer, peering at Barry’s panic stricken form.

“I, uhh… I’m lost, ma’am.” He stammered, backing away as carefully as he could on the uneven ground.

She stopped in place and slowly scuttled in a half circle one way, and then the other. “Who spoke? Come out, I already promised to ask permission before consuming you.” Her harp held a note of irritation and curiosity.

“No more games, show yourself.”

Barry… Or whoever he was, waved at the giant arachnid, lurking a few short yards away. “That’s me.” He said very slowly and clearly. “I really, really didn’t come here to be your mate or dinner. I’m just lost.”

It was at that point that Barry… Yes, Barry realized he wasn’t speaking a human language, rather he was emitting a sweet, soaring whalesong from his lungs. In tone, it was the strangest amalgam of a cello, played with a musical saw and a pipe organ.

“Weird…” He sang in that droning, musical language by instinct, drawing on something that felt right inside himself.

“Really, a primate that speaks… interesting, too interesting to eat, I’m afraid…” She clacked her fangs at him in irritation. “Now I am peckish…”

#

“Where the fuck is Barry?” Perry demanded, when Ward showed up in Rio’s house, where the boys were bunked, just before dawn.

“We heard a loud noise from his room and when we got there, he was gone!”

“It sounded kinda familiar, like breaking glass and tearing metal.” Harry added, a desperate and fearful look in his eyes. “It really set us all on edge, even before we realized he was gone.”

“First thing, Barry is safe, relatively speaking… Second thing; I’m sorry. I underestimated just how badly Dana is taking this whole business.” The family god murmured awkwardly.

“The crazy bitch actually slapped him! The sound you heard was the deity of interdimensional fuckery, Truck-kun.” He shook his head in wonder at the situation. “She got pissed off and isekaied him one etheric void down the way, into Thirp’s homeworld. Truck-kun is the guardian of lost and broken souls and the guide between realms, her actions summoned him here, nice guy...” He sighed tiredly.

“Thirp’s working on getting him back now, she’s a pretty big deal there.”

#

Dana, the Healer of Wounds found herself in the awkward position of being actually wounded, and unable to do a single thing about it besides suffer. Her right hand was a red, swollen, throbbing and painful mess, exuding a silver slime and crawling with new and unfamiliar sensations, like itching, burning, crawling skin, electric tingles and zaps, aches and general discomfort in all its many flavors and subtle shades.

She was also in huge trouble and was currently being yelled at by yet another in a long line of angry beings, both divine and eldritch.

Currently it was a spider of truly awesome size and scope, raining dissatisfaction on her from a very great height.

“...the offspring of a personal friend of my ambassatrix to this domain… Can you imagine how embarrassing it would have been, had one of mine consumed him?”

Aclintherios, the primary deity of a very robust and well connected dimension, just one short etheric void away, was really giving it to the goddess of Healing from next door when Thirp arrived.

Her web sacks swelled with pride, as she watched her patron deity crush the prideful and obstinate little bint with his righteous anger.

“That entirely discounts the affront of launching a living, corporeal mortal into my realm without so much as asking for permission!” He dribbled venom from his fangs, letting Dana know exactly how cross he was. The orange vapor the stuff exuded when exposed to a mortal aura smelt of the finest incense spices and the sap of the chula tree, prized in every realm for the rich, sweet scent it produced.

She scuttled away, giggling with excitement at her deity’s silent commands, transmitted into her essence through their bond.

With swift, sure movements, she spun a complex veil of webbing between two slender trees and focused her divine and sublime Will onto her lacy construct, opening a doorway into another realm, following the path her quarry had smashed on his sudden, violent trip through the etheric veil.

#

“Never mind that the lad’s father is a personal friend of mine, whom you have been abusing pretty terribly, from what I hear.” The spider deity stood mountain high and valley wide, dominating the area with his essence and power.

He stood before them, a notable and potent deity in his own right, with interdimensional law on his side.

“Now explain to me why this young primate wound up in the web of one of my followers, who nearly devoured him.”

Dana found few answers that were satisfactory to the towering being of cosmic might… and his aura of profound arachnid discontent.

#

Barry was still slowly backing away from the terrifying spider, who seemed content to follow him at a distance. Occasionally she would call out to him, pleading that he stop, before he wound up stumbling into ‘something dangerous’…

“Well then stop following me!” He called back, secretly enjoying the experience of singing the sweet, droning song of the spider kin.

“My visual acuity is not so great… Yet I am commanded to watch over you; now you insist on fleeing the range of my vision…” She sang in mild annoyance.

“Are you sure I can’t bundle you into a nice snug cocoon?”

“No, I’m good… how close do I have to be, for you to ‘watch over me’?” He asked, feeling a little foolish.

“Outside my webs?” She played a tinkling spray of icy, crystalline high notes from her bone and silk harp. His strange translation power told him that was a spidery laugh of self deprecating amusement. “I am a lurker in webs and spinner of snares… very close indeed, young monkey.”

“That’s a hard no.” He answered firmly.

“I suspected you would be unwilling to stand between my forelimbs… Just as you are unwilling to return to my web and wait there…?” She sounded faintly hopeful on that last suggestion.

“Step into your parlor? I’d rather not, Ma’am.” Barry paused when a soft, subtle tearing sound came from behind him. A moment later, the massive black widow bent low, placing herself entirely on the forest floor in an arachnid bow of reverence. Slowly he turned around and found himself facing another gigantic spider.

This one was white, as big as a small pony, with tawny, golden lightning bolt markings on her furry body. Somehow he knew this being was female… and vaguely familiar. She scuttled forward in a few quick hops and skitters, sending shivers down his spine.

He turned, trying to keep both creatures in his line of sight, without stumbling into, he assumed, even more damn spiders.

“Barry Ward, My name is Thirp… I’m a friend of your family, though we haven’t met.” She spoke the human tongue with an accent and meter similar to his papa’s, as though she’d learned to speak it from him; a suspicion that slowly grew in his mind as she continued.

“Blessed Dana, Healer of Wounds has completely, as your father would say, ‘fucked up’.” She giggled a little and bounced on her many, many knees.

“She attacked your spiritual form, the capsule of aura and Animus that contains your soul and keeps you tucked inside your body, where your soul touches this place.”

The giant jumping spider paused to let that sink in and turned to address the enormous black widow still hunkered down humbly and not moving.

“Forgive me, mistress Finli’tichintch… Thank you for watching over my young pet… Please return to your brood sack.”

“Blessings of the day, lady Thirp.” The spider whispered, before scuttling away.

“I suppose you are not enjoying your visit to my homeworld very much, young Barry… let’s get you home.” She scuttled closer and reached for him with her furry forelimbs, moving with a speed that left him stunned. She leapt and sank her fangs into his throat without warning, plunging him into the dark.

“That should have been terrifying…” Was the last cogent thought to run across his mind before the world became a warm, comfy blackness.

#

Barry tore himself free of his cocoon of silver spider silk and gossamer webs with a horrified gasp of fear and sat up in a near panic; finding himself on a terribly familiar lawn of impossibly perfect wild flowers, beside the standing stones.

The standing stones… there was a freaking henge right there and it was a s familiar as his own two hands… “Weird…” He whispered as memories began to percolate in his slowly reforming identity.

He felt himself… jiggly and insubstantial in this place, but more real and immediate than anything here… except for Thirp. That name and the sensation of her near presence jarred him back into being, fully being Barry Ward…

Though he could still taste a faint hint of the Gary Ward his father had been, before coming here, and gained a suspicion of the dark secrets that young madman held.

He shook that off, as he sensed, somehow… that Thirp was near.

A four armed, four legged, white furred, sexy spider girl scuttled closer and smiled winningly. “I am Thirp, in the form most familiar on our shared homeworld.” She sang sweetly and bobbed on her knees, just like the jumping spider did.

Though, that jumping spider hadn’t been wearing a damnably sexy spiderkini top and a long silken loincloth that displayed a luscious expanse of nearly bare hips; four of them.

She hadn’t had bouncy, pale boobies either; fortunately she only had the two pert, perfect, jiggly breasts… Any more would have been a bit too much.

Barry nodded along, unconsciously keeping time with the bouncy boobage, drawing another sexy smile from the petite and beautiful creature. “Come along, boy, there is something you should see, before we send you back where you belong.”

She took him by the hand, her long, slender, eight fingered grip felt warm and natural… and somehow, right. He followed along, docile and compliant, two words seldom used in conjunction with any of the Wards.

She led him to the wide, starry meadow near the crater where he’d died… That always sent shivers down his spine, whenever he’d dreamt of this place…? That was getting weird.

Behind a small copse of flowering camellia bushes, they stopped to peek at a gathering of deities, out beside the blasted ruins.

“Here, beings from the outside can communicate more easily with those who dwell in our realm. Listen now, and learn.” Thirp whispered. “I will conceal our presence, but please, do not speak.”

#

Out on the edge of the vast meadow, where the blasted, stony crater fell away, amid the scattered ruins and tumbled stones of a shattered cathedral, Dana, goddess of healing and her cronies were getting chewed out pretty badly… By the biggest damn kaiju spider he’d ever imagined in his worst nightmares…

Except this creature was urbane and cultured in his speech, with exquisite manners and a goodly splash of godly style.

He tore strips from the divines and pasted them back on with his careful precise and very stern words. Each biting, cutting, searing remark and quip landed like a hammerblow, brutally mauling their pride with every syllable.

Eventually, the huge spider tired of battering the gods and goddesses with subtle insults and demands that they ‘Do better, lest you embarrass yourselves further.’

He began to fade away into an unknowable distance, not too far off, judging by a strange, comfy feeling in the base of Barry’s skull.

Some faint connection remained to that dim, spider haunted world, just across the veil from the world he knew.

“In this place, a deity's size and authority are directly related to their intellectual state and how closely aligned their activities are, with their divine essence and portfolio…” Thirp whispered before Barry could ask his real questions.

“I have never seen lord Aclintherios in this state… breathtaking, is he not?” She gasped breathily, as she hugged closely to his captured arm, rubbing those plump, very human seeming titties against him, without seeming to notice what she was doing…

The boy nodded silently, gripping the spider girl’s hand and sweating for all he was worth… He was certain that the being had spotted them and was keeping at least one of his eyes trained on the skulking pair of eavesdroppers. That was almost enough stress to counteract the sensations thrilling his bare arm.

That gaze of alien and divine, godly might and benevolent affection washed over the young mortal and his companion in waves of subtle force.

Aclintherios’ gaze was impressive, rather than oppressive; that strange energy started a gentle vibration in the boy’s bones, one that felt.. familiar and jiggly.

Barry had landed on the unreal surface of the Madman’s moon… in the flesh, rather than in his dream form, giving him some extra insight into the nature of the place. He could feel it, the subtle, jiggling, jello world sensation that still rang and sang in his wobbly, but very comfy bones.

“Thirp… How malleable is the matter of this place?” He asked the giggling, sniggering being, once her patron had finished gnawing on the ragged dignity of a major goddess of this place.

That chilled her laughter and sobered her right up. “Such things are best left alone, they are dangerous to the uninitiated…” She mumbled awkwardly.

“So there is something there, some slow, heavy vibration…” He began, with a sneaky smile on his face.

Lost in his own contemplations and the feelings radiating from the very sexy spider girl hugged up so close to his body, Barry hardly noticed when Dana and her goons drifted away, the goddess softly moaning and whining to her friends, once the big scary spider was out of sight.

“Can I… manipulate reality here?” He asked Thirp gently.

“Oh my… The conclave of gods has broken up, time to send you home now… follow me!” She was as unsubtle as a brick to the face, when she wanted to change the subject. She grabbed him by an earlobe, gently and firmly, in a way that spoke of his mother’s influence.

She frogmarched the young man away from the scene of Dana’s crimes and into a darkly shady forest, one not unlike what he’d left not long ago. In the dark forest, that new occult bond deepened and sharpened, firming the connection he felt in his skull, hinting at the nearness of that not too distant, deeply alien world.

“This is my little domain… here in your father’s secret hideout.” Thirp sighed winsomely, drawing the lad’s gaze back to the pale, smooth skinned spider boobs…

“Uh, huh…” He agreed eagerly, with a stupid and familiar smile on his face. “I can’t believe I’m really talking to the goddess of the panty cult…” He mumbled, abstractedly smiling at the beautiful, alien creature.

“Just like your father…” She sighed with more effort and heaving than was strictly necessary. “I never should have suggested those catalogs…”

Barry flushed bright red with embarrassment, thinking on the stash of those glossy, colorful booklets he had squirreled away, in his super secret hiding spot.

As if she’d sensed his errant thought, she smiled even more excitedly and bobbed on her knees, again. “Yes, I know mister MacGruber's dark secret…” She whispered, as she crept closer. “Your plush owlbear toy holds more than stuffing in his tummy.”

When she was so near that the boy could feel her warmth, radiating against his bare skin, she reminded him very clearly that he was still nude… and had been since waking up with the giant widow. The boy gulped with a suddenly very dry throat and stammered:

“Uh, lady Thirp… are you busting my balls right now?” He asked carefully, as her eight fingered but otherwise human hand caressed his bare chest gently.

She looked up at him, so petite and slim, her furry abdomen was barely noticeable bouncing behind her in a way he had to admit, was pretty cute.

“Busting your balls? Never…” She sighed softly, as she edged a little closer. That was when a familiar, male voice had to ruin everything…

“No, Barry, Thirp is not toying with you; but she is under the influence of her divine patron’s aura and shares a strong and very real bond with your parents, each of you and all of you together.…” Ward said softly, as his hand gently landed on the spider girl’s shoulder. “It’s complicated.”

Harry’s tall weirdly handsome uncle took Thirp gently by the hand and wrapped a tender arm around her many slim shoulders. “Come along, darling… You can apologize to my nephew when your mind clears…” He kissed her cheek and carefully led her away, deeper into that dark, close forest.

“Sorry about that…” Lord Axio muttered behind him. “She is a wise, sensitive and truly loving being, but her primary deity just put on a clinic in divine judgment and fury… It was pretty… intense.”

The tiny fae spirit’s calming and soothing voice melted the lad’s stress away in just a few seconds, as the being’s plump, white hand took his, in a very much not sexy way, to his intense relief.

“Thirp was to have opened a portal for you, back into your proper world.” He bubbled and squeaked merrily at his young cultist. “Sadly, she is indisposed, so it falls to me…”

The short limbed, pudgy aquatic creature led him back into the eternal meadow, arriving at the standing stones in a few short minutes of slow strolling.

“In this place, Will, Mind and clear intent matter more than any ‘reality’ or silly, ‘physical laws’. That is why your presence and her patron’s influence shook her from good sense and into a more primal… sensual state.”

“Please, do not think ill of her, when your own senses clear. She would happily Contract with you if that is what you wish, but not until this mess is cleared away…”

Barry’s new patron ambled along slowly, his wide, thick tail sweeping over the grass as he walked and talked. “Where my attention is on the natural cycles of life and death; lady Thirp is deeply rooted in the complexities of human mating and seduction rites, so this is pretty tough on her.”

He continued in his liquid, watery voice of cool, calm and untroubled peace. “...thus also, we arrive at my little patch of your father’s impossibility in just a few steps…”

Just like that, they stepped around a small colorfully striated desert cliffside and into a land of reeds, willows, shallow lakes and slow moving, crystal clear waterways. Among the lakes, croplands and canals, a towering stone mountain stood, draped in green and growing things.

“Bear with me, Barry, I haven’t had a mortal cultist in so very long…” The tiny being explained, while the boy took it all in.

The high, stepped mesa before him had been wrought into a fantastic city of men at some point in the distant past… or future, perhaps both. Verdant with hanging gardens and thronged with shades and spirits, they went about their business, heedless of the living lad and aquatic salamander being, walking among them.

Before he knew it, the two stood atop the bustling mesa city, in a jungle grotto, beside a crystal clear spring that bubbled up from the center of the open space.

“This is a representation of my home on our world below… or above? Whatever, it’s really complicated and pointless to discuss.” He clasped his hands in front of his long, pale belly and smiled, ruffling his crimson gills at the nervous lad.

“In any case, the physical world lies on the other side of my spring; dive in and swim deep, my friend; your home lies there.” Axio raised one plump, shiny white hand and spoke very carefully, as the boy readied himself for the plunge between worlds.

“Dana struck your very soul, an unprecedented act… And one that is in direct and absolute conflict with her very nature.” He said very slowly.

“You have traveled between worlds and witnessed deities in your mortal guise of flesh, due to these extraordinary conditions… you may awaken… changed. Know that these changes are wrought by your own soul, as a result of these stresses and bizarre occurrences.”

“What does that mean, Axio? Am I gonna be all fucked and crippled up too?!” He demanded of his fae patron, perhaps unwisely.

“No, but you will be expanded, increased, or perhaps, simply different…” He sighed wetly. “Your mother and father know more of what you… and perhaps your brothers also, will experience in the coming days and weeks than any mortal or god. Speak frankly to them about your concerns.”

Barry paused and thought for a moment, then hugged the plump salamander man and dove into the cold, endless waters, swimming for the unreachable bottom of the pool.

#

A very carefully not frantic group of kids very slowly and carefully searched the house and grounds for any sign of their missing brother, just in case he’d wandered off. They found nothing, but did attract the maternal gaze within moments.

“What be this, boys? What do ye plan?” She demanded of the super not suspicious boys, when she caught them searching the stable and checking that Barry’s bike was still there. Some maternal instinct triggered in her, cluing her in and tumbling the whole mess out into the open.

“Where be Barry?” She asked hotly.

A few, very tense minutes of quiet discussion in the workshop below Wilf’s house was enough for the woman who had survived their father’s weirdness for so long.

“Ward says he’s fine and will pop up soon…” Larry finished lamely. “So it’s all fine… we’ll handle this with Ward… don’t tell papa, ok?”

“Nae, ‘tis very much not ‘okay’...” She growled. “Dana did strike me son… an hae been abusing me children under me own roof… I say thee nay.”

Their mother seemed to grow larger and began to radiate a palpable, physical heat as she spoke, a phenomenon they had seldom seen. She was furious to the point of doing murder and that boiling rage was surging through her, with unpredictable results.

#

Gary was still closeted away with Amy and the older boys, discussing something or other, in his workshop… so that was something.

Harry dipped out the back entrance and sprinted for the inn, hoping to prevent an explosion. He slipped through the garden using stealth skills that came naturally to him, but suddenly felt… extra sly. He savored the feeling as he passed unseen through the guests and slipped down into the basement.

“This is fine work… I like the subtlety and reciprocity of the enchantment… a curse for a curse…” Papa was saying, as Harry appeared in the room.

“Wow! Harry, you snuck up on me… and in the house too?”

His father wrapped him in a huge hug that made him feel four years old again, even though they were the same size, almost.

The big lad quickly but gently pried himself away and spoke earnestly, quickly and clearly.

“That dumb twat threw a tantrum and bitchslapped Barry through the veil and into the next world over… He’s fine and Ward is going to get him, so it’s ok. The whole thing is a huge shitshow and nobody is coming out of this clean… except us.” He blurted out quickly.

“The whole pantheon knows by now and something called ‘The Devourer’ is super pissed off over the whole deal.”

“Ok… that was a lot.” Gary whispered in a frosty tone that they had never heard before.

#