Here's something to start off with. If anybody would like to continue it, it's all yours.
= = = = = =
The slug girl had no name. At least, none that she was aware of. She had probably been given one by her mother, many years ago, but she was not aware of having had a mother. She was about as far from her birthplace as it was possible to be, but she was not aware of that, either. Her own origins were not something she had been encouraged to think about.
For that matter, she had not been encouraged to think about
anything.
Which was a shame, really, because she possessed a certain natural curiosity – much diminished by a complete lack of education. She could not speak, for instance. She had never been taught to, and had no understanding of what language might be. She knew that certain sounds made by her keepers were associated with certain objects or activities. She knew that ‘Here’s a swamp toad’ meant food, and she had learnt the meaning of ‘Stay still’. She had realised, eventually, that she could mimic the sounds herself, but her keepers had frowned on that and punished her, so she had stopped doing it. In front of them, at least.
On this particular evening, she was slithering over the grounds of the large, enclosed area which was her only habitat. Sparse trees dotted the grassy ground, and an artificial brook trickled through it. They comprised the world as she knew it. She was aware of there being more, though. The tall electric fencing which kept her confined gave her a glimpse of a reality extending beyond her own. On the other side of one part of the fence, for example, small creatures came and went – as they were doing now. They looked like her, in a limited sense. They had a face very much like hers, and hair, and arms, and a chest which they kept covered over. But instead of a slug-like tail, they had two strange, moving sticks beneath the waist, and moved around on them with jerky movements. They were also a lot smaller than she was – tiny, in fact. And they smelt like food, although she could not get at them, and was not allowed to eat them. Her keepers were of this kind, too.
Although she did not know it, they called themselves ‘humans’.
These humans tended to stop and stare at her, and point, and make noises. And then they went away, free to go wherever they wanted, and more of them came, and stared and pointed. And she looked back at them, sometimes. Occasionally, she pointed back, and they made strange noises in response, but her keepers didn’t like her doing that, either.
Far more interesting was the creature living in the area next to hers, beyond another section of the fence. The slug girl inspected some of her slime trails, hoping small mammals or birds may have been trapped them, then, disappointed, slithered over to the fence which seperated her section from that of her ‘neighbour’. The latter was watching her, and the slug girl approached her with a smile.
This creature was of a normal size, unlike the tiny humans. She had a normal head, arms and torso, but, like the humans, lacked a tail. Instead, she had a dark, bulbous lower body, extending behind her, and eight articulated stick-like limbs which held her up. The slug girl often marvelled at those. It seemed impossible that anyone could move about on them, but this creature did, with apparent ease.
They looked at each other now, and the slug girl smiled. She did not know what a ‘friend’ was, but she knew she felt something for this strange, multi-legged creature. She liked being close to her, as close as she could with the electric fence between them. And the strange creature seemed to like her too.
What made it even more fascinating, in the slug girl’s eyes, was that it sometimes talked to her.
“Hey there, Slippy,” the dridder said, with a casual smile that masked a certain fondness.
The slug girl giggled. “Heyeh yippy,” she repeated, and giggled again, a little nervously. She knew they were not supposed to make noises at each other. They could get into trouble.
“Good.” The dridder smiled. “That’s a start.”
* * *
A short distance away, and a short while later, in one of the vast zoo’s administrational buildings, all manner of staff members had congregated in a large room set with blinking monitoring screens.
“How can a storm appear out of nowhere?” a middle-aged, slightly paunchy man in a white suit demanded tensely. “Explain it to me!”
“It just… appeared.” A much younger, dark-haired man in green clothing, sitting by one of the screens, shrugged, worried. “That’s what all the readings say. One moment, we have a clear blue sky. The next, a sort of… like a split in the sky, and a highly localised, really intense storm. It makes absolutely no sense.”
Although they all knew it was possible to travel between worlds –they were, after all, employees of Felarya Park–, none of them had ever heard of a naturally-occurring dimensional rift.
Thus they failed to appreciate the irony of the situation which was about to befall them.
Felarya Park was a high-profit venture, a vast zoo covering the greater part of an isolated island on a mostly aquatic planet. Visitors flocked here through dimensional gates, coming from many worlds, to admire the tame and captive creatures plucked from one of the most lethal dimensions known to man. The giant predators exhibited here had been kidnapped from Felarya in their infancy – sometimes even before birth in the case of oviparous species. They had been raised with no acknowledgement of their sentience. Never taught to speak, or think, they had been locked in large areas, kept apart from one another, for visitors to gawk at. Slug girls, dridders and nagas were trapped safely where tourists could pull faces and take pictures of them. Mermaids were confined to giant aquariums, and harpies to gigantic aviaries. Crude straps of material covered their genitals, and the chest of females, but they were otherwise left unclothed. It helped give the Park a feel that was both prudish and perversely lecherous – which had proved wildly successful in financial terms.
“How long until it hits us?” the first man asked.
A brown-haired woman grimaced, gazing at her screen with a sense of foreboding.
“Four minutes,” she said.
* * *
“Apparently that’s called a ‘tree’,” the dridder told her slug girl neighbour, who smiled at the sound of the words, but could not yet understand them. “Tree,” the dridder repeated.
“Tree.” The slug girl smiled. “Good Swippy.”
“Yes.” The dridder grinned. It was obvious this odd, slimy creature had some form of intelligence. Perhaps, in time, the dridder could teach her to speak. It was a skill she had taken a long time to master herself. And it had remained her little secret. Hers, and that of the human who had taught her.
The human in question was one of her keepers, a young redhead girl who spoke to her with interest and sympathy. Over time, that human had opened the dridder’s mind in ways the caged spider-woman could never have conceived of. Her thought processes still had a long way to develop, but, with words at her disposal for the first time, she was indeed beginning to think.
“Tree,” the slug girl said again – not a word, but a mere sound. The dridder nodded, and looked up at the darkening sky, huge black clouds roiling across the clear blue expanse. There was a rumble of thunder. Some of the humans shouted, and began running for cover. The slug girl looked up, too, concern on her attractive young face.
“Tree!” she exclaimed, pointing up at the thick clouds.
“No, not tree,” the dridder said softly. And it was then that the lightning struck. Bolts of light flashed down from the sky, sizzling down with deafening claps of thunder. Without warning, light rushed over the fence, traversing it with bright, crackling intensity. The slug girl yelped, and lurched back, frightened. The dridder, too, scuttled out of the way. She blinked, alarmed at this entirely new phenomenon.
She had seen storms before, but not like this.
“Tree?” the slug girl whispered, shaken and confused.
“Attention, attention!” Calm yet urgent, the deep male voice boomed through the air, carried by unseen loudspeakers. “Would all visitors please make their way back to the portals? I repeat, visitors please make your way back to the portals. Thank you.”
Beyond the fence, humans were moving past, almost all going in the same direction. The dridder scuttled over to watch them.
As she did so, she noticed something else that was unusual. A bright, red and orange bird flew down, swooping in the wind, and landed atop the high fence.
It took her a moment to realise the bird was touching the fence, without being electrocuted. When that realisation clicked, she stared at it for a long time. Slowly, something in her mind stirred.
She was thinking, once more.
Subject: Felarya Park 
Sat Jun 27, 2009 4:08 am
And the preds wouldn't know how to cast magic. Nobody would ever have taught them how. (Unless it's instinctive.) Besides, doesn't their magic generally derive from the Felaryan land?
