Emissaries from the Dead

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When the Monster sleeps, she dreams of Bocai.

Bocai had been an unremarkable world, of the usual unremarkable beauty. There had been deserts of towering red spinestalks, mountains lined with spongiform trees that remained tall and unyielding despite the softness of their bark, oceans that glowed with dancing phosphorescence at night, and a day and night approximately half the length of the normal human sleep cycle, allowing the human beings who had leased one small island from the natives two sunsets and two sunrises for every day they stood upon its generous fertile earth.

A beautiful world, yes. A remarkable beautiful world, no. Those who’d traveled to many all agreed that they’d seen better.

Following the usual behavior pattern of their species, the tiny human community had found the exotic sights and scents a fine subject for overwrought poetry. They had composed several hundred volumes, in no time at all, before something happened to all of them that lent those works a dark undercurrent they had never been meant to possess.

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