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”What is it doing?”
Elderbug did not quite flinch, but the startle was still obvious in the twitch of his shoulders.
”I think it’s asleep,” he replied when Sly stepped up beside him. ”At least, it has been sitting there for quite some time now.”
”Huh.” Sly tilted his head, observing the strange little bug on the bench. While he would admit fully that the way its head was tilted to the side, cloak bunching slightly to the side it had slumped, made it look like it was asleep, those deep eyes were still staring straight ahead; unseeing and all-seeing. ”… Maybe it’s dead?”
Elderbug hummed to himself for a bit, stroking the fine petals of the white flower he had been gifted. ”I don’t think so,” he said at long last. ”It wasn’t hurt when it climbed out of the well, and it spent quite a while pestering Iselda for maps and pins before sitting down to keep me company.”
”Good! I don’t want to lose my best customer!” Sly said and bounced over to give the little thing a poke and see if it was somehow still breathing.
And not only was it still breathing, it bolted upright, arms cartwheeling wildly, and fell off the bench entirely the moment Sly’s finger prodded one of its horns. Still disturbingly silent, and without even a glimmer of expression from whatever bits it had beneath that white mask of its, though. Even the husks—bodies swollen with infection as they trotted ever onwards under the force of some evil magic—made noise and expressions.
But even without either, it was still very obviously alive. Obviously curious and attentive, from how it tilted its head and turned empty eyes to Sly, the only noise being a faint crackle from where their mask brushed against the odd grey cloak. No expressions and no noise, none of the usual signs of life apart from its movements, yet so much more alive than most things scuttling about underground.
Elderbug watched as it jumped off the bench, short arms tugging eagerly at Sly’s wing and pulling them both towards the general store.
Very alive. But also very… not. What, he wondered to himself, looking over what still stood of Dirtmouth, made a bug into something like that?
The noises from the well were getting worse. When the wind blew just right, it carried the faintest traces of orange-bright smoke with it, sticky and tacky and made Elderbug want to crawl into the deepest, darkest hole he could find after scrubbing his shell clean. But despite it all, the strange little bug kept venturing down. Kept returning, sometimes with other bugs pulled from the madness of light and moths in tow, sometimes alone and with what felt like an ever-heavier burden weighing it down.
It still did not speak. It emoted, as much as it could with a motionless mask, gesturing and waving and hopping, but it never spoke. The well, it seemed, screamed enough for them both, and so all Elderbug could do was to offer the bench and his own company for as long as the little one needed it.
When the tents arrived in the space between one thought and the next, both new and having been there for ages, Elderbug was not afraid to admit that he kept a bit closer to the bench. The people within were unfathomable and eldritch, their ways and mannerisms as alien as the dreams of light and screaming. It did not, however, seem to deter the little bug, who went into the largest tent and returned with a child in tow.
Elderbug… did not really press the matter. The child, though obviously related to the master of the circus, seemed happy enough to stick around the little bug, and the little bug in turn kept doing what it always did; bothering Iselda for maps, visiting Bretta, buying everything Sly could find of useless trinkets, going to that terrifying place on the other side of the graveyard, and diving into the depths of the well again and again and again and again.
And, of course, taking a frequent rest on the old iron bench.
“Is it asleep again?” Iselda asked, keeping her voice low, as she leaned against the outside of her shop.
Elderbug observed the small bug, lying on the bench with its eyes staring blankly at a spot on the ground.
“I think so,” he said, and laid a careful claw on its mask.
It shifted, pushing into the touch, and then relaxed with a movement that he would have called a sigh in any other bug. Beneath his claw, the full-head mask was marked and chipped, covered in a thousand tiny scratches and dents that spoke of a long existence. And yet, the bug itself seemed so young.
“What are you, my friend?” Elderbug muttered.
The small bug, quiet as always, did not respond except to curl further into the gentle touch, so much like a child.
Elderbug was not entirely sure what to make of the newest arrivals in town. While he could tell the connection between the tallest one – awkwardly folded into itself to fit on the iron bench, long legs and arm poking in every direction – and the small bug that used to sit there, he was quite certain he had not before seen the red-clad one this up close before.
Still, their appearance had followed the abrupt disappearance of the bright fog and the slow tickle of confused bugs talking about strange visions and a stranger timelessness. If the two strange bugs sitting on the bench, leaning against each other and looking as if they had the first break in a long, long while, Elderbug was certain that they more than deserved what rest they could get.
Then the red one raised a hand, beckoning him over from where he was standing.
“Have you seen,” she startled, flailing a bit with a claw for words, “the little Ghost? It used to come here.”
“Not for a while now,” Elderbug replied, and watched as the tall one’s head snapped up in much the same manner that its smaller kin had when jerking awake. “It used to sit on that very bench. Not a very talkative fellow, but it seemed happy enough to listen.”
The tall one was fully alert now, head gently tilted to one side as it ran large claws over what parts of the bench it could reach.
“That does sound like the little ghost,” the red one laughed and tipped her head to look up at her companion. “Ghost followed me through most of Greenpath when I first met it. Then it kicked me all over the place when I challenged it to a duel.”
The tall one did a shaking motion that could have been its way of laughing, before it patted the red one’s head in a manner that somehow managed to be smug, proud, and mocking at the same time.
Siblings, it struck Elderbug, even though the two bugs shared only the very faintest of similarities.
“I’m sure it’ll come back, wherever it is,” the red one continued, turning her head up towards the first glittering stars high above.
Strange, Elderbug had looked at that sky countless times and yet he could have sworn that there had never been stars before. It was as if the lights of the town and its surroundings had been dimmed, allowing the fainter, paler light of the moon and stars to reach Dirtmouth at long last.