Despite being alive for twenty-three years and interested in kissing people for at least nine of those, the kiss that had upturned Cephal's life was also their first. They didn't regret it.
On the Saturday evening following their first week at their first 'real' job at Be Wired, they came to Kim's house. Cephal and Kim stayed up playing chess and lamenting the personalities of Cephal's coworkers. Cephal sipped at their cider and moved their knight. "Me being me, I tried to explain that he's a fascist. They did not take that well. I got reported to HR and now there's a no politics policy in the office. Literally no-one will talk to me now."
"Hey, well, you tried and that's more than most people would do." Kim took a lowly, unprotected pawn. "I admire that."
The game had ended in a long hug that made Cephal cry. Instead of awkwardness or apprehension, Kim joked, "Are my hugs that good?" Cephal told her that they were that good, and that she was too.
Then she pressed her lips into theirs and Cephal cried again.
A week later, Frasier's militia imposed a mandatory lockdown as they swept the city. The day after that Cephal found out why. All the news stations showed footage of something that looked like Kim outside a butcher shop. The nude thing squatted on the edge of a bin filled with discarded meat, facing away the shaking camera person. Something sticky and sleek dangled from its prolapsed vagina. The Kim-thing was dropping lumps of black mucus and raspberry-shaped clutches of eggs into the rotting meat below.
Kim-thing's head snapped around. With her new, much longer tongue, she wetted both her original eyes and the new rounder ones that sprouted on her bulging neck like cherries. The camera person ran away.
Even if she'd Bloomed, Cephal still rooted for her. They didn't know what happened to those affected by Lazarus Rose pollen--but if any part of Kim remained, they wanted her to be happy. Frasier's militia, however, had other plans. They ended the curfew with an announcement that the threat had been eliminated. The crowd cheered. Frasier himself went on to call for stricter screening and tighter border controls.
As Cephal spooned yogurt into their mouth and watched this announcement, people in suits from The Wash Investigative Division arrived at their apartment. Cephal was handcuffed and the investigators calmly explained that they were at severe risk of Blooming due to close contact with an infected individual. They were placed in the back of a van with seven other people with whom Kim had most likely had close relations.
The Wash Investigative Division agents drove the un/lucky suitors out into the forest surrounding The Wash and gave them backpacks with three weeks' worth of rations.
Cephal did not know where to go, the others, who were mostly older, seemed confident.
It was only on the second night that Cephal realized they were going to the nearest city, Bubble.
"Do you think they'll take us in?" they asked. It was the first time they had spoken since their arrest.
"Why wouldn't they?" a man with a moustache replied. Cephal recalled seeing Kim holding his arm in a photo once. He had such a goofy expression then.
"Well, if Wash sends word ahead of us, they might be just as paranoid about the Bloom. They'll put us in the slums." No-one seemed surprised by this, and no more words were said on the matter.
Eventually Cephal turned around and walked the opposite direction--towards the mountains, away from the cities that they knew would reject them.
***
Cephal had never seen a natural valley before. They did not know if it was normal that the river at the bottom wriggled with white worms (each half as thick as one of their arms). The worms swam downwards, with the river's natural current, although that current was hardly visible on account of the sheer number of creatures.
As they descended into humidity of the valley, droplets formed on their face and trailed onto their lips. It tasted like the air smelled, of chlorine and wet earth.
Sat beside the river, Cephal picked the dirt from under their fingers. They were looking forward to washing the sweat out of their hair and clothes. The water would also have been a welcome ally against the sun's incessant heat. Maybe they're friendly? Cephal wondered. They reached over to the river but withdrew their hand again. Maybe they're hungry. Instead, they watched the oddly rhythmic motion of the worms; the ones at the top would undulate their bodies, pushing forward, while the ones at the bottom would hold still and support the ones above. The upper worms would then descend, and the roles would be reversed.
All in all, a mesmerizing sight.
If they had not been thrown out of the city, they would never have seen such a phenomenon. This was only a small comfort; whether or not the worms were hungry, Cephal was. The last of their food had run out over a day ago. If only they'd rationed more diligently from the beginning--even though they knew they wouldn't have had the energy to make it this far if they'd done. They'd foraged to bolster their main supply, but they hardly knew which things were edible and had already suffered a bout of food poisoning.
This close they saw just how soft the worms' bodies were, like they could be ripped apart like wet paper. Did they taste like wet paper too? As long as they filled their stomach, Cephal wouldn't have minded, but the more important issue was if they were willing to eat another creature to survive? Certainly, they'd not judge anyone else for doing it.
No, it was not a moral problem. It was that worms would satisfy only one of Cephal's hungers. Only now that they had the undeniable hollowness of their stomach as a reference did they understand just how numerous their hungers were; they could be satisfied with nothing but an arm over them while they slept, a tongue in their mouth, and the scent of someone else's hair on their pillow.
The stream of worms had begun to thin, revealing the flowing water. The chlorinated scent dissipated too. Since the river was now available to them, Cephal wet their face, scrubbed their nails, and filled their canteen with water. It would be so easy to quench their thirst now, but the memory of their recent illness stopped them. They would boil the water once they reached the top of the hill.
Cephal walked slowly along the bank of the river, towards the source of the worms. Although they could not see the nearest peak of the valley, they spotted a hand shoot up and wave at them.
The sight elated Cephal. They ran towards the welcoming stranger, shouting "Hello? Hey!" and other such greetings. A smile cracked their dry lips. Finally, someone to talk to, they thought. Yet something was off. The hand seemed no closer despite the distance traversed. Cephal's perspective was all wrong.
They slowed down as they came to the top of the hill.
The hand was not just over the edge but instead attached to some gargantuan structure draped over the distant hills with no end in either direction. It was just one of a waving mass, each skeletal and much larger than a person, spread over the entirety of the thing's body which curved tangent to the river. That body had the sheen of wet clay and loomed almost twice Cephal's height. It had indented the ground around it so that it sat in a trough of its own making.
There were other appendages too: muscular legs spaced regularly as far as Cephal could see; tendrils, some which seemed like they could snap a birch tree, and other smaller ones which sprouted sporadically in patches like wriggling sea anemones; and here along the side of the creature were rows and rows of penises. Or something like penises, except longer and bumpier. Each twitched writhed and would occasionally spew some lumpy white substance out of its circular hole.
