Chapter 11

As the sun came up earlier in the day, Nick became aware of two things. One was that it was getting warmer and even though the tiny sun had just risen above the horizon, and he noticed that the brush on that horizon burst into flame, that was never a good sign. What had happened during the night was a pachylapis - a slow motion earthquake caused by the shifting of an elephant. It was theorized that as the tiny sun orbits the discworld, it will occasionally get close to one of the elephants and its proximity startles the snoozing elephant and he draws back from the sun. His movement raises his section of the disc, which causes that portion of the disc to be closer to the sun as it passes over until the elephant settles down.

Often that was the case, but now there is something out there that terrified the elephants, and it just discovered the discworld.

Light moves slowly on the discworld. Imagine invisible glowing syrup that warms and lights the world. It pours out of the sun and oozes across the landscape, slowly filling ravines and valleys before moving on to the next field or prairie. In mountainous locales, the sun is high in the sky, but the area is dark up to early evening because of all the valleys that have to be filled. Because of this, winter can be confusing for poor hinterland creatures like deer and peasants. (That’s not a spelling error. There are poor farmhands that live in the woodlands here on the discworld.)

But here in the wide open spaces of XXXX, when the great beast Jerakeen raised up, which lifted his corner of the world, he created a downhill run for the oozing, sleepy light. Great globs of light accelerated across the Four Ecksian desert and continued to speed up as it went. The tsunamillumination roared across the desert, scattering tiny wingless birds and dozing drop bears in its passage. The light wave had a full head of steam when it hit a line of hills and squirted through a gap in the hills like a sudden case of... (not to be too graphic but anyone who has eaten at a questionable Turkish restaurant knows exactly what I mean), its force was multiplied like water squirting through a nozzle. It shot through the gap, fiercely illuminating everything in its path, eventually colliding into an exhausted, sleepwalking Nick. It blasted into him with a force that sounded like a cold porkchop thrown against a wall and lifted him on a wave of heat and light which eventually dropped him two furlongs away in the center of a group of the tallest, meanest looking rabbits he’s ever seen.

The dingaroos leaned down and sniff the new morsel that was dropped in their midst and Nick froze in terror. He began looking for a possible exit when a familiar voice said, “Come on guys, leave the kid alone, he’s new here.”