Flushed Away 1 10 -

He began to roll, not towards the outflow, but towards the wall. He found a rough patch of brick, a vertical ladder of microscopic crystals. He started to climb.

He came to rest on a sandbar of congealed… something. He didn’t have a word for it. He was new.

He stopped. The number was gone. The hum was silence. flushed away 1 10

It was a cathedral of pipes, a roaring, misty cavern. Water sprayed from a dozen leaks, forming temporary rainbows in the weak light from a cracked manhole cover far, far above. And before him, the outflow split. A hundred small mouths, each whispering a different song.

He didn't need a pipe.

"New blood," the oil gurgled, its voice a slow, poisonous purr. "Lost? They all get lost. Stay here. The dark is safe. The light evaporates you."

He landed in a pool of stagnant tea, shared a brief, silent greeting with a piece of floating parsley, and continued. He began to roll, not towards the outflow,

He rolled off the sandbar with a soft plip . A week in this world, and he’d already learned the rules. Surface tension was his muscle, cohesion his skeleton. He could stretch, wobble, split into two smaller selves if he wasn’t careful, and reform with a shiver.