-through the angel’s spiral, Boots-in-muck watches the noise dance through the windshield. Intrinsic light in place of dead electricity. The lificinik seizes and whines.

“Cauld? Afeart o the dark?” Boots-in-muck steps out of the half-track and runs his fingers over the bonnet. “Naething tae fear.” All that is dragged from the sea can only be bone. His eyes sketch the vaulted ribcage above, old cathredal of the sublimik, air dense with effluvia. Presses his ear to the hood. Ah. Hungry. “Haed yoursel an accident?” Should have had enough fuel to make it through the Antercast.

Should have never been here in the first place.

“Nae bother, ay? Let’s get you open…” Lificinik had bit off more than it could chew. Forty liöl worth of meat stuck in its teeth. An eyeball, split and weeping, sits on its lolling tongue like a pearl. Boots-in-muck reaches into his stomäg-wyrms, careful not to burst a pipe with an errant hangnail. Pain beams effulgence behind his eyes.

“Guid lad. Just a minute, ay?” Tussles its hair, slick with motor oil. He pulls out a spine, polished by gut flora, marine ivory incandescent in brain-grey. He pushes it into the lificiniks teeth, navigating mulched tendon. “My auld da wis a tutisanavan. He had metal tools though, like.” Lificinik offers a laugh in machine-speak, wobbling the web of choked flesh. “There.” With the tendon freed the half chewed meat flops onto the floor, and lificinik breathes life into engine.

Into the light.

“Oh.”