Chapter 247: Jellyfishes

The rope bridges were emptying. People crossing fast, single file, the bridges swaying with the concentrated traffic, everyone knowing to go one direction so the weight distributed right.

An old woman moving slower than the current of people around her, and two teenagers who'd noticed and flanked her automatically, not saying anything, just matching her pace and being the wall between her and the rush.

The fishing platforms cleared. The boats came in— the leaf ones, pulled up fast by their tethers, folded and tucked under overhang spaces that I could see were specifically built for this purpose.

Someone crying somewhere, not from injury, from fear, the sound of someone who was moving and keeping themselves together and the moving was the only thing doing it.

Kids stopped playing instantly. No argument. No resistance. Just— stopped, and ran.

I ran too. Helping where I could, which was mostly moving fast in whatever direction the human traffic was going and making sure nobody went the wrong way off an edge.

The village had a route to this, I could see it— the way the flow went, which bridges cleared first, the building people were heading toward, it was all pre-decided and they all knew it.

Eventually the last person I could see went through a door that closed behind them.

I turned and ran toward our house.

The vines were moving.

Not in the wind— not that kind of movement. The vines the houses were built on, the roots that tied the structures together, the thick green masses that formed the foundation of everything— they were pulling inward.

Drawing themselves tight.

Doors I'd walked past earlier were now sealed with root growths that had thickened across the frames while I wasn't looking.

Windows had coiled vine over them, a living shutter, woven dense enough to block whatever needed blocking.

The houses were becoming something else.

Not just structures. Closed. Sealed. Each one folding itself into a shape that had no gaps, no openings, roots and vines doing what they'd apparently been waiting to do every time the storm escalated to this.

Our house. Right there. Five meters.

The door.

SLAM.

I heard the roots move across it. The click of live wood locking into live wood.

I stood in front of the sealed door.

"...Wait—" I tried it anyway. Solid. No give at all. "WAIT—" I knocked. Nothing. The roots didn't care about knocking. "JISOO! Wait what the fuck YO?"

Jisoo was asleep.

Jisoo was deeply asleep and had been asleep for hours and a knock was not waking her up, I knew this, I had firsthand experience with this, and yet I tried twice more because hope was a thing.

I turned around.

The whole village was sealed. Every house, every structure, the living roots of the vine doing what they'd evolved or been shaped to do when the storm hit this level.

Everything locked. Everything closed. Everything except me, standing on an empty platform in the rain with the jellyfish in the sky above.

"Ahhhhhh," I said.

Then: "Fuck."

I stood there for exactly two seconds being genuinely very annoyed at this situation. Then I heard something.

Crying.

Trying to be controlled and wasn't entirely succeeding, the kind that had snot in it. And underneath it, barely audible, someone talking to themselves.

I turned.

The rope bridge. One of the main ones, the wide span that connected the central platform cluster to the outer ring.

And on it, hanging onto the rope side rail with both hands, the rope wrapped around her forearms the way you did it when you needed to be very sure it wasn't going anywhere… was the girl from earlier.

Dark hair everywhere, completely soaked, rain running down her face indistinguishably from what was clearly several tears.

Her expression was the expression of someone trying very hard to look like a person who was not scared and was currently failing to look like that person.

"THIS IS KARMA," she announced, to the rain, or to herself, at a volume I hadn't expected. "I SAID SOMETHING MEAN TO THE AHJUSSI EARLIER AND NOW THIS IS WHAT I GET—"

I blinked. "...Is she talking about me?"

Then she saw me.

Her hand came up immediately, pointing. "DON'T JUST STAND THERE! HELP ME!"

A pause.

The trying-to-be-brave expression did something complicated. "...Sorry for saying mean things to you earlier." Then, louder: "WAHHHHH HELP—"

I was already moving.

The bridge was alive.

I'd known they were vines— it was obvious in the daytime, the way the rope of them twisted and moved slightly even in calm weather— but the storm had done something to them.

Rhey were moving. Not the sway of a bridge in the wind, not the bounce of weight crossing it— actual movement, directional, the vines of the bridge tweaking in response to the thunder the way they'd been waiting for permission.

Each crack of lightning made the whole span jerk sideways, hard, like a living thing startled.

She was on it while it did this, both arms wrapped through the side rail, her feet finding purchase and losing it with every jerk and finding it again.

"The fu—" I said, under my breath, and kept running.

"—bridge is MOVING—" she was yelling, informatively, like I hadn't noticed.

"I SEE THAT."

"THEN HURRY!! ಠ⁠益⁠ಠಠ⁠益⁠ಠ"

I hit the bridge at full stride, grabbed the side rail, felt the first jerk of it hit me through both arms and found my footing and started moving toward her.

"—hy does it do that—" I said, to myself mostly.

"THE STORM MAKES THEM NERVOUS—" she yelled back, apparently answering.

"THE BRIDGE GETS NERVOUS—"

"THEY'RE ALIVE, OBVIOUSLY—"

Lightning. Flash.

I looked up.

Not at the jellyfish this time. Past them— underneath them. Below the bells, below the trailing curtains of tentacles, what was hanging from the tentacles themselves.

Small. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Dangling below each jellyfish like fruit, like cargo, like— like parasites, like babies, like fish that hadn't decided what shape they were yet— each one a different type of shape, all of them suspended there in the rain, dark and the storm.

Darkness again.

I looked at the girl.

She was right there. Two meters. I got my hand to the back of her jacket and she immediately let go of the rail and grabbed onto me instead with both hands like the rail had been a temporary solution she was very glad to be done with.

"I got you," I said. "Stop looking up, watch your feet—"

"I WASN'T LOOKING UP—"

"Good. Keep not doing that."

The bridge jerked. We both grabbed the rail simultaneously, the whole span swinging sideways, and I put my body between her and the edge and held on until it settled back.

"We're going to move fast," I said. "Stay with me."

"Where ELSE would I go."

"I'm gonna leave you."

"Wahhhh sorry Ahjussi!!! I'm joking!!!"

I started moving. She moved with me. The thunder rolled and the bridge moved and we moved with it and the rain came down on all of it and somewhere above us, in the clouds, behind the fog and the dark, the jellyfish drifted through the storm carrying everything that hung beneath them.

I did not look up again.