Rafiki’s Nightmare

The full moon has always seemed a friend, its light illuminating everything about us with a silvery loving glow, its motherly magick casting everything in a protective shroud.  But that was before I saw the things.  The things that the circle of life does not touch.  The things that slither and shamble blasphemously, howling and sobbing their agonized existence in our world, beneath a full moon.  Better by far that the moon had hidden her face behind a cloud that night , and allowed the world to sleep peacefully, unaware and blissfully ignorant of the truth.

It all started one night as the others were sleeping.  Something woke me.  I stretched my old bones, unfolded my lanky limbs, and handed myself down from the limbs of the great baobab tree I have lived in since time immemorial, and stepped into the warm grass of the savannah night.  The moon was full that night, her light milky and ethereal over the grasses and bushes for miles about.  In the distance I could even see Pride Rock rising, proud and unbowing, over the grasslands.

But tonight, there was a difference.  Perhaps it is that which awakened me, I shall never know, or perhaps it was something more malefick, something in the ether that night that troubled me as I slept and dreamed of companions and friends, and disturbed my slumber.

I was not aware of it for some few minutes, as I stretched, breathed the warm air, and relieved myself in the grasses.  But gradually, I became aware that something was not right.  The moonlight did not calm me as it normally does, and normally should all living things.  It was perhaps too bright, or perhaps a strange shade not normally seen.

I looked around, casting my gaze over all the scenery about me.  Behind me lurked the great baobab, its comforting shadow transformed by the malevolent moonlight into a haunted hulk.  Malevolent?  Moonlight had never seemed particularly malevolent to me before, or to any of the creatures in the great circle of life.  I frowned, wondering what it was that had given such an eldritch tinge to my thoughts this night.

Suddenly my spine stiffened, and the coarse fur along my back stood on-end, as my eyes caught something out of place.  Not far off, in a field maybe a few lengths of an elephant from where I stood, I saw out of the corner of my eye something white.  By the time I looked towards the source of the movement, it had gone, but the chill up my back had not.

I gazed for long minutes more and finally saw it again, something white and wormlike, emerging from the ground to wave in the air, then plunge back into the ground with a fitful lurch.  My heart raced.  No animal I knew in the Pridelands could do something like that, and I knew them all.  All the proper ones, that is.  

Another few seconds, my heart pounding in my chest and my breath suddenly stertorous in the night air, and I saw it again, erupting from the ground, waving obscenely in the sickly yellow half-light of the full moon, then plunging back into the ground, silently, with a puff of dust.  It was huge, the width of a warthog at least, and shiny, in its oily, wormy way.  It looked like any other grub, but larger than any grub should be, and something about the way it waved about in the air made my very head ache with the…. wrongness… of the way it acted.

I was frozen.  I, the master of the arcane, the adviser to kings, the one untouched by the treacheries and powers of Pride Rock, the wisest of all, was frozen.  I was unable to correlate what I had just seen with any wisdom that my fathers or my fathers fathers had passed down to me.

Once more the thing breached from the ground, and waved about in the air.  Finally it hit me.  It was looking about for something.  Its wormy head swayed to and fro, and I dimly noted a further change in the moonlight.  It felt more solid somehow, or maybe its shade had gone a bit more wrong, further from the moonlight we know and more like some loathsome light of a place and time no living thing has ever seen.

Finally the thing lurched, and rose, and in its oily, oozy way, began to fully erupt from the ground, slowly, but with conscious purpose.  It began… reaching… towards the sky, towards the moon, and then, in one convulsive heave, rose into the sky, undulating its way towards the moon.  No creature I had ever known save birds and insects was capable of this, much less a wingless, limbless worm.

Something rooted me towards the spot, gazing towards the sky and the leprous moon, as the thing rose (flew?) swiftly out of sight.  Finally something broke the spell, and I looked back to earth.  Nothing else stirred in the night air, the silence heavy and unnatural about me.  My mind raced, unable to find a meaning or reason for what I had just seen.  I turned and loped off towards the baobab again, feeling exposed and uneasy in the open as I was.  And it was then, just as I turned, that I saw it, that I saw the thing that made me shudder the most that night… another white flash, out of the corner of my eye, like the first, breaking forth from the earth, then cresting and plunging back into the ground.  At the base of my baobab I waited, till the moon was again hidden behind clouds, and then longer, until the sun touched the tip of pride rock, but saw nothing more.  The thing was still in the ground.

Now I alone know what roils and slithers beneath the paws and hooves and talons of the denizens of the Pridelands, and I alone know what They do beneath a moon coloured by evil light.  No other will believe these words, these thoughts, and I know not whether any other has ever seen what I saw that night. 

I am Rafiki, and I commit these things to the symbols and pictures of my fathers, my people, that others may know, in time, when the full moon again touches the ground with a baleful light that does not comfort and bring beauty, but only illuminates that which the circle of life does not touch, what may happen beneath that light.