There is a certain unease that comes with something that looks living, should be living, and yet is not. The frozen caricature at the entrance stares down at him like he has done something oh so terrible, like he has caused one great upheaval of everything moral and decent, and the look is so familiar—so ingrained—that it is then that the pangolin knows for certain that it is not the first. It is a face only a living thing could make. Too many curves and edges. Too living, even in its unlife. “...Oh, dear. How do, old boy?” It stares on, unblinking. “Goodness, me. What a ghastly thing you are.”
He hopes it was not rude. It was not rude coming out of the mouth, really. It was only an observation. And what a broad observation to make, because whatever this thing was, or is, proves to be quite unlike anything the young gembound has ever seen before.
It was carved from the earth itself. That is a feat surely reserved for the living—taking such a thing and changing it irreparably. There was nothing one could do about such a sight but admire it, and admire it the pangolin did. Chipped stone and all, the thing stood so proudly atop its plinth that the bowl in its claws almost seemed like a—
Oh, what could he say for it? A treasure? But the pangolin did not know what treasure truly meant, either.
-–Like a treasure. Because it feels right. Because the meaning did not matter, not really. All that mattered was the protection, the stationary care. He did not know what having treasure felt like, but surely it felt like this.
Holding it outward. Here, it said. Here it is. Now, it is your turn.
Your turn. But he did not have much to give, except—
Except perhaps the last vestiges of its organic form. What better gift to give than a piece of you, repurposed? An unbeating heart in the cup of its hands. Giving back. Letting by. A respect. Now that was good manners.
Well! A fare is in order, he thinks! A fare for—
A fare for travel. A fare for respect, whatever it may be. Thank you, he says back to it. Thank you for your pity. “All is fare in love and war. That is what the people say, is it not? Heard it before, have you?.” He sniffles. “Ah, bother.”
And so, gently taking a rock in his tail, he brings it up and throws. It almost bounces off the smooth casing, yet another taunt, but it rattles around until it settles between one of its claws and the held urn. “Delightful. Delightful! May I pass?” It may be a tad boorish, but he says it as he walks away, tail dragging. “You have had your treasure! And my fare! My fair fare, say. Mind how you go, stranger!”
Like the tunnel, it does not respond, and for once the pangolin is not too offended at the gesture. He would not be too amenable himself if he was made of stone. No way to relieve itches. No way to talk. And that notion is scary enough to garner the most earnest of his condolences. And he does offer those condolences, his rickety voice echoing, but when the flat stone leads into towering engravings, that is when they run out.
Mosaics–beautiful, overlapping abstractions—are inscribed into every surface above him, and yes, these must be the stars he saw beneath his eyelids. They do exist! And they were horrifying.
Artificial. Made. The pangolin pales at this—they were made! Recondite shapes and colours fan out to form the quills and feathers and paws and crests and tails of beasts he cannot even hope to name, and sitting atop a perch of sweeping bone and sinew sits the most empyrean thing, a creature of wings and cloven hooves and those eyes---three uncanny abysses staring back—and there is a majesty there even then, in the simplicity, for the pangolin cannot imagine what pressure it would be, three eyes and nowhere to put them. And there were more—the twisting, many-legged forms of insectoid, bovine monstrosities with flaring nostrils and frightened eyes. The scratched and smudged things of scales and lumpy, spine-stretched skins. In every direction and then some sat beings that stitched every biological impossibility together and spat it back out. Nestled in crooks and crannies were things so simple and things so needlessly convoluted. Against the ragged canvas of Monoceros’ tunnel laid the good and bad and left and right. And encircling were the culminations, named and unnamed and horribly secretive and graciously honest. Above him, everything that has ever existed, and yet, should not have. Above him sits the firsts.
It is, likely, the scariest and yet most fascinating thing the pangolin has ever seen, and by the time he has made it a mere thirty feet into the tunnel, he is already waving himself about and flinching at how the whipping wind, from such places, sounds like their growls and brays and yelps. Because he may have manners, but he by no means a courageous thing. And so there the poor, meek, unseemly little pangolin sits, choking on his own tremors. There the poor, weak, unassuming, scared little pangolin stays.
For the firsts could not always be the firsts.
And he has come along.
He has come along.

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