The Golden Sphere found the creature known as Ruth Less beyond rude. Beyond any kind of polite decorum—she was unreasonable and uncouth and a terrible conversationalist and in all ways the Golden Sphere despised her and now wished that It had not called a convocation of a book club, but how could It have known that—
“Pow,” Ruth Less said after having overturned a table and some chairs and a whole row of bookcases, the Golden Sphere now exposed, at least for a moment.
“Pow, you say?”
In a most surprising way, Ruth Less’s head boomeranged at the Golden Sphere and smashed It through the bookstore wall, onto the street beyond.
“The rudeness!” the Golden Sphere shrieked. “Do you know who I am, you wretch!” Except Wretch was the wretch. The Golden Sphere truly had no idea what Ruth Less was. Was running analytics fast all across its vast memory. Looking for a parallel or an analogy or even the Thing itself, whatever Ruth Less might actually be. But finding nothing in the millisecond before Ruth Less burst through the remaining wall, which gave up the ghost, and onto the street next to It.
“Smash,” Ruth Less said.
“No smash!” the Golden Sphere said.
But Ruth Less smashed. Ruth Less made two feet into one monstrous foot with clubs on the end, and that foot came down and smashed the Golden Sphere through the pavement, leaving It embedded a few feet below the ground.
All righty, then, if it was going to be like that. It could play the Speck, too. It could be Specky, as they’d learned in Rome.
So when Ruth Less removed her foot and regained her form and peered down into the hole she had made, the Golden Sphere was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was a tiny marble rocking back and forth.
The Golden Sphere waited until Ruth Less was peering down into the pit, then went all spiky and big.
In theory, this should have cut Ruth Less’s ugly face to ribbons and sproinged her brains out the back of her skull. But at the moment of spiky, Ruth Less was no longer looking into the pit, but impossibly swift had moved to the side, so the Golden Sphere, braced for the impact of Ruth Less flesh, fell forward farther and faster than anticipated and crashed into the stone wall opposite the bookstore.
First thought was embarrassment. To be caught looking so awkward. But, fortune shone: Not a soul walked the streets. They’d all disappeared for some reason.
Then—It had to work on its reaction times, clearly!—Ruth Less was whispering near an ear It did not have, for the Golden Sphere was all ears and all eyes—and all fists.
For rather than listen to Ruth Less, the Golden Sphere punched out with a myriad of golden fists in all directions. Once again, missing.
What had Ruth Less said?
“Squishy for you, sad buoy. Squishy for you.”
And of a sudden, before the Golden Sphere could un-think its own fists, all these soft tentacles had erupted from nowhere good and entangled the fists and the Golden Sphere could not stop from reflexively fighting back and thus the fists became more entangled, but worse, It had not anticipated the larger tentacles that followed the smaller and these tentacles were somehow seeping into its body, into its core self!
“Argggggh!” And the Golden Sphere spun itself around and around ever faster until it was a whirling dervish, it was as a ball of light traveling almost at the speed of light and tentacles flew everywhere and everywhere was splattered with tentacle blood, which was a light green and malodorous and disgusting and the Golden Sphere kept whirling longer than It needed to so It could spray a dose of water across itself from its internal water system that It might feel clean and not icky-sticky.
Before It could change shape again, or size, though, Ruth Less, who had been standing nonchalant while the tentacles icked the Golden Sphere, now slapped It from both sides with hands grown huge and flat and powerful. Slapped It senseless, something vital inside dislodged for a moment, so It plummeted back to the ground, the street, and had an impression of the sun and trees above and a bit of tall wall and the birds flying there were only in its head, It was fairly sure.
“I will pouch you,” Ruth Less boomed. “Then you will be good.”
“You already punched me, Lug,” the Golden Sphere said, still dazed. “And I am good. Already.”
“In the pouch you will be better.” One huge hand descended on a monstrous arm, like some sort of fleshy crane.
The loose bit rolling around inside the Golden Sphere settled back into place and It went flat, nothing more than a golden shadow on the cobblestone, so that Ruth Less’s arm missed and swept past and took out a last bit of wall across the street. Oh, Prague, you will never look the same. They will speak of this battle for … at least hours. Until the next thing.
The Golden Sphere as hole had benefits.
“You want to pouch me? ME?! I’ll POUCH YOU!” the Golden Sphere screamed, although It didn’t really know what Ruth Less meant by being pouched. Poached? Punched? Pooched?
Yet still as Golden Hole, It flipped up, ghost of a manhole cover, and attempted to engulf Ruth Less in the holy hole, the empty golden mean. For the Golden Sphere was mean, and crafty, and bitchy, too, at times, and in flipping up to engulf, the Golden Sphere roared with rage at having been thwarted and put all energy into it and all momentum, became a midnight sun burning across Ruth Less, over Ruth Less, and soon Ruth Less would be sent to another place, the place the hole directed. Somewhere on Aurora, true, and definitely still in Prague, for the Golden Sphere was trapped, but definitely Not Here.
Except the Golden Hole became, upon encountering Ruth Less, a Golden Hula-Hoop, and fell down around her stomach, then her knees, then her horrifying feet, which had clearly never received a pedicure for thousands of years and had little faces staring up from them, and snapping fangs.
By which the Golden Sphere understood that Ruth Less was also a Celestial Beast, no mere creature. And the holy terror of that was in no way matched by the horrifying spectacle, audience or no audience, of Ruth Less clamping onto the sides of the Golden Hula-Hoop and twirling It around her hips, and in that dizzying display, attempting to, at the same time, the Golden Sphere disoriented, tear the Hula-Hoop apart and shove the parts in her pouch.
Was this the end?
Was It to be dismembered and pouched?
Was that to be the last thing in the obituary?
No! It was too cruel, too crass, too … stupid-pathetic an end, and so the Golden Sphere went limp, turned to liquid, and fell in puddles and drops to the cobblestone street.
Screaming the entire time, for this kind of dissolution was terrible pain for the Golden Sphere and a kind of temporary death.
And yet still the Golden Sphere might not have escaped from Ruth Less if not for the sudden blinking into existence of half a dozen flying Crowley heads, which distracted Ruth Less enough for the last few drops of Golden Sphere to disappear into the cracks in the pavement.
The Golden Sphere had never been happier to see flying Crowley heads in its entire life.
Would forgo sending back a grand piano, as a thank-you.