Hi my name is Tez and I first read Thief of Time 17 years ago and I only just goddamn realized why Lobsang freezing himself in midair after falling off a building is called “the Stance of the Coyote.”
“And then she woke up and it was all a dream.” It was just about the worst ending you could have to any story. But it had all seemed so real. She could remember the smoky smell in the pictsies’ cave, and the way… who was it… oh, yes, he’d been called Rob Anybody… the way Rob Anybody had always been so nervous about talking to her.
It was strange, she thought, that Ratbag had rubbed up against her. He’d sleep on her bed if he could get away with it, but during the day he kept well out of Tiffany’s way. How odd. There was a rattling noise near the mantelpiece.
The china shepherdess on Granny’s shelf was moving sideways of its own accord, and as Tiffany watched with her porridge spoon halfway to her mouth, it slid off and smashed on the floor.
The rattling went on. Now it was coming from the big oven. She could see the door actually shaking on its hinges.
She turned to her mother and saw her put another plate down by the sink. But it wasn’t being held in a hand.
The oven door burst off the hinges and slid across the floor.
“Dinna eat the porridge!”
Nac Mac Feegles spilled out into the room, hundreds of them, pouring across the tiles.
The walls were shifting. The floor moved. And now the thing turning around at the sink was not even human but just… stuff, no more human than a gingerbread man, gray as old dough, changing shape as it lumbered toward Tiffany. The pictsies surged past her in a flurry of snow.
She looked up at the thing’s tiny black eyes.
The scream came from somewhere deep inside.
There was no Second Thought, no First Thought, just a scream. It seemed to spread out as it left Tiffany’s mouth until it became a black tunnel in front of her, and as she fell into it, she heard, in the commotion behind her:
“Who d’yer think ye’re lookin’ at, pal? Crivens, but ye’re gonna get sich a kickin’!”
Tiffany opened her eyes. She was lying on damp ground in the snowy, gloomy wood. Pictsies were watching her carefully but, she saw, there were others behind them staring outward, into the gloom among the tree trunks.
There was… stuff in the trees. Lumps of stuff. It was gray, and it hung there like old cloth.
She turned her head and saw William standing beside her, looking at her with concern.
“That was a dream, wasn’t it?” she said.
“Weel, noo,” said William. “It was, ye ken, and therrre again, it wasna….”
Tiffany sat up suddenly, causing the pictsies to leap back.
“But that… thing was in it, and then you all came out of the oven!” she said. “You were inmy dream! What is — wasthat creature?”
William the gonnagle stared at her as if trying to make up his mind.
“Well, spiders spin webs. Dromes spin dreams. It’s easy in this place. The world you come from is nearly real. This place is nearly unreal, so it’s almost a dream anywa’. And the drome makes a dream for ye, wi’ a trap in it. If ye eats anything in the dream, ye’ll never want tae’ leave it.”
He looked as though Tiffany should have been impressed.
“What’s in it for the drome?” she asked. “It likes watchin’ dreams. It has fun watching ye ha’ fun. An’ it’ll watch ye eatin’ dream food, until ye starve to death. Then the drome’ll eat ye. Not right away, o’ course. It’ll wait until ye’ve gone a wee bit runny, because it hasna teeth.”
“So how can anyone get out?” “The best way is to find the drome,” said Rob Anybody. “It’ll be in the dream with you, in disguise. Then ye just gives it a good kickin’.” “By kicking you mean—?”
“Choppin’ its heid off generally works.”
Now, Tiffany thought, I am impressed. I wish I wasn’t.
“And this is Fairyland?” she said.
“Aye. Ye could say it’s the bit the tourists dinna see,” said William. “An’ ye did well. Ye were fightin’ it. Ye knew it wasna right.”
Tiffany remembered the friendly cat, and the falling shepherdess. She’d been trying to send messages to herself. She should have listened.
“Thank you for coming after me,” she said, meekly. “How did you do it?”
“Ach, we can generally find a way intae anywhere, even a dream,” said William, smiling. “We’re a stealin’ folk , after all.” A piece of the drome fell out of the tree and flopped onto the snow.
“One of them won’t get me again!” said Tiffany.
(…)
“Oh, and there was the world where the dromes come from. They laughed about that and said if I wanted to go in there, I was welcome. I didn’t! It’s all red, like a sunset. A great huge sun on the horizon, and a red sea that hardly moves, and red rocks, and long shadows. And those horrible creatures sitting on the rocks. They live off crabs and spidery things and little scribbity creatures. It was awful. There was this sort of ring of little claws and shells and bones around every one of them.”
–The Wee Free Men, Terry Pratchett, 2003
& the Weeping Angels were Auditor ripoffs - grey robes, life-stealing demons who manipulate time to steal it but not killing ppl outright & thus the scariest creatures in the Whoniverse when they first showed up b4 they got made into monster-of-the-week types – but nobody called SM out on it & so he got bolder
& ppl believe him even tho BOTH the NuWho showrunners are known & celebrated liars
& take for granted that he got the "dream-crabs” from ALIEN ( tho that was a fnord – remember i said that HELLBOY was ALIEN fixfic ) like the “Last Christmas” dialogue pretends instead of from Discworld & Half-life – & from PACIFIC RIM
bc when GDT did it , it really was an homage
& a way of showing that both of them were Tiffany too , and Ofelia , all along :
“Aye. I believe you. Ye have murrrder in yer eyes,” said William, with a touch of admiration. “If I was a drome, I’d be pretty fearful noo, if I had a brain. There’ll be more of them, mark you, and some of ’em are cunning. The Quin uses ’em as guards.”
“I won’t be fooled!” Tiffany remembered the horror of the moment when the thing had lumbered around changing shape. It was worse because it was in her house, her place. She’d felt real terror as the big shapeless thing crashed across the kitchen, but the anger had been there too. It was invading her place.The thing wasn’t just trying to kill her, it was insultingher.
William was watching her.
“Aye, ye’re lookin’ mighty fierce,” he said. “Ye must love your wee brother to face a’ these monsters for him.”
theresthe REAL dream-crab – which is also an avatar of The Quin – & the drome that got a good kicking w the aide of the sheepdogs Thunder & Lightning in thistelling of thestory
bc Granny Aching is an avatar of Hekate in the Tiffany books w her hounds & her lantern & waking the dead lambs & thus a Queen of the Underworld in her own right – & SM is trying to play Mr. Teatime in the game of mirrors still …
“Jeremy tried to be an interesting person. The trouble was that he was the kind of person who, having decided to be an interesting person, would first of all try to find a book called How to Be An Interesting Person and then see whether there were any courses available.”
