Date Devourer: Dringle Written by Septia. On a backdrop of eidolon-stars looms a beast ethereal. The irregularity of her stalk shifts surrounding space. She stays low, her frame splayed along an endless road paved in bricks of alabaster starlight. Faint fissures furrow the path between each block of pure pale; so infinitesimally small it is invisible to the naked eye, yet so deep in contrast to the path it is impossible to ignore. Her head rests against the path, peering into existence below. Each brick a window through which reality is projected. -Grrrmubbgl-. Her abdomen rattles, plump and splayed with its bottom flat against the path she traverses, grinding into reality below with the clockwork churn of brewing, unsung potential -Chh-grll-plsh-. The chimes of the chyme within an orchestra of prospects wasting away within her gutters. The abdomen sluggs forwards as she moved, draping and bulldozing the path, under its bulk of eons worth of belly juicy pudge -Bbwwrlsh- -Cshhrr-grllptsh- -Chhrgg-pltsh-. She peers past the veil of light in the path, parting her lips to let a radiant tongue of enchanted lilac lull free, dragging up across the path -Shhrrrlsllprt- her tongue plastered over the path, steamrolling a mote of drool in its wake as she sequestrates seconds for a sampler. Her tongue unfurls, rolling down through the veil, and once she has found the desired time, gaping open into a proboscis, siphoning up particular situation that grace past the maw of her moist muscle. Enclosed, it moves up as a mound of manifested musculature. The bulge sloughed upwards in her slurps. She envelops her lips over the lump before swallowing it down -Ooomngh- -Glluurrslp- gulping her tongue after it to allow herself to embrace and savour the moment plumbing down the depths of her unnatural biology. She is Dringle. She is a chronophage. And she is eating good. The being by the nomenclature of Dringle is said to be an entity overseeing time's progression. Aeon locked – unlike other living anomalies of their stature – to exist within the bonds of linear time. To the point she traverses time along the flow of the calendar, which houses their source of entertainment and sustenance alike: reality. Her diet consisting of snippets of time left behind in the progression of days. These moments consumed by Dringle remain lost to the memory of otherworldly biology. She was picky. Orderly. A few seconds licked up from this day, a stray minute suckled up from a week, a jiffy ingested from a month, and at times – when gluttony takes over – hours are hoovered up by her proboscis -Shgllunngk-. Broad lumps of time inflating her proboscis on the way up to her throat. Lumps of the universal fabric morphing along the bulges siphoned in by her limber muscle, nursing them down her throat with a glug -Glllmmnnb-. An echo of wasted hours ringing out as her meal all she swallowed compiled into in within her abdomen. Everything feeding the glut of ages bloating her belly. She crawls with her frame flat to the path to experience every moment from below, taking in seconds at a time across a cosmos of possibilities; from the natural to the unnatural and the life that transpires in between the epagomenic she nurses into her being. Dringle amuses herself with the transience of every iota. Every being and location under her vision. It is always someones's time, it is always something's time… and the instants there are none, Dringle corrects it with a curling swipe and suckle of her tongue. She gives the lost time a place to ruminate in her belly. Yet, now and then, she allows herself to indulge… It is believed Dringle consumes only time that no one will miss, the moments that are unobserved and lost, what stays in the blindspot of all of creation for but a moment. Yet, there is nothing to suggest this is a limit to what Dringle could partake in, should she choose. Similar to other living anomalies, lanoms such as Dringle should not be presumed to have limits. Some seconds tastes better than hours: a nano, a frame, a single pico ensnared at the right moment can satiate her for weeks. These moments are the peaks of achievement or downfall. An invention or idea snuffed by her tongue consuming the moment it would occur. The seconds of birth so satisfying to engulf, and the seconds of death a bitter caramel of equal stature to savour, till it melts betwixt her maw and joins the sludge of her gut. Then, the larger moments, where everything in existance at that time, is confined to her… There would always be more, despite how often she would quell her hunger. The notion of devouring every birth, & every death, tantalised her once every few centuries. There are many phenomenon attributed to the yet-known, and the living anomalies can be expected to stand for many such events. Who has not felt as if time flew by in the blink of an eye? It is possible that reality has been altered due to the forge of Dringle's hunger. Though, if it has, there are precious few instruments available to measure and prove it. ~ 1 ~ -Ghhrbbrglgls-. Dringle feels possibility mulched and melting in her bowels, coalescing under the forces of her unnatural biology. She rises on a backdrop of reflected lights in an ink black cosmos, her vestigial legs unfitted to carry such magnitude, seldom does Dringle have a need to stand, but she is approaching a seldom time indeed. Here, either gut has told her it is full, that it has, in the space between days ahead, Dringle's tendrils carves a groove along the cleft within the cosmic calendarium. A gouge in chronological progression. She positions herself over it, and the entity allows her stomach peace. The growls of grinding fudge croans of her stomach, as her belly deflates, constricting -Chhrgllgpthsh- -Shhrssplt- and funnels the congestion through her colon. Her pucker twitches, creaks with a squeal of lost hours -Chhrrlalap- and peels back over an onslaught of pure, gleaming alabaster. The clean coil of chalk-white chrono clay crawls through the clutches of her cheeks. Wasted hours seconds, hours, boiled into a clog of raw potential. The portly possibility prowls through her pucker, protruding downwards to take the plunge into reality. The coils are caught in the calendar's canyon -Chhrllpggh- cradled as it coalesce and conjoin with the path of eons. Another cobble to be clutched into place, incorporated into the annuls of history from the annals of anomaly -Chhrrllgpgsh-. The congestion of raw time folds into the gap, swelling through the crevice as a rising dough to cleave the calendar apart to its nadir. A mesh of lattice gossamer manifest in contact with the calendaring timeline, as the bulk of the raw potential plies wedges the timeline apart these tethers integrate it with the strands of reality, the lattice forming webs, the webs knitting seams, and the seams moulding the filaments of existence together. Dringle's reserves draining as the gap she sliced fills to the brim, the final heap of molten white time toffee trudging untraveled free to topple in tumbled troves, melding through the top to expand its girth. Mortar that binds the calendar together once more. Yet there is balance to be found even in the existence of a lanom. The anomaly's gluttony repaid in the kind with new time, with new opportunities and possibilities, birthed from all the superfluous moments that pass us by without our notice. A day when all our wasted time returns. A new chance to make better use of the moments we have. Recycled or not. She reclines prone once more, cuddles up against the cosmic calendarium pavement, stomach flat against the new day. Their gradual crawl smothers and bulldozes the day clean and smooth. As she returning to observe, to admire, and to consume the reality beneath her. Expelling twenty-four hours worth of reality is exhausting work, and Dringle is starved to fill her stomach, once more.