Chapter Text
He materializes upside-down and underwater, obviously.
Ford claps his hands over his nose and mouth and braces for a monstrous wave, the sting of hydrochloric acid, a sudden violent temperature shift. Or maybe space and physiology work differently in this dimension and he’ll be trapped here, unable to drown as he paddles uselessly for a surface a thousand league away that may not even exist. That should keep Bill entertained for a while. He’s less prepared for the soft brush of solid ground against his back, or the curious little brown fish darting overhead when he cracks one eye open. Above them, through the cloud of silt billowing slowly upward around him, light dances so temptingly close within reach that it’s maddening.
This is a trap, he tells himself, even as he kicks off towards it and marvels at how nothing bursts from the ground to grab at him. You didn’t escape, he just wants you to think you did so it’ll hurt more when he sets this place on fire too. You’ll never get out of his world. Maybe all of the others belong to him already anyway. Ford tells himself this and more, but he still can’t entirely smother the treacherous anticipation building in him as he rapidly gains momentum.
He breaks through the surface and takes a hasty breath, followed by a deeper one when the air doesn’t sear his lungs or transform him into a giant insect. The shock of normalcy still makes him cough and sputter a little, but he forces himself to recover and swims for the nearest shore as soon as he spots it. His shaking arms can only propel him for a short burst, but the current doesn’t fight much and the water shallows out enough for him to walk the rest of the way sooner than he expected, so that’s all he needs. It’s a river, he concludes, trudging through it. Freshwater. Even clean, before his steps stir up the sediment at the bottom. He stumbles out until he’s only waist deep and starts checking himself for injuries, trying to ignore how mild the breeze is here, how pleasant the lilting birdsong. Surely Bill can’t think he’s that stupid. It’s almost a relief when he feels eyes on him from the shore, but when he looks up to glare at the source his certainty falters.
Ford has seen evil countless times, in and out of just as many different disguises. “Ponderous teal aardvark-shaped creatures doing their laundry” is…an oddly specific one. Two of them have bonnets on. The bonnets have flower patterns. If this is demonic illusion, it’s either the best he’s seen so far or the silliest.
There’s a moment where they all regard each other in silence, Ford still patting himself distractedly for bruised ribs and three of the smaller creatures still clutching the large, dripping shawl they were lifting out of the water together. Then the bigger one sitting next to them wrinkles its snout, folds its arms over its washboard, and says, in the universal tones of a disapproving aunt, “You’d have better luck climbing out on the other side.”
Ford blinks at her and turns mechanically to face the opposite shore. It’s a farther swim, but the land forms a beach that slopes down to the water much more gradually that the flat drop-off from the surrounding forest over here. He squints, but can’t spot anything obviously deadly lurking on that side either. “You’re right,” he sighs.
“Oh, did you fall in trying to reach some of those berries back around the last bend?” one of the smaller aardvarks asks. She has a jaunty purple stripe crossing diagonally through the fur on her face. “I hate that! All the best-looking ones grow where you can hardly ever get to them.”
“You could grab onto those roots sticking out over there and pull yourself up,” her neighbor suggests, blinking two sets of eyelids in rapid alternating succession. Something tells Ford quite strongly the gesture is meant to be coquettish.
“Gonna catch digger rot,” the eldest says, sniffing disinterestedly. “Standin’ around there gawping like a wet idjit.”
“Hold on.” Ford slides his hands up under his glasses and presses against his closed eyes, trying to focus. The raw adrenaline that’s sustained him for so long is starting to flag and leave him with a head full of smog. He knows from the lightness at his hip that the knife he had is gone too, either buried in the riverbed or drifting out of reach somewhere downstream. Maybe that’s for the best right now. “I just. Need to get my bearings, I haven’t…”
He trails off, lowering his hands a fraction to watch the edges of the clothes still floating dreamily in the water near him. They’re made from some kind of thick plant-based fabric, weathered but sturdy and decorated with broad stripes of dye and colorful embroidery. Ford studies them, then lets his gaze wander back up to the washers and the gauzy white sheets they’re all wrapped in. If he could listen clearly enough to anything at the moment, it’s possible he’d be able to hear realization tapping insistently at the windows in his brain. “Oh my gosh!” Ford flushes to his ears. “I’m so sorry, I’m new here, I didn’t mean to stare. Should I keep covering my eyes?”
Their laughter makes him flinch, but in a more familiar way than what he’s been dealing with for the last few months. They help him out of the water in a bustle of limbs and friendly chatter, and Ford has to tell himself again that this isn’t real because it can’t be. The sun can’t be this warm and yellow, the river can’t wind so wide and calm along its course. People can’t be glad to see him without baring rows of jagged fangs.
But then one of the washers guides a wad of coarse yet fragrant moss into Ford’s palm and shows him how to scrub the river mud out of his coat, and the weight of the motion is so convincing he’s not sure how even something as powerful as Bill could fake it. So he holds onto that for whatever it’s worth and keeps scrubbing, only trusting himself to look up for seconds at a time to nod or answer a question. His shirt is dry on his back before he starts cautiously asking some of his own. It feels starchy and a little wrong against his skin, but nothing could be stranger than how quickly he remembers everything it means to just sit by the water and be.