A little while after Isaac left, Lublamai rose and, leaning out of the open window by his desk, he tied a red scarf to a bolt in the brick. He made a list of shopping that he needed, should Teafortwo come by. Then he returned to work.

By five o’clock the sun was still high, but it was curving towards earth. The light was thickening fast, becoming tawny.

Deep within the pendulous chrysalis the pupating lifeform could sense the lateness of the day. It shivered and flexed its nearly finished flesh. In its ichor and the byways of its body, a final set of chymical reactions began.

At half past six, an ungainly thud outside the window interrupted Lublamai, who looked out to see Teafortwo in the little alley outside, rubbing his head with his prehensile foot. The wyrman looked up at Lublamai and let out a yell of greeting.

“Guvnor Lublub! Doing me rounds, saw your red flapper…”

“Evening, Teafortwo,” said Lublamai. “Fancy coming in?” He stood back from the window and let the wyrman in. Teafortwo flopped to the floor in a heavy, flapping motion. His russet skin was beautiful in the shards of late light that caught it. He grinned up at Lublamai with his cheerful, hideous face.

“What’s the plan, boss?” shouted Teafortwo. Before Lublamai could answer, Teafortwo looked over at where Sincerity was eyeing him dubiously. He spread his wings, stuck out his tongue and leered at her. She scampered off in disgust.

Teafortwo laughed uproariously and burped.

Lublamai smiled indulgently. Before Teafortwo had a chance to get more sidetracked, he tugged him over to the desk where his shopping list waited. He gave Teafortwo a slab of chocolate to keep his attention on the job in hand.

As Teafortwo and Lublamai bickered over how many groceries the wyrman could carry in the air, something above them stirred.

In the rapidly darkening shadows of the cage in Isaac’s raised laboratory, the cocoon was oscillating under a force that was not a wind. Movement within the tight, organic package was sending it in a quick, hypnotic motion. It spun, then faltered, bucked slightly. There was an infinitesimal ripping noise, much too low for Lublamai or Teafortwo to hear.

A moist, sculpted black claw split the fibres of the cocoon. It slid slowly upwards, ripping the stiff material as effortlessly as an assassin’s knife. A welter of utterly alien senses spilt like invisible guts from the ragged hole. Disorienting gusts of feeling rolled briefly around the room, making Sincerity growl, and Lublamai and Teafortwo look up nervously for a moment.

Intricate hands emerged from the darkness and held the edges of the rent. They pushed silently, forcing the thing apart and open. There was the softest of thumps as a trembling body slid from the cocoon, as wet and slippery as a newborn.

For a minute it huddled on the wood, weak and bewildered, in the same hunched pose it had maintained within the chrysalis. Slowly, it pushed outwards, luxuriating in the sudden space. When it encountered the wire mesh of the hutch it tore it effortlessly from the door and crawled into the larger space of the room.

It discovered itself. It learnt its shape.

It learnt that it had needs.

Lublamai and Teafortwo looked up at the screech and discordant plucking of torn wire. The sound seemed to start above them and wash throughout the room. They looked at each other, then up again.

“Wassat, guvnor…?” said Teafortwo.

Lublamai walked away from the desk. He glanced up at Isaac’s balcony, turned slowly, took in the whole of the ground floor. There was silence. Lublamai stood still, frowning, gazing at the front door. Had the sound come from outside? he wondered.

A movement was reflected in the mirror beside the door.

A dark thing rose from the floor at the top of the stairs.

Lublamai spoke, emitted some tremulous noise of disbelief, of fear, of confusion, but it dissipated soundlessly after the briefest moment. He stared with an open mouth at the reflection.

The thing unfolded. The sense was of a blossoming. An expansion after being enclosed, like a man or woman standing and spreading their arms wide after huddling foetally, but multiplied and made vast. As if the thing’s indistinct limbs could bend a thousand times, so that it unhinged like a paper sculpture, standing and spreading arms or legs or tentacles or tails that opened and opened. The thing that had huddled like a dog stood and opened itself, and it was nearly the size of a man.

Teafortwo screeched something. Lublamai opened his mouth wider and tried to move. He could not see its shape. Only its dark, glistening skin and hands that clutched like a child’s. Cold shadows. Eyes that were not eyes. Organic folds and jags and twists like rats’ tails that shuddered and twitched as if newly dead. And those finger-long shards of colourless bone that shone white and parted and dripped and that were teeth…

As Teafortwo tried to bolt past Lublamai and Lublamai tried to open his mouth to scream, his eyes still fixed to the creature in the mirror, his feet skittering on the flagstones, the thing at the top of the stairs opened its wings.

Four rustling concertinas of dark matter flickered outwards on the creature’s back, and outwards again and again, slotting into position, fanning and expanding in vast folds of thick mottled flesh, expanding to an impossible size: an explosion of organic patterns, a flag unfurling, clenched fists opening.

The thing made its body thin and spread those colossal wings, massive flat folds of stiff skin that seemed to fill the hall. They were irregular, chaotic in shape, random fluid whorls; but mirror-perfect left and right, like spilt ink or paint patterns on folded paper.

And on those great flat planes were dark stains, rude patterns that seemed to flicker as Lublamai watched and Teafortwo fumbled with the door, wailing. The colours were midnight, sepulchral, black-blue, black-brown, black-red. And then the patterns did flicker, the shadow-shapes moved like amoeba in a magnifying lens or oil on water, the patterns left and right still matching, moving in time, hypnotic and heavy, faster. Lublamai’s face creased. His back itched maniacally with the thought that the thing was behind him. Lublamai spun to face it, gazed directly into the mutating colours, the dusky vivid show…

…and Lublamai no longer thought of screaming but only of watching as those dark markings rolled and boiled in perfect symmetry across the wings like clouds in a night sky above, in water below.

Teafortwo howled. He turned to see the thing that was now descending the stairs, those wings still unfurled. Then the patterns on the wings caught him and he stared, his mouth open.

The dark designs on those wings moved beguilingly.

Lublamai and Teafortwo stood still and silent, agog, slack-jawed and shivering, gazing at the magnificent wings.

The creature tasted the air.

It looked briefly at Teafortwo, and opened its mouth, but the pickings were meagre. It turned its head and faced Lublamai, keeping those wings spread and enthralling. It moaned with hunger in a soundless timbre that made Sincerity, already sick with fear, cry out. She huddled closer into the shadow of the motionless construct, propped against the wall in the corner of the room, weird shadows twitching in its lenses. The air hummed with the taste of Lublamai. The creature salivated and its wings flickered into a frenzy, and Lublamai’s taste grew stronger and stronger until the thing’s monstrous tongue emerged and it moved forward, flicking Teafortwo effortlessly out of its way.

The winged creature took Lublamai in its hungry embrace.