9.

The vibrations surged again, shaking the ground under Nowar's feet. Then they suddenly ceased, or rather, they lapsed down to a nearly imperceptible hum. There was a sudden rumbling CRASH from not too far away, the sound of a huge amount of rock shifting, falling, smashing into smithereens against other rock. The two children grabbed each other, hearts pounding. Then there was nothing but oppressive, eerie silence.

 Miles away, and many thousands of feet up above them, where the sun shone and a light wind rustled leaves in trees, in quiet rural Bone Bridge, the ground trembled slightly. In a house, a window slammed shut, though no-one was at home. A few stones tumbled out of an old stone wall in a field and rolled onto the ground, startling a passing woodchuck.

Deep underground, Luz tugged at Nowar's arm. "We've got to get out of here!" she said, "It's not safe!"

"Let me grab my backpack!" Nowar said. His backpack now lay on the ground near the tentacled creature, who was straining to escape from under the rubble. "It has my lunch and everything inside it."

Hurriedly, before any more aftershocks could tumble a building down on top of them, Nowar ran to grab his backpack. The tentacled creature looked up at him imploringly with strange deep-set little eyes.

"Hurry up Nowar, we really have to go!" Luz called from nearby.

The creature made a small rasping, groaning noise as it strained to pull it's tentacle out from underneath the chunk of rubble that pinned it down.

Nowar made a decision. It might have been the first time in his life that he consciously chose to do something Brave. Putting his backpack down, he tried to life the piece of rubble off the little creature's trapped tentacle. It was far too heavy, and the rock wouldn't budge.

"Luz, help me!"

The chunk of fallen stone was massive, far too heavy for the two children to lift. But working together, rocking it back and forth and straining hard, they were able to shift it enough for the odd little creature to free it's trapped tentacle. It scuttled out from under the broken piece of bridge.

"Run!" it squawked in an odd, dry, raspy voice; and run they did. Nowar grabbed his backpack and he and Luz followed the scuttling little creature out of the street, toward the park and the fountain where no tall unstable buildings loomed.

Not a moment too soon. As they ran, a large section of what was left of the high bridge, hanging on like a dead branch, suddenly became detached and fell, shattering on the street in the exact spot they had been. The fleeing figures were briefly enveloped in a billowing cloud of pulverized rock dust.

They stopped just past the fountain, where cold clear water still gurgled up as if nothing untoward had happened. They all three stood, panting, the small greyish tentacled creature's breath coming in rapid high-pitched wheezes.

When they had gotten their breath back, the creature looked up and with some effort, as of someone who is speaking a foreign language in which they are not conversant, "Tha-- Thank You.