Ghyll:Quicksand
Quicksand is not at all, not even a smidgen!, like what you see in the lumics. There, quicksand is merely waterlogged sand - looks like sand, smells like sand, but step on it, and whoosh! (for varying definitions of whoosh) down you go, slowly, comically, and not very dangerously. Quicksand isn't so named because it's quickly moving or quickly exasperating, but because it's a quick gag, something to lighten the mood. P'Jubal just die? Fijjit Mejora falls in quicksand (cf. the lumic version of "Fijjit and the Fefferberry Failure")! Cue laughter!
In real life, however, quicksand is not cool or funny. Predominantly in the Evesque Valley and Elminster Mire areas, quicksand is a thin layer of sand on the ground that moves, yes, quickly. It seems alive, ALIVE!, I tell you, but not in the sense that it eats or breathes - at the most, it seems to courier, but to where it's difficult to know, especially when you're screaming your head off running in the other direction.
Imagine yourself walking blissfully along, giggling and chortling with your loved one, and whoosh! (no, really, whoosh!), she falls to the ground. As you register the accident, you find yourself with no time to react - she's already half a unanit away. And getting further, seemingly being carried off by that carpet of sand. Whazzah wha? This, then, is the behavior of the quicksand: upon stepping on it, it'll shift under your feet, creating a disruption of your balance that makes you prone to prone. Upon satisfying said proninity, the sand spirits you off, never giving you a chance to regain your balance (or, for that matter, roll off in either direction - the quicksand compensates by shifting its location to keep you in its center).
After this, very little is known. The quicksand is quick, faster than we can run. The screams of the entrapped do fade, but from distance or something else, we're not entirely sure. We do know there is a lack of tracings: no sand sprinklings to follow, no clothes discovered, no bones with which to cast doubt over. There are no drive-by quicksandings, no haggard victims returning to civilization, and no despotic lackey claiming partnership in a scheme with an even more disturbed end boss.
This lack of evidence has lead to a startling finger pointing, reached after months of Resgrewian debates: Shtreiml. By enduring the final scare and tribulation of the quicksand ride, the victims are more appreciative of the immense joy the Octuplets lavish upon them. Why they'd be abducting folks, of seemingly no orthly importance, is unknown, and some folks suspect this is just some convoluted logic relating to the happiness of Fijjit Mejora and the Joyful Divine. The real answer lies only months away, I suspect - the reported abductions have been increasing, and people are gardening (or is it cultivating?) courage.
Citations: Evesque Valley, Resgrewian debates, Shtreiml.
--Morbus Iff 12:16, 16 Sep 2005 (EDT)
