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ShellCreature wrapped shell around itself, wrapped dark around himself, herself, punctuated by stars. There were stars on the inside of the shell. The dark between them writhed with fractal growth and sprouted detail as one looked closer like lichen or soot-dark coal glittering shamelessly. Creature looked closer, because she had rage to diffuse. It was inside her like the sea was outside the cliff (in which was embedded the shell, in which was embedded ShellCreature). It was a heavy ocean pressing, pressing. The act of her looking was the act of poking holes and watching small rivulets trickle from this greater rage into ridges of shell where they glistened as they split and split and split fractally going down and down and down as creature clung to one shameless glint becoming smaller until it got lost in the almost-dark.

ShellCreature felt that her rage could rupture the world, should it ever be released. She imagined a great lightining-struck flood of the kind that created life on a dead world once, that would make this world dead, that would leave this world and all that was precious and awful in it dead for cold aeons. That is why she curled inside the shell - at least so she told herself - she curled out of care for the world that she could and wanted to and would tear apart. Yet she was also afraid. She was afraid of doing and being something so uncompromising. She was afraid it would destroy her, yes, but she was more afraid that it wouldn’t, and she would be left standing there at the cold end of it, alone.