Fiction: It Guffawed at Geoff by Snehal Bhadani

Photo Source: Unsplash

We had no business being in the Vorrakh Valley. This was something I had brought up on the flight, then again at baggage claim, and then a third time when Geoff was photographing a deer from six inches away. We were, as our guide would later put it, “a particular kind of visitor.”

For the first hour Geoff asked questions and the guide supplied the answers. Yes, the emerald pools were hot. No, you could not dip your feet in them. Yes, the fish could bite. No, that was not a local custom. When Geoff asked what the reeds were called, the guide simply said, “Reeds”.

The valley was extraordinary regardless—tall reed stalks rattled in the wind, lakes opened suddenly between the soft hillocks, bright and silent, and, every so often, a fish would heave itself to the surface, snapping a jaw considerably larger than our own. The truth is that the spectacles we had seen up to this point in our journey were nothing short of remarkable. That an unnamed, unidentified species of some sort should come crawling out of rows of reeds was not at all unfathomable.

It was Geoff who saw it first.

It came on four limbs, rose to two, reconsidered, and settled on three. Uncategorised was the word that arrived in my head and stayed there. It had the quality of something that did not care for a name.

Every time I thought I had understood its shape, it adjusted a joint or redistributed a length of itself. It was not ugly, exactly. It was simply a smug little thing.

It looked at the mountains, then the lakes, then nodded at the deer. It did not so much as glance at us.

Geoff cleared his throat. When that failed, he tried a sort of soft whistle. The guide closed his eyes briefly in a manner suggesting prayer, patience, or the onset of a headache.

We were standing directly in its path. It strutted past us without acknowledgement and continued on its way.

We trailed it for two hours through the Vorrakh lowlands, past the ruins of Essavar and the hot springs at Dûl-Mekh, snapping photographs with flash and making increasingly deranged noises at it.

At one point, it paused beside a steaming mineral pool and appeared to inspect its own reflection. Geoff straightened, hopeful. The creature then craned its neck delicately, examined a passing insect with evident interest, and moved on. 

After that, Geoff became determined to provoke some kind of mythic response from it. He spread his arms. He shouted. He announced, for no clear reason, that we came in peace. The creature did not alter its pace. Geoff even threw pebbles at it, after which it made a guffawing sound so smug that I cannot reproduce it in writing.

We had wanted a story. An attack, even. Something small, preferably something with teeth, some lore to bring back home. A scar would have been ideal–nothing disfiguring, just enough to be impressive at dinner.

By evening, we were panting, sunstruck and ridiculous. We ate at a guesthouse in Vorrakh town, ordering whatever the owner pointed at.

He asked how we had found the valley.

Geoff grumbled that it was fine.

Snehal Bhadani writes poetry, flash fiction, and haikus for her substack. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Claudine Literary, the Deadlands, and the Women's Review of Books, among others. 

If you are interested in learning more about Snehal, you can find her Substack here.