Nature Abhors A Hungry Vacuum

20260117

Written for Luna Asli Kolcu’s “Myths of Winter - Week 7” event.

Tanith leant on her cane and eyeballed the old shed. It looked rather… small to hold whatever malevolent force was causing the village’s suffering. But her dowsing had been clear. And there was a certain watchfulness to the musty darkness which put her nerves on edge.
She sighted down her pointer finger at the rickety door, popped her thumb knuckle, then snapped her fingers. The rusty lock, which hadn’t been opened in living memory, politely finished disintegrating, and she nudged the door open with her cane.
It immediately slammed itself shut. Aha.
A warbling whine crept from under the door. Words? Or possibly a trap.
“Speak up. I’m eighty-seven.”
Silence. Then, louder and slower and definitely words, the being whined “Cheeeeeating.”
“Me? Cheat? The nerve. Who do you think you are?”
“Dunno.”
“Hm?” Tanith’s brows rose. “You don’t have a name?”
“Oh, have name! Fred.”
Tanith’s grip tightened on her cane. Poor Fred Miller forgetting his own name was when everyone realised something dire and magical was going on. And once people discovered they weren’t imagining things, and weren’t alone in this, it’d swiftly turned out almost everyone in the village was missing something equally personal.
“I thought I was going mad”, Tanith had been told, over and over.
What was missing varied. A favourite song, their mother’s voice, where they’d put something important… many people weren’t even sure what was gone, but said they’d been struggling with a strange empty feeling for weeks.
“Like someone plucked part of my guts without me noticing and it’s left a horrible hollow space behind”, Joan Fisher had put it, and others agreed.
Tanith kept her voice perfectly level. “Where did you get that name?”
“I was hungry.”
“Hungry?”
A whimper. “Always hungry! Why are others so full inside? I take nibbles and nibbles but I still feel hungry.”
Oh dear. A voidling. While Tanith felt pity for the poor thing, there was only one way to free a voidling from its insatiable longing for substance. They were shadows without objects, and no matter how much they devoured, they never became more solid.
Still… she felt obliged to at least explain.
“I’m afraid hungry is what you are. Taking from other people won’t change that.”
“I don’t like it!”
“I don’t blame you. But after all you’ve eaten, do you feel any better?”
A sorrowful whine.
“Can you give what you took back?”
“Don’t wanna.”
“Why? You said none of them helped.”
Uncertain muttering.
Tanith sighed. All voidlings had, all they could ever have, was the incessant need to take essence from living beings. Even ones like this, which had managed to cobble together something in the shape of a mind, couldn’t resist their instincts. You might as well ask a dropped stone not to fall, or a fire to put out no heat.
“I… I am still empty…” Its voice was slow. Pensive. It somehow scratched at the ear. “But… now… they are empty too. Not as empty. But still. Empty empty empty… like me.”
The last words were almost a purr.
Sometimes a voidling forming a mind meant it could be reasoned with. Usually it made them far more dangerous.
Time to call in an old friend.
So Tanith unhooked the leather-wrapped silver flask from her belt, shook it briskly, unscrewed the lid, and glared at the shed. Its door apologetically swung open. Just for a moment, before the voidling inside squawked and shoved it closed again. But long enough to lob the flask inside.
She didn’t need dowsing tools - or any magical boost at all - to feel when Alfred slithered from his home. But the voidling’s screech of panic would’ve tipped anybody off.
“Try and save the memories!” Tanith called, and Alfred gave a reluctant, forbearing grunt in response.
A blot, like a shadow’s shadow, tried to dart out under the door and didn’t quite make it. Claws without substance scrabbled against nothing and were dragged back inside. There was a long, guttural slurping. Followed by silence.
Tanith nudged the door open once more and stepped into the shed. Had it been scoured clean by the small voidling? Or was Alfred the reason there wasn’t a speck of dust or hint of spider? Either way, the shed was practically useable now. Just needed someone to fix it up a bit.
She turned her attention to the large, comparatively ancient voidling puddled in the middle of the room. Pulsating gently as he sifted through his meal. “Sorry to wake you so abruptly. I didn’t want to give the little one a chance to spook.”
Alfred gave an amiable grumble. A tendril formed, stretching upwards, and Tanith pulled an empty bottle from her pocket.
“Just put them all in. I’ll sort them and make sure they get back where they belong.”
A grunt, and tiny shards of essence, like marbles cast of light, tinkled into the bottle. Almost filling it.
“Goodness. They had been busy.” Tanith shook her head and clicked her tongue. “Can’t believe I didn’t sense what was happening. I’m getting old.”
Alfred muttered agreement, which really shouldn’t sting. Tanith sighed and absently petted him, letting him leech warmth from her fingertips, and he nestled against her feet like the shadow he’d once devoured. A painful loss, that. But one she couldn’t begrudge him, it having set her on her current path.
“Thank you for the help. Now, I’d best get these back where they came from, while they’re still fresh.”
With a final fond slurp at her fingers Alfred oozed back into his flask. His aura immediately cutting off.
There was only one way to free a voidling from its insatiable longing for substance, and that was stopping it from existing. Figuring out the right combination of runes to give non-existence to anything contained within had been a puzzle and a half. She was still proud of solving it.
Talking a voidling down had only worked once, but… that left her feeling obligated to try every time.

Prompt was “People in your town have started feeling... empty. Hollow. That’s the word for it. Like something that used to fill them has been removed. It started with one person. Now it’s spreading.”