In raising his eyes, with a strong feeling of curiosity to ascertain the color of his guest's, he found them by no means black, as he had anticipated—nor gray, as might have been imagined—nor yet hazel nor blue—nor indeed yellow nor red—nor purple—nor white—nor green—nor any other color in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. In short, Pierre Bon-Bon not only saw plainly that his Majesty had no eyes whatsoever, but could discover no indications of their having existed at any previous period—for the space where eyes should naturally have been was, I am constrained to say, simply a dead level of flesh.
—Edgar Allan Poe, "Bon-Bon"
Cat-shaped, it was as hairless as a newborn kitten. At first, wildly, Pouncequick thought it must have been some kind of monstrous infant— its eyes were sealed shut, as were eyes of the Folk when they emerged from the womb.
The sniffer smiled his too-wide smile. In the torchlight, his teeth were almost the same blue-green as the blood vessels visible through his translucent skin. “Seems like spies’ work,” he said in his voice like the grave. “Well-put-together, this was. But nobody,” he said, drawing his bony fingers over the scabrous, distended flesh where a man’s eyes ought to be, “nobody escapes the Wellmen.” Like a hairless, misshapen spider, the sniffer dropped to all fours, delicately tracing a long fingernail through the spattering of mingled blood on the floor. He pressed it to his lips and cautiously tasted it. “Yes,” he said. “Plenty to work with.” He scuttled through the postern, stooping low and loping ahead at startling speed.
