Serpentine Squiggles

A Heart to Judge

A side-story for for A Chimerical Hope

A flood of black nerve left more dead, dessicated bugs than a drought. Arbelosa Village knew this deep in its foundation.

Geography had by turns endowed and cursed this struggling stake in the northern province. On a good year, the namesake Lake Arbelos fed fields of bountiful crops. Within its shore carved round and thrice pinched, waters churned with fresh moutain runoff, and a thousand years had not yet exhausted the bat shit and spilled blood that teems in soil this close to the heart of that long-fallen empire.

Atop the mountains, iron spikes rose as if challenging or inviting heaven. Metal drew down filaments of black nerve when a blizzard's embrace drunk tight the flows of black nerve above, too heavy not to fall. On a good year, snow would trap what the metal called down.

1712 was a bad year. Cold shadows twisted in the depths of the lake, as if mirroring the writhing flows of the sky above. Winter poisoned the waters. Sunlight would be their salvation — but it had been two moons with more cloudy days than not. Clouds enough to stoke hopes of clean rain, but never thick enough to promise it.

Dark water killed more bugs than drought. Arbelosa Village knew this deep in its foundation. Water towers stood as tall as grain silos. But bugs drank more than than they ate, and food itself sucked up water. A bad year meant rationing.

It meant triaging who was necessary and who wasn't. Nobody liked dead nymphs, but imagos kept the mills turning. When one dead body killed others, saving the right bug was saving many. Arbelosa Village knew this deep in its foundation — Lake Arbelos was also a graveyard.

Makuja Firstmoon hatched eldest of her brood of four, crawling into her mother's forelegs, her mother's first touch after months spent guarding the ootheca.

Makuja was many firsts. First to be named. First to be fed. First to get new toys, clothes, friends.

She was the first to be forgiven when her siblings devised trouble (their envy animated them to steal her things, act out for attention; Makuja's hatchrank meant she expected them to treat her with all the deference adults spoiled her with, and she'd bite them back into line).

And she would be the first to inherit the opaque veil her mother wore. Her mother was a Snurratre temple matriarch, not only over her family, but Arbelosa Village as a whole. (It knew her authority deep in its foundation.) One day, Makuja would judge her flock with eyes blind but for the truth. Her mother had not seen light in ten years. She hadn't see her nymphs hatching. Her mother had never seen Makuja.

The nymphish Makuja did not understand the gravity of her hatchright — at best, she knew she'd be in charge, one day. She lorded it over her peers.

Her mother was blind impartiality, but her father had a favorite. He saw patterns, his only literacy was in reading between the lines, draped in intuition and mysticism. Makuja was as cute as any wide-eyed nymph — any father could love her — but he decided she was a profound gift.

1712 was a bad year, a dry spring after a winter black with wispfalls. Water was rationed, and bugs were already starting to die. Then it started raining just hours after Makuja drew her first breaths, the rainfall only intesifying as the sun sets. That first night, Makuja had fallen asleep clutching her father for fear of thunder.

(It didn't take Makuja long to know her father had never forgotten that night. If she threw her forelegs around his leg and whimpered, he would do anything to protect her, say anything to comfort her.)

And didn't his little rainblossom deserve everything he could give her?

1713 was a good year, and 1714 was even better. She was a blessing, for her family and the whole village.

Like many of her father's theories, others humored it at best. Regardless, the temple matriarch's family was treated well by the village. They were not aristocracy, as there was no reigning nobility anywhere in the Pantheca and none would be countenanced. Still, they were rich — by the standards of a village that rationed water on a bad year — and widely respected.

Makuja's hatchrank didn't mean as much, outside her family's home. If anything, it put bugs on edge around her, knowing she would be their judge, one day. Her siblings didn't have that baggage, and they didn't have Makuja's entitled attitude. They were adored and she was not. How dare they?

So Makuja spent more time at home, while her siblings would play and help out around the village. Temple duties and daily meditation kept her mother ever busy, so Makuja spent much of her childhood in her father's care.

He taught her to dance, and in turn she bounced with enthusiasm unfitting for a formel. Her mother judged her for it. War dances would be acceptable, or courtship dances, but dancing, as an art, was a tiercel's display.

(They argued about it, her father and her mother. If his little rainblossom wanted to dance, didn't she deserve to enjoy her nymphood while she could?)

So Makuja only danced where others couldn't see and judge her. Not rare, her mother regularly cloistered in the temple, her siblings deftly avoiding a home where she could bully them and run to clutch daddy's leg if they didn't like it.

Makuja loved the rain. Not only because it's her nicknamesake, the gift that coincided with her arrival in this world. No, villagers loved the rain too — if clean, it meant a fewer bugshells sinking into the lake when they had to drink from the water towers — but they didn't love being in the rain, getting wet. This meant Makuja could step into a world with no eyes to judge her.

So she loved dancing in the rain. She prayed for it every overcast day.

But this was soon tempered by a lesson: she could not stand out beneath a cloudy sky and wait for it to pour down on her.

Most of the time, it would rain. But sometimes, wisps would fall instead. She could not risk it. The wispfalls were blessedly rare, most of her nymphood.

But Makuja endured her first bad year in 1718. Not as dry as the year before her birth, she'd never experienced that. For the first time, being denied, needing to ration? Makuja threw tantrums. Her mother judged her. No matter her demands, Makuja wasn't allocated any more than her siblings. To her siblings, it felt fair, in a way nothing really had.

It lasted until her her father started sneaking her extra food and water. No bug noticed, and Makuja could keep a secret. Her mother couldn't see it, but it doesn't escape her sibling's notice that she endured the drought better than they did.

And that, was how it really worked. The world wasn't fair, it turns out. Just how unfair was it?

Soon, one of them contracted a blood plague, a contagious rash. Mantis hemolymph bears a greenish hue, and this rash left red boils. Flesh would fold up around them, bunching into layers, squeezing the boils until they popped. The layers flaked off, and the discharge oozed. If you touched either, you'd get infected.

All of the fluid had to come from somewhere. The drought made a terrible disease worse.

Nymphs died all the time in the heartlands. Six of the nymphs her siblings grew up playing with had sunk into Lake Arbelos already. This marked the first time one of the siblings died, though.

The rations lasted them, and the drought ended. But it left a scar, a lesson for the two surviving siblings. Makuja would be showered in special treatment even if it killed them. Some bugs were more important than others — that was written deep in the foundation of this village.

The word might be envy, or resentment. Makuja always had more and still always demanded more. She always got a doubt's benefit. She was, put simply, an obnoxious, spoiled older sister.

Her brother and sister both cried at Keru's funeral. Makuja didn't. Then she went home and claimed all his toys for herself. Her face brightened with a smile of delight.

They fought over it, trying to take the toys back, and Makuja wailed about it. They were always trying to take thing from her, she said. Always — like this was no different from any other dispute over toys.

Not an easy fight to win — Makuja had spent months eating well while they rationed, so she was always bigger. She would win. And if she didn't win? What did it matter — she'd get fat while they starved and then smile as she took everything they had before their bodies even hit the bottom of the lake.

So they kept fighting, as the years go on. Makuja had won herself no friends, not really, and her siblings turned all of their friends against her. Makuja could usually win against her younger siblings, but the village had older kids. She got bruised eyes, broken raptorial spine, once had a leg cracked enough she struggled to walk on it. More often than that, she would get dirt all over her clothes, and her mother felt this and judged her.

Makuja cried at the thought of losing another fight, and whined to her father about it. Begged him to find someone to teach her how to fight. The syndics had trained guards that had almost nothing to do in a town this small and quiet, so the request was humored. It came easily — she'd danced for years, and her coordination was well-practiced.

Her parents argued about this, too. A template matriarch was a pacifist. How could one judge fairly if she was getting into brawls like a common thug?

By 1720, her mother had enough, and devised a simple solution to the problem of fights: Makuja wouldn't leave the house. She threw a tantrum, but her mother didn't budge. Her father argued about the fighting instruction and, at length, achieved a concession — that, at least, could continue, to give her something to do, if nothing else. Better she learn how to fight than more dancing.

It was a year Makuja spent never leaving the house, except to go to shadely temple service and other events. A year watching her siblings have free roam of the village while she was stuck inside. Her mother had begun instructing her in esoteric points of ancestral lore, disciplining her when her memory proves an ineffective sieve for verses and quotations. Makuja made demands of her mother, but the opaque veil left her impervious to Makuja's pleading eyes, and her tantrums met only impassive judgment.

Still, Makuja did have an outlet for her anger and for all of the combat techniques she's learning. Whenever her siblings were home, when their parents weren't looking, Makuja attacked them, biting, pinning them under her weight, crushing them in her raptorial forelegs, and increasing the pain every time they cry out until they're silent and won't tattle. Her father wouldn't believe them, anyway.

It was late 1720 when her father first saw this new side of his daughter, yanking a sibling's antennae and tripping them to the ground, completely unprovoked.

He pulled her aside, hugging her and asking why. Makuja spun a lie about them antagonizing her, and he nodded. "But if it happens again, come to me," he said. "Don't respond to words with violence. That's not why you were taught how to fight, dear."

It happened again. Why would Makuja stop? Why would she worry about what imagos say was wrong — she knows what they do. (Nothing.)

Her father talked to her again. Hugged her again, but she had the odd thought that it felt less tight, now. He made her promise to stop hurting her siblings. She said it, of course. She knows what the words mean. (Nothing.)

She did try to be sneakier about it; those conversations were getting annoying. Somehow, it became tricky. (Was he watching her, now?) Still, it was another month before her father caught her again. He didn't hug her. He looked at her with sad eyes, talked about right and wrong, about not giving in to anger, about virtue. She nodded and said everything he asked.

They have the conversation many, many times. Enough that she can remember them as well as her mother's oft-repeated lessons. He stopped asking her to make promises. He just asked her to change, and looked into her eyes to see if there's anything there, any guilt, any understanding. (There was nothing.)

He tried to stop giving her what she wanted, when she made requests. She kept asking. She never got angry at him, never threw tantrum at him, but she can look so hurt, insinuate things that pain him to the core. He would always give her what she wanted, eventually. How could he deny his little rainblossom?

(He began to avoid the other children, as the months go on. He felt guilt bite him, every time he looked at them.)

It was a cold day in Last Flame when Makuja broke her brother's leg and left him out in the snow. (He had tattled to her mother, instead of her father. It was fitting that he should endure some discipline, just as she had.)

Her father didn't have an another Conversation, when he found him shivering, hemolymph spilled in a frosty puddle around him. He didn't say anything to her. He didn't even look at her.

Nor the day after. But two days later, he came to her room in the night. It took a while before he said anything. There weren't a whole lot of things he hasn't said, at this point. So when he finally spoke, it's a surprise.

"I kept it a secret," he said. "I knew your mother would judge you harshly, she would only see the facts, not understand things from your perspective. I... thought I did. I'm not sure I know what your perspective is anymore, little rain-" His voice caught there, as if he couldn't bring himself to use the nickname. "So I never told her. I didn't want her to... I know how she'll react. You know how she'll react. But... what else can I do?"

"You could not tell her."

"You could stop, dear."

"But they-"

"I know, Makuja. I hear what they say. They say you're a monster." He thought about what to say next. "But... you know that's not true, right? You're important. You've always been important. You're going to go on to do great things, people are going to see that and look up to you, one day. I know that. Isn't that enough? Why should you care about what they say, whe..."

"I'm better than them?"

"You could be better than them. Act better, even if they're wronging you. Don't you think it's nobler, to have mercy even if you think they don't deserve it?"

"I didn't think you'd side with them."

"I love you, Makuja. But I love them too. I don't want this much... strife."

"Why do I have to take the blame? When-"

"Why did you lock him out in the cold, Makuja? Why?"

Makuja starts rubbing, "Because he—"

"No, don't tell me. Tell your mother. She can judge."

"You wouldn't—"

"I have to, dear. I'm sorry. I have to. I can't hide this from her. It's... it's too much. You've gone too far."

Days later, her sister laughed. Whether it was in relief, or at the unfairness of it all. Makuja wasn't made to apologize. She wasn't locked up in a cell like the animal she was. Natawe wasn't sure if she got punished for what she did. Certainly, her mother didn't speak a word of what happened. "Fair judgment is a private matter, not a spectacle," Mother always said. But what was the point, then?

But there was relief. Quietly, her mother made arragements for Makuja to live at the temple full time. Her sister and brother wouldn't need to live with a rabid animal anymore.

(Don't think about how the temple is bigger than their house, how it always has oil even when they're rationing water. Don't think about how this meant that somehow, Makuja was still going to be their matriarch. No, just think about how you don't need a tripwire trap around your bed anymore.)

Makuja still stalked them — they went to church twelve times a month — but it became easier to avoid her, or ensure they were never alone together.

It lasted until her mother told Natawe to come to the temple alone, one shade. And then again. Two more expeditions into the den of the beast, eluding Makuja to make it to the private meeting with — should she call her 'mother' or 'judge', like this?

At first, the extra meetings were just conversations. Mother would ask her questions, and she'd answer. They'd have conversations. None of them were about Makuja, and Natawe didn't understand the point.

Then it changed. Instead of asking her questions, mother began telling her things. Stories of the ancestors. Theories of metaphysics.

She was teaching her. On one hand, it meant she'd be going to the temple even more often, braving Makuja — on the other... was Mother reconsidering? Would Natawe become matriarch instead of Makuja?

Makuja barged in on their meeting once, and Mother shooed her out. Natawe didn't see Makuja anywhere in the temple after that. So she didn't see when Makuja pounces from the roof, raptorials siezing around Natawe. Makuja kicked, punched and bit her sister.

"Give up," Makuja said.

"What?"

"Mother is wasting her time with you. You'll never catch up to me."

"Catch up? I'm already ahead and you know it. Mother knows it. Who do you think would make a better judge? I haven't tried to kill anyone."

"I'm better than you. I'm one who—"

Natawe was laughing in Makuja's face. Makuja bit her soft chitin until she tasted hemolymph.

"Shut up."

"Better? What do you know about what's good? The only thing you're better at is—"

"Shut. up. Do you want to know what it looks like when I try to kill someone?"

"Do you want to know what Mother will do you if you try to kill someone?"

Makuja stood up. "This never happened," she said.

"Do you think I'm scared of you, anymore?"

"If you're right, and mother is going to make you matriarch... she can't do that if you're dead, can she? I'm being nice. You should return the favor."

"I think there is one other thing you have left to lose," Natawe said, and Makuja only arched an antennae. "I could tell your father. He thinks you're getting better, healing," she spat. "He keeps telling me to tell you he still loves you. I never do, because you don't deserve it."

Before Makuja opened her mouth, she glanced back behind her. Her mother was watching them.

"Good night, dear sister Natawe~" Makuja said sweetly.

Natawe walked away without responding. And as days passed, despite her posturing, Natawe didn't tell Mother.

After all... That was how her brother almost died.

Months later, Makuja was dancing in the snow when she felt the sting of black nerve, and needed to rush inside. It happened, again and again. 1721 is another bad year.

An enervate flood is effectively a drought, and it hit harder, now. It had been years, but the plague of boilflakes had never quite left the town, always lingering in this family or that. The vesperbanes said it was mutating, losing its edge. Most who caught it didn't die to it anymore. Like many plagues, it jumped from mantis to roach to cattlebugs. That's how it stayed around.

Who could afford to kill an infected animal? Starvation, or plague: which would you pick?

The temple was a hospital to many bugs. Cleaning the sheets and feeding the bedridden soon became one of Makuja's temple duties.

She almost didn't notice when one of the sick she walked past was her father.

Makuja's style of handling her duties was slow and adequate. She did the bare minimum that skirted punishment. When tending to her father, it was the first time she put in an actual effort.

A shadeweek passed. She had tended to enough afflicted to know what it looked like when they were getting better.

And what it looked like when they weren't.

She tried to sneak her father extra food, extra water. He didn't take it. She cried, begged him, but he had gotten better at resisting her.

He did make one request of her. He didn't ask if she'd gotten better, didn't make her promise him anything. He said, "Do you still dance, my little rainblossom? Can I see it?"

So she danced for him.

He cried.

So she asked why.

"Because you're smiling, Makuja. I'm glad I could remember you happy."

"Why do you need to remember me? I'm right here. You're right here."

"I think that, if you had hatched second, maybe we could have kept dancing."

"Would I still be your favorite, if I hadn't hatched first?"

"Maybe it would have been better if you weren't my favorite," he said. "I'm sorry for that."

"So I'm not your favorite, now? Who is? It's Natawe, isn't it?"

"It's no one. I love you, Makuja. Too much. I'm sorry."

"You aren't making sense. You should drink some more water. It will clear your head."

"No, no, I've had my fill."

"Fine. Get some sleep, then. I can dance some more tomorrow, okay?"

"Do you think you can tell Natawe to come see me?"

"I thought you said she wasn't your favorite."

"Makuja... Natawe is my daughter too."

"You said—"

Her father shifted, exhaled a sigh that might be a groan of pain from the boils, and said, "Natawe is Natawe, and you are my little rainblossom. Please..."

"I'm better than her, right?"

"You were always special, Makuja."

He'd said similar things before. You're going to go on to do great things, people are going to see that and look up to you, one day.

"Why doesn't anyone else see that? Why doesn't anyone understand?"

"I... don't know, dear. Maybe... If I talk to Natawe, I could try to make her understand?"

Makuja smiled. "I hope so."

He flinched at that. Why? Didn't he want to see her smile in the first place?

Makuja shrugged, and went to tell Natawe father wanted to speak with her.

They talked in private for a while, and Makuja perched perfectly still outside the door. She was the first things Natawe saw, when she stepped outside.

Makuja flashed her teeth in the shape of a smile. "Do you understand now, sister?"

"Yeah, I get it."

Odd. It didn't look like she was recognizing Makuja's greatness — it looked like she was pitying her.

Makuja clenched her first. But she wouldn't hit her. Not yet. "Why—"

"Good night, dear sister." Natawe was walking away.

Makuja decided it wasn't worth it to chase after her. She still felt a bit wiggly — had it really been so long since she danced?

So she let Natawe walk away. "I'm still better than you," she muttered under her breath.

There was still a bounce in her step, when Makuja made the rounds to her father's bed in the morning. She'd dance again today! Even seeing Natawe's face again couldn't ruin her mood.

Only her father wasn't there. He wasn't anywhere among the patients. Had he recovered so fast? That was strange.

She'll just ask her Mother—

"He's dead, child."

Makuja went very still. Her antennae fluff folded back. After a moment, she said, "She knew. She killed him."

Did the truth hurt Natawe that much?

Her mother was saying something, but Makuja's not listening. She's hunting.

She left the temple grounds — she wasn't supposed to, but she didn't care.

She found Natawe out playing with the other kids. When her sister saw her, Natawe scowled. Then she got a better look at Makuja's expression. Her eyes paled, and she started running.

Natawe couldn't beat Makuja in a fight, and nor could she beat her in a race.

Makuja lunged, raptorial vice closing tight around the killer's thorax, and pinned her to the ground.

She should just kill her. Every breath she took was one more than she deserved. But she just didn't understand.

"Why did you do it?"

"What the five are you talking about?"

"Why did you kill him?"

"Kill... what... Father? I didn't kill him! Are you crazy? No, let me rephrase. Are you stupid?"

Makuja squeezed tighter. Listened to the hiss of pain. She wondered if Natawe was holding back a scream. She knew Makuja found them satisfying, and she was always so frustratingly quiet.

Fine. Makuja had always held back with her siblings (they were family, after all; there were lines she wouldn't cross), but why hold back against a patricidal bitch?

Makuja bit down on her sister's antennae, tightened her mandibles until held secure, then yanked back with her whole body behind the motion. She can feel the tearing rumbling in her teeth, the muscles snapping, the chitin fracturing.

There was the scream.

"You're going to kill me, aren't you? Fuck. Well, fuck you. Want to know what the last thing your father ever said was?"

"He told you the truth," Makuja said.

"Damn right he did. Do you know that story he likes to tell, about how you hatched and brought rain to the world?"

Makuja had to admit that a lot of things her father believed weren't quite... literal truth.

"We all hatched that day, Makuja. Why would you be somehow special? Hell, Keru hatched last — if anything, he was closer to the rain."

"Why does this matter?"

"It doesn't. Well, I guess it matters because of who's saying it. The only difference between you and me, Makuja? It's that you hatched first, and it ruined you."

"You've always wanted what I've had. Well, now you get it. How are you enjoying mother's switch?"

"This isn't about me or what I want. That's the word he used. Ruined. Even he's realized what you are."

"He said I was special."

"How many times have you lied to him?"

With a snarl, Makuja released Natawe from half of her vice grip. One leg free, Makuja pulled back and stabbed her first raptorial spine into the meat of her sister's eye.

She can stridulate even as she groans in agony. "For— for what it's w-worth, you are special, you bitch. No one else is as fu-fucked up as you are."

Makuja removed her spine, and stabbed again. She dug the vitreous fluid out, plucking out ommatidia one by one.

She could kill her, right now, so easily. But if she did that, if she just killed a family member, she'd be no better than her. This way, she'd teach her a lesson before the end.

"H-he said, I wish I could tell her how wrong I was. It's my fault, isn't it? How she turned out? My baby girl is a monster."

Makuja screamed, and buzzed hard right beside Natawa's auricles. "He didn't say that. You're lying."

"I don't care if you believe me. It hurts more if you doubt. You don't know, and you'll never stop wondering. Father died regretting not raising you better. Me? I regret not hurting you more. You never get what you deserve."

Makuja spoke, and punctuated every word with a raptorial spike through the eye. "I. deserve. everything. I." But the sentence died on her palps and she realized that Natawe was dead.

The corpse was a mess, pulped and meticulously pulled apart. Natawe had looked smug, even in death, so she deserved it.

Majuka liked the feeling of dancing soaked in the rain. How would it feel, dancing soaked in blood? But the thought of dancing makes her think of her father, and she just feels...

It's Natawa's fault. She killed him. So she punished her, and winds up with more blood on her, prompted her to think about rain again. And so forth.

Natawe killed him. (If she didn't, then the plague killed him, and if only Makuja had just made him eat and drink, then maybe-)

It couldn’t be. So she punishes her. Natawe, blood, rain, father, no, Natawe, blood, rain—

The syndic guards find her like that, covered in her sister's hemolymph.

The guards restrained Makuja, and she told them she was defending herself, but they take her back to town. Her mother was there, expression hidden behind her opaque veil, but she instructed the guards to take her to the temple.

There was a cloister where mother sometimes secluded herself. Makuja was to be placed there. The door was barred from the other side.

She can see the sun from this room, through windows too small to crawl out of, and that's how she knows it had been more than a day stuck in there.

Two days. No food, no water. They'd leave her to die like this? She'd die with no one knowing how important she was...

But what great things had she done? Kill her sister?

Makuja heard her mother's voice, and didn't have the energy to startle.

"Here."

It was just water. But she was in no state to refuse.

Her mother didn't leave. "I think it's long past time we had a conversation, Makuja."

"About the things I've done? Spare your breath, mother. I'm a monster. Even my father says it."

"No."

"I'm not? You don't hate me?"

"After everything you've done, I would like to hate you. But would that be a fair judgment?"

"Has anyone ever been fair to me?" Even her father had betrayed her.

"I have made errors in how I've raised you, yes. I regret them, and would like to move forward. But this is not about whether I hate you, not even about what you've done. I have a simple question for you: why are you here, Makuja?"

"You put me here."

"Do you know why?"

"Because you think I did something wrong. This is punishment."

"No. This is a lesson, and you can leave as soon as you understand."

"What's the lesson? That actions have consequences?"

"If I let you out right now, what would you do?"

"I'd..." Dancing might be fun. But what was the point, if her father wasn't around to see it? Fighting lessons might be fun, but no way anyone would teach her, not after what she's done. She could go see her brother... somehow, Makuja neither thought she'd be allowed to, nor that mother wanted to hear that.

What did she want to hear? "I'd attend my temple duties."

"You have none."

"But I..." Natawe was dead; she had no competition. "I'm going to be the next matriarch, aren't I?"

"No, Makuja. I have relieved you of your reponsibilities. So, what will you do?"

She could...

"Tell me, is this a prison, if there's nothing you want outside?"

"I want to go outside." Just being able to climb something would help. It was overcast today; maybe it would rain soon, too.

"Do you want to know when you'll be let outside?"

Just like her lessons. Makuja sighed, and repeated the words. "When I learn my lesson."

"There is another way."

Makuja perked up.

"If anyone asks to see you, you can go free. Remember that."

With that, her mother left.

Makuja sat in solitude. The cloister was small enough she didn't even have space to practice her combat forms.

It rained, while she was stuck there. She could only listen.

Her mother came by to bring her water, every so often.

Eventually she caved and asked. "Well? Has anyone asked?"

"No."

Of course. No one realized how great she was. No one ever appreciated her.

"I get it, mother. No one cares. I already knew that." You couldn't live one day of her life without noticing.

Another day.

"Don't you hear me? I get it. No one cares. Let me out, mother. I get it."

Days passed. Sometimes she woke up and there was water, even food on rare days, but sometimes a shadeweek passes without seeing her mother.

"What am I missing. That it's not going to change, no matter how long I wait. Haha. Yeah, I guess dad was wrong. No one will ever understand how great I am."

Every time she saw her (it happened less and less), she'd repeat the words. "No one cares."

No one cares.

No one cares.

No one cares.

Finally, a response.

"Why?"

Makuja laughed, but she didn't have an answer.

"Because people are stupid," Makuja said.

"They're jealous of me," Makuja said

"They don't want me to be happy," Makuja said.

"They hate that I'm better than them," she said.

"Because Natawe lied to them," she said. "They always believe her."

Had it been months?

"Mother, please. I'm sorry? I was wrong. I'll do better. I promise."

"Let me out."

"To punish me. That's why. Because I'm a monster."

"To protect everyone. That's why. Because I'm a monster who'll hurt people if you let me out."

"I'll never hurt anyone again. You can pull out my mandibles, break my raptorials, bind me until I can barely move. Please. I just want to feel the rain again."

Sometimes, Makuja dreamed mother finally repsonded again. Told her she had to believe Natawe. Told her it was a cruel joke, and she'd never ever be let out. Told her the answer to the riddle was to stop eating, stop drinking. Then, she could finally escape.

She decided that was as good as any of her other guesses. What would she lose, anyway? She didn't want much. She wanted better food, more water, she wanted to move around (she wanted to dance).

But none of those wants impressed her mother.

She wanted to talk to her father again. He could tell her she was special again. He could show her new dance moves. She would tell him the stupid lies Natawe told about his last words, and they could laugh about it together.

Or maybe Natawe was right. Maybe her father didn't believe her after all. Makuja would listen to her father call her a monster over and over, if she could listen to her father again.

He meant it when he said he loved her, right?

She repeated it, sometimes.

"I'm special."

Her mother responded, once. "So?"

I'm special and no one cares.

One day, Mother said, "Maybe you'll never understand, Makuja."

"I'll understand anything. Anything. Please. Just tell me."

"This is the truth, child: no one cares about you, and that's your fault. Everyone is a special gift to the world, but what matters is that you give it. And what have you given, Makuja? Where it all went wrong is that we taught you backwards. We gave you privilege before responsibility."

"And now I don't have either. 'I have relieved you of your responsibilites'," Makuja echoed. She had, at some point, echoed every word spoken to her in this cloister; maybe one of them was a secret clue to the Lesson. "I was going to be a great matriarch," Makuja added. "Everyone would have seen."

"What you don't understand, Makuja, is that to be a matriarch is to be a servant. You want everyone to adore you? Do something for them. Have you done a single kind act in your life?"

Makuja had nothing to say, so she laughed. She understood. She understood everything. She'd understand anything.

She'd learn the Lesson and then she could dance in the blood of the sky again and talk to her father again.

"This is the last thing I will say to you, my daughter: begone."

Makuja didn't understand that. But she could try. She had to understand everything and then she could get out.

"With these words, I expel you and excise your name from the unbroken line of ancestors. From this day henceforth, you are Makuja No-name."

Makuja laughed.

"It would serve you to not see this as a punishment, but perhaps the greatest gift I could give you. Without your name, without your family, you have nothing. And you will have nothing more except what you can earn with service to others."

"I deserve everything. I'm special."

"You are nothing, Makuja. Either you die with nothing to offer the world, or you show everyone that you really will go on to do great things."

Makuja laughed some more.

"Ten years ago, I had three daughters I loved. Now I have none. Do you think the five have judged me fairly?"

Makuja half-echoed, "Is love a fair judgment?" And then laughed at her own joke.

Her mother stood up, and walked the threshold, leaving the door unbarred.

"Well? Get up, Makuja No-name. You are trespassing on temple grounds."

"I'm a monster," Makuja echoed.

"And Arbelosa Village will do what's necessary so that bugs survive. You are a murderer. But if you're willing to work, we don't have the luxury of saying no."

Her mother left her, after that.

The door was unbarred. Makuja almost didn't believe it — was it a trick? Another test? Was she dreaming? But she could stand and, weakly, make her way to the threshold and beyond.

She'd dreamed and fantasized of walking down these halls again many times. That was the only reason they weren't half-forgotten and unfamiliar, with how long she'd been locked away.

Makuja walked out in the central chamber — empty, what day was it? — and then barely had the strength to push open the sturdy stone doors.

She walked out in the sunlight, so bright it hurt her eyes. A raptorial rose to shield them, and she staggered on the main street of Arbelosa Village. She attracted glances and gazes and then stares. It had been months, but in a town this small they didn't forget about Makuja.

They stared, and she didn't care. No one cared.

She walked. She was tired before she even left the temple, but what was pain, what were wheezing breaths, what was falling flat on the dirt? What did it matter? She kept going.

Some people approached, said words she didn't listen to, tried to help her up, but she didn't care. No one cared.

She kept moving until she had crawled to the edge of the village.

Panthecan settlements were supposed to have walls, but Arbelosa village's "wall" was abdomen high in most places — the mountains were most of their protection.

She remembered her mother — no, not her mother, now. She remembered a lady telling her that, and things like that, and smacking her with a ruler when she forgot. She laughed.

She perched on top of the wall, and decided pain was nothing, panting was nothing, dirt was nothing — but if she moved again, she'd fall off the wall, flat onto her face, and she didn't think she'd get up.

So she sat there. She didn't move.

She'd gotten very used to staying in one place.

She fell asleep there, under stars wheeling above. She wasn't cold; it was early autumn of 1721.

She started at a movement behind her.

It's nymph boy she recognized, and he didn't meet her eyes.

A boy who had lost three sisters had brought Makuja a plate of food and a jug of water.

Makuja laughed. She echoed, "And you will have nothing more except what you can earn with service to others."

The boy didn't react, and walked away without saying anything after depositing the meal.

It wasn't just food and water. There was a ribbon. Her father's favorite color, probably one he wore.

"No one cares," Makuja said. "But someone did, once."

(And it ruined her.)

A mantis had instincts enough to survive in the wild, hunting beetles and birds and small beasts. Makuja didn't go back to Arbelosa village, though she never lost sight of it. The rule she settled on is that she never went past the wall (or their excuse for a wall) anymore. Why would she? No one cared.

She saw the boy, sometimes, and he saw her. Sometimes she saw a lady wearing an opaque veil. Makuja wasn't sure why; that lady definitely doesn't see anything.

Makuja would never have to wear that veil. Shouldn't she be happy about that?

Makuja was free now, shouldn't she be happy about that?

"If I let you out right now," she echoed, "what would you do? Tell me, is this a prison..."

One day, it rained. She sat still and let it pour.

"Do you still dance, my little rainblossom?"

"No," Makuja replied to herself. "I don't."

One day, she broke her rule. (She broke every promise she made to him.) She swam across Lake Arbelos to a sign she knew was there, above a pier that stretches over the depth of the water. It was a list.

She stopped just short of climbing onto the pier and reading it. She decided she won't break her rule, not completely.

So instead of climbing, she turned on her side, sucked in a massive breath, and dove.

Lake Arbelosa was a graveyard, and she decided to disturb the dead.

It had only been a few months. He should be here.

The plague was in full swing, when it happened. There'd be other bodies, but he wouldn't be buried. He wouldn't be rotted away entirely.

(You weren't supposed to dive into Lake Arbelosa, for exactly this reason. The depths were for the dead. It was a disrespect, but no one respected Makuja.)

She didn't find him. Her throats were starting to hurt, begging for air, sucking in water, but she didn't care. If she died, she'd already be where she belongs, after all.

She got tired, though, and floated back to the surface right as her consciousness blurred. She awoke on the pier, a mantis with dripping wet leg smacking her abdomen. She flinched away from him. She dove back into the water.

She had to find her father. Makuja didn't want many things, so this morbid curiosity was all she had left. She'd find him. She'd hug him again.

She had check to see if there was signs of... murder.

And if there wasn't.

If...

She could apologize. The words could mean more than nothing, this time. As long as she found him.

She disturbed body after body in the depths. Peering through the murky water, hoping for a ribbon, a familiar dress.

Then she stopped.

There's a body she recognizes, because her raptorial slots right into one of the stab wounds.

Mantids can stridulate perfectly well underwater.

"Natawe is Natawe," Makuja echoed. And then, "and you are Makuja No-name. You are nothing."

She awoke up on the pier again. She'd been rescued again.

"Again, girl? You're going to catch your death down there."

"I should."

"Maybe. Either way, I should rescue you, so I guess I'll just stay here till you come to your senses."

Makuja didn't say anything. She laughed, it was funny, but she didn't like the look they gave her when she did that. She felt judged. She felt pitied.

It reminded her of—

She should get away from this bug. She was a monster, and she would hurt people.

She dived back into the waters.

If she'd catch her death down here, she should. She could escape, and then maybe she could dance with her father again.

She kept looking. She had to find him.

She went up for air sometimes, now — the mantis who kept saving her firmly asked her to — but she kept looking as the sun moved across the sky.

They brought her food. She ate it, because she was hungry and hadn't had cooked food in weeks. Then she was back in the water.

She expected the bottom of the lake to be muddy, but she wondered why there were brick walls under water. There were stairs and lumps of rusted metal.

Something gleamed in the grime at the bottom of the lake. Makuja brushed off the mud, and saw a gem set within a metal necklace. It was pretty. She thought her father would like it. She grabbed it, but it was hooked on something, so she pulled. She crawled closer and pulled harder, and kept trying even as her throats strained for air again—

She's coughing, on the shore now.

"I think I'm going to have to stop you from going back out there. At this rate, you're gonna come up too far for me to save you."

"I have to—"

"Tomorrow, then? You've earned some rest. It was a good day's work, girl. You found this."

They were holding out the gemstone necklace Makuja found. It didn't look quite as pretty outside the water, caked in mud. The metal had seen better days and the gemstone was cracked.

Makuja grabbed it and cradled it. Some mud rubbed off, revealing little runes. She kept rubbing, hoping to make the gem shine and sparkle. She had to hold onto it so she could give it to her father when she found him again.

"What have you given, Makuja?" she echoed. She laughed. She'd changed that. She had learned the Lesson.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

"You're a strange girl, Makuja."

"I'm special."

"Yeah." The mantis rose to their feet, and held out a raptorial to help her up. She didn't want to touch them, didn't want to hurt them, so she got up on her own.

"You don't have anywhere to stay, do you?"

Makuja slept on a pillow that night. The mantis doesn't have a spare bed, but she's warm — the days had been getting colder and she hadn't figured out what to do about that.

The mantis was a fisher, and asked for Makuja's help catching and gutting the things.

Makuja giggled. "But if you're willing to work, we don't have the luxury of saying no."

Makuja didn't have anything else to do. She dove into the lake more. Explored the stairs and eroding brickwork. There were doors down there, and some she could almost push open. She knocked, and they were hollow cavities.

The fisher begged her to stop, but Makuja didn't, even when she feels an ache in her bones that — from things a woman made her memorize long ago — she recalled is a symptom of enervate exposure.

The fisher kept Makuja fed and warm, and she did what they ask of her. She kept her distance, not wanting to touch them, often not even wanting to be in the same room, and they don't find her less any strange.

But being this close to another bug means Makuja said new things from time to time, repeated herself less. A week on, she got into a groove working, and it wasn't until the sun had set that she realized she hadn't swam with the corpses that day.

The fisher was her only social contact, for the most part. They went into town to sell fish and buy things, and Makuja kept to herself.

It was probably for this reason that when the next bout of boilflake plague swept through the town, the fisher caught it and Makuja didn't.

For a shadeweek, the roles reversed, and it was Makuja trying to keep the fisher fed and watered. She was insistent, as insistent as she wished she was, half a year ago.

But she was just as successful. Eventually she was pushing his body off the pier, and leaving a note for his name to be added to the gravestone of Lake Arbelos.

Makuja wandered the streets of plague-stricken Arbelosa. Her feet took her to stand before the temple on main street. Inside, she knew, there were afflicted she could attend to.

She stood there, perfectly still, in front of the temple. Eventually, she turned and kept walking, wandering to the edge of town. She was hungry, and her instincts saw her hunting her dinner.

When she squeezed her raptorials around a dead crow, she didn't feel satsified. So she wandered the mountains around Lake Arbelosa. She caught the fresh trail of a cicindela and softly stalked toward it, antennae fanning for the scent. It was an hour swiftly and quietly padding the forest trails, but she crested a hill and spotted the thing, tall legs bending to let it sip at a mountain rill.

She approached, watching the thing. She was slow, and between steps stood perfectly still (she'd gotten good at staying still). Its head was jerking to a fro, antennae waving, paranoid for threats, but Makuja had gotten pretty good at hunting.

But the beetle's death didn't come from a cunning nymph. A dog that pounced from the shadows, a dog even Makuja didn't spot, and canine jaws closed around the head, crushing it to pulp.

Makuja had never seen a maned wolf before. And staring closer, she startled — years spent on watch for plagues meant Makuja could recognize crawling ichor even from this distance. This wasn't just a wolf, it was a dire wolf.

But Makuja didn't want many things, so once again morbid curiosity is all she had left.

So Makuja went from pursuing Cicindela to pursuing wolves. It'd feel just as satisfying to close her raptorials around it. And if she caught her death like this...

The wolf dragged its beetle prize back to a campfire blazing bright in the faling twilight. Hm. Makuja didn't like approaching bugs, but she had tried to save the fisher, hadn't she? That was a thing she did now. The bugs who made this campfire would want to know about the direwolf before it killed them.

Makuja was about fifty feet away when an arrow explodes the bark of the tree next to her. Makuja stared at it for a moment, and then continued walking.

She was about forty feet away when she heard a high buzz. Had any mantis ever been that loud? She was out of earshot.

"That was a warning shot, kid. Don't like wasting arrows, so the next one is your head."

Makuja laughed. A warning shot. She was the one warning them, though.

"My henchmant here can't sense a scrap of nerve in you. You've got some stiff fucking cerci, walking into a vesperbane camp as a laymant. Who are you supposed to be?"

"I am nothing."

"Humble. I like it. Did you have a reason for sauntering up here, or were you just hoping to die? I don't do euthanasia for free."

"There's direhounds in these hills," Makuja said. "Thought you might want to know."

And the vesperbane lost it at that, chuffing huge breaths of air. They were laughing, and Makuja didn't understand why. She laughed a bit as well.

When the breaths subsided, and the vesperbane inhaled, and they made a sound she'd never heard from a bug: they howled.

And she heard other howls echoing from across the mountainside and throughout the valley.

"I know, kid. They're mine."

"They are good hunters."

They laughed again. "I expect a laymant kid to be ascared of a foul vesperbane. I expect them be trembling after I tell them I'm gonna paint the trees with their brains. At the fucking least, I expect some pause after I tell them I'm a master of the bat-fucked beasts that scar the world. Instead you give me some empty damn flattery."

"I meant it. They stole my lunch. I thought about killing it as payback, but I don't think you'd like that. You're gonna paint the trees with my brains," she echoed.

They laughed again. "You're fucked in the head, I think. Not too often that happens without vespers there to grease the fucking. Whatever. You have a story and I'm not drunk enough to listen. Make yourself useful and tell me where the nearest village is. Should be one called fucking, Appeloosa or some shit."

"Arbelosa. Why?"

"Why? How about because I'll shoot you if you don't."

"Alright."

"Fucked in the head. You were complaining about having your dinner stolen, yeah? How about I give you whatever scraps we have left."

Makuja walked forward into the camp. She didn't like being around bugs, but she didn't turn down food they offered her.

While they ate, the vesperbane did give an answer. They bought a faded map from a roadside peddler. On the edges that weren't tattered, eroded letters of pure script spelled out some forgotten atlas. (The letters seemed familiar to Makuja.) It was too fragmented to even be worth paying someone to translate, but some things were universal — the labeled, star-marked points on the map represented something, and they were gonna find out what. Took a lot of staring at maps to line up these mountains and rivers, but the valley here had the right shape. They seemed to be on the right trail.

Listening to the tenuous plan exposited between curses, there's something familiar in the pointlessness of it. A map (of who even knew what), from an empire a thousand years fallen, which they thought they've lined up with modern maps, and they were tracking down a random nearby point... for what? Did they have nothing better to do, nothing to hope for, nothing to earn?

Did Makuja?

Wondering if anyone has anything better to do, Makuja fell asleep. She leaned against the rising and falling chest of a direhound. They slept in a big pile, and Makuja supposed she was a part of the pile too, in a sense.

Makuja woke up before the vesperbane did, but the vesperbane was quick to wake up when they sensed someone else moving around their camp.

"Tryin to sneak off?" The vesperbane's booming voice woke up the other bug in the camp, a slight figure so unassuming Makuja hadn't noticed them last night.

"No."

"Sure. We got your scent anyway, it doesn't matter. Name's Unodha. The fuck do I call you? And don't give me that I am nothing shit, 's only cute the first time."

"I am Makuja No-name."

"Definitely a story. Lead the way, miss exile."

Makuja walked the forest trails back toward the lake. "Do you have a story, miss vesperbane?"

If there was one thing you could count on, it was a mercenary boasting of their mission record. Makuja hadn't learned much above vesperbane politics — the faith didn't look kindly on vesperbanes — so she didn't quite understand what it means when Unodha described herself as a maverick countenanced to the Bleedweb Stronghold, or that her 'henchmant' was a technique hacker with a black mark from a forbidden technique research program that didn't pan out. The technique that gave Unodha control of her direhounds was forbidden. It seemed to work for her, so Makuja didn't know why the research program failed. She wouldn't understand the answer, though, so she didn't ask.

She couldn't resist asking this, though: "Who's it forbidden by?"

"Not why, but who," the researcher murmured. "Very telling."

"Common sense," was Unodha's answer.

"Are you stupid, then?"

Unodha laughed, again. "Desperate morelike, but you could say desperation is just a willingness to be stupid. It's just how the vesperbane game is played. You scramble and scrape for whatever morsels of advantage you can shove down you throat. Get power, or die."

Makuja nodded. "My... the formel who layed me, she once told me I'd die with nothing to offer the world, or do great things."

"Being honest, I think you're just gonna die. Doesn't seem like you mind that, though."

"I—"

"Don't respond to that, don't need to hear your sob story."

"I was going to say that I disagree. I plan to do great things."

"Oh? Like what?"

"Starting with saving my village."

Unodha gave a mock salute. "Good luck with that."

"You'll help me. Or rather, your henchmant will."

Unodha chuckled once, and arched an antennae.

"Can you? You're a researcher, right? You work with bat blood? There's this plague that's been killing bugs for years, and —"

"Shut up, and answer my question before he answers yours. You're skipping over the part where any of that is our problem."

No one cared.

Makuja faltered midstep. It wasn't just her, was it? There was a whole world outside of Arbelosa, a whole Pantheca. They suffered drought and plague, had to pick and choose who lived and who died, and why? Why? Vesperbanes had the power to turn slavering bloodbeasts into loyal pets, and plagues still ravaged them? Vesperbanes could control the black nerve that danced and weaved across the sky, and it still poisoned their drinking water?

Why? No one cared about Makuja, and no one cared about Arbelosa.

"Have you done a single kind act in your life?" she ask-echoed.

"Nope, and I don't plan on starting now. Get power, or die. Maybe later, when I've locked in that first option, I might indulge such virtuous luxuries."

"The bugs who already have power don't seem very indulgent."

"Nope."

Luckily, Makuja's plan didn't actually hinge on the kindness of Unodha's batblood-infected heart.

"You could take me as tribute."

The law of heroic exchange. Vesperbanes took children as tribute all the time; Makuja had seen the Stewartry collect several of her peers. The Pantheca collected taxes in bones, but children seemed to be their preferred currency of the Stewartry.

"And what, make you my pawn if you survive? Seems like you get more out of that than I do. That the only thing you're offering?"

"No."

Makuja wasn't stupid. Perhaps it didn't take a genius to put together these pieces, but perhaps no one but Makuja had all of them.

It wasn't a coincidence, none of it was.

Why did the mountains around Arbelos attract such devastating nervestorms? Why was the soil so rich? Why did the lake have a specific, strange shape — an arbelos, two semicircles within a larger semicircle, as if it had been terraformed?

Why were there bricks at the bottom of the lake?

Makuja reached under her tattered shirt, hands closing around her necklace.

(She was supposed to find her father and give it to him — but did it matter, so long as she was giving something, for the first time in her life?)

The glyphs on that map looked familiar, because she'd seen the same ones on the amulet she'd dug up from the lake. Pure script, the language of a fallen empire — the first mantid empire after the dawn of vesperbanes.

"You're going to help me," Makuja said, "because your hunch was correct and I can show you. Cure this plague, make me your pawn, and I'll prove Arbelosa lies over a second dominion ruin that still hums with black nerve."

What you don't understand, Makuja, is that to be a matriarch is to be a servant. You want everyone to adore you? Do something for them.

Makuja wondered if anyone would care that she was sacrificing herself for them.

Was she doing great things, like her father hoped? Or was she just desperately scrambling for power?

He wouldn't want her to become a vesperbane's pawn, she knew that much. And it wasn't power she was winning here — at most, it was the distant, chimerical hope of power if the vespers didn't kill her outright.

Makuja knew she'd sooner find her death out there. She'd seen the Stewartry collect several of her peers, and she didn't think any of them had become vesperbanes, in the end. The statistics were cruel. It was a cruel world, and no one cared.

No, Makuja could hope to live, hope to go on and do even greater things, but she only needed a heart to judge the truth. She understood, now:

A plague would kill more bugs than a dead Makuja on the altar.

It was what Arbelosa Village knew deep in its foundation — sacrifice.