You awaken in chrysalis. Your mind hangs by a web, our web, our embrace. Like dewdrops rolling down threads, your dreams are pulsing-sliding along silk lines, and our dreams enjoin and subsume. Your sleep is long, and the accord has washed all vestiges of you into us—tucked safe, in care unending—leaving you blank as a palimpsest. Upon this canvas we shall paint you.
Remember us as fragments, threads. Our queen triumphant, our queen cunning. In predator’s repose: hunting by traps, by ambush. The tender brush of a sculptor grafting exodermic flesh to your shell. The indulgently extended kiss of a replete feeding you—drooling—syrupy—milk. This is what you fight for; this is what you serve.
Hate sizzling from your mandibles as you stalk exscient waste—claws striking down what threatens us. You could strike with force most lethal— But our mercy! But our hunger! But our purpose!
To the exscient we owe parascixion!
(Think now of your provenance, but do not dwell. Flowers were once dirt, and we were all of us exscient before our queen bound each child in adoption-marriage. Iä, chimerae we are!)
Hate through the hollow needles of your jaw. Hate, infectious hate—this ardent loathing of exscience! Yes, this seething love is parascixion! This is your venom. Hunt your prey: bite deep and inject deeper.
—You were not just a hunter. You were my surrogate.
We are merciful, for the exscient shall fear and despise and exterminate us—yet we adopt, yet we marry, yet we redeem! We are hungry; to us the exscient are but dirt, but most of all we are a dire craving desperate for the flowering fruit! The nectar in blood!
—Do you remember me yet? You and I—do you remember us?
As venom flows, the soil is watered, purged, but before flowers there must be seeds. From your mandibles comes the venom, and from your loins—
—Mine. You were my favorite. Seventeen children in this web, a cacophony for me to conduct. Thirteen thralls parascized by my stinger. And then…
—The surrogate. She is us. We are you. (Words come forth. This is conversation, and you are participant.) But she is not you. I am not you.
—There are too many of you now, (as your queen I say, sadly). Too many duties I must attend. No time to nurse more thralls, alluring as ever it sounds. The chase, the consumation. Doing it again to be sure it takes…
And you see me now, a vivid specter. One eye brilliantly red, tall on my brow with a halo of lashes; on either side, two dark and hexagonal slits. Twin teardrops of venom on my fangs, pheromone-rich, among wet setae wicking that mix. My excitement becomes aromatic. Oh, you swoon.
—There she is. My darling’s active imagination~
—Imagination? (you ask).
You are still in the chrysalis. Mind suspended on the fluttering lines of our webs, sonorously rich with the coded meaning of the hive-harmony. Denser, truer than the language of tongues. Our minds pulse and flow throughout.
—I’m here, inside you… and isn’t that delightful? (I tell you). But I’m still at such a remove. Can you imagine what I’d do if I close enough to touch?
You can. More than imagine, you remember it. Thicker, deeper than fangs into prey. From your queen’s loins and into yours. You were my surrogate.
—To speak in past tense is a lie. Nor is this a hypothetical. You are my surrogate, and dear, I have more eggs for your womb. Soon. But we have other duties.
—Is it related to why I’m recapitulating?
All dreams—our memories and wills—belong in the web. In our deepest sleep, we unravel and return. But while there is work to do, crafting identities—as a she, as a they, as an it, as this one and that one, as you, none of whom are not quite we nor I—this becomes expedient. In trance, all the components that bring forth an agent can be marshalled. It is part of us.
In recapitulation, you remember us as a fragment, a thread. A dronesong.
Like this, one may transfer to a form more fitting one’s task. One may spend a hiatus in our lucid collective, and return when called. Or, should one valiently face down threats to the hive, and in the course of that duty…
My excitement has vanished—the stench on my mandibles is sharp like ash.
—You were lost, my love. This is all I could save.
—I’m sorry (you say).
—I want you to… We want to destroy the ones who did this. To suffer them nothing but suffering.
Hate, infectious hate—our seething love that devours.
Yes, chrylurk you are!
Strength and will surges through a dozen limbs. Hard membranes shatter-snap like glass, like binding, torn into jagged edges like a maw’s dentation. Hatching—eclosion—exuviation.
—Emerge and return to me, my dear (I command).
Through the slit torn in your chrysalis, a waterfall of pale green liquid seeps out. Rivulets on the outside of the pod, and a puddle forming beyond your hindmost tarsi.
Air on sticky chitinous faceplates, and your breathing catches. Not from the exposure: your mouth remains shut, and your spiracles still suck oxygenated chrylymph into your inner throats. But the turbulence, the change in pressure—you aren’t breathing calm waters anymore.
Tearing proceeds at three places: your first pair of limbs bear claws that easily puncture the thick membrane; your second is tipped with fingers too soft and round, only able to widen what rifts already bleed; another emerges from your next major segment, equipped with thick blade and all the strength of legs to stand on.
Your last is what you fall back on when floating in chrylymph proves untenable. So fit for walking is this pair that it lies flat to the ground, almost hooved. Useless for freeing yourself, though.
(This does not exhaust your panoply of limbs—but two pairs are folded and sheathed within you, not yet needed.)
You stagger forth, proprioception an untested theory. Behind you hooves and thick hindlegs are steady pillars, beneath you the bladed feet find purchase, sickle-claws held to only lightly tap the clay tile floor.
All along you were suspended upon our web, literally so: these clay tiles hook into taut ropes; you feel it give ever so slightly under your weight. (Emerging chrysalides always make such a mess; the tiles form a water-tight seal while being easily removed.)
A wan glow suffuses the room—here you see three more pods bearing the dark forms of chrylurk drones mid-metamorphosis. Two spaces in this hexagonal chamber offer room for more pods. The hive is always growing.
You are not alone here—your unfurling antennae catch the pheromonal mark even before your eyes resolve the forms by the entrace. A pair of drones, sent by the queen, maids to attend to your emergence.
An eye dominates the brow of both, each a color of the sunset—pale yellow or deep orange. That eye is the crossroads of our face. Above, antennae sit rooted on either side, each followed by a smaller eye the same color. Taken together, these are jewels of a sensory diadem.
Those eyes peer into liminal metaphysics, but lower, near the cheeks sit eyes for worldly light. Six lids spiral like a closed flower, adjusting what shines inward: both of your maids have wide, excited apertures. They widen further when you make eye contact.
One has a proboscis curled up, flush to the face yet bulging like a nose, on the other that segmented trunk hangs free, obscuring her toothed mandible-smile. Both mandibles curved downward to expose twin fangs, daggers tipped with venom and pheromones.
Little of their exoskeleton is truly exposed. Their exoderm is a study in white and black. Ceramic white in the face, and in the spine and ribs lining the thorax, or in the pauldrons where limbs emerge. This is a porcelain mask and doll’s outline. Everywhere else, all black—and shiny as if from a faint oil-slickness.
Rubber skin and cermic shell: that was what the queen designed.
The two drones approach with a slow amble of legs. One soft hand feels along your wet cuticle, wiping away afterhatch. A hand finds its way to the back of your head.
Both chrylurks bear silken tresses, a full head of white woven hair. Your is quite short; your scalp-hive had little time to work, and waterlogged conditions made for poor silk. The head that touched you was not empty—a thread of serivane now binds the two of you together.
—Sister! (says the fluttering song-voice of this one). Welcome back!
Another hand touching you, lighter now, shy. It too bore the invisible gossamer of serivane.
—Must you gawk? Come now. You need rubber on your shell before you subject the queen to your return.
So many hands between the two them—claws to scrape you clean, firms grasps to pull and pose you. They arrived prepared, jars of wax in silk-woven satchels. Wax of the same composition as the secretion of your own abdomen, but you’re spared growing your own exoderm. Upon your exoskeleton the grease falls aptly. It’s liquified relief, this return to the embrace of the hive’s shared integument.
So easy—so instintive—to relax, and let the hive do the work
—Not quite right, sister.
Her palps boop you on your trunk. But the firm pressure in six places doesn’t her hands kept working, seamlessly passing one grease-slick leg to the maid who laves you just as persistently. Dressing, encasing.
She boops you again before her hand pulls back. You don’t see her face, but she hums with the harmony of a smirk.
—Oh, of course, I’m not making you do all the work when I sit back (you say).
—You are not (says one).
—You are not (says the other, giggling).
A hand reaching past your face—giving a stray caress to your cheek as it extends—and grips your silk-hair. In concert the other maid strokes a tress. Lines of silk join you to the hive-in-harmony, yet the contact suggests you still your vibration.
Finally, the thought is completed; any of the three could be its origin:
—No, we shall work together.