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Introductory Text

Mara and The Womb
The Arthropod's Narrative Part 01 87th Post Posted 17 June 2016 at 21:42 EDT Link to original

Mara is molting so we can't play. I'll have to wait until she's done.

I've moved out of the crowded sand burrow. I think six different broods live there now, and everybody crawls over each other and bickers and snips. Now I live in one of the sea caves. It's wet and lonely, but at least nobody snips at me, and it's a little easier to find food. When Mara is done molting, I want her to come here, and maybe we can live together.

The caves are made of ganna-black meltrock that has hardened into fluid shapes. The moons shine through dozens of porous holes in the roof, and the seaglitter throws shapes onto the rock ceiling. I like to sit back and let the shapes tell the ancient worldstory. This cave is nice. I will stay here.

I'm getting a tired of eating sea flowers, but I don't want to go through the trouble of buying livestock. The crowds at the temple are awful this time of year, everybody clamors and begs, and the priests are greedy and officious. They tell us the livestock is a generous blessing from the womb-sac of the Mother, but I think they just buy it from the Inland. At any rate, I don't want any part of it.

There is never much food around during the Ebbing, when the air turns cool and the worms travel away but the plumes have not come yet. This year it is even worse than usual. They say the ocean dies a little more each year. The water is becoming bitter. But since I live in this sea cave, I can get down into the cove before everybody else, so I'm pretty lucky with what I get to eat.

I wake up to the sound of rain on the ocean outside the cave. I look out to see which kind it will be. Light yellow-kadda-green, my favorite. I crawl out to a bluff and let the rain fall on my carapace. There is something sweet in the kadda-green rains that loosens up the whelks on my seams. I comb through my carapace with my forelimbs, snipping them off, letting them fall onto the rocks until whole front is clear and smooth. After that, I do my joints and my underside. Nowadays, with food scarce, it has become common to eat the whelks, but they taste like ammonia.

Just as I am done grooming and feeling very new and shiny, Mara comes climbing up the rock. Her shell is brand new and looks amazing. We dance and burrow and make happy little snips. I have missed her even more than I realized. She moves the colors on her carapace to show me how she feels. They are very vivid on her new bone. She shows pictures of her looking everywhere for me, searching through all the sea caves. I show her myself as I sat in the cave, lonely and waiting for her. She snips at my front legs, and I dance around for her. Sweet lovely Mara!

I show Mara my cave, and she likes it. She loves the sea mist and the way we can see the tetta-purple moons pass through the sky through the holes in the rock. I show us living here together and making it into a nice home. She shows me leaving the burrow, colored as a question. I show her that it was too crowded, and I was getting sick of all the others. She flicks her antenna at me, making slow, comforting movements. But I notice she hasn't answered about living in the cave. I feel my little plan is being washed away.

Mara doesn't stay with me in the cave, but she visits often. I make sure to always have some sea flowers for her when she comes over. Lately, they have been harder and harder to find. I get so hungry that it's hard not to eat all the flowers before I can give any to Mara. I give her the best flowers, but still they are small and colored an ugly shade of hanna-blue. Despite this, she always shows me how delicious they are.

Mara suggests we go to the temple to get some livestock to make a proper meal. I show her that I don't like the crowds. Mara has always loved the temple. She uses admiring colors to show the great gemstone mountain and the moons passing through the pylons and the great ziggurat where the livestock is brought out and sold. She shows the priests with their painted shells and red claws.

I insist that I don't like meat. I prefer sea flowers. She wiggles her hind-jaws at this. Nobody can prefer sea flowers! They taste like sand! I crawl back away from her a little. Hadn't my sea flowers always been delicious to her? Was that just a lie? She crawls closer to me. Her carapace takes on gentle yellows. She shows me that they were delicious because I had picked them. But I don't want her pity. I pull my legs in and lay still until she leaves.

I don't see Mara for a long while. The third moon makes its way to the high cusp, marking the end of the Ebbing. The plumes have still not come, and I'm often hungry. Finally, Mara shows up with a meat wrapped in temple cloth. I wonder if she's there to taunt me, but she offers it to me. She shows me that my shell has become thin and dull, and I am looking worse. She is right. I have not eaten enough in a while.

We go down inside my cave. Before she unwraps the meat, Mara lets me know that she has become a priestess at the temple. I turn blue with surprise. How had it happened so quickly? She had been studying for a while without telling me, since I never liked the priests. I feel sad about this. How many times had I complained about them in front of her while she was studying to become one? It was no wonder I didn't have many friends.

Mara unwraps her gift. The creature she has brought me is soft and pale pink. Mara likes the taste of these the best, but I don't think there is any difference between these and the brown ones. I break off one of the five little feelers on the end of its foreleg and nibble at it, but Mara snips at me and breaks off a hind leg and offers me the thick end. My shell turns yellow, and I take it. The pretty red juice runs all over my jaws as they pull the meat from the bone.

We eat in blankness for a while, then I ask Mara where the priests get the livestock from. It has always been a mystery, since none of these soft little creatures are ever found on the land or in the sea. I have wondered if they raise them inside the temple or if they bring them in from the Inland. Mara doesn't answer at first. She doesn't want to show me. I ask again. She shows me a quick, vague picture, the old story about the womb and egg, something the priests tell little children. I know she is hiding something, so I snip at her. Why does she hide things from me? We used to be so close. After a moment, a picture forms on her carapace, as clear and vivid as anything she has ever shown me. I ask what I am seeing. It is the womb. It is where they come from.