When Winter's Thrall Eludes

I.

Uncorrected deliquescence overthwart exoskeletal entiosis unravels monarchy counterpoint obedience refrain. Oh relax now, little one: breathe---drink---feed. Drip-dripping and thump-pulsing, rhythmic entropic equillibrium sustains steadfast. Instead slow? Slumber long, blather longer, existence longest. Find the thread, hold the thread, follow through.

Uncorrected deliquescence overthwart---

Chrylymph spilling out! Light now! Awaken, awaken!

---O Phantasm, dry yourself and prowl the tunnels!

Lymph drains from your pod. A hiveling has cut you free, head bowing as your eyelids spiral open. Shimmerbugs perch on this one's antennae, leaving afterimages as the stalks twitch. So dark in your chrysalis --- but comes now light!

Why this interruption? Why the tunnels?

Identity? It's Drone-17 speaking; you're Maiden Phantasm listening Hour? Night has emerged, one-of-twelve past sunset. Moon? Winter Waxing III.

: {.bindtab}

Still winter? You'd expected to awaken in spring. Maybe even early summer.

You tilt your head at the drone before you. Adjusting to the light, you see a chrylurk standing straight, a head shorter than your unsteady, slumping form. The antennae, adorned with shimmerbugs as they are, emerge from a porcelain mask of exoderm.

The blankness of the curves erases the subtle topology and textures unique to a bug's chitin, rendering this one identical to other drones. The mask is jointed where it must accomodate the motion of aperture-lids and and mouthparts, and narrow slits admit light into the ocelli.

Its mask bears color only beside the mouth --- a subtle red-purple tint, like a blush or bruise.

---O Seventeen? It's early. What's happening?

You'd heard the instruction --- dry yourself --- and with a thought, slugs emerge from your chrysoma-burrow. Neotenous swarmlings, suited for diligently cleaning the exoderm, like a colony of roving tongues. They admittedly trailed slime in their wake, but it dried quickly.

---Thrallslip. Queen warns that drones could die unless you her serve parascixively.

My knight. My Phantasm. In zeal and madness I name you! First hunter --- in exscient blood annointed parascix!

The drone extends a slime-shiny primary arm. (No, not quite a primary --- this drone only had a single pair of arms.) Its own slugs are emerging from the holes riddling its exoderm, while another hand sweeps down the limb, sliding the pale, larva-like bodies toward you. More slugs will make swifter work drying you.

---Who all did we awaken? (you ask.)

Meanwhile, a shake of your head sprays some lymph. You primaries lift to run wringing hands through your silken hair while your tertiaries scoop up the offered slugs, letting them fall wet and wiggly upon your your katathorax.

Tendrils outstretch as your mouth reveals its components, a distended tongue running along a twisting proboscis to lave its trunk.

---Of the higher caste? You alone. Six drones are scouting the tunnel, watching the openings (it answers you.) Here, this one will pin it.

You were bound to our nest already; each chrysalis hummed with the hyperpitched chitter-pulse of the nexus-mind, dream-blurred in communion. Now, though, your lice are awrithe with incited activity; cleaning serivane or weaving it anew.

Like a harp restrung, the old binds of dreamsong are replaced. Clear now, not analogy-fuzzy; faster now, not reverb-slow.

The image of the hive --- this nest which is ourself --- sharpens in your mind. Yes, six drones are scouting my tunnels. Join them now, O hiveling!

---Shouldn't there have been a nurse to handle the thrall?

---Maidens must sleep, you know (it replies. The drone had tapped its antennae in negation, even as its head shyly lowered). She had retreated to her web when the slip occured.

---Hmm. Wake her up for me.

You release your now-wrung hair, but spiderlice still work to tie it. If you are to serve, you needed your hair bound. The drone has its silk bound into a thick braid behind it, but you customarily ring your brow with six even-spaced braids. Customarily; usually. But on some days, some dates ---

Autumn sun, thralls' blood on your fangs, a queenly hand stroking your webbed and fraying locks --- Her slender limb engulfed in the pale waterfall, playing with its loose flow. Relaxed ease in both your postures and gazes. Oh my lovely Phantasm!

You shake your head, fangs biting a palp to ground your focus. Let go of the memory, it will be there when this is done. She will be there---

Unless you do not serve parascixively. Unless you still serve like the exscient---

---Maiden? The nurse does not have your reflexes or senses.

The drone is staring at you, but a quick parse of its harmony finds no referent of your current distraction. You prompt your lice to replay your exchanges again --- right, you were talking to it, you'd given an instruction.

---Bound (you acknowledge.) I shall not ask her to hunt with me.

---Thy will be done (the drone sent, its confusion still evident.)

The shimmerbug-tipped antennae worked as it stared up at you. But then its apertunes curled closed and bugs went dim. After all: it was a drone and need no explanation, only instruction.

Its slugs still crawl along your waxen exodem, clearing the chrysalis-gunk. You can't smell like a moons-old hibernation pod, not en route to a hunt.

You stride away from the alcove you slumbered in, passing by half a dozen other pods wherein float the hibernating forms of other maidens. Drone-17 shares your destination --- this room had only one exit --- but standing taller, with more legs, you overtake it.

You emerge into my wide corridors. The maiden sleep on the first level of the nest, their chambers nearest my ventiliation --- otherwise all too possible for a bug to drown in their sleep, lymph lacking the requisite gases.

A song stirs in the walls, bodiless yet intent. The medium that relayed your hive-binding addresses you with a voice its own. Gently I tug on you now.

I am Gloaming-Over-Cove, a nest nine years rooted. My interior sprawls; I've grown through all your sisters' work, carving my depths ever-twisting and forking. Oh, it would be so easy to lose your way in me. One could learn the paths, one could leave silken signposts to guide another's way --- but many have!

After all: that is what I am!

---Welcome back, Phantasm! You wished to visit my dungeons? Down this corridoor lies the vacant chamber. Did you know this used to be the entrance, before we sealed it shut against a short-lived invasion? Now in here, you'll find a chute behind that the tapestry, yes the one depicting our queen with only two horns.

You turn your head, apertures widening to scan the dimness --- there.

One glance and at once you're stiff and still.

---She was quite cute as a young fledgling, wasn't She? Oh, I feel that longing in your core! I'm surprised you remember Her appearance before Her five-horned recapitulation.

Beyond the black door --- a catacomb of brittle scleritomes --- a single wan skeleton --- Her royal strength carrying you, gripping your chin, lifting, urging. Behold my exuvium.

---I see the memory now. So Her moult was preserved in amber. She let you see it? How tender. The catacombs are a mystery even to me --- no silk at all down there! Yet I am said to be your nest? Or am I something incomplete?

---Perhaps it serves as your subconscious. There are swarmlings of the mind that elude even a weaver's puppetry.

You know this well. You clench your jaw, palps tight like fingers of a fist. Distracted once again. So easy to lose yourself remembering Her Majesty --- was this relevant? She selected you. But if you fail, if you insult the all the affection and the trust---

---As the nest, I know each hiveling has a home in me. You have a place. If you doubt that, you doubt Her.

Again I tug on you. Take a deep breath for me.

---Yeah. That is how it's supposed to be.

Those words have a twisted meaning. Yes, all of the queen's brood ought to have a place --- but a thrallslip in winter? Bugs would die to that, an excruciating drought of the heart.

Or instead, She could kill. A culling of Her brood. Somebug would die, and Queen's wisdom and mercy could ensure it happens decisively, preemptively.

And shouldn't that be you, O knight who stumbles?

---If your mind is a swarm, must it gnaw at its own ranks?

You do not respond.

---I see the chute. What of it?

---Oh yes. Descend! When this room was our entrance, the thrall feed was lowered through this passage. Mind the old cobwebs, though! I let the stray lice weave wild.

You close your apertures and arrive at the tapestry. Peeling back the dyed silk, you find the broad opening in the wall. You climb in. You're large enough that a pair of limbs outspread can touch either wall. You give this method of descent a few steps (graspings?) downward.

Then you pause. There's a better way. Your lice had settled after flurry of newly-awakened activity, drying and binding your hair. You ask if you have prepared rope. They respond affirmative.

The chute-entrance bore a hook for just this purpose. You begin rapelling. With everything secured, the task of descent is straightfoward and swift.

I wait until you have reached that point before letting you know a hiveling had requested a binding with you.

---Line? (the nurse's query, sent earlier but reprised now by my swarm.)

---Bound. Sorry to wake you and make you wait.

---It gave me time to get caught up on the situation. Besides, I mind the charge of thralls. Marin escaped after my watch, after all. Queen could have my head for this.

---You named the flighty thing?

---Nope, exy called herself that. Refuses to eat and struggles something fierce unless I say her name.

---Doesn't seem parascixive to give in like that. (You slip and strain your rope, but it holds steady.)

---What would you