{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/vermin/winter-thrall",
  "path": "/posts/vermin/winter-thrall",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-31T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "I.\n\nUncorrected deliquescence overthwart exoskeletal entiosis unravels\nmonarchy counterpoint obedience refrain.  Oh relax now, little one:\nbreathe---drink---feed.  Drip-dripping and thump-pulsing, rhythmic\nentropic equillibrium sustains steadfast.  Instead slow?  Slumber\nlong, blather longer, existence longest. Find the thread, hold the\nthread, follow through.\n\nUncorrected deliquescence overthwart---\n\nChrylymph spilling out!  Light now!  Awaken, awaken!\n\n---O Phantasm, dry yourself and prowl the tunnels!\n\nLymph drains from your pod.  A hiveling has cut you free, head bowing\nas your eyelids spiral open.  Shimmerbugs perch on this one's\nantennae, leaving afterimages as the stalks twitch.  So dark in your\nchrysalis --- but comes now light!\n\nWhy this interruption?  Why the tunnels?\n\n---------- ----\nIdentity?  It's Drone-17 speaking; you're Maiden Phantasm listening\nHour?      Night has emerged, one-of-twelve past sunset.\nMoon?      Winter Waxing III.\n---------- ----\n: {.bindtab}\n\nStill winter?  You'd expected to awaken in spring.  Maybe even early\nsummer.\n\nYou tilt your head at the drone before you.  Adjusting to the light,\nyou see a chrylurk standing straight, a head shorter than your\nunsteady, slumping form.  The antennae, adorned with shimmerbugs as\nthey are, emerge from a porcelain mask of exoderm.\n\nThe blankness of the curves erases the subtle topology and textures\nunique to a bug's chitin, rendering this one identical to other\ndrones.   The mask is jointed where it must accomodate the motion of\naperture-lids and and mouthparts, and narrow slits admit light into\nthe ocelli. \n\nIts mask bears color only beside the mouth --- a subtle red-purple\ntint, like a blush or bruise.\n\n---O Seventeen? It's early. What's happening?  \n\nYou'd heard the instruction --- dry yourself --- and with a thought,\nslugs emerge from your chrysoma-burrow.  Neotenous swarmlings, suited\nfor diligently cleaning the exoderm, like a colony of roving tongues.\nThey admittedly trailed slime in their wake, but it dried quickly.\n\n---Thrallslip.  Queen warns that drones could die unless you her serve\nparascixively.\n\n> My knight.  My Phantasm.  In zeal and madness I name you!  First\nhunter --- in exscient blood annointed parascix!\n\nThe drone extends a slime-shiny primary arm.  (No, not quite a primary\n--- this drone only had a single pair of arms.)  Its own slugs are\nemerging from the holes riddling its exoderm, while another hand\nsweeps down the limb, sliding the pale, larva-like bodies toward you.\nMore slugs will make swifter work drying you.\n\n---Who all did we awaken? (you ask.)\n\nMeanwhile, a shake of your head sprays some lymph.  You primaries lift\nto run wringing hands through your silken hair while your tertiaries\nscoop up the offered slugs, letting them fall wet and wiggly upon your\nyour katathorax.\n\nTendrils outstretch as your mouth reveals its components, a distended\ntongue running along a twisting proboscis to lave its trunk.\n\n---Of the higher caste?  You alone.  Six drones are scouting the\ntunnel, watching the openings (it answers you.)  Here, this one will\npin it.\n\nYou were bound to our nest already; each chrysalis hummed with the\nhyperpitched chitter-pulse of the nexus-mind, dream-blurred in\ncommunion.  Now, though, your lice are awrithe with incited activity;\ncleaning serivane or weaving it anew.\n\nLike a harp restrung, the old binds of dreamsong are replaced.  Clear\nnow, not analogy-fuzzy; faster now, not reverb-slow.\n\nThe image of the hive --- this nest which is ourself --- sharpens in\nyour mind.  Yes, six drones are scouting my tunnels.  Join them now, O\nhiveling!\n\n---Shouldn't there have been a nurse to handle the thrall?\n\n---Maidens must sleep, you know (it replies.  The drone had tapped its\nantennae in negation, even as its head shyly lowered).  She had\nretreated to her web when the slip occured.\n\n---Hmm. Wake her up for me.\n\nYou release your now-wrung hair, but spiderlice still work to tie it.\nIf you are to serve, you needed your hair bound.  The drone has its\nsilk bound into a thick braid behind it, but you customarily ring your\nbrow with six even-spaced braids.  Customarily; usually.  But on some\ndays, some dates ---\n\n> Autumn sun, thralls' blood on your fangs, a queenly hand stroking\nyour webbed and fraying locks --- Her slender limb engulfed in the\npale waterfall, playing with its loose flow.  Relaxed ease in both\nyour postures and gazes.  _Oh my lovely Phantasm!_\n\nYou shake your head, fangs biting a palp to ground your focus.  Let go\nof the memory, it will be there when this is done.  She will be\nthere---\n\nUnless you do not serve parascixively.  Unless you still serve like\nthe exscient---\n\n---Maiden?  The nurse does not have your reflexes or senses.\n\nThe drone is staring at you, but a quick parse of its harmony finds no\nreferent of your current distraction.  You prompt your lice to replay\nyour exchanges again --- right, you were talking to it, you'd given an\ninstruction. \n\n---Bound (you acknowledge.)  I shall not ask her to hunt with me.\n\n---Thy will be done (the drone sent, its confusion still evident.)\n\nThe shimmerbug-tipped antennae worked as it stared up at you.  But\nthen its apertunes curled closed and bugs went dim.  After all: it was\na drone and need no explanation, only instruction.\n\nIts slugs still crawl along your waxen exodem, clearing the\nchrysalis-gunk.  You can't smell like a moons-old hibernation pod, not\nen route to a hunt.\n\nYou stride away from the alcove you slumbered in, passing by half a\ndozen other pods wherein float the hibernating forms of other maidens.\nDrone-17 shares your destination --- this room had only one exit ---\nbut standing taller, with more legs, you overtake it.\n\nYou emerge into my wide corridors.  The maiden sleep on the first\nlevel of the nest, their chambers nearest my ventiliation ---\notherwise all too possible for a bug to drown in their sleep, lymph\nlacking the requisite gases.\n\nA song stirs in the walls, bodiless yet intent.  The medium that\nrelayed your hive-binding addresses you with a voice its own. Gently I\ntug on you now.\n\nI am Gloaming-Over-Cove, a nest nine years rooted. My interior\nsprawls; I've grown through all your sisters' work, carving my depths\never-twisting and forking.  Oh, it would be so easy to lose your way\nin me.  One could learn the paths, one could leave silken signposts to\nguide another's way --- but many have!\n\nAfter all: that is what I am!\n\n---Welcome back, Phantasm!  You wished to visit my dungeons?  Down\nthis corridoor lies the vacant chamber. Did you know this used to be\nthe entrance, before we sealed it shut against a short-lived invasion?\nNow in here, you'll find a chute behind that the tapestry, yes the one\ndepicting our queen with only two horns.\n\nYou turn your head, apertures widening to scan the dimness --- there.\n\nOne glance and at once you're stiff and still.\n\n---She was quite cute as a young fledgling, wasn't She?  Oh, I feel\nthat longing in your core!  I'm surprised you remember Her appearance\nbefore Her five-horned recapitulation.\n\n> Beyond the black door --- a catacomb of brittle scleritomes --- a\nsingle wan skeleton --- Her royal strength carrying you, gripping your\nchin, lifting, urging.  Behold my exuvium.\n\n---I see the memory now.  So Her moult was preserved in amber.  She\nlet you see it? How tender.  The catacombs are a mystery even to me\n--- no silk at all down there!  Yet I am said to be your nest?  Or am\nI something incomplete?\n\n---Perhaps it serves as your subconscious.  There are swarmlings of\nthe mind that elude even a weaver's puppetry.\n\nYou know this well.  You clench your jaw, palps tight like fingers of\na fist.  Distracted once again.  So easy to lose yourself remembering\nHer Majesty --- was this relevant?  She selected you.  But if you\nfail, if you insult the all the affection and the trust---\n\n---As the nest, I know each hiveling has a home in me.  You have a\nplace.  If you doubt that, you doubt Her.\n\nAgain I tug on you.  Take a deep breath for me.\n\n---Yeah.  That is how it's supposed to be.\n\nThose words have a twisted meaning.  Yes, all of the queen's brood\nought to have a place --- but a thrallslip in winter?  Bugs would die\nto that, an excruciating drought of the heart.\n\nOr instead, She could kill.  A culling of Her brood.  Somebug would\ndie, and Queen's wisdom and mercy could ensure it happens decisively,\npreemptively.\n\nAnd shouldn't that be you, O knight who stumbles?\n\n---If your mind is a swarm, must it gnaw at its own ranks?\n\nYou do not respond.\n\n---I see the chute.  What of it?\n\n---Oh yes.  Descend!  When this room was our entrance, the thrall feed\nwas lowered through this passage.  Mind the old cobwebs, though!  I\nlet the stray lice weave wild.\n\nYou close your apertures and arrive at the tapestry.  Peeling back the\ndyed silk, you find the broad opening in the wall.  You climb in.\nYou're large enough that a pair of limbs outspread can touch either\nwall. You give this method of descent a few steps (graspings?)\ndownward.\n\nThen you pause.  There's a better way.  Your lice had settled after\nflurry of newly-awakened activity, drying and binding your hair.  You\nask if you have prepared rope.  They respond affirmative.\n\nThe chute-entrance bore a hook for just this purpose.  You begin\nrapelling.  With everything secured, the task of descent is\nstraightfoward and swift.\n\nI wait until you have reached that point before letting you know a\nhiveling had requested a binding with you.\n\n---Line? (the nurse's query, sent earlier but reprised now by my\nswarm.)\n\n---Bound.  Sorry to wake you and make you wait.\n\n---It gave me time to get caught up on the situation.  Besides, I mind\nthe charge of thralls.  Marin escaped after my watch, after all.\nQueen could have my head for this.\n\n---You named the flighty thing?\n\n---Nope, exy called herself that.  Refuses to eat and struggles\nsomething fierce unless I say her name.\n\n---Doesn't seem parascixive to give in like that.  (You slip and\nstrain your rope, but it holds steady.)\n\n---What would you ",
  "title": "When Winter's Thrall Eludes"
}