{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/vermin/hive-bound",
  "path": "/posts/vermin/hive-bound",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-07T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "Two chrylurks, Gloom and Adversity, crawled through tunnels of\nlimestone.  Shimmerbugs aglow were the only illumination, glinting off\npools and streams.   Water trickled through, carving these caverns\ndeeper, but its work has largely been outpaced by the hive's\nexcavation.  Behind them, the floor bore a layer of crushed chitin and\nexoderm, and the walls a tracework of woven lines. Both grew scarce as\nthey went on.\n\nThen, at once, the confining tunnel gave way to a larger chamber.\nShadows swallowed the wall, but the echoes of chitin-hooves on stone\nwere suggestive. Smaller still than the bustling heart of the hive,\nbut almost an hour of squeezing through crevasses rendered any space\nwhere two legs outstretched touched no wall profoundly welcome.\n\nBut was it truly an hour spent spelunking?  The body was present for\nthis adventure, but the mind?  Draglines of the silk led back to the\nhive, at time hitched to those wires tracing the cave walls.  Lively\ncommunication had pulsed back and forth all throughout.  Adversity\nwatched as her closest sisters attended their own duties --- a hunter\npracticing forms fit for four-limbed fighting; a nurse washing and the\nfeeding the thralls in their pens.\n\nAdversity sent cheers of '---Good job!' as they completed each task,\nand they pulsed their thanks.  In turn, she recounted cave sights ---\nslender olms sleeping, stalagtites looming high --- for she was the\nfirst among their group to venture this far from the hive.\n\nA bit spooky, she admitted --- and her nurse sister sensed it.\n\n---Focus, sis, you aren't going so far to not pay attention to it!\n\nBut most of what lay this far from home was so much opaque cave\ndarkness.  Then, almost in response, came deliverance.\n\nGloom's Shimmerbugs flew forth by unspoken command, finding perch on\nthe far walls.  The larger chrylurk once more lead the smaller.  Zhe\nwas one head taller, and zir head boasted a panoply of silken loops\ndrawn in dizzy patterns.  Three horns burst from above zir, and\ncobwebs latticed the space between, a concourse for crawling\nspiderlice.\n\nA veil fell over zir visage, cloaking her eyes to vague points --- but\nit seemed less a matter of obscurity than emphasis: as if the silk and\nall the spiders at work were her true expression.\n\nBy contrast, her follower Adversity bore no horns but buds thereof,\nnor silk-work save a short-cropped head of hair.  Her exoderm clad\nher thin and shiny.  Her apertures were wide and credulous, and her\nfour arms fidgeted in excitement-uncertainty. \n\n---You're ready (zhe told her.)  We will begin.\n\n---I am? (she started.  But it hadn't been a question, and she\nshouldn't question it.)  Right, I am.\n\n---Come here.\n\nShe approached.  Two of the weaver's hands lifted from the space\nbetween zir forelegs, and she caught a whiff of something pungent, but\nzir hands were already reaching out, grabbing.  Zhe grabbed her\nantennae, one in each hand, and moved along their lengths in a smooth\nstroke.\n\n==Danger! Caution! Quiessence!==  Zir fingers were wet with deep\nbitter alarm.  A pheromonic command backed with a high caste\nauthority.  The caress continued past her antennae --- with pressed,\nfeelers were pushed against her head, and how those scented fingers\nbrushed her hair. \n\nHer body reacted automatically.  Pulse spiking, attention snapping\ninto keen focus --- but the most dramatic change lay in her swarm,\njust as compelled by the pheromones.  Her spiderlice stilled their\ncontinual chatter.  All the communication lines, all her\nhive-bindings, went still, retracted and clipped.\n\nShe opened her mouth to yelp in shock, but her voice was utterly mute.\n\nHer eyes settled on the weaver --- not glaring like had every right\nto, but watching for a signal, an order.  That pheromone said\n==Danger!== and zhe was her authority. \n\n\"Calm now.  You may speak.\"\n\n\"What the heck!  I didn't even get a chance to say slack to my\nsisters.\"  She threw her arms to either side.\n\nZir head inclined, shifting zir veil.  \"You shall speak to them again\nsoon.  This is part of today's lessons.\"\n\n\"You could have warned me!  Heck, you could have told me to tie up my\nbindings myself.  I know how!\"\n\n\"You would take too long, girl.\"  Head head tilted --- and one\nnoticed, distractingly, that her two side-horns formed a perfect right\nangle.  \"You know what role we have assigned you.\"\n\n\"Yeah I'm gonna be an infiltrator and get all the exscient wrapped\naround my finger!\"\n\n\"And what dangers does an infiltrator face?\"\n\n\"Getting caught?\"\n\nA hum. \"And the easiest way to get caught?\"\n\n\"Forgetting your backstory?  Taking off the mask at the wrong moment?\"\n\n\"Wrong.  Mortals are fools and liars.  They will believe you, and when\nthey don't, they will believe it a mundane deception. Further, their\nsense of privacy and propriety is our advantage.  No, any chrylurk\ndeemed smart enough to be a infiltrator is far from likely to make\nsuch simple mistake.\"\n\n\"Then I guess I don't know.  This today's lesson?\"\n\n\"It's a preliminary,\" said Gloom.  \"The answer is alchemy.  Alchemists\nare always your greatest enemy.  No disguise or story will suffice if\nthey see us wielding forspun arts mortals cannot.  Evanescence ---\ndo you know what that is?\"\n\n\"We drink their blood, and then our webs become magical?\"\n\n\"Approximately.  Weaving serivane taxes our sanguine reserves, yes?\"\n\nHer antennae nodded.\n\nThe veiled eyes stared, waiting.  \"So why did I cut your\nhive-binding?\"\n\n\"That's what I'm saying!\"\n\nAntennae fell over zir face, drooping disppointment.  \"Your duty here\nis to think, dear.  I ask because you know.  You are ready.  Simply\ntie toward the threads you have been given.\"\n\n\"Oh. Um.\" She paused, lifting a secondary hand to chew on her fingers.\n\"It's not that just weaving it that taxes.  Sometimes I get thirsty\njust from messaging my sisters a lot.  It's like breathing, you keep\ndoing it.\"\n\n\"Approximately, yes.  Evanescence allows threads to pass beyond the\nveil of material.  After all, Your line back to the hive went\nthrough the cavern walls around us.  But serivane cannot remain\nephemeral anymore than a fire could burn forever with no fuel.\"\n\n\"And... fire spits also out smoke, right?  You're saying alchemists\ncan sense serivane?\"\n\n\"Mortals are fools.  They will walk right into cobwebs without seeing\nthem.  Serivane is just as inconspicuous, even to an alchemist's aura.\nUnless, of course, there is an abundance of it.  But it is, always, a\nmatter of chance.  Infiltrators must deal in chance.  Just one glint\nis enough to raise suspicions.\" The weaver reached out, and this time\nzir hand bore a strand of serivane.  Zhe patted her head, and in the\nprocess bound their licenests.\n\n---As an infiltrator, you will spend your time cut off from the hive,\nnot because you must, but because it's simply a prudent caution.  Such\nis the virtue of quiessence.\n\n---But what about my sisters?  That's kinda...\n\n---Your duty. You will accept it (zhe sent, and zir ironclad certain\nunderscore the words.)  But let us move on.  Here is my next\nquestion-lesson for you.  Can you reconnect to the hive?\n\n---Yeah, let me just---\n\n---Do not do so, not yet.  The real question: how? \n\n---Um, I just tell my lice to do it?\n\n---What are your lice doing?\n\nShe chewed on her finger again.  Another hand, reaching up, grasping\nthe silken tresses the hung by her neck.  She groped around till she\nfound a spiderlouse that was dutifully weaving or just chewing on silk.\nShe plucked it and stared at the tiny bug.  (Bug --- despite the\nname, they had six legs.)\n\nBut it had no answers for her. It only squirmed.\n\nZhe hummed wordlessly, making her glance over.  As an idle\ndemonstration, she had a line of silk drawn between two secondary\nhands.  At once, a primary claw came down and severed the line.\n\n---Tell me.  How can this connection be restored without either limb\ncrossing the intervening distance?  (zhe asked.)\n\nShe stared.  But this display seemed to underscore the fundamental\nabsurdity of what zhe had asked.\n\n---I don't know.  Maybe if you... threw the lines?  But you'd have to\nget closer, or you'd have to throw them at the same time --- which you\ncouldn't coordinate without already being hive-bound! --- and even\nthen both lines would have to meet midair, but even then they're still\nsevered... I don't know. It doesn't seem physically possible.\n\n---It's not.  Evanescence transcends what is physical.\n\n---So it's magic then.  Do I have to know this?\n\n---You want to know this, dear.  You're curious.\n\nAgain that certainty in her tone.  And... she did recall the heady\nscent of the pheromones, laden with pragmatic meaning but also that\nunique musk of ==zir==.  This was an authority.  She knew what was\nbest.\n\n---I must explain, because you won't be able to figure this all out on\nyour own.  First, we often speak of harmony --- our bindings are\nlike songs, pulses of meanings --- but the vibration of serivane\nstrings... it does not always serve us to think of it as sound. It is\nalso akin to light.\n\n---I've seen through my sister's eyes before (she sent, antennae\nnodding.)\n\n---You misunderstand.  That is synesthesia of a different origin, but\nI cannot discuss protocol today (zhe replied with a waving of her\nsharp primaries.)  This light shines back and forth across a serivane\nline.  When you cover up a light, it casts far-reaching shadows, and\nwhen a serivane line is cut, the disturbance is quite distinct from\nsimply going still.\n\nNow, zhe reached into the ropes that clad zir body --- all the netting\nthat surrounded zir had myriad treasures, less like a spider's web\nthan a magpie's nest.\n\nWhat zhe retrieved looked like a spool with hooked flanges, as if\nchitin had grown into a contorted shape.\n\n---Your spiderlice produce these devices with the same industry with\nwhich they produce silk, but theirs are all tiny and thus difficult to\ninspect.  This one operates by the same principle, though.\n\nWith a claw, zhe cut a new, thin string from zir hair, and began\nwinding it around the hooked flanges in an intricate pattern.  As zhe\nw",
  "title": "A Student Asunder"
}