{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/chimhop/r02",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/chimhop/r02",
  "publishedAt": "2025-01-19T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "::: foreword\n\nPart of an attempted rewrite of A Chimerical Hope.\n\n:::\n\n::: afterword\n\nThis revised second chapter only adapts the first half of the\noriginal.  Click here to jump directly where the\nrewrite leaves off.\n\n:::\n\nSmaller, with large eyes and round features, the nymph looked up to\nthe refugee like a younger sibling to their elder.  The refugee bore\nin her expression a look of calcined despair, of having lost\neverything yet gripping to one hope and determination.  The nymph bore\nan emptiness, of having lost everything, of falling with nothing to\nhold on to --- as if they gaze out from within an ever-deepening pit.\nSomehow, her white eyes did not look bright.\n\nThe refugee had asked, Why should I let you live? to a mantis\nyounger than her.  This nymph had no answer.\n\nAwelah's grip on the spear slackened, and her eyes flushed with\npigment as she peered at the nymph she was threatening.  For one\nmoment, the light all around was the color of baneful flames.  She\nsmelled ash and blood.  She heard crackling tongues amid the pleading\nscreams.  She saw death and judgment.\n\nIn the heartlands, there is only one law---\n\nThe spear lowered, but it was still pointing at the nymph.\n\n\"What are you doing out here?\" asked the refugee.\n\n\"I am gathering mint leaves.  It will serve to make a salve.  A roach\nnymph scraped their leg when running from a hound.\"\n\nMessy antennae twisted forward, intent, examining.  \"Where did the\nroaches come from?\"\n\n\"Farmers from Duskhold.  They tell me they once supplied food to the\nstronghold, but they must flee... whatever had happened there.  The\ncountryside is so dangerous now, and they believed I would be safer in\ntheir company.\"\n\nThe spear now pointed at the ground.  Both pawns had claimed their\nmission required killing everyone from Duskroot.  And this nymph\nwasn't.\n\nStill a small, calm voice.  \"What's your name and epithet?\" asked the\nnymph.  Those large white eyes were looking her up and down.\n\nThe refugee had been drilled long on proper introduction, and her tone\nwas rote.  \"I am Awelah, she who...\"  Then already, a hitch, a piece\nthat no longer fits.\n\nWho was she?  To Mewla: she who will be her mother's pride (you're my\nonly hope, honeyhatch).  To Akida: she who should keep trying (you\nmight catch me next time, cousin).  To Honorari: she who was\nacceptable at spears and survival (you're the oldest still a pawn\n:-- please keep up, niece).  To Hotar: she who bore the noble name\nAsetari (you'd do well to act like it, child).  To her: she who was\nnot even worth the bother to kill (there is only one law, and you are\nits subject).\n\nA scrape of palps together, the sound like a chorus-roach clearing her\nthroats.  Then she at last said, \"Awelah Asetari, she who will have\njustice for her clan.\"\n\nAwelah caught a twitch of red palps, a tightening of antennae.  A\nsmile, a determined arch?  Was this nymph _laughing_ at me?  Or is\nshe envious?  Doubting?\n\nBut her reaction now only looked flat, polite.  She bowed with\nraptorial arms lowered.  \"I... I'm Makuja, she of no name.  Are you\nstill going to kill me?\"\n\nAwelah stared down.  Like an elder sibling at her younger.\n\nIf the baneful flames were crackling, if she stood before Makuja,\nAwelah knew what answer she would have chosen.  She could have,\nand would have.\n\n\"No,\" Awelah answered.  \"Get up. Take me to the roaches.\"\n\n- - -\n\nA stalwart tree had endured long, its roots carving into rock, and\nthen faltered.  Its branches grown thick, but long lain leafless and\ndead.  Odd conic fungi grew underneath the boughs.  They expanded and\ncontracted as if breathing.\n\nBeneath this tree waited seven chorus-roaches.  Bugs just barely\nbigger than the nymphal mantes, bright of chitin, pastel reds and\ngreens.  The largest of them pulled a small cart.  Long, waving\nantennae greeted the mantes, rubbing a curl-palped head against\nMakuja, but only stares advanced toward Awelah.\n\nMakuja followed their eyes and inclined her head.  A raptorial\ngestured toward her guest, and she said, \"This is Awelah, she of clan\nAsetari.\"\n\nThe red nymph had a quiet voice --- but if she had issued a shout of\nair from her throats, the roaches would have flinched the same.\nAntennae jerked back, glances were exchanged among them.\n\nThe largest roach met the refugee's gaze with dark eyes. Perfume-scent\nfeminine, her limbs were thick and softly rounded with fat beneath\nchitin-plates --- matriarch of this family? thought Awelah --- and\nthis roach was folding her first two legpairs in a deep kneel; the\nother roaches followed suit.\n\n\"Honored Asetari,\" she whispered with six voices, \"we thought you had\nall died.\"  Noble roaches didn't stridulate with their palps; they\nhissed through finely-lipped spiracles along their abdomen.\n\nMakuja tilted her head.  \"Why?\"\n\nThe thick roach glanced between the two mantes.  Would, should, Awelah\nanswer?\n\nThe refugee thought of the ruins, the massacre, and scowled.\n\nThen the roach was speaking.  She had an intonation, a cadence ---\nmothers told their nymphs many stories.  \"The noble clan Asetari\nwandered the heartlands for generations, chasing the flight of their\nancestral spirits.  Their wandering dead guided them to a sacred\nmountain upon which they built a magical castle wherein their buried\nwould live and rule eternally.\"  A pause, a shudder that jolted along\nher underspine, and then she finished.  \"Then four days ago a cursed\nstorm prowled in, visiting otherworldly destruction upon their\npromised stronghold.\"\n\nAwela gave an enigmatic grunt.  This roach was but a fool, then.\nGrandmother Uvema was one of three who'd survived an encounter with\nthe Second Antiscourge, and she had understood the clan's techniques\nso deeply she had crafted the astral plane herself -~- and Mother\nMewla had told Awelah that Uvema's greatest accomplishment was\nconvincing the clan that letting her play queen had anything at all to\ndo with their traditions.\n\nThe clan believed the story, the bugs of Duskhold believed the story,\nAwelah had at first believed the stories when the lessons recounted it\n--- and she'd excitedly repeated the tale of the Asetari clan founding\nto her mother one evening.\n\nRootless mysticism, all of it, Mewla told her.  Don't let them fool\nyou.  \"Ancestral spirits\"? \"Sacred guidance\"? \"_Nobility_\"? Her\nstride had broken to spit loudly.  All _bullshit_.  Play their games,\nhoneyhatch, but do it for money, do it for favors.  Never do it for\ndead bugs and sweet words.\n\nSix voices jarred her from the lash of memories.  \"Are you coming from\nbeyond the hold, pup?\"  The matriarch hummed something like a coo in\nher throats.  (Now that she did not kneel, now that she stood up with\nmidlegs at full height, she was the only roach eye level with the\nmantis nymphs.)  \"My apologies if this is how you had to find out.\"\n\nAwelah's antennae curled tight.  Tight.  \"I was there,\" she ground\nout.\n\n\"Yet now you are here.  I thought the Asetari would have died\nprotecting that domain.\"\n\nPurple palps pressed together, scrapers pressing together wordless.\nThen her gaze fell, and her antennae unfurled to fall too, over her\neyes.\n\nWhy did this sting?  She had already been measured, already knew where\nshe stood.  (She was not the law, but its subject.)  Those who had\nfought had died.  Mewla wanted her daughter to live.\n\nWasn't it a good thing she did?\n\n...Was it a good thing her clan only had a coward to its name?\n\nWhile the roach matriarch and her dark eyes lingered on Awelah, they'd\nlost the interest of the younger, smaller roaches, who'd turned to\nhiss among themselves.  There was a restlessness in how they circled\nand tapped the ground.\n\nMakuja had stepped forward, too, leaving Awelah to face the roach\nmother alone; she knelt before a small roach.  That one had moved\nlittle, walking on five legs with the sixth curled up.  Makuja was\nwiping it down and wrapping it in wet cloths.\n\nThis was why they'd stopped, Awelah recalled.  They'd set off soon,\nthen.\n\nBut first, the matriarch directed one last question to Awelah.  She\nshook her head and declared, \"We have no accommodations for a\nvesperbane pawn, nothing fit for clan Asetari.  But if you can endure\nthat, you may accompany us.\"\n\nAwelah stared at the roach's light green face, met once again those\neyes.  What dwelled within them?  Did she blame the Asetari --- blame\nher, for she was the Asetari, now --- for inviting the destruction\nthat drove this family of roaches from their home?  The purple nymph\ncould scratch some rebuttal, mount some defense, and felt an urge to\n--- but the pain and disappointment in that face...\n\nThe Asetari had kept roachservants, maids who'd practically raised\nAwelah.\n\nHad.\n\nWary dark eyes looked up at her, listened to her present silence, and\nsaw her hands clenching into fists.  But the mantis did not feel\nanger.  It had been three nights, three nights cursing her weakness,\nthree nights remembering her family in nightmares --- but this touched\na different wound.  With the loss of her clan, Awelah lost purpose,\nhonor, expectation.  But she hadn't just burned the Asetari, even if\nthey had been her target.  Reminded now, of the loss of the roaches\nwho'd sung her to sleep, holding her like their own nymphs?\n\nAwelah let out a gasp, and articulated nothing else.\n\nThen she inclined her head --- what might be a single nod, or a small\nbow.  She wondered if this was a level of deference a roach farmer\nwould never expect from a mantis, a clan mantis.  But she turned and\nAwelah could read no more of her expression.\n\nWhen the journey resumed, Awelah followed after.\n\n- - -\n\nLong stretches of the road passed, the chorus-roaches singing folk\nsongs in their throats.  The pale nymph fell back, kept her distance\nfar behind the convoy of roaches.  From here, they couldn't see or\njudge her.\n\nAt night, Awelah perched on a rock as the roaches tucked into tents to\nsleep, and she stared heavenward.  Stars struggled to shine amid a\nenervate-dark sky; Awelah struggled to sleep amid the nightmares,\nstruggled to grasp some purpose as spear-steady ",
  "title": "The Weak Must"
}