A Heart to Judge

::: foreword

Note: This is a side-story for , and reveals a major twist of the first arc.

:::

i.

A flood of black nerve left more dead, dessicated bugs than a drought. Arbelosa Village knew this deep in its foundation.

Geography had by turns endowed and cursed this struggling stake in the northern province. On a good year, the namesake Lake Arbelos fed fields of bountiful crops. Within its shore carved round and thrice pinched, waters churned with fresh moutain runoff, and a thousand years had not yet exhausted the bat shit and spilled blood that teems in soil this close to the heart of that long-fallen empire.

Atop the mountains, iron spikes rose as if challenging or inviting heaven. Metal drew down filaments of black nerve when a blizzard's embrace drunk tight the flows of black nerve above, too heavy not to fall. On a good year, snow would trap what the metal called down.

1712 was a bad year. Cold shadows twisted in the depths of the lake, as if mirroring the writhing flows of the sky above. Winter poisoned the waters. Sunlight would be their salvation --- but it had been two moons with more cloudy days than not. Clouds enough to stoke hopes of clean rain, but never thick enough to promise it.

Dark water killed more bugs than drought. Arbelosa Village knew this deep in its foundation. Water towers stood as tall as grain silos. But bugs drank more than than they ate, and food itself sucked up water. A bad year meant rationing.

It meant triaging who was necessary and who wasn't. Nobody liked dead nymphs, but imagos kept the mills turning. When one dead body killed others, saving the right bug was saving many. Arbelosa Village knew this deep in its foundation --- Lake Arbelos was also a graveyard.

Makuja Firstmoon hatched eldest of her brood of four, crawling into her mother's forelegs, her mother's first touch after months spent guarding the ootheca.

Makuja was many firsts. First to be named. First to be fed. First to get new toys, clothes, friends.

She was the first to be forgiven when her siblings devised trouble (their envy animated them to steal her things, act out for attention; Makuja's hatchrank meant she expected them to treat her with all the deference adults spoiled her with, and she'd bite them back into line).

And she would be the first to inherit the opaque veil her mother wore. Her mother was a Snurratre temple matriarch, not only over her family, but Arbelosa Village as a whole. (It knew her authority deep in its foundation.) One day, Makuja would judge her flock with eyes blind but for the truth. Her mother had not seen light in ten years. She hadn't see her nymphs hatching. Her mother had never seen Makuja.

The nymphish Makuja did not understand the gravity of her hatchright --- at best, she knew she'd be in charge, one day. She lorded it over her peers.

Her mother was blind impartiality, but her father had a favorite. He saw patterns, his only literacy was in reading between the lines, draped in intuition and mysticism. Makuja was as cute as any wide-eyed nymph --- any father could love her --- but he decided she was a profound gift.

1712 was a bad year, a dry spring after a winter black with wispfalls. Water was rationed, and bugs were already starting to die. Then it started raining just hours after Makuja drew her first breaths, the rainfall only intesifying as the sun sets. That first night, Makuja had fallen asleep clutching her father for fear of thunder.

(It didn't take Makuja long to know her father had never forgotten that night. If she threw her forelegs around his leg and whimpered, he would do anything to protect her, say anything to comfort her.)

And didn't his little rainblossom deserve everything he could give her?

1713 was a good year, and 1714 was even better. She was a blessing, for her family and the whole village.

Like many of her father's theories, others humored it at best. Regardless, the temple matriarch's family was treated well by the village. They were not aristocracy, as there was no reigning nobility anywhere in the Pantheca and none would be countenanced. Still, they were rich --- by the standards of a village that rationed water on a bad year --- and widely respected.

Makuja's hatchrank didn't mean as much, outside her family's home. If anything, it put bugs on edge around her, knowing she would be their judge, one day. Her siblings didn't have that baggage, and they didn't have Makuja's entitled attitude. They were adored and she was not. How dare they?

So Makuja spent more time at home, while her siblings would play and help out around the village. Temple duties and daily meditation kept her mother ever busy, so Makuja spent much of her childhood in her father's care.

He taught her to dance, and in turn she bounced with enthusiasm unfitting for a formel. Her mother judged her for it. War dances would be acceptable, or courtship dances, but dancing, as an art, was a tiercel's display.

(They argued about it, her father and her mother. If his little rainblossom wanted to dance, didn't she deserve to enjoy her nymphood while she could?)

So Makuja only danced where others couldn't see and judge her. Not rare, her mother regularly cloistered in the temple, her siblings deftly avoiding a home where she could bully them and run to clutch daddy's leg if they didn't like it.

Makuja loved the rain. Not only because it's her nicknamesake, the gift that coincided with her arrival in this world. No, villagers loved the rain too --- if clean, it meant a fewer bugshells sinking into the lake when they had to drink from the water towers --- but they didn't love being in the rain, getting wet. This meant Makuja could step into a world with no eyes to judge her.

So she loved dancing in the rain. She prayed for it every overcast day.

But this was soon tempered by a lesson: she could not stand out beneath a cloudy sky and wait for it to pour down on her.

Most of the time, it would rain. But sometimes, wisps would fall instead. She could not risk it. The wispfalls were blessedly rare, most of her nymphood.

But Makuja endured her first bad year in 1718. Not as dry as the year before her birth, she'd never experienced that. For the first time, being denied, needing to ration? Makuja threw tantrums. Her mother judged her. No matter her demands, Makuja wasn't allocated any more than her siblings. To her siblings, it felt fair, in a way nothing really had.

It lasted until her her father started sneaking her extra food and water. No bug noticed, and Makuja could keep a secret. Her mother couldn't see it, but it doesn't escape her sibling's notice that she endured the drought better than they did.

And that, was how it really worked. The world wasn't fair, it turns out. Just how unfair was it?

Soon, one of them contracted a blood plague, a contagious rash. Mantis hemolymph bears a greenish hue, and this rash left red boils. Flesh would fold up around them, bunching into layers, squeezing the boils until they popped. The layers flaked off, and the discharge oozed. If you touched either, you'd get infected.

All of the fluid had to come from somewhere. The drought made a terrible disease worse.

Nymphs died all the time in the heartlands. Six of the nymphs her siblings grew up playing with had sunk into Lake Arbelos already. This marked the first time one of the siblings died, though.

The rations lasted them, and the drought ended. But it left a scar, a lesson for the two surviving siblings. Makuja would be showered in special treatment even if it killed them. Some bugs were more important than others --- that was written deep in the foundation of this village.

The word might be envy, or resentment. Makuja always had more and still always demanded even more. She always got a doubt's benefit. She was, put simply, an obnoxious, spoiled older sister.

Her brother and sister both cried at Keru's funeral. Makuja didn't. Then she went home and claimed all his toys for herself. Her face brightened with a smile of delight.

They fought over it, trying to take the toys back, and Makuja wailed about it. They were always trying to take thing from her, she said. Always --- like this was no different from any other dispute over toys.

Not an easy fight to win --- Makuja had spent months eating well while they rationed, so she was always bigger. She would win. And if she didn't win? What did it matter --- she'd get fat while they starved and then smile as she took everything they had before their bodies even hit the bottom of the lake.

So they kept fighting, as the years go on. Makuja had won herself no friends, not really, and her siblings turned all of their friends against her. Makuja could usually win against her younger siblings, but the village had older kids. She got bruised eyes, broken raptorial spine, once had a leg cracked enough she struggled to walk on it. More often than that, she would get dirt all over her clothes, and her mother felt this and judged her.

Makuja cried at the thought of losing another fight, and whined to her father about it. Begged him to find someone to teach her how to fight. The syndics had trained guards that had almost nothing to do in a town this small and quiet, so the request was humored. It came easily --- she'd danced for years, and her coordination was well-practiced.

Her parents argued about this, too. A template matriarch was a pacifist. How could one judge fairly if she was getting into brawls like a common thug?

By 1720, her mother had enough, and devised a simple solution to the problem of fights: Makuja wouldn't leave the house. She threw a tantrum, but her mother didn't budge. Her father argued about the fighting instruction and, at length, achieved a concession --- that, at least, could continue, to give her something to do, if nothing else. Better she learn how to fight than more dancing.

It was a year Makuja spent never leaving the house, except to go to shadely temple service and other