{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/chimhop/16",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/chimhop/16",
  "publishedAt": "2022-05-18T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "Occlusion. Safety is occluded by tension, by the sudden absence.\nCertainty is occluded by questions, doubts, the most dependable part of\ntheir morning ripped away. Clear thinking is occluded by the vestigial\nfingers of poor sleep pressing against their mind.\n\nFor Awelah, though, those fingers slip away as a thrill of urgency and\nmotivation comes, a problem to solve, a new hunt beginning.\n\n\"Look around. Let's see what tracks we can find.\" A vesperbane would be\ntrained to avoid leaving tracks in a way a direbeast would not. Her next\nfear, after the diamond-shaped prints, would be three sets of distinct\ntarsus-tracks.\n\nEyes darken and focus as a closer search unfolds. Despite the dark\nocclusion of their moods, the sky above them is pock-marked with breaks\nin that days-long overcast that had shadowed them. Shafts of dawn light\nshine as the sun rises. In uncaring contrast, today is bright.\n\nMaybe it'll be easier to find her, then, Awelah thinks.\n\nMakuja is a light step, but her weight falls on muddy soil, so her\ntracks remain. In face of the evidence, an oddly dreaded third\npossibility fits where others have failed.\n\nShe left alone. Of, one assumes, her own will.\n\n\"She didn't say anything to you?\" Awelah says.\n\nOoliri shakes his head.\n\n\"I know her scent. Follow me.\" Her messy antennae uncurl, extending out\nand sampling the air. Feeling the ghost of an old gradient that agrees\nwith the footprints, the pursuit advances.\n\n\"I'm... surprised. Tracking is a bit of a... masculine thing, isn't it?\nNo um, no offense.\"\n\nOoliri, even at this instar, isn't quite yet all that different from the\ngirls. His antennae are longer already, though. While length isn't all\nthat matters, his sense of smell surely outsteps her own in sensitivity.\n\nPhysical sensitivity isn't all that matters, either, though. Olfaction\nisn't just given to you. A certain skill lives in how Awelah moves her\nantennae, learned from observation and correction. A certain kind of\nfocus in probing apart scents, and a theory of wind and diffusion to\nmake sense of them. Ooliri, it's quite possible, has never tried or\nlearned.\n\n\"I don't think it's too masculine to know how to hunt,\" is her reply.\n\nOoliri nods --- since speaking, his face had been a little bit scrunched\nup, worried his words had been too careless.\n\nBy scent and by sight they are led to the creek-ravine. There's two\nlarge dents in the ground at the edge and the trail led right to them.\nAwelah, without yesterday's headache addling her thoughts, puts two\ntogether with this one.\n\n\"That's how she did it.\"\n\nMakuja had been so evasive, so agile in that fight, and seemed to be\npreparing a spell she never cast.\n\n\"What did she do?\"\n\n\"Did you catch it yesterday? I hated that she cast that spell at me ---\nso much I didn't think about how. She used her middle legs.\"\n\nOoliri nods slowly with a frown, not unappreciative of the knowledge,\nbut failing to see the relevance. Then he looks back at the dents in the\nground. \"Explosive force. If directed under her... clever. But we can't\ncross that gap.\"\n\nAwelah knows that. She's looking from this edge to the other side. At a\nloss, but knowing the answer would be found. She wouldn't fail.\n\nOoliri looks too, but his thoughts stray outside the confines of what\nlies in front of them. They still have rope, after all. Could they---\n\nThen Awelah jumps. \"Feel that?\"\n\n\"No?\"\n\n\"The wind changed. It's coming from...\" Awelah looks down the creek.\n\"That way.\"\n\n\"What do you smell?\"\n\n\"Makuja smells... heavy. And she's been exerting --- running, maybe.\"\n\n\"Or, or fighting. Do you think...\"\n\n\"I don't smell the mutt. I would. I don't smell any hemolymph either.\nI don't expect violence.\"\n\n\"But you sound so...\"\n\n\"She wasn't in a good mood yesterday. You sense that? It's worse.\nIt's... Let's go.\"\n\nAwelah, anxious to move, closes the distance the only way available,\neven as Ooliri looks back to the creek, wants to remind her that maybe\nthey should close that gap first --- but the pale nymph is already\nquickening to a jog, and needs to catch up.\n\nThe word on the tip of her palps, that she refused to say, was\n'familiar.' You couldn't read all the nuances of a mantis off of\npheromones, but sadness had an odor, an aroma. Bitter, or spicy, or...\nthere is a certain twist to it, a scent unpleasant, yet very much not\naversive, like lead.\n\nAwelah wouldn't be running if she hadn't felt despair of this depth,\nthis pungency, before. Years ago, it was a stale autumn day in the\nAsetari compound. She'd learned that mommy wasn't going to be a\nvesperbane anymore --- she learned it from a distant pair of cousins,\nfrom the rumor mill, instead of directly. She couldn't find her mom,\nonly her dad. She confronted him, he told her where to look. She found\nher taking a deep bath, and only the sound of her daughter calling\nbrought her out.\n\nOoliri knows none of this, only that he can't keep pace with Awelah, nor\nwhat would have her concerned if she can't smell an enemy.\n\nThe wind had come from down the creek, but it is only down as the water\nfar below flows. The hills get higher. At least the vegetation is\nclearing. The gorge gets wider, deeper as they go. Above, the peak of\nthe incline lies on the other side.\n\nOoliri only catches up when Awelah stops. Awelah stopped because she\nspotted Makuja. She'd be hard to miss, now.\n\nThe sun rises in the east, and the creek runs east. She's shadowed\nthere, alone on the highest point around.\n\n\"What is she doing?\"\n\nThere's only an answer to give because, at that moment, she does\nsomething. Perhaps she saw them.\n\n\"Running.\"\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nMakuja is observant. Makuja is patient.\n\nShe's been to the edge of the gorge. She's calculated the extent. She's\nnot going to make it.\n\nShe doesn't calculate the way the gray nymph does it. She feels. She's\ndone the boosted leaps enough times now to know how far she goes. She\nhad picked just the right part of the ravine to cross over, where it was\nthin enough she landed. The gorge in front of her is not that. She's not\ngoing to make it even with a boost. Unless her calculations are wrong.\n\nMakuja is patient. She stares at the wide gap below her, where the\nincline of the hill abruptly drops off. She's eyeing the distance one\nmore time. Sometimes she doesn't feel the success or failure, not\nimmediately. She's patient, and can wait for her calculations to reach\nunoccluded certainty.\n\nMakuja has killed. So many times, she's stood poised, knife ready, but\nnot feeling if she was going to make the cut. To be sure it would kill,\nto be sure they wouldn't struggle, retaliate, raise the alarm, she could\nwait. She is patient.\n\nShe had done the same to Awelah --- waiting, and not knowing even as\nshe moved the knife if she was going to make the cut. Why, then?\n\n\"There's not a best time to fire an arrow,\" she recalls her master\ntelling her, not long into her apprenticeship. \"You can wait on the\nwind, wait on the target, wait on your own damn nerves. You wait for a\nbetter time, and there's no best time --- but there is a worst time to\nfire an arrow.\"\n\n\"When?\" Her voice had been higher, then. Her mind slower, too, not\ncatching that she'd been all but given the answer.\n\nUnodha had sharp teeth, and even palps that looked fit to bite.\n\n\"Too late,\" she says.\n\nMakuja starts running.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\"She's heading for the edge. Is she going to jump?\"\n\nAwelah's face is set hard, even as her antennae continue to move. \"What\ndo we do?\"\n\nThey are far from the opposite edge themselves, and even if they\nweren't... it's a long way down. How could they catch or stop her from\nthis side of the gorge?\n\n\"My technique is all we have,\" Awelah says.\n\n\"How? Do you even know it can move fast enough to get to her in time? If\nyou do... can it push with enough force? What would you accomplish ---\nyou might kill her yourself! We don't use techniques like that on\nallies.\"\n\n\"We have to do something.\"\n\n\"I don't even know if it's safe for you to try. Remember --- remember\nhow you screamed yesterday?\"\n\nAwelah puts her forelegs together and Ooliri snaps a tarsus out to pull\nthem apart.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nHer heart is beating faster, faster. Her blood is stirring in her every\nextreme. It is alive, her capillaries like the tendrils of some greater\nthing.\n\nHer heart is beating faster, the resting rate feeling like the tides in\ntheir agonizing slowness. Now, her blood can move, and each pulse, each\nthunderous impact of her legs, feels things speed closer to how they\nshould be.\n\nShe is so close.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nAcross the gulf, they see the red nymph running faster and faster,\ngravity accelerating her. Then she moves even faster than that --- it\nmust be her technique.\n\nWhen she reaches the edge, she jumps with no tarsigns. Their eyes are\nmagnetized to her form as she sails through the air --- for fear of\nwhere they'd go if they traced their trajectory.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nNot all of her is occluded by the overwhelming sensation of blood flow.\nHer eyes are in front of her, still eyeing that gap, calculating even as\nher legs bend.\n\nShe's not going to make it. Not with her momentum, not with the power of\nher leap.\n\nIt still feels like flying. The other edge is so far away. She wonders\nif birds feel always like they are falling.\n\nShe looks down. It's so far. Vesperbanes heal fast, but puddles don't.\n\nShe remembers things. So many things come to her so quickly.\n\nShe remembers asking Ooliri a question.\n\nShe remembers the night this all began. Appraisal. Investment. The\npower she felt, from somewhere deep within, somewhere beyond, somewhere\nvespertine. Her blood lived almost as it does now, but more. That night,\nshe had felt so much like her master. She was dead, but Makuja would be\na worthy heir. Wouldn't she?\n\nShe remembers h",
  "title": "An Occluded Path"
}