{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/eifre-quest/13",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/eifre-quest/13",
  "publishedAt": "2021-08-12T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "::: subchapter\n\"Well? What are you going to tell her? I imagine she won't be up there\nfor long.\"\n\nYou glance up at the dark curtains of your parent's platform. Shafts of\nsunlight rain on it from the windows, and dust floats in the light like\nsparse snow.\n\n\"Yikki has to stay here. I don't want her to have to leave.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" Shimare says. She isn't standing. Her tarsi grip the handles\nof a perch, her small abdomen resting on a cushion. She doesn't look\nrelaxed, though, eyes regarding you intensely. \"She's like the rest of\nyour agemates, right? Adores vesperbanes, defers to them?\"\n\nYou nod. Who doesn't?\n\n\"Good.\" Her antennae unfurl, reaching for you. \"Still, you didn't answer\nmy question.\"\n\nYou run a palp across the dentation of a mandible. \"I don't know. I keep\nthinking about what Yikki said. It's a risk.\"\n\n\"So is keeping it secret.\" Shimare is still looking at you with mantid\ngaze, her Brismati eyes open, but not directed at you.\n\n\"It's...\" you start and stop. \"Secrets get out eventually,\" you say. How\ncould you keep something from Tlista forever? She seems to figure\neverything out. \"We have more time to work things out if she doesn't\nknow right away.\" You glance at her curtain, half expecting unlucky\ntiming, your mother appearing right as you allude to the secret. She\ndoesn't; you're safe for moments more.\n\nThis is like last night, you realize. You're still seeing it as a\nbinary. There are more options than asking Tlista or keeping it a\nsecret. \"Maybe we could ask other nymphs' parents, just in case Tlista\nfinds out and doesn't let her stay?\" Maybe Maune herself would be\namenable to her staying in the woods with her. Or! You've heard legend\nof the secret treehouse the older nymphs got the bees to build years\nago. No one's been able to find it since, with those nymphs (now imagos)\nkeeping it a grave secret.\n\n\"Bad idea,\" Shimare's quick to say. \"Can you trust other parents not to\njust take her back? You should keep her close.\" The vesperbane stands\nup. \"But if you're not going to tell her now, we're eating our luck by\nstaying here. Let's go.\"\n\nYou turn to the door, but stop. \"Wait. If Yikki just woke up, she's\nprobably hungry.\"\n\n\"I can just give her one of my ration bars. It's half of what we eat, so\nwe're packed with them.\" You nod, not having better ideas; your father\ncooks. \"Wait for me outside while I go down there? Can get the quilting\nboard too, so we aren't caught in an obvious lie.\"\n\nOutside, the sky is as clear as a vast emptiness. The atmospheric\nenervate is fainter this deep in the day, and has been driven completely\nout of the radius of the sun, like a great celestial banishment.\n\n\"Want one?\"\n\nA vesperbane surprising you should not be a surprise, but you still\njump. The white mantis is offering you a paper-wrapped tube. It's\nhexagonal, like it was extruded alongside a hundred others from a mold.\n\nYou smile and take it, feeling the mid-day pang in your abdomen. The\nbland, unappealing brown tube is lumpy, studded with what might be nuts.\nYou pause. It smells like meat.\n\nShimare tsks at your look. \"Please don't tell me you were raised on any\nof that noble hunter bullshit. Sure, haemofab'd meat is farmed like a\ncrop rather than killed, but it tastes like meat. Calories are calories.\nIf you want to be a vesperbane, by no means can you be picky.\"\n\nIn the end, your stomach decides.\n\nShimare hums, then says, \"Follow me.\" The bane starts walking.\n\n\"Uhm, where are we going?\"\n\nShe doesn't stop or turn to reveal her expression, but the tone is of\nanswering a stupid question. \"Our camp. Have you forgotten my offer\nalready?\"\n\n\"I do want to learn about being a vesperbane, and you are --\"\n\n\"I can see the 'but' in your words, nymph. Cut to it.\"\n\n\"I don't want you to get in trouble, showing me something you\nshouldn't.\"\n\n\"And if I tell you I know my teacher and what he wants better than you?\"\n\n\"I'd have to be around the others, wouldn't I? I know they're your\nteammates, but they don't seem very nice. Or good vesperbanes. And after\nlast night, they might not trust me.\"\n\n\"Should I save myself the trouble of eviscerating your new excuses, and\nassume the ground truth here is you don't want to, and this game is\nwhat? Trying not to hurt my feelings?\"\n\nOr revealing what you'd rather do. When you decided you wouldn't take up\nShimare's offer, you didn't determine if your intentions should be\nsecret. There was nothing wrong with visiting the apiary, was there?\n\n\"It's worth remarking,\" Shimare scrapes, tone light, \"how odd that is.\nA child of the Pantheca, an aspiring vesperbane, and you don't want to\nlearn from your superiors? I'm sure any other nymph in your village\nwould leap for the chance, and yet you hesitate. And I wonder why that\nis. Do you trust the Stewartry? Do you believe in the Dream?\"\n\nYou nod with vigor. Had you made a terrible mistake? Was this going to\nruin your chances of becoming a vesperbane?\n\n\"Or perhaps... is this your interpretation of caution? Or do you just\ndistrust me, specifically?\"\n\n\"I think you're nice!\" you say, extending antennae outward to her,\nwiggling them.\n\nShimare frowns at that, and you aren't sure why.\n\nYou decide to move the conversation along. \"I won't accompany you\ntoday,\" you emphasize, \"but maybe there is a way you could help me.\nI've read of the sovrans at Greci, and I was wondering --\"\n\n\"No,\" Shimare curls up her antennae. \"Not only are you wrong, you're\ndoing it wrong. First of all, no bane of rank lower than fiend has\never been to Greci --- and it's forbidden for us to be transported there.\nI have no connections for you to exploit.\" She leans toward you, and\nit's not a pleasant look on her face. \"Was it just flattery, a moment\nago? Is this what you really think of me --- a big, influential name, a\nladder for your little ambitions?\"\n\n\"No! I just --\"\n\n\"You should take a lesson from this, nymph. About the implications your\nwords may carry, to those who aren't blind to them. If you just want to\nuse mantids as stepping stones for your schemes, then you'll be in good\ncompany, becoming a vesperbane. Or perhaps you aren't even capable of\nthat depth yet, and you really thought your intentions innocent. I don't\ncare.\"\n\nYou take a step back, palps quivering inaudibly. You glance around --\nanywhere but at the bane. Should you just leave? This isn't what you\nwanted.\n\n\"Don't run away just yet. There's something I need to tell you --- that I\nwas going to tell you, before your little... infelicity. Walk with me,\nwe won't have to part ways for a bit.\"\n\nYou welcome walking beside the bane, where keeping your gaze fixed ahead\nof you is expected and not impolite. You're breathing a bit fast, but\nyou have the composure to slow it.\n\n\"Here. I'll present this in the form of three questions. Questions you\nshould have asked, questions a good vesperbane would have thought of.\nListening?\"\n\nYou nod. You meet her Brismati eyes, rather than her compound eyes. The\nunease her vein-marred, glowing orbs stir is appropriate.\n\n\"Why, if speaking at the schoolyard was a test from our teacher, would\nwe skip out on the test by sending ourselves a fake message? Does that\nmake sense? And how, if your friend was able to sneak out of her\nhouse, could her windows be barred or door locked from the outside? And\nwhy, if I am a vesperbane born of one of the most prestigious clans,\ntaught by the arch-fiend of one of the major cities of the plains, would\nI find you impressive? Do you think you're that special?\" She shakes\nher head. \"When you leave for the academy, and you have more than one\ngeneration of a tiny village to compare yourself against, you'll\ndiscover just how unremarkable you are.\"\n\nYou stop walking. \"Why --- why would you... you lied? Why lie about those\nthings?\"\n\n\"My teacher loves his tests, and I think it's infectious. When the\nexaminers speak of Shatalek's stock, the one they talk about is\nHervanium Alcha. But you come up second. I wanted to know if that meant\nanything. And, well.\"\n\nYou make a wordless scraping noise.\n\n\"But, having met you, I had another motive. You're gullible, Eifre.\nListen to me. Vesperbanes are liars! If they tell you something, it only\nmeans they wanted you to think that. Always interrogate motives.\"\n\n\"You-- you can't treat everyone like that. Some are good, some are\ntrustworthy. Some are...\" --- you reach for a word the vesperbane would\nlike --- \"allies.\"\n\n\"Even your allies, bug. Vesperbanes make sacrifices. And what's truth\nmean next to lives saved, or concrete results? It's ephemeral. This is\nthe heartlands. Truth is scarce. Your trust should be, too.\"\n\nBrismati Shimare closes her eyes.\n\n\"It's something a lot of new vesperbanes get stung by. And I'm willing\nto bite, and demonstrate directly, even if it makes you see me as some\nkind of venomed scorpion, because it will make the Pantheca stronger. I\nwant you to know this, before you have to learn it from some renegade or\ndefect, at cost.\"\n\nWhen you part ways, she walks back, directly opposite the way you had\nbeen walking.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nCrossing town towards the apiary takes you tangential to the important\nbuilding at its center, where Tlista talked to the syndic. You see\nunfamiliar mantids in purple robes outside it now, adorned with\neight-pointed stars. They are talking to passersby. Had they arrived\nrecently? Most mantids in town are vaguely familiar, but strangers pass\nthrough the tavern, uncommonly. Most weren't interested in the syndic or\nthe assembly building, though.\n\nBees grow more numerous as you near their home. You always see them\ndigging around in the flower cups, or tending to the flowers and you\nwonder if that's what they all do. Do they ever play?\n\nLocating the apiary's no mystery. Though your fleeting familiarity with\nthe fringes of town begins to fail you, there is an irregular stream of\nbees diving in this direction.\n\nThe apiary sits as a squat thing, a hexagonal slab of a building, whose\ncolorfully painted façade shows more creativity than its shape. From the\nlo"
}