{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/eifre-quest/12",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/eifre-quest/12",
  "publishedAt": "2021-08-06T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "::: subchapter\nYou do not go unnoticed. If you're close enough to see the crowd in the\nschoolyard, it means, even fascinated by the vesperbanes, everyone can\nsee you approaching without turning their heads. Still, some do. Remna\nglances over and smiles, a boy with long antennae regards you with a\npinched, confused expression, and a fifth instar girl with white and\ngreen chitin glances over for one moment. Her antennae curl up and palps\ncurve downward like fangs. It's one moment, then she looks away --\nthroughout, you don't meet her eyes.\n\nThe decision --- go or stay --- isn't helped by the eyes and attention\nentangling you and drawing you in. But really, were you ever not going\nto find out whatever these vesperbanes were telling everyone else? Sure,\nthey were mean and don't seem very good at their job, but they do the\njob, which alone elevates their words over the usual mentors.\n\nAnd if you didn't find out now, you don't trust anyone else to remember\nit well enough to relay it accurately.\n\n\"--bats and mantids, and in theory shoggoths but that's more of a\nscary story. I... we don't know why none of the other kinds can, it\nmight be biology or the vespers just don't want to.\" The vesperbane with\ngreen chitin is the one speaking, her voice losing focus and trailing\noff as you arrive, a distraction.\n\nWesk had saved you a seat --- or at least, had enough free space around\nher. The almost-sixth instar nymph is about half again as big as anyone\nelse, and with her beside you, you're obscured from about half the other\nnymphs.\n\nThe two of you aren't quite on smiling terms, but she does give you a\nnod. The arrangement the two of you went was something like, whenever\nyou did athletic team exercises, the two of you try to end up on the\nsame team --- Wesk being enough of an asset to make up for how little you\ncould offer in any activity --- in return, you have far more patience\nanswering her questions than anyone else.\n\nInserting yourself into the rapt crowd doesn't decrease the number of\nglances your way. They still come, and pair themselves with light, quiet\nstridulations like gossip. You imagine it couldn't be a secret that your\nmom had rounded up half the town in the search for you last night.\n\nYou ignore them. You look to the front. Green had leaned over to consult\nwith one of the mentors --- to make sure you belong?\n\nYou mirror her, and lean to consult with Wesk, asking what's going on.\n\n\"The banes came here from the city to fight termites! And the mentors\ngot them to spend the morning here, and tell us what it's like to be a\nvesperbane and answer all our questions.\"\n\n\"What was the last question?\" You piece together context from the bit\nyou heard. \"Why other species can't become vesperbanes?\"\n\n\"Yeah. How'd you know?\"\n\nThe vesperbanes were speaking again. Red, this time. \"Hey, settle it. If\nyou're going to talk instead of listen, we can get back to our mission\ninstead.\"\n\nThere's quiet, and where there isn't quiet, there's other nymphs jabbing\neach other to quit it.\n\n\"Are there any other questions?\" Green asks.\n\nYou look, and Shimare isn't standing with them --- she's in the shade\nbeneath an awning, reading and occasionally shuffling the pages she is\nreading.\n\nThe nymphs with questions (surprisingly not all of them --- had that many\nquestions already been answered?) show it by making a display of the\neyespots on the inside of their raptorials.\n\nYou consider trying to ask a pointed question about renegades, or maybe\nthat's a bad idea. You do want to get their help, after all.\n\n\"You, with the red chitin.\"\n\n\"I um... well, my aunt tries to make me stop coming here whenever I go\nsee her. But I don't know... why do some mantids hate vesperbanes?\nAren't they heroes?\"\n\nGreen glances at Red, antennae flexing. It's Red who speaks first. \"You\nknow, there's a story our teacher told us when we asked something like\nthat. Should we tell them?\" She smiles. \"I think we should.\"\n\nGreen frowns, hesitant, but it seems to be all the prompting she needs.\nShe starts, \"The short way to put it, it's a story about mantids a long\ntime ago. A long time --- before the bats. A lady owned a farm that fed\na village, but then there's a drought, and then a plague that cripples\nher farms' roaches, and then a horde of reaver ants sweep through and\nraid their grain silos and livestock... it's a real bad year. And it\nstarts to look like she's not going to be able feed the village.\"\n\nRed asks the obvious question. \"So what does she do?\"\n\n\"Searching for a solution, she dares to venture out into the woods,\nwhich are...\" --- Green pauses, eyes drifting towards the horizon.\n\"Actually, this far south, you probably know what the woods are like.\nThis long ago, before the ambrosia isolation pact, the woods were even\nmore unkempt --- trees melting into each other, blight galls growing like\nweeds. So this lady ventures into the woods, and shadows dance at the\nedge of her vision, weevils keeping just out of sight, their breaths\nand beatings wings like a chorus of laughs. She's lost in those woods,\nhopelessly hounded and herded by those shadows, till one weevil has the\nmercy to appear before her.\"\n\nOne nymph interrupts here. \"What do weevils look like?\"\n\n\"Night had fallen at this point, so she doesn't get a good look at it,\"\nis Green's way of dodging the question. \"Weevils can only speak by\nmaking you eat the fruit of a fungus that makes you babbling mad, making\nyou dream while awake, giving all light a smell and every sound a color.\nBy comparison to that, it makes the buzzing of weevil wings makes sense.\nSo this one weevil makes the lady eat the mushrooms, and it speaks to\nher. The lady babbles forth her problems to the weevil, and it proposes\nthat it can solve their problems.\n\n\"'What are you willing to give?' the weevil asks. And the lady replies\n'Anything. My husband, my kids, the village --- they have to eat. I'll do\nanything so that they can eat.' The weevil laughs, and it tells her the\nsecret to solving her problem, and disappears. With this knowledge, the\nlady runs back to town, her eyes dilated black from the mushrooms, and\nthe other weevils laugh and leave her alone enough to finally escape the\nforest. She reaches her house before she reaches the village, and in her\nexcitement, exclaims the solution to her husband. He then turns into a\ntree.\"\n\nGreen pauses there, eyes roaming as if savoring the gasps and confused\nmurmurs. \"A little sapling, but it grows fast, the way they say weevil\nmagic does to plants. She's as surprised and taken aback by this as you\nare, and decides this is another waking dream of weevil's mushrooms. So\nshe goes to sleep. And in the morning, she rouses to find the tree her\nhusband became is still there, now far bigger than their house. It's\ngrown flowers and fruit now. The lady herself can do nothing but stare,\nbut when one of her children picks a fruit, they find it tough and\ngreasy and delicious. And there's enough fruit on all the boughs to\nfeed the entire town.\"\n\nRed's palps draw into a big grin as he looks over the bewildered nymphs.\n\"That's it. That's the story our teacher told us.\"\n\n\"How does that answer the question at all!\"\n\n\"If we explained that, it wouldn't be authentic to the experience of our\nteacher telling it. He has this way of telling you things and watching\nyou react like it's a test, and you fail if you don't act like it\nsomehow makes sense.\"\n\n\"But,\" Green starts, \"because we're better than our teacher, in this\nregard, we'll try to explain. By now, you've surely learned what it\nmeans to be a hero, right? A hero is one who sacrifices. The good for\nthe better, the one for the many, a hero pays the price, whatever\nstruggle and strain needed to keep her protectorate safe. The story\nillustrates this with the husband, I think. I believe the husband is the\nsame as a vesperbane --- he was transformed into something else so the\nvillage could survive. There are people who think vesperbanes are less\nmantid, because of their union with the vespers. But despite this,\nbecause vesperbanes fight monsters, heal the sick, and build our cities,\nthe Pantheca endures.\"\n\n\"Look at this way,\" Red cuts in. \"Your parents might not like it when\ntheir little nymphs go off to Wentalel to get transformed into powerful\nvesperbanes. But I say it's what makes you a hero. And besides, if you\nlive here, enjoying the benefits of there being vesperbanes, without\ndoing your part to help there be more vesperbanes, isn't that the\ndefinition of being a defect?\"\n\n\"But to return to the question we're supposed to be answering,\" Green\nsays, \"we think it's that simple. Vesperbanes make sacrifices mantids\nare uncomfortable with. Especially among the religious, becoming a\nvesperbane is viewed as a corrupting transformation. They say a soul\nunited with the vespers can never be reborn in the welkin, and call that\ndeprival of eternal life murder, and conclude that vesperbanes kill by\nsimply existing.\"\n\n\"It's all very complicated, but it's all nonsense. Especially if you've\never met a vindicator. Assholes, all of them.\"\n\nGreen makes a sort of coughing sound in their trachea.\n\n\"Oh yeah, nymphs,\" she says, an antenna falling. \"It's a word you'll\nlearn when you're older.\"\n\n\"Are there other questions?\"\n\nYou keep glancing to Shimare, and decide you'll ask her for help after\nthis is over.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nRed is answering a question (\"Why don't vesperbanes rule the world?\")\nwith an analogy to mantis-fungus-aphid (which sounds a lot like a weird\nforeign version of mantis-fungus-ant), when an interruption comes as the\nbeating of chitinous wings. Above, a dark form darts down to land on the\nforeleg of the Green mantis. It's a bee, black thoracic fuzz pressed\ndown to a more aerodynamic form. It puffs out after landing, making the\nbug appear rounder. The bee bounces and points at paper tied to a leg.\n\nA messenger bee. Green gently unties the paper and unfolds it, meanwhile\nrubbing the bee's head with a dactyl. \"Good girl.\"\n\nTh"
}