âCrtt, chk, chk, chkâ A claw âchkchkchkchkâ desperately sloshing in the fluid pulsing in the lungs. Throbbing abdomen. Veins burning. Aching. âchchchchâ
GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT
Bright white colours behind the hard surface wall. Blocking, trapping, the trapped, black, red. Veins illuminated on something thatâs stopping blocking the motion, stopping the hands that, five fingers that trace the veins in the wall which peel away as the membrane, the red glow pulls back for a white light that burns through the hard shell surface of the wall, in the way of the scratching, scrabbling fingers. Push forth My hands against the wall, forcing, the back curled inside the crushingly tiny space seeming to shrink tiny, tiny, tail having to curve and bend, to straighten out to no avail, inky black cage GET OUT GET OUT.
Such a big and vast darkness once before stretched out in a million directions. Why is everything so small now. GET OUT GET AWAY suddenly a convulsion and every tendons shocks against the tiny sphere Theyâre stuck inside, instinctual awareness thrusting Their head back banging against the stone, smashing with the skull, bashing, that They can even move these parts, that They can even need to, that they NEED TO GET OUT
âchk chk chkâ the scraping noise of fingers against cavern-wall it slows. Weakness starts at the finger-claw, up the hand. Trapped. Dark. Taste. Different taste like sharpness on the tastebuds all over. It tastes like pain.
A new sensation. Lots of new sensations.
Floating in darkness now,
peace,
sensation leaving.
Scratching claw feeling fuzzy. The walls seem far away, again, the pressure doesnât seem on the back and legs and shoulders and head. The world is big again. They think to themselves, Iâm okay again. They wiggle their head from side to side, idly play with the veins of the membrane that used to enclose them. Good.
âTHUMP!â If the creature inside the walls knew such language it would certainly be thinking what the fuck!?
The light filtered amidst the nearly opaque shell, then was blocked again. âTHUMP!â A chitter began, like the one made when They were scratching at the wall, but this one was weird, it sounded like Their thinking, like scratching, chittering. âKeep going! We donât have much time!â
They put Their scratching claw to the wall. What? And their senses returned to them. Ow ow ow ow ow GET OUT GET OUT CLAW SCRATCH AWAY OUT NOW NOW NOW
They didnât know how much energy they had but they used so much of it pushing, pushing and scratching at that wall clawing pulling pushing.
The weakness they mistook for peace became a restless painful horrible painful âTHUMP!â ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow and they pushed and when the noise came again âTHUMP!â They didnât just hear it in audio but They heard it with Their claws and âTHUMP!â touched and felt their bones shake? ow? It was certainly like pain but different? They realised the pain in Their claws when They scratched wasnât pain either? The crushing, touching, overwhelming pressure. If They could just make the world a little bit bigger. Wanting to be free of constant walls pushing against the coiled body, irritatedly tying itself in knots.
âLet me try.â And a very very strong âcrrk, crrckâ noise began and They realised with horror that the white light was getting whiter and lighter and whiter so much it was like a not-pain, then it was like a pain, They realised if they pushed Their claws at the white-light the white-light died a bit and the pain went away. âTHEYâRE GOING TO DIE.â They kept the dark away with their claws and realised they could move at the light and the noise was louder, the thinking noise, it felt good, it was comforting âITâS TOO LATE THEYâRE BRAINDEAD WE CANâT LOSE ANOTHER!â When it was this loud it was a not-pain, but They liked the noise, it was very comforting, very comfortingâ¦
But whatâs this? They pushed at the wall again.
Reality explodes outwards in flashing light and brightness and choking, the sudden expulsion of Their entire body thrust outwards two feet away from what had been Their entire universe. Everything aches as amniotic fluid rapidly dries, sucking the moisture off of glistening carapace, still soft, drying, cracking, expanding in a dry and horrid sensation of cartilage scraping âgainst cartilage creeping up the core of the body, crawling with that endless dry sensation starting up the throat.
Retching. The lungs clamp down. And They thrash wildly, all muscles pushing the spine out erect, then pulled into a crescent-moon foetal position. The first retching stops, as the lungs expand, drawing thick swaths of orange jelly back into the body before.
âGhthrkâ Their head is flung to the ground, prostrating before the hard, grainy, dry earth of a million sensations and a light burning, They push and push and stick out their hands against the bright white light which burns Their antennae, flinging around like flaccid noodles, They whip back and forth their twin tails, on the length of their lower-half, twenty legs all sticking out to the side, wriggling and straggling outwards in some vain attempt to get away from the light! Bows and arrows against the lightning as the lenses of their eyes fuse into place, their nervous system accepting even more stimulation into a mind so destroyed by understanding of heat and touch and cold and dry and ache as everything moved and burned and dried and hurt and They were so so small, crushed in everything and everyone and What is going on. Where am I. What.
They didnât even know that TOUCH could be such a HURT as lungs expelled amniotic fluid and again and again unable to get it out and then oh it was out with so much air, choking, smothering, empty, light air was filling up the insides bringing its drying burning sensations where the peeling skin and shells of the epidermis now were on the inside, struggling, aching, each heaving breath a struggle. No longer feeling the pressure of water gently lifting Them up. No more heavy fluid in the lungs. They retched on the floor, vision mouldering into Their sagging and retracted eyestalks.
White light was everywhere, white light was burning, white light was everything. NOW-place is HORRIBLE. And the white light was so strong that even moving claws into it did nothing, it was everywhere!
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Even though Their lungs were empty they tried to empty them again, and suddenly a noise that was so so loud occurred âAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHAAHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!â
But They realised They could pull their eyestalks into their translucent head and the white light disappeared and comforting before-like darkness returned. Instinctually, Their body demanded They empty Their lungs, this time less forcefully, âAahâ Coldness flooded the innards, âAhâ it was good to be blind again, the pain from before was gone now, their lungs felt, good,
good.
Two fat hare lips slithered and slavered over a mouth, cavernous, covering the gape while four more stalks extended from the jelly-meat amidst the carapace, four stalks containing bright red feathers still glistening with birth-canalâs dew. Two arms, extending from a trunk of a torso, pushed the mass, sad and weary, while the lower bodyâs length swirled upon the ground, snakelike. A human could say the creature gave the impression that it was a centaur with the horse given for a centipede, with the human head for a snail's face. The hard ground, compacting under the weight of those two arms, explored by twenty finger-like legs, was a brown and grainy and weird soil, made of tiny little hard clumps, going forever in one direction, and another; but looking up, the ground gave way to a big white nothing which could not be touched even by extended claws, a grey sky.
A sort of meat-puddle was behind, where the egg had spawned them, with a big purple ball laying next to the flesh, it smelled like 'good for eating' and before even realising what They were doing They thrust the purple stuff into Their cavitous mouth, struggling to enjoy the immensity of new flavours. They were heavy again, full of something, full of calm, peaceful sensations dissolving into stomach acid, although the sensation was marred by skin softly burning, and the ground was crushing Their legs, hope crested black despair.
Testing the mud with their sensory fronds but looking up with an eyeball they saw...
From the ground, two long fuzzy cylinders with, at their tops, two long stilts, connecting at what simply was one large ball of fluff. From the fluff dangled two more stilts, with their own fuzzy cylinders, complete with their own three metallic claws, these arms did not touch the ground, unlike their counterparts â the body also exuded two pairs of big flat panes of glass, wider at the ends than at their roots. A beak-like head sat opposite the glass-panes, periodically splitting in two to reveal that the whole face was a set of jaws, enclosing a gullet menacingly quivering from the contrastingly hard, smooth face. The eyes on either side of the âbeakâ were large bubbles, containing little white jellyfish eyeballs that looked straight at Them.
The creature made some chittering noises, halfway between resignation and hope, and another responded from behind.
The fuzzy one split open its boney skull, clattered its jaws together, âHello, Noisemaker.â
Noisemaker responded to it, creating a pheromone cloud to convey its emotional state, Panic. Confusion. Awe. the one from behind somewhat recoiled, a great hulk rocking to-and-fro, indenting the earth beneath enormous arms, it looked like a knuckle-walking slab of bone - without a discernible face, just a hulking slag balancing on comparatively small tree-trunk legs, and of course those stone columns of arms on boulder-shoulders. It forced air through holes in its shell, making a sonorous tooting, âWhat brood are they?â The fuzzball ignored them.
âWelcome to the nest, Noisemaker, Iâm Wings, this is Arms,â they waved a claw at the behemoth, âYour egg was too thick, thatâs why youâre hurting, you were drowning inside. How are you feeling?â
Noisemaker explained: Confused with their pheromones.
Five pearly white orbs were in the area, indeed Noisemakerâs was larger and thicker, four of the eggs had large cracks revealing hollows â the fifthâs hole was clogged by a creature (scent marked as family), halfway on the exit, unmoving.
Each pearl was planted in a big chunk of flesh from where many tendrils extended, seemingly drawing in the green hairs from off of the earth, leaving the soil naked, some of those green hairs came from giant brown claws that came out of the soil, reaching up against the sky maybe even touching it, those green hairs, on the fingers of the brown-claws, were big and flat and too high for anyone to touch. The brown claws were so big they were like a thousand times as big as Noisemaker maybe a hundred times bigger than Arms.
'Iâm leader.' Announced the 4th living family through signalling, this one had two legs, two arms, no wings, they were the only blue thing in Noisemakerâs new universe, their face was small carrying another translucent goo-sac, huge and blue and jiggling atop the little head when the frail body walked; Leaderâs body was without shell, balancing precariously on its two legs, waggling that huge cephalon, swaying it in the wind. Every family except the dead one gave submission pheromones.
'Where are we?' Asked Noisemaker, becoming accustomed to pheromone-communications. The family only responded with contemplation. Wings began to flex the twin glass panes on its back, waggling them to-and-fro, which made a horrible noise, at first the lanky mass of limbs was thrust forward, awkwardly, threatening to collide with the ground, but soon the creature managed to buzz onto a brown-claw, spearing its steel talons into the bark, Wings clambered up the trunk â more adept with limbs than flight â and disappeared.
Leader began scentmarking, 'Feeding-ground, all of this. Our Directive â build, breed, feed, pacify threats in the area.'
'Directive?' Noisemaker let the thoughts absorb into their mind, envisioned the area around like a kind of potential building ground for something marvellous, unknown, but clearly desirable.
As if commanded, Arms began ploughing the soil with their enormous club-like arms, tilling the dirt into channels, they reached a brown-claw under the ground and moved the bottom of their body against it, eating with an unseen mouth. Wings then buzzed back onto the patch of naked soil with a round, red sort of fleshy thing impaled on each finger-claw, juice dripping down the metal talons âThey were on the branches, for eating.â Noisemaker carefully took a fruit, pressing the padding of their hand onto its clean surface, feeling the cool, red skin stealing the heat from four triangular fingers that grasped the thing, at first gently, then roughly as the bug intermittently pushed the meal up Wingsâ claw.
Leader, too, took two fruits, one per hand, they had five fingers which ran, long, jointed, when they noticed Noisemakerâs curious eyes, they came closer, it was clear that they too were curious â the family had taken turns staring at one-another for about 10 minutes of the 20 they had been alive.Wings ate the remaining two fruits by sliding their jaws over their talons, making the noise you would expect of metal grinding against bone.
âCrr-thunk!â A crash, Arms had dropped their bulk into their mud-hole, self-satisfied, Noisemaker came over to inspect, sliding their torso in against the soil while their winding lower-body rested above, Leader clambered in too, resting their enormous head on the wall thatâd been made, and Wings sat down with their knees twice as high as their face.
The four newborns all, for the first time, learned the pleasure of resting in a hole in the ground, and the troop snacked on various fruits or berries they found, except the ones Leader claimed were poison. Arms was shocked, gasping as a small creature flew down, on top of the fifthâs egg, it had wings, just like Wings, except that they were covered in small plumes, it had skinny legs but they were very short, and its head had a beak coming out of it, whereas Wingsâ head was a beak. Noisemaker gestured at the small creature with its four feathery antennae, For eating?
Leader responded,
'All is for eating.'