Chapter 4 – Sisters
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Chapter 4 - Sisters

That welcome left me plotting schemes that hadn't entered my mind since college. As mom's only prisoner who couldn't leave, the freedom of college had me doing such outrageous things as air popping corn without a cover to direct it into the bowl. The drugs were after college, when I started working.

But, back in college, there were bets, jokes, and paybacks. It took forever to feel like a raised voice wasn't speaking with broken glass under my tongue. I could be a doofus or a screwball and it wasn't a personal attack. Those were the only times I felt alive.  

Now, I could've tackled Citrine and punished her for drenching me. But, in my head (what there was of it), I knew I had to be smart about this. Call it the only useful lesson mom ever taught me. I had to pick what battles to fight and how. Flailing impetuously against something bigger than me would either earn me a scolding, a face full of goo in a counter-attack, or several other unpleasant possibilities. So, I flicked that head with as much annoyance as I could express.  

With a rise of authority to her voice, Citrine proclaimed, "You need to keep wet, sis. I was just helping you out."

After a slow brush of an antenna, I answered, "Thanks, sis..." If the sarcasm was palpable, then she would understand I didn't actually come out of an egg with nothing inside my head. If she missed it, then all the better for me. I didn't see any easy clues to which it was but I still had an encyclopedia of buggy body language to internalize. 

Citrine reminded me of a girl in elementary school who wore a buttoned, black romper, stomped around the yard, and decided which spots in the sand were for who would make castles, dragon-faces, and fairies. Riva made me think of a smaller girl who desperately trailed behind the other girl, wearing a long skirt that swallowed her feet and cloaked in a curtain of hair that protected her as much as Riva's shell. Same as those two, I could see no way to get Riva to speak to me outside the echo of Citrine. 

My first real question was, "So, how old are you both?"

Pushing ahead of Riva, Citrine boldly answered first, "Ten milk lights, from when it was hidden to when it was clearly unfurled, last father saw it. " 

It didn't take me long to get on my own that she was referring to something looming far about in the "outside" which sounded like the sun or a moon. Riva idly brushed her arms and groomed her antenna before managing, "I'm...twelve of the...those. But I like to...I like to say it's an ice puddle. And the King drinks from it." 

Wait, what? No one told me about a king. I pressed her, "King?"

Nudging her sister, Citrine shifted around in what I took for exasperation as she butted in, "The King of All Shashelm. Did you learn nothing in your egg sleep? Gosh! Also, Fain Mosstrod told me yesterday that the milk light is the glow of the King's wings when he casts them off. They open like the most beautiful Bombomori crafts, bigger than all of us put together, bigger than Mudwell, bigger than anything outside!"

Brushing her limbs together carefully, Riva softly muttered, "But t-then...how can...how can he fly, if he...if he gets rid of his wings?"

Flicking away Riva's question like it was a mote of dirt, she confidently resolved, "Because he can instar whenever he wants. He just grows them again, good as new." 

More stuff I missed out on in my 'egg sleep'. Asking plenty of dumb questions, Citrine swiftly caught me up that, "The King of All Shashelm is very very very very very very very...that many verys, important. Whenever you find something good, no matter what it is, you must share it with the King. Whether the red sweet, the black sweet, sweet meat, or something stuck on your feet, it's for you and the King to share!" 

"And what if you don't share with the King?"

She got right in my dome-vision, overwhelming everything, and cautioned, "If you don't...then your antennas will pop off. And you'll go dry. And you'll never grow bigger. And the Vesperil will find you, no matter where you try to hide. And then, what's left, the King will eat allllll up and you'll be gone...forever..." Riva gave a twitch that reminded me of a shiver. 

Okay okay. Though skeptical of a...kid's story, I agreed to not anger the King or the world, or fate, or whatever put me in this strange state. 

When I inquired about the Bombomori, Citrine swung me around and started pointed others adorned in the silken shifts I'd noticed before. Out of everything I'd seen, it was the most comparable to clothing. None of the outfits were decorated beyond streaks of mud to blend them in with the ground. It was also good to know that I wasn't going crazy with seeing bugs dressed in dirty nightgowns. 

"The Bombomori make them", Citrine gleefully explained, "From their children. They take half of them and feed them till they're about to explode! Then out of their mouths, there's this goo, like milk, that spreads around until they can't breathe, and they die. Their parents peel off the goo until it's like that but it's full of little pieces of them all smushed up."

Yeah, Citrine was definitely one of those kids. Bugs. Whatever. It didn't matter, because I knew I was on the verge of an end to this insectoid nightmare with a look of relief on my face and a soft hospital bed underneath me. Riva earned my sympathy though. She groomed herself furiously at each idea Citrine planted in her head. It amused me that even a roach could be grossed out. 

Before Riva could gather up a sliver of confidence to refute Citrine's claims, the mother creature returned to our side with everyone else in tow and announced, "Father is returning..."

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