“Curious,” the Queen said. “The gods are mysterious. I will receive your Taste and give it to one of the Drone Nurses. When you require it, your Drone will be waiting.”
The Queen’s Nurse gave Yellow-Spot a Paste-berry. Yellow-Spot bit into the fuzzy skin, cringing a little at the bitterness. She hated eating this kind of Paste-berry, but it was necessary, as this variety added more of her Taste into the Paste.
A few moments later Yellow-Spot regurgitated the berry into Paste. The Nurse collected it for safekeeping.
The Queen said, “I grow tired. My days are numbered and I shall soon go to The Heavenly Colony. Is there anything else to discuss before I retire?”
“Yes, there is.” Yellow-Spot stared at her hands, surprised she’d said anything.
“Do it!”the demon commanded. “Tell her the truth!”
The words came to her fingers as if unbidden. “The gods aren’t true gods.”
The Queen’s color-face was the green of confusion, but she didn’t say anything.
“I mean … maybethey aren’t gods. Forgive me. I have misspoken.”
The Queen moved forward till their antenna almost touched. Her palsied hands said,
“How do you mean?”
“Do it!”the demon goaded.
Yellow-Spot loosened her fingers to speak. Perhaps she could feign blacking out. But no; the Queen might simply request the information after she pretended to wake. She said, “Perhaps they’re not gods at all. They look nothinglike us. Didn’t the gods make us in their own image?
They’re missing two arms, for one thing. And their skin is soft and squishy like a Drone or newly hatched larval person, or an animal like a razor-run. They have only two eyes. Their ears are on top, not on the abdomen the way proper ears are. They have no antennae. Their eyes and ears and mouth are on a bulb supported by a thin stalk atop their body. And their size … gods are supposed to be larger than us. These gods are the same size, if not smaller. And most of their body is furless, and not in the vibrancy of our golds, and blues, and reds, and greens, and-”
“Interesting idea,” the Queen interrupted her. “But wholly incorrect. Come, let’s { }.” Their antennae touched and Yellow-Spot felt the { } course through her. The air filled with the smell of the Queen’s love. The Queen fed Yellow-Spot Paste, and Yellow-Spot Tasted the blissed music of the entire colony in the { }. She wanted it to last forever. Yellow-Spot slumped and collapsed to the floor, drunk with { }.
Yellow-Spot woke with the sun glaring in her eyes. She sat up and nearly bumped the top of the cell she lay in. She scooted out and looked around. Drones. Larvae. Cocoons. The nursery.
She must’ve been carried from the Queen’s dome.
“It’s about time you woke,” one of Yellow-Spot’s eyes caught a Nurse saying.
Yellow-Spot turned toward the Nurse, feeling guilty at the things she said to her Queen, questioning the gods’ validity, no less. “I’m sorry-”
“You shouldn’t be,”the demon said.
“You’re lucky you don’t get exiled.”
Exiled. Yellow-Spot imagined being pushed out of the colony, forced to wander the forest alone, cut off from her Queen and sisters. The horror almost caused her to pass out. “Yes, well, the Queen’s very forgiving.”
The Nurse made a dismissive gesture, and Yellow-Spot couldn’t make out if it was an actual word.
Yellow-Spot moved toward the dome’s entrance. “I’ll be leaving you, then.” She waited for a response, but the Nurse just stared at her, and the other Nurses were busy feeding larvae and attending to other duties. She was glad to leave.
Outside the nursery, she took a deep breath, feeling her abdomen expand and contract, smelling the Paste being cultivated from the nearby berry field. Gods yelled at the Farmers. To most people, any sound a god made was divine. But Yellow-Spot had lived with them; she could detect anger in their strange noise-speech. She thought about going over to the field and telling the Farmers what the gods were really saying. But her words would fall upon blind eyes.
“We need to leave tonight,”the demon said in her mind.
“I don’t want to.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“I do!” Yellow-Spot looked around, hoping no one saw her speak. She began walking toward her clutch’s dome, with the sun to her back now. Both moons were out, both nearly full.
“Why am I doing any of this?”she asked the voice.
“Everything will become clear,”the demon assured her.
Yellow-Spot thought about defying the demon, but she feared the demon would then withhold the { } that they could share.
The whine of one of the gods’ flying machines brought Yellow-Spot back to the present. Several people stopped what they were doing to prostrate themselves in prayer. Yellow-Spot continued walking, feeling only slightly guilty at the sacrilege she was committing. Perhaps the demon’s crazy thoughts were getting to her. She recalled the demon’s first appearance in her mind.
Yellow-Spot had been with the gods only a few days, feeling like a Queen, of sorts, as she’d been chosento learn the god’s speech. That day she witnessed two gods standing, facing each other and making loud noises. One god pointed a grey stick at the other. The second god began to run away. The stick thundered, with smoke coming from it, then the second god fell. The fallen god made softer noises, like some wounded animals make, and leaked red fluid. After a short time she stopped moving.
“How could one god kill another of her own colony?”Yellow-Spot had asked herself. “Only animals do that!”
A new voice replied, “They are not gods.”
Yellow-Spot could deny the voice at first. It began as vague arms, indistinct, yet able to form words. Much as Yellow-Spot’s own thoughts. But it grew stronger the longer she’d spent with the gods, took more shape until it was not just arms but a body as well. She often wondered where the demon had come from. Perhaps it was some trick the gods had cursed her with. But that didn’t make sense; if anything, the demon acted against the gods. But then where’d the demon come from?