“I agree.”

They heard a mewling from below. Sweet-Berries spotted the source first. “Look!” She pointed at a figure climbing up toward them. Pale, soft skinned, but with six limbs, eyes and antennae. A person that had just hatched out of her cocoon.

Sweet-Berries, being the Nurse, clambered down to meet her. Yellow-Spot stayed up above with the Drone, feeling helpless.

“Must’ve been one of the survivors,” Sweet-Berries said.

“She’s sure lucky.” Though she didn’t really believe those words. Yellow-Spot couldn’t imagine being torn from her clutchsisters. Perhaps the dead were the lucky ones.

Sweet-Berries looked over the survivor. “Her shoulders are broad and her gripping arms big and strong. She’s a Builder.”

Dark thoughts invaded Yellow-Spot. The memory of Electric-Touch stabbed her. She stepped forward. She felt herself falling.

Sweet-Berries grabbed her. She pushed Yellow-Spot into the canyon wall. “You didn’t do that on purpose, did you?”

“Please … what’s the point. Look around us. The softs have already won.”

“Is that so?” Red anger showed on Sweet-Berries’ color-face. “You force-fed me your Taste and made us touch antennae when I wanted to charge that soft. I felt the { } with you so strongly that I can almost see your thoughts. Now I understand what needs to happen. As crazy as it sounds, we need to form a new colony, a secret colony, without those softs. Whatever they did to us, that’s in the past. We need to look to the future.”

Beyond the canyon another dome collapsed, melted and burning. Yellow-Spot said,

“They forced me to learn their strange noise language only so they could communicate with us better, to subdue our culture and our colony so they could … feel better, for whatever strange purposes they use our Paste. They’re too powerful.”

“They’re just stupid, soft animals,” Sweet-Berries retorted.

Yellow-Spot looked at the Southern survivor. A ghostly figure appeared by her. Though indistinct, Yellow-Spot could see its strength and power. It gave her confidence. “We’ll name her Electric-Touch-On-Red-Fur.”

“And if she doesn’t grow red fur?”

“Who cares? The name is symbolic. A remembrance of her.”

“That’s the Yellow-Spot I know and love.” They touched antennae again, feeling renewed { }.

***

Just beyond the direct opening to the cavern, so the softs couldn’t easily see them,

Yellow-Spot lay in her oversized cell. She’d grow into it as she became a Queen. Sweet-Berries was teaching Electric-Touch the rudiments of language.

It’d been slow going to find a suitable place to create the nest for their colony. The softs had been too busy with their own petty war to mind what the three persons and one Drone were doing.

Presently, Yellow-Spot watched the new Electric-Touch with interest. It also brought new pangs of guilt and sadness. The strong ghost comforted her. Now it was but one of many. So this was what it was like to be Queen, to consult with imaginary advisors.

Yellow-Spot wanted to get up and move, perhaps to relieve her boredom. But with her leg, that was difficult.

“Can we get this started?” She made exaggerated motions so Sweet-Berries would understand the imperative.

Sweet-Berries grabbed the wax basket in which the Royal Paste was in and began feeding it to Yellow-Spot. “You’ll feel drowsy very shortly, and sleep most of the time for several moons. Even when I wake you to feed you, you probably won’t remember. Then, when you’re fully grown, you’ll wake all the way, and be our new Queen. You’ll probably also heal, especially the leg and arm. Not sure about the eye and antenna though. Anyway, that’s how it’s supposed to work. I haven’t …”

Sweet-Berries’ voice faded as Yellow-Spot fell asleep. She dreamed of a world without the softs.

I hate my dad

THERE’S DAD, ASSHOLE EXTRAORDINAIRE, evangelizing to the pigeons. The day is damp, the sky looks like mud, and he’s got a plastic grocery bag on his head, handles knotted under his stubbly cleft chin. His thigh-length coat is spattered with bird shit. He looks homeless. He is. And so I have to be too.

He’s wandering among the pigeons, who coo threateningly and barely amble out of his way. They know who owns this plaza, in a part of the city that most people have given up on. Other living-rough folks are here, though, too; and it’s really these that Dad is speaking to, in his madman’s croak, peppering his words with crazy phrases. It sounds like goon babble-until you listen, or you just can’t help but hearing, for a few minutes. Then he starts to make his own special kind of sense. If you try, you can catch the camouflaged meanings, the strings of sane words among the gobbledygook.

Some arelistening, gathered on the rusting benches, sitting out in the drizzly open, as Dad roams the cracked pavers of the plaza. What a douchebag.

I’m on lookout. I’ve been doing this since I was nine, all the small squirrely stuff, because I could go unnoticed. But I’m getting too big for it. People look at me a lot more now; and I’m aware of the attention in new ways.

Dad goes on with his mutterings. Some people listen, some doze on the benches. This can’t last forever.

* * *

I push hanks of wet blond hair off my forehead as I burrow down into my sleeping bag. Eight months without a haircut. Dad used to keep it short and more or less even, but he had his scissors-little orange-handled ones, like I remember cutting construction paper with in kindergarten-taken away at a Handoutlet, where nobody can have anything like a weapon. I don’t miss school. And I like my hair longer. I look a little bit dangerous these days.

We’re out of the rain, though we’re not in a great spot, which is why nobody’s near us. And since no one is around Dad can tell me, “C’mon, Cedric. Go ahead and say ’em. It’s okay. No one’ll hear.”

Like I’m getting a treat. I don’t sigh so loud that he can easily hear over the rain sizzling on the concrete on either side of the slim overhang we’re under. It really started coming down after nightfall. But when I do my “Now I lay me…", I exaggerate the singsong, just a little. Just enough. I see the disappointment in his eyes even as he tries to hide it. It scares me for a second. I want, briefly, to be good. The good son. Good Cedric.

Well, screw Dad. And screw Cedric too.

He goes to his bag, and I hear him whispering for an hour, the same stuff he’s been saying all day in the plaza. Only now it’s crystal clear; and I’m the only one in earshot. I don’t drop into sleep until he finishes.