Queen tells stories to empower us: stories of great grey skies that drip and drip rain until our colony is slowly flooded and we are all washed away, our scents included – how sad, how sad, all of us washed with no scents to find our way back to each other, Queen drowned, how horrible – she tells us stories of black-rimmed circle skies that shoot rays of pure sun onto one or two of our unlucky until they’re incinerated on the spot, and of a great metal moon that hovers above our hill and pours hot thick rain, hot as fire, there is nothing to stop this kind of rain, we cannot barricade against it, it reaches our Queen, and we are washed away and burned to death all at once, all our tunnels, our glorious tunnels, great winding precise tunnels, we, us, these tunnels, our Queen, these scents, our scents, our ways home – these skies really happened to other colonies in our empire – we know this because our Queen knows this because the memories are stored in her abdomen, that great white fortune bulb, that magical orb of our future which pulses at her end – we are lucky because we get to stay close to Queen, we are the most important to our Queen, of all of us, we are the ones whom she trusts to feed her, to crawl over our future in its larval shiny form, and we are all over ourselves to do it, leg on head, leg tangled with leg, leg on middle, end bumping into leg, watch it, we are overeager and rude to ourselves – once we saw our sister fed to our Queen and we were jealous – proud, yes, to have known her, to have passed weight with her, but mostly jealous, what an honor, to have our heads pincered off by Her, by Good Queen Ms. Queen Lady Queen Queeness Mother of All Queens, Mother of Our End, our God, The One Who is Beautiful and Deserving – to be singled out, chosen, that is the dream, the dream of we, and we pass weight to be chosen, to be considered good – leg in face, leg in way, abdomen on leg – antennae saying more weight to this hungry one, this gleaming orbing wriggling future – we do not choose favorites, but this one right now, this one we give sweet weight to, she is our favorite, she will make a good future for us and be strong and pass weight with us one day – we are so excited to welcome her to us and smell her scents and follow her scents when she is slick and long and exact like we are, not blurry and gorgeous and plump as she is now, and the weight is here, it is here! so sweet, let us give it to her now, she accepts it, she is good, our Queen will be proud – she made this future for us and we are feeding the future to show our thanks and our future will one day show her thanks, just as we do now – she takes the sweetness and we wait and she excretes! yes! we gather and drink and make room for others to gather and drink and we are so sated, yes, and now that we are sated some of us must go out, for others are coming in, others are filling the tunnels with the sweet weights they found, and we must go where they went, follow their scents and let them drink the excretion they have earned –
here in the tunnel’s corridor we pass sweet weight from me to sister – we savor the weight, good weight, we worship the weight and the transferring of it from sister to me to sister, and how when it is sister’s weight and not mine, it is still our weight – when i return i will again drink the liquid which that weighty sweetness creates in our future, and which our future excretes for us, delectable excretion – each has their turn to drink and to search, and it is now our turn to search – we are out into brightness, i am, scattering, sisters following sisters following scent of follow, antennae to abdomen antennae to abdomen, there and then also there and over there, long lines along the scent of follow, marching sisters, enough to follow all follow scents, so i set off for a new sweetness – if i find it then tap tap will drag my abdomen and leave fresh scent of follow – first i find: unlucky body, flat, completely flat but middle right leg up and twitching, and i smell for what killed sister and there is nothing, tap tap the scent of the dead, on my way home i will collect her corpse and drag to the unlucky pile – it is nice to see sister, even unlucky sister, because it is nicer to be we than i, but better to be we when we are alive rather than unlucky – sometimes, i am lonely out here, lonely and then click! antennae touch antennae and we are we again, but must depart – out here it is against the point of antennae touching to stay touching the point is to turn quickly new direction! it is lonely being i, just two lonely antennae, probing and finding nothing, not other antennae and not sweetness neither not even another corpse of the unlucky – all my life is telling obstacle from sweetness and i must smell to know – i smell everything for its scents – i smell rock most often – wet wood – i smell linoleum, hair of dog, smudge of olive oil – sister! click! antennae touch antennae and we are we again, but must depart new direction! lonely again, that’s alright, what’s it all for anyway – scent of woven fiber, dishtowel, mountain to climb, and deep shadowy valleys and, a new scent, not from us, not a sister’s trail, but a promising scent, a new one very sweet, yes, very sweet, and i’m upon it – eureka! it is the length of me times ten i circle and i circle it is layered and complex, divine, very very very weighty – i smell red lumpy jam icing butter i smell the best sweetest weight i have ever found, or any of us have ever brought to our Queen, so not for a moment do i think of consuming this weight on my own – i do not consider even a taste of such beautiful weight – not one – not even a little bit which would not be missed – to consume it just for me, what would that mean? no trail for we no tap tap of my abdomen no fed larvae and excreted juices just sweetness for greedy, greedy me – should be killed just for considering – legs torn from thorax, properly – proper punishment, i would gladly accept from us – but, me, all alone, with weight . . . one taste, one pince – little me, weight, sweet, i am doing it! pincing selfish weight never have I been more I icing tastes like a color I cannot see, pink, toasted pink is a lonely taste, delectable, another word comes: fragrance – my sisters will surely smell this new fragrance on me, they will smell lonely selfishness in my mandibles fragrance of red selfish jam caught in hairs of my legs limb for limb, leg for leg, legless is my destiny rightful and just, thankfully and, oh, yum, yum, we would love this! we would savor this! come, come! enough solitude – i cut biggest hoistable weight and hoist – tap tap scent of follow i run to Queen and to us all, and i cannot tap fast enough as i run, follow follow follow – i shouldn’t have tasted, but i did, it is all right, dismemberment considered, because we will taste the glory that is icing – i pass twitching leg of previously tapped unlucky sister, poor sister, never to taste icing, unluckied too soon – i smell tunnel opening, not far, then click! antennae, meet mine, follow the way i came! smell what i laid down and know of the sweet weight we will taste it and it will become more than what i alone tasted, the future will love this, they will excrete for us and they will grow into us just as planned! i hurry faster than ever with my weight and tapping my scents and am at long last re-embraced, antenna, antenna, antenna, antenna, become we, down and around tunnels, darkness, our beautiful crowdcrush tunnels, every space filled with long leggy limbs, black wiry limbs, heads into legs, legs and legs over thoraxes, abdomens bumping abdomens, we can smell her, our Queen, she is lovely, fragrant, nearby, pulsing, and our future she has made for us is sweet as weight, sweet as pink, lumpy as jam, my legs are ripped as righteous punishment, torn from thorax, the pain is hot like fire rain from fabled silver moon, the future is bright and excreting, and we are we, yes, yes, this, this!
