#gods inside

(I've decided to post some more of my bug book, if you like this and want to read it in a better-organized format go here: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/105895/gods-inside or here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63668572/chapters/163206946)

It was the winter-season, which was the third in which Skith had lived, when Skith first walked Outside where there are many dangers.

While she first walked from the Colony's entrance, the widom that Akkis shared steadied her legs and quieted her fear. But when there were great trees all around her, she could no longer hear Akkis, and a fearful silence filled with hidden things was all around her. As she had learned to do from Akkis, she walked until she could no longer count her steps. Without even counting to follow, fear was welcomed among Skith's thoughts for the first time since her climbing. She walked imprecisely, for there were no scents that were familiar around her. Skith followed then where fear sent her, and it was a spiral path.

With the press of hidden things around her, things that together seemed as silence to her, Skith felt six deaths. She had carried the drumming in the Colony's walls between the plates of her armor. It grew faint, and was gone from her thoughts; this was the first to die. The patter of busy legs on smoothed dirt was second to die, and she then heard only herself walking. The little songs from the egg-chambers were third, for they found no answer Outside. Fourth was the clicking of jaws and the scrape of feelers on armor, for Skith could not touch her own. The fifth death was of the taste of kissec as its last drops dried on her tongue. Sixth and final was the death of scents Inside, until all she smelled was Outside.

Skith felt great pains. She walked in long spirals under the shadow of the leaves above, but the trees did not have her path home. Her fear dug to where her deepest thoughts were buried, where her learning from the pit was pressed flat, and it caused much upset to her. Her thoughts became slow and troublesome, and she was often needful of rest that was shallow and left her legs weaker than before. The comfort that she had left with was rotted away, and its space was filled by evil voices from the Gods Outside.

“Soon,” they said to her. “Soon we will eat you.”

Skith was hungry, for the last of the food that Akkis had shared was gone. And as her hunger grew, she trembled. She ate the bitter armor of beetles, and she found fruits with strange juices that would not stay inside her. But even with unpleasant food she was able to sate her hunger, for a time. Her fear lost its full power when her stomach was full, but it always returned. She lost the strength to walk far for food, and soon there were no beetles or fruit to eat around her. Her sharing-stomach was full to bursting, and with no sharing to be done, its contents leaked from her mouth, and from her backside. It stung her armor, and surrounded her with a fouler stench than any she had smelled.

Always Skith watched the eyes in the dark. She learned of many strange beasts, and all of them seemed allied to her fear which rose to meet them. She felt her first hatred then, wishing that the beasts around her would be killed so that she could go and find her comfort. Her shallow rest did not let her travel far in sleep-travel, and her travels were filled with the killing of beasts large and small. She often awoke with her jaws dripping venom, until her weakness was such that it dried away.

“It is nearly the time,” said the Gods Outside. “You are nearly ours to eat.”

She shivered under moon's gentleness, and under the sun's warmth, for there was cold at her insides. She then hated the Gods Outside as she hated the beasts that watched her. She sleep-traveled into the sky and her weakness followed her; still the Gods Outside looked down on her, tasting her with searching tongues.

“I will die with labors incomplete,” Skith said. “I will not reach the Tunnels That Glitter.”

“The beasts will eat your armor,” they said to her. “We will eat the secret things inside you.”

The Gods Outside were loudest when the sun was above. She hid from them in the hollows of trees and in great burrows that were made by beasts stuffed inside them. She found comfort nowhere, and was always moving as a sister burdened. She had become like a tumbling stone, with the wide sky above her and the empty Outside before her to fall into.

It was in the final days of the winter season, when the sun's labors became longer, that the last of Skith's strength was gone. She had come to the foot of a stone from which water was falling always, where the voices of the Gods Outside were buried beneath its roaring. There she found the bones of a killed beast at the water's edge, and beneath crossing shadows, her legs failed.

A darkness that was not the moon's fell upon her. She no longer felt the lifted scars that marked her armor, and the cold of the winter-season released its grip. The Gods Outside came to her and picked away her thoughts. The Colony where she had labored was left empty, and its remains were scattered away. The pit from which she had climbed became only a dip in a simple flatness. The Gods Inside were eating, and Skith was losing her pieces.

“I will wound you in the taking,” she said to the Gods Outside that she had learned to hate.

And still they tore at what she held closest. There was no more Skith from the First Foraging. She was only Skith who had climbed, Skith who had learned, and Skith who had walked Outside. And still the Gods Outside took from her. It seemed to her that she had not climbed, for her strength had left her at the foot of greater things that the pit was very small beside.

They made to pull away her name then; it was all that was still inside her. She held it more fiercely than she had held her bite in Rathak's eye, more fiercely than she had held the wall of the pit.

But when her jaws were clenched so tightly that they creaked and whined, she felt a gentler pull on her learning; it was a the gentle hold of food-sharing. With no strength in her, she agreed.

Then was her strength returned to her, and it was scented. It held new learning. She found her name there, and it was larger than before. She found Akkis there, and the Replete, and they were small parts of good and bountiful gift.

Food was in her stomach. It was not kissec, nor the foul flesh of beasts. Skith was Outside once more.

If you like this and want to read it in a better-organized format go here:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/105895/gods-inside

or here:

https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/63668572/

As the sun began its watching, one-and-two sisters came to the spine-tree that had sung of their labor's end. These sisters had walked far from Our Mound in a searching labor. They had searched faraway places and faced many dangers, but now their foremost labor—that of finding Sett who had been stolen—was completed. Sett was found upon the spine-tree, and many feelers were jumping to share their great satisfaction at the end of such a troublesome labor. Soured food trickled from where Sett's jaws were deep in a wet wound on the spine-tree, and her legs were hanging.

The six sisters of Our Mound stood upon each others' backs—Satiak was largest, and she was beneath the rest. Kiyit was topmost, and she touched her feelers to Sett's backpiece. As if bitten, Sett pulled her joints close, until Kiyit said to her gentle, “You are found, sister Sett. You will be lifted, and carried.”

Kiyit lifted Sett from the spine-tree, and passed her to Iksith, the youngest sister among them. Iksith passed her to Skatta. Skatta passed her to Rekki, who passed her to Ayik. Sessa and Atter together held Sett, and they carried her to the ground as Satiak, standing above the others even with her legs bent, was watching. They sang a quiet song to Sett as they cleaned dirt and beast-lymph from her armor, and on the sand they each spat a portion of the fouled food in her sharing-stomach, until it was emptied.

Our Mound—in comfort.

Our Mound—with death repelled.

And as the foulness of Sett's troubled and pathless walking was wiped away, the one-and-two sisters who had found her smelled something strong beneath the stench. They smelled something potent, and something old—something that swept over their thoughts and brought their feelers together with Sett's broken ones. For upon her, they smelled a God Inside, one that so rarely was smelled in Our Mound, where labors are completed without trouble and sisters are not left Outside.

It was Iki-Ikas, who is mother to all workers, that they smelled upon Sett. They took up new labors of cleaning that were more eager than before, digging away every last piece of Outside that was upon the armor of one who bears the scent of the Worker God. Good thoughts of safety and resolve came to them, and they learned that all the troubles of their labor to find her had wasted no food. They would forever tend a place in their thoughts of the morning when they had cleaned a sister and smelled Iki-Ikas beneath.

When the sun was highest, Sett came troubled from sleep-travel. She eagerly joined the small labors of her sisters, cleaning them as she had been herself cleaned, with her armor shining. And as Sett came beside each of them, she asked them each to share their names. She was most eager then to share her learnings with Satiak, a name that was familiar to her from old labors of foraging.

Satiak shared with her of Our Mound, and its troubles. Our Mound had repelled a host of impostors who had taken the shapes of soldiers, but were laborless beasts that had sought to steal Our Mound's males. Sett was most eager to hear of Tattik's role in this great change, and Satiak told her of how Tattik had been lost, and how she had returned from a path through all the outposts to do war-making.

“We labor in a god-touched season, this I have learned,” said Satiak with great eagerness. “Tattik returned with the voice of Rakkitik, and we heard it clearly when the impostors were killed. A Queenly smell was upon her also, and so Our Mound will host many new labors. No longer will we gather eggs—now we will have a Queen, and there will be birthing within Our Mound.”

Satiak had not expected to smell a small fear upon Sett at these words. Sett said, “It is strange that you say that Tattik is a Queen—I have walked long with Tattik, as leader and follower both, and she is no Queen. She is a soldier, and she is smaller than many workers. I have learned that she should do her labors in the Learned Castes, where her skills are matched.”

Ithsik approached then, and she told Sett of how her learning was inexact, for the Learned Castes had been cleaned before Tattik's war-making. Sett was troubled greatly to learn of how their chambers had been emptied, and Ithsik continued to share this learning even when Satiak came beside Sett to comfort her. And Ithsik told Sett then most eagerly of the war-making that had been done in the tunnels of the central chamber, and how the conduit-lines were being made newly.

Sett's thoughts were then storming, and all her comfort became brief, as it was buried beneath the learning that war-making had been done Inside.

“Many have been killed, this I have learned,” said Sett.

“Our Mound suffered, and lost one sister for each two that still live,” said Satiak. “It is an evil thing, because war-making was done so soon after Our Mound glimmered, and the scents of that good day are now buried beneath death-smell.”

Young Ithsik shared more to Sett then of war-making, for it was her first learning. She had come from her final molting into it, and so she had learned precisely of its doing. She had killed many, even while her armor was still stiffening on her first day. Her eagerness, made bolder by the small count of her days, was answered by a cold stillness from Sett to whom war-making seemed a very foul thing.

“The labor of war-making is familiar to you. Why would such a great labor trouble you?” asked Ithsik.

Satiak said then, “You will not dig up Sett's troubles, Ithsik. Our labor here is completed, and when we bring Sett to Our Mound, much sharing will be done there in comfort.”

But Sett was still eager to learn of Our Mound, and she was then beside Satiak who did not bring trouble to her thoughts as young Ithsik did. Satiak shared to her of the outposts, and how they had all been emptied, for many sisters were needed in Our Mound for the labors that precede a Queen.

But when Sett asked of how the Learned Castes were to labor to welcome this change to Our Mound, Satiak told her of how the Learned Castes had been emptied. And to Satiak, Sett seemed very strange then, because with each thing that was shared of the killings in the chambers of the Learned Castes, Sett was hungry for more, and she had the scent of a desperate labor. Satiak's reluctance was made more potent with each buried name that she said, until her thoughts repelled this labor, and she shared no more so that her own thoughts could settle.

Sett was then more troubled than before by the loss of her feelers, for she was needful then of her sisters' scents that would calm her. “I have learned that Our Mound will die” she said to Satiak. “There is much death in my thoughts now, for with the killing in the Learned Castes, my labors of dueling have been killed also. My two-tandem with my sister Tattik with whom I dueled has been killed. And the scents of so many good things are dying, because they are being buried so deeply beneath my thoughts that they will never be carried upward to me again.

“I am eager to bring calm to you, worker Sett,” said Satiak, “but it would be an evil thing to share my learning of Our Mound inexactly. Our Mound is marked by many wounds. Some are large—none larger than the breaking of the conduit-lines, which many sisters now follow without eagerness. But that there are deeper and smaller wounds beneath our armor that cannot be cleaned.” She fluttered her feelers in the direction of Ithsik, who had kept one of her own pointed to Sett always. “So many sisters were born into the labor of war-making, with death-smell surrounding.” For a moment her feelers were to Ithsik, until they met Sett's. “These sisters are strange to me. They are eager for war-making, this I have learned.” Satiak once more cleaned Sett, though her tongue found no filth and ran over scars only.

“I have smelled great joy, beyond any thrill, warmer than sunlight, with the wind's lightness, and this was when worker Sett and Queen Tattik descended from the Learned Castes, having completed a long-made labor. Had I learned then of the troubles that would follow it, I would have waited longer in the tunnels through which you had walked together, and put my feelers into the dirt until the last pieces of that scent were deeper than their reach. It was a godly scent, one now buried beneath death-smell. I now feel no eagerness to return to Our Mound, which is an evil thing, but the tunnels are filled with death-smell, and my labors Outside have been less troubled than those done Inside.”

Sett could not smell it, but in her thoughts, she heard a gentle voice, one that had come to her while she had clung to the spine-tree throughout the night. She spoke to Satiak then, and it was the voice of Iki-Ikas that was heard. “Go to your labors, and bury all foulness beneath them.”

Satiak pressed close to Sett then, to be soaked in the scent of the Worker-God that rolled from her sister. “Wise Iki-Ikas, gentlest sister who walks far with armor cleaned—you have shared a wisdom to me. I will do the labor that I have joined, and bring us in safety to Our Mound, and we will labor, and the death-smell that has fouled the tunnels will be buried also. Yours is a name I am eager to share to all my sisters, worker Sett, whose wounding has let the Worker Mother speak clearly within you.”

Satiak then went to the sisters she had accompanied in their labor to find Sett, to share her eagerness. But there was disagreement between them. Satiak smelled eagerness to return to Our Mound on Ayik and Rekki, and they brought this eagerness to Ithsik, who was beside Sessa and Atter. Ithsik, Sessa and Atter were eager instead to more precisely do the labor they had brought from Queen Tattik, which was not only to find Sett, but to kill the threats that had carried her away.

“On Sett I smell something evil,” said Ithsik, and Sett stepped away from her. This brought agitation to Sessa and Atter, who found it strange that Sett would avoid young Ithsik's attentions.

“Why do you not share of the threat that stole you?” asked Sessa.

“Why do you hide the smell on your armor?” asked Atter.

Ithsik's feelers twisted as her thoughts were disturbed. “It is an evil thing to hide such learning from your sisters. We will hold you, and take this learning, if you will not share it.”

Satiak chattered her jaws at Satiak then. “You will not hold a sister who has joined our labor—this is a great evil, and it is made greater by the smell of wise Iki-Ikas upon her.”

But to Ithsik, this did not seem evil. She said to Satiak, “It was not Iki-Ikas that I smelled around me on my first day, when I drove my jaws into strangers who would welcome the God of Death and Eating into Our Mound—it was Rakkitik whose voice brought goodness to my thoughts. If Iki-Ikas is wise, she will speak now and agree.”

But the voice of Iki-Ikas was silent in Sett, who spoke instead. “There was one who brought me so far from Our Mound, this you have learnedprecisely. But I think that you will not complete this labor of finding her, for she has learned much of being unseen and unsmelled, and her skill is greater than any of Rakkitik's daughters. This labor may be impossible for we foragers to complete.”

“We will find her, and kill her,” said Ithsik eagerly. “You will lead us to her, for you have surely learned much of her and how her skills might be followed.”

“We will abandon this labor!” said Satiak. “I will not pursue a doomed labor that will bring us even further from Our Mound, where we will go quickly to bury war-making's foulness. We have been far from our Mound for many days, and we are made stranger by each day beyond the entrance hall!”

“Finding is a small labor,” said Ithsik. “It is a far greater labor to kill impostors, to make safety and comfort for Queens!”

Satiak then disagreed, and it was with the harshness and stiffness of falling stone. “You have learned that labors most good—of returning to sisters, of filling the wounds in Our Mound by bringing its sisters to its safety Inside—are small labors? You are a wounded thing, for your thoughts gather joy only in those labors done in troubled days!”

Ayik and Rekki came to Satiak's side then, and the three of them faced Ithsik, who had Sessa and Atter at her sides. All had their feelers raised high, and Satiak and Ithsik both stood high upon their legs in opposition to the other.

Sett was very afraid to see the evil that had taken hold of her sisters' thoughts. She was comforted that Satiak would stand to defend her, but she could not find an answer in her thoughts as to why she had fled from Ithsik's attempts to smell Skith upon her. And in her thoughts then was a split that was not unlike what had risen between her finders, and so her legs were trapped by a new pathlessness.

“You are filled by the God of Death and Eating,” said Satiak to Ithsik. “But I will do evil and repel my sister, if you will not lower yourself and follow me untroubled. We will bring Sett to Our Mound, and let this labor bury any others we have brought!”

Ithsik strained her legs to stand even higher upon them. “Your armor is the only piece of you that is not soft, and it is brittle after many days. You are old, Satiak. Your thoughts have become soft and imprecise—you have lived too long without threat, and you have learned little of repelling it.”

Satiak and Ithsik then armored their thoughts against the other. Wind announced itself in the silence, and the sun overhead watched eagerly. Sett, with her skill in dueling, could see that Satiak was stiff all over, and her legs that stood highly had little steadiness.

Ithsik, however, was not stiff, and she stood higher still. “Your fear is thick, Satiak. I have smelled it many times while I have followed you. Put your feelers to me and smell the sureness of my thoughts.”

“You will lower yourself,” said Satiak, and she swayed to each side upon her legs. Ithsik disagreed.

Their duel began immediately. It was no practice duel, and each took up a labor to see their opponent brought to the dirt. Their combat lasted five-and-three contests. Satiak could not be easily forced low, for she had learned much of danger in her many deep and dangerous forages. With her springing leaps that had carried her to many difficult places, she crashed upon Ithsik's armor where jaws could not reach her. But in all her labors of foraging, she had not learned precisely of dueling, for she had repelled only beasts who have no labors.

Ithsik's legs gripped the sand precisely. For each contest that she failed, she took two in answer, for she was skilled in struggle against sisters. She could move leftward and rightward in ways that Satiak could not. When she was near to Satiak, her feelers jabbed boldly, searching always for openings in thought and armor. And she found these, for Satiak was troubled by Ithsik's eagerness to wound her.

For the last six contests, Ithsik forced a retreat in each. On the fifth-and-third contest, Ithsik climbed upon Satiak's armor. She slipped her jaws behind Satiak's head, and pressed harshly. All the steadiness left Satiak's legs, and she was lowered.

Ithsik opened her jaws and let forth a her satisfaction. “You are defeated, worker Satiak. You will follow me, and you will join my labors.”

Satiak agreed, and said, “I will join you in the labor of finding the one who stole our sister Sett.”

Ithsik's eagerness was potent, and Sett watched it spread among the others, save for Satiak. With flexing jaws, Ithsik brought her feelers around to face Sett.

With scent to guide them, Sessa and Atter were at their Ithsik's side, and they came upon Sett.

“You will no do this!” said Satiak from the ground. She rose suddenly, and made to bring Ithisk under her strength before her thoughts could gather. But to disregard the duels she had lost was a most evil thing, and it was learned by all. They pounced on Satiak, with Ayik and Rekki joining.

Held immobile, Satiak could not stop Ithsik from slipping her jaws between the backpiece and middlepiece of her armor. Her sisters hopped free as she struggled in pain, soon to die from such a terrible wound.

In moments, the labors of the five sisters who remained began. They pressed Sett to the sand, and held her legs as they had held Satiak's. Ithsik's feelers touched each part of Sett's armor, and she brought her feelers to her tongue after.

“A very strange scent,” said Ithsik. “But it is potent. Finding the stranger will not be troublesome.” She shared the scent with her sisters, who each gathered something different from it.

“It is a worker-smell,” said Sessa.

“This smell is of danger,” said Atter.

“I smell fear beneath it,” said Rekki.

“A killer smell,” said Ayik.

But Ithsik had smelled it closely, and she said, “This is the scent of venom, which I smelled upon the jaws of the impostors that were killed in the central chamber of Our Mound.”

At once, each sister began their labor of finding the source of that scent that was venom's. They brushed all the sand around them flat with their feelers, searching for the path toward the impostor who had stolen Sett. Ithsik was always walked furthest, and brushed most precisely, for she labored with a Queen in her thoughts.

Without her sisters holding her, Sett went beside Satiak, whose legs were bunched beneath her. Satiak said nothing, but her feelers were reaching weakly.

“I cannot smell you,” said Sett. “But I see that you are not yet stilled, and so it seems to me that death-smell is not yet upon you.”

“Ithsik has not shared a quick death to me,” said Satiak.

“Do you despair?” asked Sett. “I cannot smell your troubles.”

Satiak agreed. “I will die with my labors incomplete.”

“I have learned how this might be changed,” said Sett then, and Satiak said to her, “This is a comfort. Did Iki-Ikas share this learning with you?”

Sett disagreed. “It was not Iki-Ikas. It was the one who stole me away. She is skilled in making new labors.”

“You will lift me, and place me upon my legs,” said Satiak, and Sett did this troublesome labor, because Satiak was made heavy by her insides that were sinking.

“My thoughts are all breaking,” said Satiak. “Our Mound and its sisters have killed me.” She tapped at Sett with the steadiness left in her feelers. “Speak to me, sister Sett, so that Iki-Ikas will speak to me also.”

“Iki-Ikas shared little wisdom with me in sleep-travel,” said Sett. “She comforted me, and settled my fears while I clung to the spine-tree. But she disagreed with me many times. She is a gentle God, Satiak—she would not repel you who have done many labors with her daughters. Learn that you will walk with her in the Tunnels that Glitter. There in those tunnels that are longer than a tree is tall, in those chambers wide enough to fit five Colonies left to right, Iki-Ikas who learned most of rest and searching will come beside you.

“This is a comfort,” said Satiak, and pain struck her again. “It is late.”

“Make this your final labor: share with me the learning that made Ithsik seem to you a threat.”

“She held you, and did not ask that you share your learning of the impostor who stole you. It seems an evil thing that they took it from you in the manner of a beast who is caught.”

Satiak again was pained, and Sett tended to her, but it was a shallow labor. Ithsik and the others continued their searching, and they came to the stone one which the hook-foots had gathered. Sett learned that she had not gone far in her scent-blind walking—her path was knotted and had many circles. They came to the stone one which the hook-foots had gathered,

When the sun was coming downward, Satiak spoke little, because her thoughts were all unmanaged. But between the scents that passed over Sett and were not gathered, she heard one thing: “Take me now, with no fear of wounding.”

Soon after, Satiak had died. Since there was food remaining in Satiak's stomachs, Sett plied her jaws to her dead sister's armor, so that no food would be wasted. But as she began this quiet labor, Ithsik jabbed at her from behind, her agitation potent, having paused her labor of finding.

“The last of Satiak's food is not for you who has done no troublesome labors,” said Ithsik. “I will take it and share it with my sisters.”

“Then I will have it also, because I am your sister,” said Sett.

Ithsik jabbed again with her feelers. “I have not learned this precisely. You will not follow us to Our Mound when our labors Outside are complete—you will be carried. You will be carried until I learn that you are a sister to us, and if I do not learn this, I will butcher you and share your pieces to the conduit-lines.”

Sett lifted her broken feelers in surprise. Ithsik tapped at them, and said, “You say that we are sisters, and yet upon you there are familiar smells. I learned of these in war-making, upon those strangers who were threats to me. They feared me and my sisters beside me as you do now.”

Sett could not reply then, for a drumming came from where Sessa and Atter labored. They went swiftly over the sand, until they were beside Ithsik and Sett.

“I have found threat!” said Sessa, whose thoughts were quickest.

“It is a spider!” said Atter, whose thoughts were keenest.

Ithsik lowered herself and moved beside the two. She added to their drumming, and Ayik and Rekki arrived soon after.

“We followed Sessa,” said Ayik. “The enemy who stole from Our Mound is close.”

They stood in silence with their feelers taut, and it was Atter who first lost the steadiness in her legs. “The spider is very near,” she said, and it was only with Sessa's aid that she could repel her fear of it.

The sun was red in the rightward sky. It was leaving, and they would not have its watching. Against the sky, over the dune nearest, Sett and her sisters saw two long legs curling over its crest.

“We find you!” called Ithsik, and her sisters were steadied to hear her. “Tonight I will learn how a spider is killed!”

The two legs that gripped the rise were joined by a third, and the spider was nearer to them. It would not allow itself to be precisely seen.

The spider, to the surprise of all, then disagreed, and its eyes were upon the sisters of Our Mound, and Sett saw a strange stillness in them. “A beast has not brought threat to you tonight. I wear the spider-shape, as I have changed to be many shapes. All who search after me will complete this labor.”

Then Ayik, who had learned many stories, no longer stood in the circle made by her sisters. Her legs shivered and she could no longer keep a grip around her thoughts. “We must not do this labor, Ithsik!” she said. “I have learned of the daughter who shape-changes—it is her, that most hateful God Outside, who has learned of Death and Eating!”

“You have learned precisely,” said then the God of Death and Eating. The beasts who watched in the dark heard the sound of dry top-roots then, and it was made by the shivering legs of sisters. Among them, Ithsik's legs were stillest. The Gods Outside then were gathering also, and the eager wind who goes widely went across them, and the cold that is familiar to them was left upon the armor of all the tight-pressed sisters.

The God of Death and Eating, in her spider-shape, gripped the dune with four legs, and she said to Ayik. “Daughter Sett will come to me—she is mine to carry.”

“Sett is a sister of Our Mound,” said Ithsik. “And her sisters will carry her.”

The God of Death and Eating said, “You cannot take what I will gather. Your labors to carry daughter Sett away from me will not be completed. But you can aid my labors.”

Ithsik flexed her jaws. “I would not join your labors that are against mine.”

Two, then four, and then one-and-two eyes flashed, once, and the God of Death and Eating, with her spider-shape, could see them all. Her shape hung loosely, and walked with hollow armor. The spider-shape's legs cracked dryly as they tensed, for they were without insides to urge them. Behind the spider's eyes was an empty place without lymph to be smelled.

Sett was in that moment comforted that she was blind to the fearful scent of her sisters, for it would surely collapse her thoughts. But Ithsik was strange among them. Ayik, Rekki, Sessa, and Atter were all burdened, Sett learned. She could see their wobbling legs that drew closer to her, because she was largest. But Ithsik was steady, and her feelers bobbed lightly then.

The God of Death and Eating saw this also, and she said to Ithsik, “There is an eagerness in your thoughts, daughter Ithsik, this I have learned. I am eager also to be near a daughter who has learned also of Death. There is more that I would share with you, if you leave this daughter Sett to my labors.”

Ithsik's feelers stretched towards the dried spider on the dune. “I will not exchange, for my labors are great, and should be joined. It is from contests that it can be learned whose labors are most good and should be aided.”

“This I have also learned,” said the God of Death and Eating, and she drew her spider-shape higher and closer atop the rise, until she leaned over them in the manner of a wilting bush. “You are wise as the Gods Outside are, daughter Ithsik. But no daughter of the First Queen Atiati-kikitia, my sister who was so imprecise in her learning, has had victory in a contest with me. Are my labors not then most good? Should you and all your sisters not aid mine?”

Ithsik then walked from her sisters, her feelers stretched to the God Outside's spider-shape. “I will do a contest with you, God of Death and Eating. I have not buried the learning you brought to me on the day of my last molting, when you came to test me. Your learning was a great aid to my first labor that was war-making. Now we are speaking again, and you again offer me learning of Death. It seems to me you have hate for all the daughters of the First Queen, but not for me.”

The spider-shape again cracked and groaned as it sagged down the dune. The God of Death and Eating agreed.

“This is precise, because I am not hateful of you. I will share with you greater learning of death, daughter Ithsik who kills. This will be your contest—if upon you I smell fear, as I did not on the day of your last molting, I will renew my hatreds to you, and I will come to take you when you are in greatest comfort, when I seem farthest from you.”

Ithsik agreed then, and lifted her feelers to receive Godly learning.

This is the learning that the God of Death and Eating shared with Warrior Ithsik:

Leaving sun, see the moon

deep wide sky—small lights

Spread sweet scent, foulness rid

still blank stiff—bent legs

Small beasts, watch them gather

climb and cross—big pile.

It is dark, it is wet

Crack and tumble, go flat

No rest, noise and shaking

You are seen, you are watched

Quick comfort, quiet, safe

Leftward sharp, rightward slick

Pressing close

Cold Outside

No escape, you are joined

Every piece, peeling back

It is light, it is dry

These things do not fly free

The God leapt her spider-shape high then, and there was a one-and-two legged shadow in the moonlight over Ithsik. And instead of coming downward after its jump, as all spiders must, it remained above the land-beast, until a great crack came from it. Its body crashed to the sand, its legs curled close, but the spider's head swung free, and it sped away to the highest part of the spine-tree that Sett had been found upon.

“I will take you, Warrior Ithsik, and join you to my labors!” said the God of Death and Eating.

But Ithsik disagreed, for the learning that had been shared with her had brought her much discomfort. She retreated then, and her sisters all were overcome with fear.

“I will follow you, and from your insides I will take back the learning you would steal from me!”

A new shape emerged from behind the spine-tree, of a strange daughter whose armor was marked with a killer's yellow-black, and whose legs trailed flashing threads. “You are mine!” said the daughter-shape, and it leapt from the spine-tree. It crossed the air over Ithsik and her sisters, who fled from the shape that wore many signs of death and could walk upon the wind.

Sett could not follow the terror of her sisters, and when they were out of sight beyond the dunes, she was lost, and she waited despairing to be claimed. Her thoughts had settled, for she could not escape the labors of a God Outside. But where she had expected to feel a sting, or sharp jaws in her armor, she felt only the light tapping of familiar feelers.

“Take me, hateful God of Death and Eating,” said Sett. “Take me, and take Satiak beside me, and I will not wound you in the taking.”

But the feelers that explored her armor did so without harshness, and it was a comfort to hear the voice that was behind them.

“I am Skith, worker Sett. No God Outside has come for you.”

With eagerness, Sett agreed. “Where is the God of Death and Eating?”

“She waits where she has always waited—beyond sight, and beneath attention,” said Skith. “This was a threat that I made with false thoughts and false scent.”

Skith's cleverness was then revealed. With her skills in the twining of threads, she had pulled at the corpse of a spider from atop the spine-tree. With the corpse, and with the death-smell that was upon Satiak, she had made a God of thought alone and nothing else. She had not changed her shape, nor had she shared Godly learning with young Ithsik.

“Where have you learned these skills of Godly speech, and of thread-twining?” asked Sett, whose fear had changed into lightness.

“This learning I will share, when our small labors are completed. We will bury the worker Satiak, who had joined my labor without learning it. She has aided our labor to climb the mountain, and we will not allow the fear in which she died to stain the air.”

Sett, who hungered for good labors, was eager to join this, and so she dug into the sand as she had done many times in foraging. She could hear Skith speak small things to the corpse of Satiak, which she then split with her jaws. She shared the sweet food from Satiak's insides as they buried her. They covered the hole with managed sand, and Skith said, “You will rejoin our labor to climb the mountain.”

Sett agreed, and all her plans that had been hidden were buried as Satiak was. “You are strange to me, Skith, and I think that I have not learned of you precisely. I have been searching for some threat from you, and I have not found this.”

“This is wise,” said Skith. “I have not shared all of my learning with you. I have learned now that I must share it all, or I will be hidden from you in the manner of an impostor that hides from watching.”

“You will unfold this learning, then,” said Sett, and Skith agreed.

“I have walked in many Colonies, beside many sisters, and I have worn all their scents. I have labored beside strange sisters, and I have slipped beneath the scented air that would divide us. I have learned that hatred is a thing that the Gods Inside make, in their hidden chambers beneath armor, from which thoughts that would come beside them are repelled.”

“Why do you bring me far from my sisters, and into the dangers of Outside?” asked Sett.

“We are not Outside,” said Skith. She looked high, to where the moon was climbing to be beside its stars. “Outside is where we do not live and do not labor. We are Inside, and we walk on the floor of a very great chamber. There are many of these chambers, and the tunnels between them have been buried by the Gods Outside. In a season that is far from this one, there will be a meeting between sisters digging, and labors will be done that those made by the Gods Inside will seem very small beside.”

Skith's feelers flicked eagerly then, and they reached to Sett, whose thoughts were then striving to gather at the tips of her own. But they could not, because their tunnels were broken, and so they gathered at her eyes, and she saw Skith's feelers lowering.

“I am far now from Our Mound,” said Sett. “You have led me far from it. I walk there in sleep-travel still, but as the count of my steps becomes larger, I go more shallowly Inside. I have learned of terrible troubles there, and I flee from them, because I cannot follow you if I am burdened. It seems an evil thing to me, because Our Mound is in need of good labors and skilled sisters to manage its troubles and settle its air. I fear also that Our Mound has been changed. I fear that I may be repelled, for I have not learned of its changes, and I will seem strange to the sisters there when my name has been learned only by beasts and strangers.”

“This is an evil thing,” said Skith. “You have learned this precisely. But I will lead a sister far away, because the good learning that we will gather is greater than any small evil.”

Sett's thoughts were hungry then, and she said, “You will share of the dangers before us. Now, I have walked Outside without following, and I was afraid. I will learn, and I will unfold my fears, and keep the parts that are not foul.”

Skith agreed, and she shared the food she had rescued from Satiak's corpse, for there were many learnings to share, and all their small labors would need completing so that Sett's learning would be exact. In a deep tunnel that a serpent had made, where they were hidden from danger, Skith shared learning of many dangers. She shared of striped beetles with their fire-venom. She shared of the egg-flies that kill with their birthing, and of the giants whose walking leaves wounds in the land-beast. She shared of them, and of the labors that could avoid them. Sett's thoughts that had been waiting to gather novel things were very eager, and her fear was buried, until she gathered of threats for which Skith had made no labors to avoid. These were the Godly threats, of burning air and falling cold, and of the God of Death and Eating's many shapes and all their curses that could cling to any sister that they touched. But when Sett's eagerness was soured, and her thoughts welcomed no more, Skith shared of the many comforts that were only Outside—of the star-flies that meet when the sun is leaving, of the tree-beasts that sing brightly in green places, and of the high places where so much can be seen. Sett's thoughts learned then of gathering quickly behind her eyes, and they would be skilled in this.

“What will we find atop the mountain?” asked Sett, her thoughts becoming soft and light.

“Atop the mountain, at the sky-point, there is special learning,” said Skith. “I have walked around the mountain's base, with many starving sisters. Their troubles pulled harshly at me, and so I kept my feelers skyward, and I learned much of the mountain while death-smell was piling around me.”

“You have walked from very far places, this I have learned,” said Sett. “Why would the sky-point atop the mountain have learning that other places do not?”

“Sky point seems to me a place unlike all others. It is beyond the Gods Outside, beyond even the God of Death and Eating herself, for there should be no death-smell there where no beasts and no sisters walk.”

For a while, Sett dug her legs deep into the warm dirt of the tunnel. “What good learning could be gathered in a place where no sisters walk?” she asked, and her thoughts were stiff with reluctance. “Why were you walking around the mountain with starving sisters? So much death-smell will stain learning deeply—I have learned this precisely,” she said, and her broken feelers flexed.

For a moment, Skith was silent. “You will share this,” said Sett, boldly, and Skith agreed after a short time, during which her feelers were still.

“This is a story that I have kept knotted in my thoughts, so that it will stay buried,” Skith said. “I am not eager to unfold this.” She brought her feelers to her jaws, and Sett saw her tongue rasping them. She let them fall to the sand, which was then clinging to them, and Skith then seemed to Sett like a Learned sister with feelers waxed.

“I will tell you of the Four Tree Colony, and why I do not labor there now.”

If you like this and want to read it in a better-organized format go here:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/105895/gods-inside

or here:

https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/63668572/

There came a lightness to the air within the Fourth Tree. The weight on our legs was lighter also, and we labored without pausing in that time. In the warm night air we hunted many beasts that walked near, thinking that we had all been killed with those two Trees that had been felled. We completed many labors without joy then, but our thoughts were steady. Every night there was a great drumming in the trunks of the Fourth Tree, and it made our insides stiff for our next day's labor. When strangers from Colonies that were built beneath the dirt in the shaded places came to pillage, we made war with them, and we killed many, and we threw those killed into the pit beside those dead from sickness. We did these labors very precisely, because our feelers were not reaching in our labors—our thoughts were not reaching to far-off days beyond evil. And while we labored, while we gathered, and while we made war, always we were screaming.

I screamed beside my storm-learned while we watched the building greyness. I screamed beside my soldier sisters while they lifted us above our enemies, and at our jaws we learned the sound of cracking armor. We wore the yellow-black of killer beasts upon our armor, and we sent many would-be pillagers away in fear. And those softlings that molted finally beside our screaming joined it, and they learned of screaming that was higher and more skillful.

With stillness that was not comfort in our thoughts, many males were brought down from Queen Katak Sati's chamber. I labored to clean the eggs, and we carried them to chambers with wide tunnels joining them. The greyness in the rightward sky still darkened, and there were then few in the Fourth Tree then who were not storm-learned.

Through all the time when we had been screaming and doing our stiff labors, the sky had lost its color, and the air was then pressing. And when it had seemed that our burdens might not be beyond our legs' carrying, we learned that there would be harsh struggle for us. A terrible scent erupted in the tunnels of the Fourth Tree, for learning of evil in the First Tree had been gathered. The Queen of the First Tree had died, for she was a very old Queen, and through some impreciseness of her nest-keepers, the death-smell of her sister-Queens and so many of her daughters had reached her, and brought sickness to her thoughts. This was an evil thing, but the sisters who came slow-falling from the First Tree were more troubled still.

They had learned that the Gods Outside had taken up labors. They had seen a deep darkness in the rightward sky, and they had seen the storm's fingers and heard a drumming within it that was beyond all of our soldiers joined. They were now all storm-learned, and their thoughts were unsettled by this fresh burden to them.

“Death and Eating!” they said loudly, and I saw many feelers lifted to these words. “The Gods Outside have brought their labors!”

The nest-keepers then walked down from their inner chambers around the Queen's. They said boldly to us, “You will manage your scents! You will manage your thoughts! You will not bring discomfort to the chambers of the Fourth Queen, Our Queen Katak-Sati!”

Those who had come from the First Tree said to them, “We have learned of the strangeness of your Queen in this Fourth Tree! We should carry her from her chamber, and tend there a softling who will be a Queen who is not so strange.”

My sisters disagreed, and there was much rattling in the chambers of the Fourth Tree. And in that time, there were sisters whose thoughts that had been held too stiffly did crack, and these sisters were killed while they were screaming their hatreds to their sisters. The nest-keepers watched this evil, and did not stain themselves with death-smell. My sisters said then, “Our Queen is of the Four Tree Colony, and she is the last. Where others have been claimed by the Gods Outside, she remains tended by the Gods Inside! No softlings that live now are precise for Queenly labors, for they have been birthed into these days of struggle and sickness.”

The nest-keepers agreed, and all who had come from the First Tree agreed then also. “Put your thoughts beside the Gods Inside! Follow where they are leading, and you will repel the burdens of the First Tree that have been carried to the Fourth!”

Those that listened often to the Gods Inside pursued their labors without comfort. They dug new tunnels, and they gathered food. But those who had joined greater labors were not settled. They bit at their sisters who still labored, and pulled at their legs, for they had greater labors that would not be completed if the storm was not survived. We lifted many such unsettled sisters and placed them far from the conduit-lines, but this did little to repel the scents of danger and fear that were then staining the tunnels.

There were some whose thoughts could not restrain the storm-learning within them. They said many evil things very loudly. “The storm will take us!” they said. “The storm will settle the land!” Many of these sisters were brought to quiet places and tended like softlings. But some, who would drive us to leave the Fourth Tree and eagerly go to the storm's edge, to join the labors of the Gods Outside, had the scent of threat upon their armor, and so these sisters were killed.

The nest-keepers came again from their inner chambers, and they spoke more harshly than before. “You will quiet your screaming! You are staining the air and the walls with the foulness of it!”

We agreed, but some of our sisters did not. They sent their fear in great clouds at the nest-keepers, who tucked away their feelers in disgust. “We are claimed,” said these fearful sisters. “We cannot labor in peace, for our labors will be broken and ended before they can be completed! The storm is so near, and we will be killed by it, this we have learned!”

“How have you learned this?” asked the nest-keepers.

Many sisters then searched their thoughts, and they found that their first learning of storms had come from those who were storm-learned. I and all my storm-learned stood high upon our legs, so that we could be seen.

“You will repel them from the Fourth Tree!” said the nest-keepers. “Repel these sisters and their strange learning which has unsettled the Fourth Tree!”

We would have left then. I will not share this story imprecisely. I was eager to leave the Fourth Tree, for beneath my own storm-learning was much fear, and it was a fear that my sisters had gathered. I would have left—I would have fled the storm, and walked with my storm-learned sisters to where we could labor together, away from danger. It might have been a good thing to do so. But Queen Katak-Sati, the Half-Queen, who was strange, disagreed.

She came from her innermost chamber, that quiet and good place in which I had lived. She walked to our wide chambers that were stained with sickness and fear, and death-smell also. Her armor was not scarred as our was. She had lost no hairs, and they twitched. Her feelers that were long and un-bitten reached to where ours had been straining to her.

“What evil has come to my daughters?” she asked, and her legs shivered when she asked this. “What has brought these terrible scents to you that I have birthed?”

The nest-keepers labored to send her away, but she was large, and would not be moved by them.

I and all my sisters of the Fourth Tree came beside Queen Katak-Sati. We were eager to taste her calm and good scent, and it brought a small comfort to us that was precious. We shared with her the burdens we had gathered over so many evil days. We shared the pains that were at our insides, and we were piled atop her armor.

Queen Katak-Sati gathered all that we shared. It seemed a good thing then, but it was evil, this I have learned. She cleaned us even as she was cleaned, and she shared much food with us that was sweet and unspoiled by sickness. The nest-keepers stood high on their legs, and they sent away many of us. But Queen Katak-Sati would not be moved, and so any who were upon her stayed.

“I will stand here,” she said to the nest-keepers. “Go to your chambers, and find peace, my first daughters. I will be beside my daughters and I will welcome the storm with them.”

We stood around our Queen, and all of us were warmed together. With the storm's fingers flashing across Outside, we made a final plan then.

We sang gentle songs and held close to our Queen, and we changed the shape of our thoughts. It was a painful thing, and it was difficult to be among the pain of my sisters's thoughts as their labors died. But our Queen was with us, and she tended to our widely wounded thoughts, and shared with us the eagerness to take up a final labor.

The males were ready to fly. The storm had arrived, and our males would be storm-learned.

It began with an arrival of many clouds. They were thick and full, like the bushes that grew where there were trees over them. They covered the sky and filled all the bright places there, until we could see only greyness above the Fourth Tree as the first rains drummed upon it.

We greet you, God Outside

Who has learned most of rain

Do not wash this Tree clean

Leave us to our labors

And turn yours now away

We heard the waters wash against the Fourth Tree. We felt the force of the Rain God's hatred pushing its trunk. But the Fourth Tree held, and it seemed that the first of the Gods Outside was repelled.

Beasts climbed the Fourth Tree. In good days, we would have repelled them from the top-roots. We would not have allowed them to rest in the lower chambers. Our chamber was shared then by many beasts, and together we waited. I had learned of the spiders that clung to the roof of our chamber where we were pressed around Queen Katak-Sati. They were killers, those spiders, and yet their fangs were hidden, and they watched us from the roof. But since our attentions were upon the Gods Outside, we did not labor to repel them. I saw birds standing with snakes beside their legs. I saw beetles climbing beside their hunters. Learn this now: there is no beast that does not fear the storm.

Some we eager then. We were not prepared for the Wind God who is older and stronger, the God Outside whose body is widest and whose labors are always eager. We heard the top roots breaking, and it was troubling, because the Wind God robbed the top-roots of their green. And our Fourth Tree, our home that we had tended, was bending.

My sisters, my Queen, and all the beasts beside us, were then thrown from our legs. Many of my sisters were lost through those holes where the Wind God could reach inside and carry them away. I saw their jaws clinging to the armor of beetles, and the beetles holding firmly with their clawed legs, but neither could contend with a God Outside, and both were thrown pathlessly Outside.

We greet you, God Outside

who has learned most of air.

Do not take us Outside.

Leave us to our labors

And turn yours now away.

There was terror then in our chambers. I could see it, without scent or sound. We screamed as we had screamed in evil days, but the Wind God buried our voices. Fear billowed from us, and yet was cleaned away to leave only freezing strangeness. Only in the grip of my legs, and my sisters' upon my armor, could fear be shared between us. Our labors had died, and we had learned much of the storm, yet still we were all afraid. Were it not for our Queen Katak-Sati, who was too heavy for the Wind God to carry, and who still had upon her armor the scents of days of comfort, our thoughts would have fled our insides.

With the strength that was shared to us from our gentle Queen, our thoughts could labor again in our plan that we had made. We sang then to the sun, who we had learned was above even the storm.

We greet you, God Outside

bright beside all others!

We will learn of you glimmering!

Watch us now, God Outside

Whose name is Sun!

Queen Katak-Sati joined our song. She sang it clearly, and we pressed flat beside her. We opened our jaws to carry the song up from deep in her insides, even as we added our own small voices beside it. Always we had labored with the sun watching. Always while we walked we made our paths beneath it. In that time, we offered our labors to be joined by a God Outside.

For a time, while the wind was pushing and we despaired, it seemed to us that the Sun had not joined. The Wind God bent our Tree lower, and our thoughts were filled with learning of how we would be killed, and this was an evil that roots deeply. The flood that was gathering rose higher, so that the land-beast was hidden, and we heard a roaring below that it seemed would soon reach us.

Then, there was silence. We stood stiffly, and we waited for the wind and the rain to return. Queen Katak-Sati stood high then above us, and raised her feelers upward to where a shaft of sunlight had reached into the Fourth Tree.

“The Sun has come!” she said to us. “The Sun has repelled the storm!”

Together we looked upward then. The top-roots of the Fourth Tree had been opened to Outside, and the sky was bright and its color could be seen from our chamber, with the sun watching eagerly. We summoned our boldness then. We gathered the air into our insides for a song that would lead our males to better places and better days.

Queen Katak-Sati said to us, “Share to the sun the plans we have made!”

To send our males skyward!

“The path is through many dangers!” she said to us. “With what gifts will we send them Outside?”

We send our males away

We give them our learning

Fly free from the top-roots

Where we sing and we scream!

Fly free from our chambers

Where you have molted, while we tended!

Fly free from where the Four Trees stood!

Where we labored long!

Fly free from our precious thoughts

Where you lived before birth!

Fly free from we sisters

Who carry good and evil!

Go above, into the sky

While the Gods Outside are near!

I share this to you, worker Sett, that I would bring you into my thoughts, where is kept the sight that was before me then, so that you might see also the first flight of the males. There is no beast or sister, or God Inside, who would not be made joyful by their flying. We stroked our feelers against their nascent wings, and the males flexed them, as the Queens do, and as we did when all were winged. We urged the males skyward, and when the first of them left the land-beast beneath them, the rest all learned, and they followed with an eagerness that scattered in the sunlit air that I have never felt since, not even when I found my first labor. They had not learned of fear, they bore no wounded thoughts. They were eager only to fly and to go highly. They disappeared above the clouds that were returning then, and the sun followed them.

For one moment, my thoughts were still in a strange manner. I had felt it in past days, when I once clung to a beast that a bird carried, high above the land-beast. I had felt it when I stood in the top-roots and sang beside Queen Katak-Sati. I had felt it when I first climbed, in days that are buried. Our males had flown free, and they would carry to faraway places what the sisters of the Four Tree Colony had shared to them in all the doing of their labors giant-great and thought-small. We had completed one last labor, greater than any killed giant, the last labor of the Four Tree Colony

But the wind and the rain returned, and they pressed cruelly against us, and drowned our voices. They washed away the scent of our great and finished labor, and left us with only our fearful thoughts that are made at our insides.

We made our long plans, as I and my storm-learned sister had done. We would find those who were thrown far by the Gods Outside, and we would lift them and bring them to the Tunnels that Glitter. We would there take up the labors that we had been forced to abandon, and we would finish them with the preciseness of uncountable days of comfort. The wind carried away many of my sisters into a flashing darkness Outside. Queen Katak-Sati screamed for the loss of each, and it became our labor to calm her thoughts, but a Queen's largeness is not easily managed.

She pulled free of us even as we covered her armor. To her, the death-smell that was upon her daughters was so very foul, for she had not carried the dead and sickened to the pit between the Trees as we had. For all the days that we sisters had had our goodness buried, she had tended her good thoughts that were not fouled. Much evil had come into us, and to Queen Katak-Sati, our thoughts had taken a strange shape of which she was afraid.

“I must fly free!” said Queen Katak-Sati. We were shocked to hear it, and we who had not been taken by the storm brought our feelers together to share our worries of our Queen. She opened her jaws to the rain to take in the taste of sky that they brought. We piled atop her wings, and we gripped her legs so that our Queen would not leave us alone within the labors of the Gods Outside.

But Queen Katak-Sati had listened closely to our song that had sent the males away. She pulled harshly at us, until we would hold no more, for we would not risk injury to her. We held her so tightly, and yet so gently, and still she was being restrained by us. We licked her and ran our feelers along her armor, to calm her. We shared our troubles to her, of how we would be forever wounded by her departure now when our thoughts were leaning against her, and still she struggled to fly free.

The storm seemed then a small thing beside the evil that would steal away our Queen. She said to us, “There is greater threat than this! The fire is coming, that will eat our armor, and the sweetness in the air, and leave us all pathless in land that is bare! It will follow the storm, this I have learned! I will fly above the storm, and find my comfort closest to the sky! I will struggle to fly to the mountain's peak! I will not stay here!”

She broke free of our gripping jaws then. She flew upward on mismatched wings, and the wind stole their strength without difficulty. I saw Queen Katak-Sati carried into the dark, and I will share no more of that time.

All of my sisters who remained then put all their thoughts at their jaws, as I had learned to do when I had first climbed. We saw nothing, and smelled nothing, and our thoughts were changed to all fit within our jaws while we gripped the Fourth Tree as it fell to the land-beast. I did not count the days that passed while my jaws were holding, and it was a good thing that I could not smell the troubles of my sisters then which were many.

The Four Tree Colony had been all felled. There were few of my sisters left. We walked from the Fourth Tree that now lay flat upon the land-beast to be buried there. We spoke little, and we did not sing. Our count was smaller with each step that we walked from where we had lived and labored, where we had been sisters who had gathered a great store of food and learning. All of it had been lost in so short a time, and it seemed that our insides were all wounds and little else.

I saw the God of Death and Eating walking beside us often. It seemed good to me that the strength of my legs would leave them, for sleep-travel was often near, and was where the Four Tree Colony still stood. But always I stepped out of sleep-travel, and my legs carried me in spite of the hatred of my thoughts.

Worker Sett, you were injured by my sisters. They learned of dueling from your sisters, and brought this labor to them. I called to your sisters with a song that I had learned from you, and I saw the last daughters of Queen Katak-Sati killed in a faraway land by a Colony that has no Queen, while I was watching.

If you like this and want to read it in a better-organized format go here:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/105895/gods-inside

or here:

https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/63668572/chapters/163206946

Stories of the killing of the Impostors are to us imprecise, for many who might have carried record of those times were killed during the days surrounding Tattik's labor. Many who had learned Tattik's name in Our Mound were brought to the central chambers, and they were killed, and the males ate them. Only Tattik had seen the evil of the secret meeting of the Impostors, and so many sisters learned from the Impostors that Tattik was a threat to Our Mound. They carried their sisters to their deaths, and enjoyed the completion of their labors, and evil was done by untroubled daughters.

The Learned Castes, with the attentions often away from the labors of the lower chambers of Our Mound, were invaded. They had all learned of Tattik and Sett, and having learned that these two sisters were good and obliging to Our Mound, they disagreed with the Impostors. Those Learned sisters who walked elsewhere in Our Mound, with their feelers waxed, were not warned by their attackers' eager scent, and they were killed while they were searching. Their paths from the upper chambers were followed backwards, and there were then drumming sisters bringing threat to the Learned Castes.

The Aesthetes did not suffer, because they sent from their chamber dazzling flourishes of light and color in many stripes. The attentions of the sisters of Our Mound were then upon the murals and not upon those who had carved them, and so the Aesthetes were not killed. But their chamber was invaded, and few of the murals they had carved on the walls that season remain.

The Songers were prepared, for they had heard the drumming from the Aesthetes' chamber. They turned some of their attackers away from their evil labors, but the eager scent of war-making was a struggle to sing above. A small song that was made then by sister Sikkita remains from that suffering day when the Songers' great singing was stopped, to be started freshly.

Many sounds strike me

I am making no songs

Drumming beneath me

A weight pressing me

The Logicians were not attacked. They retreated deep into their mazes and were hidden in places that only skillful counting will find. But there are many in Our Mound who are clever, and those sisters who were hidden by too small a counting were killed after much fleeing.

Little is learned of the end of the Observators, for the their killing would afterward leave wounds in the thoughts of those who had joined it. The scent-ghosts there are all despairing, and the labor of Observating lost the eagerness it once brought to those who did it, such was the cruelty of that day, when a labor was stained.

The Reciters were not troubled, for the Queen-smell that still lingered from the dirt they had brought from the central chambers stole away any eagerness for war-making. But many among the Reciters disagreed with the comfort of the sisters who came into their chamber with wounded thoughts from cruel killing. Sisters were repelled then from the Reciters' chamber, which is an evil thing, and so those who had smelled of disagreement were killed. Those Reciters who had been in sleep-travel awoke to much despair. Their stories were soured, and some did not ever learn to reshape that sourness into comfort. Many were troubled by the stories that came from the Reciters in later days, and so stories were for a time shared shallowly in Our Mound.

At that time, Tattik was standing surrounded within the short tunnels of the leftward Outpost. She had learned of the forage that would come near. But when the leftward forage came and surrounded the outpost there, Tattik walked to the top of the outpost, when the Wind God had come to watch them. A drumming had been carried by the foragers, but this became silent as the Queen-smell that Tattik wielded was carried forth from her, and there was then a great changing as all the leftward forage became joined to her.

With all the sisters of the leftward outpost and the forage that had come to it following, Tattik was then leading them to each outpost that had not learned of her Queen-smell. Her path was then a wide circle, for she would not go to Our Mound prematurely. She walked first to the sun-rightward outpost, and they did join eagerly. She walked to the rightward outpost, and there she found few to join her labor of war-making. But while her thoughts were reaching from that outpost toward the mountain, the eagerness of all the sisters who she was leading came potently to her thoughts, and she was not then searching. When she came to the sun-leftward outpost, she had also the eagerness of her sisters within her, and their count was then very large.

The sentinels in their watching were first to find Tattik's forces as they crossed the dunes toward Our Mound. Yat-Iya, who had learned where Tattik would arrive, brought any who would follow her to join Tattik's labor of war-making, but many sentinels did disagree. They had taken up their labor with steady thoughts, and many who had learned of war-making were not eager to make death-smell within Our Mound. Yat-Iya then came beside Tattik, and after much sharing, they walked in a smaller circle than before, coming to each of the sentinels who had disagreed. Each was killed, or repelled to walk pathlessly Outside, and Yat-Iya followed Tattik more closely than any other sister.

The smells of war-making drifted into Our Mound late in the autumn season. It rippled through the tunnels, and there was much surprise among those who lived far from the Impostors in their central chambers. Many curious workers came to see and smell, and it was learned that those who were not afterward walking with Tattik and Yat-Iya were killed. The conduit lines were stopped, and the food that they had carried to far chambers was shared instead to Tattik and the sisters with her. With the stopping of the conduit-lines, Our Mound entered the labor of war-making.

Tattik had brought many sisters alongside her, but a count of sisters opposed her that seemed to match them. The Impostors made no labors for joining then, and they piled the ancient dirt of their central chamber to block the tunnels into them. The war-making that Our Mound had joined was imprecise then. Workers who assembled against Tattik were captured by the alarm of their sisters, for beneath the death-smell that Tattik brought to the tunnels, little scent could travel. Builders dropped great stones down tall shafts and crushed many. The butcheries emptied. The tenders rushed forth to answer the smell of many wounds; softlings in their final moltings crawled into the fresh tumult of war-making, and it was their first learning. This was an evil thing.

War-making spread to every corner of Our Mound, and it became split along a line that churned with biting jaws and twisting legs. The line tilted and bulged, but always there were sisters along its length. Upper fought lower, leftward fought rightward, and inside fought outside, until broken armor was piled in midden heaps that were newly made. And still the count of sisters who were following Tattik grew, gathered by the voice of Rakkitik that wielded Queen-smell.

Our Mound—Impostors within!

Our Mound—in war-making!

Our Mound—with chambers cleaned!

Our Mound will glimmer newly!

War-making slowed, and the defeated who had not fled Outside were killed. Yat-Iya's eagerness had grown potent, and she was then leading Tattik into the central chambers where the Impostors waited amid clouds of fear. War-making seemed quiet then to Tattik and her sisters, because its scents and sounds were softened in those ancient tunnels. Those sisters to whom Tattik's Queen-smell seemed different beside the calming scents in the walls walked with thoughts that were split.

The dirt that blocked the ancient tunnels was cleared without trouble. The Impostors thrust the males before them, and many bared their unwieldy jaws against Tattik, and were killed. The males who were meek or thoughtless were lifted and placed to the side, until the Impostors were bared to the voice of Rakkitk that Tattik brought to them.

The Impostors drummed and stood high, and their Queen-smell filled the chamber. But their scent lacked the names that Tattik had gathered, Rakkitik foremost among them. The Impostors clattered fiercely, and they were feared for they had indeed learned the labors of soldiers. But the Impostors were not repelling beasts, and so their clattering that could send a giant fleeing passed over the workers who circled them without settling into their thoughts. Tattik was then very hateful of the Queen-scent around her, and the Queen-scent upon her armor, and her thoughts that were then crashing burst forth toward the Impostors. All her sisters followed, and killing was done in the central chamber that the Queen had dug in ancient days without daughters to aid her.

And within the storming scent of war-making, for those sisters who were pressed from behind to be close to the Impostors' jaws, the scent of venom was learned, for it was then familiar only to Tattik who had dueled the stranger Skith. Armor was torn, and venom was delivered into wounds, even as the Impostors were buried beneath the great count of sisters of Our Mound that climbed upon them with jaws squeezing.

The quiet of the chamber soon returned, and there was a reluctance then in the thoughts of many sisters who had joined war-making and had done no killing. The killed were piled, and as empty armor was pulled from clamped jaws, there were sisters then standing, with Tattik among them, and standing high upon legs that carried a heavy burden, they lifted the heads of the Impostors whose feelers were limp so that all the sisters in the chamber would learn of war-making's end.

Rakkitik's joy at a great labor completed washed from the central chamber, and met the feelers of those who had remained in the conduit-lines, and in the far chambers of Our Mound that they reached. Many more sisters of Our Mound came then to the central chamber, and many labors were done. But to those who had not joined war-making, the scent of completed labors was weak beneath a thick layer of death-smell. The voice of Rakkitik settled beneath Tattik's thoughts once more, and she was left surrounded by many sisters whose names she had not learned. Without Rakkitik, there was little left in Tattik's thoughts, and she would share nothing for many days afterward.

(I am very fond of this section, I wrote about writing it here https://www.tumblr.com/sceloporus-verycool/778850218135453696/a-post-about-music-and-writing?source=share) (If you like this and want to read it in a better-organized format go here: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/105895/gods-inside or here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63668572/chapters/163206946)

Skith had lost count of the days she had spent beneath the trees. She added many new tunnels to her map between them, and she learned the precise shapes and smells of each. The paths that she had marked, those that went towards the sun when it was low, rose upward, and the air was colder and stiffer there. The trees there had thicker armor, and the beasts that she found were of a calmer mood. It was the rightward paths, where the trees became leaner until the ground bled water, where she found greater danger. The beasts of the rightward paths flew in imprecise jumbles, and they were immediate threats to her.

It was on the leftward paths that Skith gathered food for herself and the eggs of the red-armors. They did not walk far from the safe places that she had led them to. She sometimes saw them feeding without her by nibbling the leaves that were their shelter. Skith would feed these beetles more often, so that they would not threaten themselves by destroying their shelter.

The lives of the red-armors were often strange to Skith. Being beasts without labors, she did not see them building or tending. They rarely moved at all, and she often found them in the very same places she had left them upon returning from her trips down the leftward paths. They seemed to be sustained by the temporary comfort that Skith sometimes shared, having no eagerness for learning. They huddled still and quiet in the dark places Skith had carved, spurred into movement only by hunger or other discomforts. She had not even seen their mating, and they were not concerned with either the fate of their eggs nor the dead that Skith would find among them. The living did not lift their feelers when Skith would drag out these heavy corpses and leave them far away where they would not attract scavengers.

At times Skith saw a great change come over the oldest red-armors. Their armor grew dark and stiff, and they no longer accepted the food she shared. She would later find their armor hollowed, and the beast that had lived inside it gone. Some died in this change, and she left their twisted bodies with the others who had been killed.

As the cold of the winter season retreated and the nights grew shorter, the eggs changed. Once they had been small wounds in the leaf undersides, but under Skith's watch they had swollen. She could see small movements beneath their watery surfaces, and she began to see the dark spots of their eyes watching her own. It conjured within her the name of Hiyiki-Haka, the Cradle God whose scent is borne by nest-keepers.

She had thought that the Gods Inside could not follow her beyond the Colony that she had left, and so she had thought little of them. But it seemed to her that she had welcomed them to her new places that were like a Colony to her, and she was comforted by their presence. The pursuit of her labors had brought the scent of Iki-Ikas, who walked with her on her distant foraging. The watching of the eggs had brought the scent of Rakktik, whose steady strength stayed her impatient legs. And now she had around her Hiyiki-Haka, banishing her fears and tending to her comforts. But when she thought of the Cradle God, it seemed to Sktih that she was herself a Queen to be tended, and this seemed an evil thought, brought to her by her strange living in the strange Colony she had built.

One day, upon returning with a bundle of beetle's legs that she had stuck together with sticky fruit, Skith found rips in the eggs that she tended. Her feelers were high, for it seemed to her at first that they were wounded, but the softlings inside them seemed comfortable. Soon after, the eggs became opened. Skith circled them with fierce attention. She tapped them with her feelers, finding some that had gone rotten, and these she placed far away from the others. Soon the eggs that remained were all opened, and the softlings inside struggled free. They straightened their legs that had always been folded, and with short lurches they stood, their armor the color of sweetpinks. Many did not succeed, and Skith placed them with the rotted eggs. Those who survived their trial climbed free and dropped from their leaf, their soft armor glittering in the sun.

She labored promptly to feed them and lead them to where their older kin waited in safety. Some rejected her and clambered up the trees, and others held still in the throes of what Skith had learned was fear. Three-and-three eggs Skith had tended, and only one-and-two beetles followed her to safety. They settled beside the others, and Skith felt the completion of a long and worrisome labor.

The night after, Skith brought her labors to the giant that still slept near her hiding place. It had settled there after the arrival of the long-bodies that had carried off many of her red-armors, and there were few of those hungry beasts now because of it. Its presence was troubling in a manner that was burdensome for her thoughts. It had not brought threat to her, but its presence had caused much upset. It flattened leaves wherever it lay, and its hunger left whole places bare. Skith lacked the size to repel it, and so she had watched it, and had learned where it would go. She came upon the giant stretched out on a wide stone that was soaked in moonlight. With the fresh completion of her egg-tending labors granting steadiness to her legs, she climbed the giant, and she found a small comfort in climbing.

She faced many trials in her climb. She persisted through its stench, that rose from it on warm coils of air. She bit at the furtive beasts that scuttled between its stiff hairs, hairs that twitched and flicked as feelers do. She would not touch them. She stepped over wet creases in its soft armor which was pocked with craters and stinking pits. Beneath her legs she felt a drumbeat echoing through great chambers beneath.

She climbed higher and found the God's hooded eyes resting in deep basins. Many of her thoughts then were gathered behind her jaws, for eyes were a familiar thing to them. Two pits beneath them sucked at the air and released it as a scented wind. A long lengthwise trench beneath them did the same, but its scent was even fouler and had a taste of death-smell. Two hairy spades fluttered above its eyes like leaves. They jumped in response to the great rumbles and thumps of faraway Gods Outside, but small sounds escaped their attentions.

Gripping the restless floor beneath her that was the God's soft warm armor, she watched for some time. She sensed much learning to be gathered here, in the presence of a beast so large that it was a place to be explored. But she could not bring her attention away from its head where its eyes glistened. It brought many questions to her thoughts. What troubles could bring the twitching that she saw in the feelers that covered it? It seemed to Skith that nothing could threaten a giant. No spider or dragonfly or long-bodied biter could hold such a giant in their grip. It could wipe away a Colony in an instant—its very presence was a danger to any daughter and her labors. Her venom bubbled inside her.

As Skith's thoughts bustled, a shape above her blocked the stars. It circled, and grew larger in silence. The trees rustled and bent as something dove through their leaves.

The hoods over the giant's eyes pulled back in an instant, as quickly as her feelers could jump. They were revealed to her as great white moons with black pits. Then the giant began to move.

Massive machinery beneath Skith's legs sprang to life. Cords of unstoppable potential grew taut and pulled great slabs together. Quakes shuddered over the giant's soft armor, and the deep drumming that she heard was quickened. Columns within were pushed upright like lifted stones. The giant swelled and squeezed its great bellows, and a juddering push of air escaped its insides. And all around her was a scent of which she had learned, and it was fear.

The giant loped into the secret shadows between the trees, and each rise and fall of its body was accompanied by cracks and moans from a multitude of parts. The great forces of the Gods Oustide, the totality of things that brought change to the places where Skith walked, were packaged in each crushing impact of its columns. Beneath her was the power that lifts dirt and pushes water, the stuff of stories and the Queen.

The dark shape that had landed in the trees followed. Shears of wind screamed behind it. With wings unfolded, its weapons were revealed, and these were curving blades that flashed in the moonlight. It could only be another giant, one with a shape for killing its kind. Two great eyes loomed above its blades, bearing danger's yellow-black. Death and Eating had arrived!

An impact that could break any wall strucky the earthbound giant. It bellowed and staggered. The giant of the air sank its blades deep and hot blood blossomed around them. Skith clung to the soft armor beneath her as the floor tumbled. Leaves scattered and dirt fell like rain around her.

The God on which Skith stood was broken and felled. All over it was red and shining. Its strength was shattered. The airborne giant bent its hooked head over them. It brought its blades down to rip open the chambers beneath them.

The beaten giant became still and silent. The rising and falling of its bellows slowed. Its killer was satisfied, and so it lifted its prey and took to the air.

The land-beast below, where Skith's labors waited to be done, fell away. The land where lived the Gods Inside was changed. The trees pressed together. The rivers became threads between them. The cliffs shrank and were small as stones. Chilled wind slid over Skith, and she heard in it the voice of the Gods Outside.

“Leave!” they said to Skith. “Leave or fall!”

But Skith did not listen. She saw beneath her such learning as her thoughts had never held, not even in sleep-travel. She saw the smallness of where she had been learning. She saw the waters that were tunnels in the forest. She saw the white-capped mountain and the dryness beyond it. She saw where the sky met the dirt that bent beneath its weight. And in the faraway rightward places where the sun always fell, she saw a roiling, flashing grayness.

Then did the giant who had seemed killed spring to life once more. It writhed on the hooks that held it. It spat and swiped with blades of its own. The hunting beast dipped and spun, but its prey found softness to tear. Locked in a contest of giants' power, they wrestled in the sky, watched by the Gods Outside.

They spiraled downward. Skith's insides rose upward, for they were reluctant, as were her thoughts, to leave behind this high place where all the land could be seen. The killing giant's wings lost their power to lift them. They fell from the coldness of the sky, past the clouds, and below the top-roots of the trees that rustled at the disturbance. The weight of two killed giants struck the ground with tremendous sound. It left them both killed. There would be no eating for either.

It was not until the moon was gone, and the sun had returned to look upon the results of the night's killing, that Skith stepped free of the tangle of broken columns and ripped, oozing armor. She walked burdened with the vast learning that had come to her in the sky where the Gods Outside lived. She fell into sleep at the foot of the pile, a forage of two dead giants that she could not gather alone.

* * *

Skith's sleep-travel then was unpleasant. She could not walk freely for she was pressed on all sides. Things without scent and without shape jostled her above and beside, and she walked low to the ground. Her path was tight and often blocked by many obstacles. No light from sun or moon reached her, and she was lost always. She wished only to escape this place where space was scarce and comfort was scarcer.

Skith found Sikas Six-Eyes perched on a tree's branch. Its armor was blue-green, lit only by a single star through a slit in the clouds. Kept low as she was, she could not climb to where Sikas waited, and so she sat beneath the God Among Beasts.

Sikas moved her feelers and found Skith's scent. She hung upside-down from her branch and asked, “Will you escape this place?”

Skith held her feelers high at the question. “I will escape, for I must return to the red-armors to which I have tended. They are much of my labor and their loss would be no small death to me.”

“Is my sight and scent a comfort to you?” asked Sikas.

“I have learned that you are not a danger. You have led me to much wisdom and preserved much learning that would have died within me,” said Skith.

With six eyes upon Skith, Sikas descended on a glittering thread. The unseen and unsmelled things that were obstructing her drew back, and soon she hung before Skith. Her form became that of a spider's, but Skith felt no fear of it.

“What learning came to you, in the place where your Gods Outside live in hatred of you and your Queen?”

Skith told Sikas then of what she had seen in the sky. She told her of the greatness of the trees and the mountains. She told her of the long tunnels that were the rivers, and of the strangely colored lands beyond that had no trees. Lastly she shared what she had seen of the grayness in the rightward places. At this, Sikas lost her spider's form and lifted her feelers.

“That is all the learning that came to me,” said Skith. “I saw all that is between the places where the ground is bent by the sky's weight.”

(EDIT: Check the tag #GODS INSIDE for the b u g l o r e now.)

Incredible fanart courtesy of @grubstrate !!!

The tag above should find all of the parts I've posted of an excerpt from a book I wrote. It's why I made this blog originally. Give it a read if you like the sound of the phrase "bug mythology." I don't know much about publishing, I don't know much about how "real" writers make their careers stick, but I worked really really hard on it and I want to share it.

I wrote a very heartfelt message just now about the book and accidentally lost it all in a tragic copy + paste blunder, so I'll make this the second, cooler draft. In 2020, I needed escapism from a family tragedy, and I ended reading a LOT about ants, and a LOT of mythology. The two of them ran together in my head, and here I am, with 441 pages of bug lore, the speculative myths of a society that has the eusociality dial cranked to 10 (ours is what, 6? 7 maybe?).

HOW THE FIRST QUEEN WAS BIRTHED FROM THINGS LEARNED AND THE MAKING OF THE CASTES

You have learned how the God Queen came to the great beast that was killed and became the land, and you have learned of the birth of the Gods who ate the God Queen and became strong. This story comes from those first seasons when the sun did not watch us and when all the Gods were winged.

The land, the great beast that the God Queen made still with her venom, was covered by beasts then. The beasts had more shapes and more sizes then, though none were as large and as powerful as the daughters who had eaten the insides of the God Queen. In those times the Gods had only one labor, the labor of learning, which was the first labor. The Gods had learned of no evil, for the God of Death and Eating had not yet learned it from the beasts that she watched often.

When all the learning of the land that could be found through watching was gathered, the Gods turned their thoughts toward learning that lay in difficult places. No place was as difficult to gather from as the days that were behind, which was the time before their birthing when the God Queen had flown alone. The Gods searched their Insides, to find secret learning buried there, and they became eager to learn of birthing, for it was the labor that the God Queen had done and they had not. But with their eagerness to learn of birthing came the first fear among the Gods, for they had learned that any who completed the labor of birthing would be eaten by her daughters.

The God who had learned of Death and Eating from the beasts below disagreed when this labor of birthing was brought to be joined. The scent of her fear was potent among the Gods, for she had learned precisely of how the cruel beasts did their killing. She did not want death-smell to come among her sisters. But there was one God whose eagerness to learn of birthing was too strong to be calmed.

The God who wished to learn of birthing was named Atiati-kikitia, who had learned first of comfort and of living with her sisters beside. She flew high above the other Gods and welcomed them to join her labor of birthing, the last learning her mother the God Queen had held secret. The God of Death and Eating's fear became a thick cloud that reached many of the Gods, and together the fearful Gods sought to repel Atiati-kikitia from her learning. But she, the fearless God of Comfort and Living, was beyond their attempts, so strong was the smell of her eagerness to learn.

A plan was made then between the Gods who did not go apart with fear. Atiati-kikitia told her sisters who were beside her that they should change their shape to that of males and mate with her. With the shape of males they would pass things held inside to her, and she would become swollen with the insides of many. Her daughters, it seemed to her, would be made of the insides of the Gods who had mated with her—each God could provide enough for more daughters than there were beasts upon the land below. Atiati-kikitia would then be the First Queen who would be the mother to all Queens.

The first God to join this plan, the first to change her form and mate, was Hiyiki-Haka, the Cradle God, who had learned of tending to the other Gods in still places. Her daughters would be skilled in the labor of nest-keeping, and would always be beside the Queen who would birth them first. Second to mate was small Iki-Ikas, God of Rest and Searching. Her daughters would go beyond the Queen's sight and bring back their learning, and find comfort. Last to mate was the largest God, Rakkitik, who had learned of Strength and Watching. She was last because she had stood with her feelers outward to repel any who would bring threat. Her daughters would keep her great size among their peers, and be always watchful of threats that would be repelled.

The God of Death and Eating watched this mating from afar with thoughts that were stale with hatred. She made a great drumming that shook the land and terrified the beasts upon it. This mating and the birthing to follow, she had learned, would bring the Gods down to the land, where they would be among the beasts who killed and ate one another. She then flew higher even than Atiati-kikitia had, and she left her scent in the sky that the sun would one day follow, and she said to all the Gods, “You will be among death-smell, and you will have it always on your armor. You will be between the beasts that are skilled in killing and eating, and you will learn of its doing. I will show you what I have learned of death and eating now, so that you will learn of its evil and be afraid, and you will abandon this labor of birthing.”

The Gods who were eager to join the labors of Atiati-kikitia were made fearful then. The God of Death and Eating changed her shape many times. She became a storm of flies that bit the Gods' wings. She became long and narrow and broke the Gods' armor, and swallowed their insides. She showed them ever-larger beasts that pressed terrible heaviness upon them to break what was standing. She gave herself precise and skillful parts, and she pulled the Gods into small pieces with grasping legs. And the beasts below watched, learning of ways that they might do harm to the Gods that they had always been beneath.

Many sisters then joined the God of Death and Eating, and took her learning among themselves. They learned precisely what the God of Death and Eating shared, and so they feared to be among the beasts below. They joined in hateful storms of pulling, pressing, grinding, cracking, and sought to show the Gods beside Atiati-kikitia the pain that they would bring to themselves in their labor of birthing.

The Gods who mated were very afraid, for they were few beside the Gods who flew above them and did them harm. They took refuge in the land below, fighting through both Gods and beasts to find comfort and continue their mating. The Cradle God Hiyiki-Haka stayed by Asiati-kikitia's side and cleaned her of the filth of the land. Iki-Ikas strove to dig tunnels in the ground where the Gods who did them harm would not find them, and Rakkitik was watching behind. Still the God of Death and Eating bit at them, bringing further hateful curses upon them.

“I will find you always,” said the God of Death and Eating. “I will hurt you until you return to me and abandon your labors! I will hear you when I cannot see you! I will feel you digging beneath me! I will bring my learning of death and eating upon your daughters until only Queens are left, and I will share them to the beasts! I have made this my labor, and I will do it always!”

The Gods trembled in their tunnels, their mating finished. Hiyiki-Haka the Cradle God could not quiet the First Queen Atiati-kikitia's fear, and the First Queen became sick with it. Her thoughts could not settle with the God of Death and Eating's words among them. She said to her mated Gods, “I am afraid for my daughters. When my labor of birthing is complete and I am dead, the God of Death and Eating will bring her hate to them, and they will be killed with no learning gathered. They will be found when they walk the land, they will be heard even when stillness is around them.”

Outside, in the dark sky, the God of Death and Eating began her newfound labor that was made with her hatred of the First Queen and her daughters that would follow. She found the largest sister among the Gods who had abandoned the labor of birthing, and said to her, “You will change your shape, and you will fill this dark place with light, that I might see those Gods who hide below.” The God that she spoke to did as she was told, and she became the Sun who watches the land.

The Cradle God gave words of comfort, but had no answer for the First Queen's fears. Rakkitik with all her strength had no way to challenge their attacker. It was Iki-Ikas, the smallest of the mated Gods, who in her smallness had learned of being hidden, that found a plan among her learning. Iki-Ikas ventured above and walked the land, until she was found by the Sun. Storms raged on all sides of the God of Rest and Searching, and she found herself before the God of Death and Eating.

“I have found you, Iki-Ikas who is smallest among the Gods. Have you come to be among us in the sky? We have shared much learning, you and I, and it would be a comfort to have you beside me again.”

“No,” said Iki-Ikas. “I will repel you, and I will do this until one of us lies killed on the land.”

The God of Death and Eating spoke no words to Iki-Ikas. She was a cloud of biting mouths then, and she tore Iki-Ikas into many small pieces. The Sun was burdened to see this killing, for Iki-Ikas had walked upon her armor many times, and forever after did the Sun's thoughts become unsettled. But as she was torn, Iki-Ikas learned of being many small things, and in her cleverness, became many more pieces that were smaller even than her killers' mouths could hold. The God of Death and Eating thought herself victorious, for in so many pieces Iki-Ikas could no longer speak or do her labors. But Iki-Ikas rode the Wind God that explores wide places, and drifted back beneath the land where the mated Gods waited. She showed them her form, touching their feelers and speaking to them in ways they had never before learned.

“You will see me now,” said Iki-Ikas. “I am among you, but the God of Death and Eating thinks me killed. I will share the learning of this form with you all, that you may escape the gaze of the God of Death and Eating and her sisters Outside. We will be inside your daughters” she said to the First Queen, “and let them speak in ways that the God of Death and Eating will not have learned to hear.”

One by one, the Gods who had mated with Atiati-kikitia the First Queen took the form that Iki-Ikas showed them. They became hidden to all but the First Queen's daughters. They became the Gods Inside then, and they labor at our Insides, and we have all joined their labors against the Gods Outside.

* * *

When Skith left sleep-travel, her legs were steady and strong, but her thoughts were sluggish, for she had traveled far in sleep. She shared food with Akkis and found that her thoughts were settled. Even with her thoughts slowed, her eagerness for learning was fresh, and she shared much with Akkis.

“Which of the Gods Inside who mated with the First Queen am I the daughter of?” she asked.

“You are small,” said Akkis, “in the manner of Iki-Ikas, as am I. We are workers, and so we have many labors to join. The Soldiers, largest of all, do their labors of repelling in the tunnels above, and they do it around the wise nest-keepers who tend to the Queen.”

“Why, then, did the God of Death and Eating take the name Iki when she came into the Colony?” asked Skith.

“You have learned the story of your namesake from the Replete who does not live in these low tunnels. That is the nature of stories told in the tunnels above, where many stories pass between many tellers. Here our stories are older, and they are often broken and remade, and there are fewer who tell them and tend them. I have not learned of Iki, and it seems to me that her name is long-buried.”

Skith heard learning in Akkis's words, and she asked, “How then has the story I have learned, the story of Skith and the First Foraging, been changed in the days since you learned it?”

Akkis touched Skith's head with her feelers four times then, and said to her, “I learned the story of Akkis and the First Foraging, and it was not the form of a sister named Iki that the God of Death and Eating took. Her shape was that of a wise Queen who folded evil into sweet learning, and so made the threat of her hatreds into a secret thing that was beneath her good scent.”

Skith's feelers stood tall then. Akkis smelled Skith's confusion, and said to her, “It was a story told in a season that was hungry and fearful. You should not let that season into your thoughts now, when you have come freshly from sleep-travel.”

Akkis could smell that Skith was eager to once again join the labors of the Colony. “You will go now,” she said to Skith, “to join the labors you find. I will put the smell of the Colony on you, and so you will join your sisters in the tunnels above. Be among the scents that are made by the Gods Inside in those higher tunnels while you are young, before you go Outside.” She ran her feelers across Skith's lowest parts, and with them spread over Skith the kissec she had saved, for kissec bears the smell of the Colony most strongly.

Before Skith left the place of comfort they shared, Akkis said, “You will return here before the smell of kissec on your armor fades, or you may find danger.”

An Encounter With Death, and Eating

“I have found threat!” said Sessa, whose thoughts were quickest.

“It is a spider!” said Atter, whose thoughts were keenest.

Ithsik lowered herself and moved beside the two. She added to their drumming, and Ayik and Rekki arrived soon after.

“We followed Sessa,” said Ayik. “The enemy who stole from Our Mound is close.”

They stood in silence with their feelers taut, and it was Atter who first lost the steadiness in her legs. “The spider is very near,” she said, and it was only with Sessa's aid that she could repel her fear of it.

The sun was red in the rightward sky. It was leaving, and they would not have its watching. Against the sky, over the dune nearest, Sett and her sisters saw two long legs curling over its crest.

“We find you!” called Ithsik, and her sisters were steadied to hear her. “Tonight I will learn how a spider is killed!”

The two legs that gripped the rise were joined by a third, and the spider was nearer to them. It would not allow itself to be precisely seen.

The spider, to the surprise of all, then disagreed, and its eyes were upon the sisters of Our Mound, and Sett saw a strange stillness in them. “A beast has not brought threat to you tonight. I wear the spider-shape, as I have changed to be many shapes. All who search after me will complete this labor.”

Then Ayik, who had learned many stories, no longer stood in the circle made by her sisters. Her legs shivered and she could no longer keep a grip around her thoughts. “We must not do this labor, Ithsik!” she said. “I have learned of the daughter who shape-changes—it is her, that most hateful God Outside, who has learned of Death and Eating!”

“You have learned precisely,” said then the God of Death and Eating. The beasts who watched in the dark heard the sound of dry top-roots then, and it was made by the shivering legs of sisters. Among them, Ithsik's legs were stillest. The Gods Outside then were gathering also, and the eager wind who goes widely went across them, and the cold that is familiar to them was left upon the armor of all the tight-pressed sisters.

The God of Death and Eating, in her spider-shape, gripped the dune with four legs, and she said to Ayik. “Daughter Sett will come to me—she is mine to carry.”

“Sett is a sister of Our Mound,” said Ithsik. “And her sisters will carry her.”

The God of Death and Eating said, “You cannot take what I will gather. Your labors to carry daughter Sett away from me will not be completed. But you can aid my labors.”

Ithsik flexed her jaws. “I would not join your labors that are against mine.”

Two, then four, and then one-and-two eyes flashed, once, and the God of Death and Eating, with her spider-shape, could see them all. Her shape hung loosely, and walked with hollow armor. The spider-shape's legs cracked dryly as they tensed, for they were without insides to urge them. Behind the spider's eyes was an empty place without lymph to be smelled.

Sett was in that moment comforted that she was blind to the fearful scent of her sisters, for it would surely collapse her thoughts. But Ithsik was strange among them. Ayik, Rekki, Sessa, and Atter were all burdened, Sett learned. She could see their wobbling legs that drew closer to her, because she was largest. But Ithsik was steady, and her feelers bobbed lightly then.

The God of Death and Eating saw this also, and she said to Ithsik, “There is an eagerness in your thoughts, daughter Ithsik, this I have learned. I am eager also to be near a daughter who has learned also of Death. There is more that I would share with you, if you leave this daughter Sett to my labors.”

Ithsik's feelers stretched towards the dried spider on the dune. “I will not exchange, for my labors are great, and should be joined. It is from contests that it can be learned whose labors are most good and should be aided.”

“This I have also learned,” said the God of Death and Eating, and she drew her spider-shape higher and closer atop the rise, until she leaned over them in the manner of a wilting bush. “You are wise as the Gods Outside are, daughter Ithsik. But no daughter of the First Queen Atiati-kikitia, my sister who was so imprecise in her learning, has had victory in a contest with me. Are my labors not then most good? Should you and all your sisters not aid mine?”

Ithsik then walked from her sisters, her feelers stretched to the God Outside's spider-shape. “I will do a contest with you, God of Death and Eating. I have not buried the learning you brought to me on the day of my last molting, when you came to test me. Your learning was a great aid to my first labor that was war-making. Now we are speaking again, and you again offer me learning of Death. It seems to me you have hate for all the daughters of the First Queen, but not for me.”

The spider-shape again cracked and groaned as it sagged down the dune. The God of Death and Eating agreed.

“This is precise, because I am not hateful of you. I will share with you greater learning of death, daughter Ithsik who kills. This will be your contest—if upon you I smell fear, as I did not on the day of your last molting, I will renew my hatreds to you, and I will come to take you when you are in greatest comfort, when I seem farthest from you.”

Ithsik agreed then, and lifted her feelers to receive Godly learning.

This is the learning that the God of Death and Eating shared with Warrior Ithsik:

Leaving sun, see the moon

deep wide sky—small lights

Spread sweet scent, foulness rid

still blank stiff—bent legs

Small beasts, watch them gather

climb and cross—big pile.

It is dark, it is wet

Crack and tumble, go flat

No rest, noise and shaking

You are seen, you are watched

Quick comfort, quiet, safe

Leftward sharp, rightward slick

Pressing close

Cold Outside

No escape, you are joined

Every piece, peeling back

It is light, it is dry

These things do not fly free

The God leapt her spider-shape high then, and there was a one-and-two legged shadow in the moonlight over Ithsik. And instead of coming downward after its jump, as all spiders must, it remained above the land-beast, until a great crack came from it. Its body crashed to the sand, its legs curled close, but the spider's head swung free, and it sped away to the highest part of the spine-tree that Sett had been found upon.

“I will take you, Warrior Ithsik, and join you to my labors!” said the God of Death and Eating.

But Ithsik disagreed, for the learning that had been shared with her had brought her much discomfort. She retreated then, and her sisters all were overcome with fear.

“I will follow you, and from your insides I will take back the learning you would steal away from me!”