9: Jaws and Arms

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“Claws,” Smon corrects. “Arms, claws.”

Tyk considers this information. She has seen Smon put food in her mouth with said ‘claws’, but for a creature without mandibles, that would be expected. No; that’s not the problem with Smon’s assertion. The problem with Smon’s assertion is the frankly horrifying things it says about her already horrifying body structure.

Tyk has a very average sort of face. Her horns are prominent but not prominent enough to completely overshadow the rest of the face below, and her outer jaw where her mandibles are anchored is the same, discreetly covering the inner jaw and its teeth unless she’s looking at somebody dead on. Smon’s inner jaw is fully exposed, the teeth hidden behind a thin strip of flesh as flexible as a tongue, which is somewhat disconcerting to look at, especially since she moves it about so much to speak. That mouth, as well as the whole top part of her head, can swivel about independent of the rest of her body to look at things (weird design, surely only the eyes are needed for that, but okay.) Her bottom jaw is far lower, and appears to be fused in place and largely immobile, acting mostly as an anchor point for her mandibles. Tyk suspects that this is because her mandibles are so large; it would take a lot of power to lift a lower jaw with mandibles like that attached, and Smon seems to lack the mechanisms to lock a jaw in place. But if those are actually her arms… does Smon not have a lower jaw at all? That can’t be right!

It’s not… that different to having an immobile lower jaw, Tyk supposes. In practical terms. Smon eats with one jaw, that’s established. Tyk can’t fly with her wings, Smon can’t eat with her jaw. But not having one at all? That would be like Tyk not having wings!

Well, Smon doesn’t seem to have wings either. So.

Tyk circles Smon slowly, looking her over. Smon hold still until she’s finished. Tyk touches the anchor point for one of Smon’s mandibles, flicking her own mandible enquiringly. Smon touches the top of Tyk’s arm.

That would mean that Smon’s arms are very high. That can’t be right. But, Tyk supposes, Smon’s body parts are all anchored on an internal rigid structure; there might be serious limitations in how you can line everything up like that.

She touches the fleshy tendrils on the end of one of Smon’s mandi – arms. “Claw.”

“Yes.”

Absolutely not. They’re definitely mandible hooks, like a bamboo spider’s. She just has far too many of them, for some reason. Tyk tries to imagine what they’ll look like when Smon’s carapace grows in, how they’ll suddenly become more claw-like, and can’t picture it. It just doesn’t make sense. Maybe her claws will be smaller and more delicate, suitable for precise work, like a man’s claws? Possible. But the shape is still far, far closer to a bunch of duplicated mandible hooks.

There’s no point in arguing about it. They just need the words to understand each other, they don’t need to agree on every little thing. Frankly, Tyk thinks, it’s a miracle that their bodies are as similar as they are. In the sky, stars look like balls of light; Smon could have hatched with no features at all, and then communication really would be difficult.

They’re quickly running out of names of nearby objects to feed the echo stone. To really communicate, they’re going to need verbs. Ways to describe time. Ways to distinguish hypotheticals from reality. All sorts of things that are much, much harder to specify than simply pointing at an object and naming it.

But Smon seems to understand this, too, and gets to work. They quickly distinguish ‘fall’ from ‘drop’ (“stone falls, Smon drops stone”), and go through sit, stand, walk, run, lie down. Up and down are simple, as are to and from once they have a word for ‘walk’; near and far take a little more work. Their repertoire of numbers and now-sizeable collection of random rocks make short work of concepts like ‘larger than’ and ‘smaller than’. Questions like ‘where’ and ‘how many’ seem like they’ll be hard, but arise naturally as part of the pair quizzing each other.

Okay. Time to see if it’s enough.

“Egg fall from sky,” Tyk says, indicating the egg. Smon bobs her head and flicks a mandible (claw?) in the affirmative; they’ve covered this. “Eight eggs fall from sky,” Tyk continues, and instantly has Smon’s full attention.

“Where?” Smon asks, looking around like she expects to see them on the horizon.

“Far. Many far. Fourteen stars from eggs.”

Smon hisses something unintelligible to herself, using her mouth, and looks away. Tyk is starting to get an understanding of some of Smon’s body language, and she certainly does not look happy. Tyk isn’t sure if the number is too high (perhaps stars are highly territorial?) or too low for Smon’s liking, but it’s definitely bad news.

“Where?” Smon asks again.

“Far – ”

“Where far?” The echo stone doesn’t allow Smon to express tone, but very line of her body suggests agitation, impatience. “Far yes. Yes. Where egg? Where star?”

They don’t have an appropriate word, so Tyk picks up a handful of stones and casts them across the ground. “Scatter,” she says, pointing to the stones, and Smon collects the word for the echo stone. “Eggs scatter. But.” She scoops the stones back into a pile. “Together. Stars come to stars. Stars come together.” She points to Smon. “You and many stars.”

“Where come together?”

“Starspire.” Tyk points in the general direction of their destination, which also happens to be the general direction of the hive, though much, much further away. She doesn’t have the words to explain the timeframe involved yet, or the distance. She doesn’t even know the timeframe involved; the convoy size and the weather will affect their travel speed. They’ll need to travel upriver to the Green Hills Hive, pick up further assistance and supplies there, cross the river (the timing will depend on the river’s volume and speed, which depends on what time of year they reach the Green Hills Hive), take a long, arduous journey over a broad patch of sleepland, reach the Glittergem Hive at the base of the mountains, and from there, reach and ascend the Starspire. It’ll be impossible for anybody except the stars to actually ascend the spire all the way, and even for that, Tyk doesn’t know how old Smon will need to be to make the journey, or what help she’ll need. Perhaps reaching the mountains will be enough; perhaps there will need to be multiple supply runs. They simply do not have enough information to accurately time any part of the journey.

And that’s not even taking into account Smon’s needs. Bringing her entire egg will be impossible, but Tyk doesn’t know what she will or won’t need from inside it. Perhaps she’ll travel swiftly without much luggage, or perhaps she’ll need several carts for her supplies. Food is a big problem; they need to find something to forage that Smon can eat. Otherwise, she’ll starve long before they can get her back into the sky.

“Starspire far,” Smon says with the echo stone. It’s a question, but she doesn’t have the tone in those words to convey it.

“Yes. Many far.”

“We go how many?” She points up, at a break in the clouds. At the sun.

Ah. She does want a timeframe. But the hive hasn’t decided to leave yet, and Tyk doesn’t really have a way to convey that information. They don’t really have an ‘I don’t know’ that Smon can be sure to convey as an answer to the question rather than Tyk simply being confused about what she’s asking. There’s been no reason to differentiate ‘I don’t know’ from ‘I don’t understand’.

Tyk tries nevertheless. “Thing sun,” she says, just to get that squared away. “Sun get up, sun fall, one day. Some days here. We go. Many days we walk. To Starspire.”

“Some day here. How many?”

That’s probably as clear of a cue as Tyk’s going to get. “I don’t know.”

Tyk’s still learning to read Smon’s body language, and it’s hard to tell what the larva is feeling at the moment. She keeps glancing back to her egg. Maybe she’s scared to leave it? That’s a possibility. But she seemed so interested in the other stars; does she not want to meet up with them? Maybe she doesn’t; maybe she’s frightened of them. Maybe stars are indeed territorial. The stargazers might know more.

Different types of gods behave differently, Tyk knows. Arnu could scarcely be said to be a god at all, so much as an environmental factor that the gods must contend with, blanketing the skies with clouds to obscure the sight of the stars and interrupt the wingsong, a sort of divine version of a sleepland. It can be roused to action briefly by Kelennin, the closest and most capricious of the gods, lancing across the very sky in streaks of light and shouting to all in her booming voice. But even among the stars further out, there are differences. The wanderers behave differently to the sentinels, and both wanderers and sentinels behave differently to the sedentary stars who barely move as they gaze down upon the earth and weave destinies. The sentinels are lone patrollers on fixed routes, and it would not be at all surprising if they were territorial; the sedentary stars are a little harder to speculate on, as they don’t move much, but most of them are clustered into hives of their own, suggesting that they, at least, are social. Wandering stars are a mixed bunch, travelling across the sky; some predictable and some not, some in clusters and some alone. Tyk isn’t sure if the different gods are fundamentally different sorts of creatures, or merely like people making different choices in life, but either way it’s near-certain that Smon and the other larvae are born of wanderers. There was no trace of a storm to birth them, and if any sentinel or sedentary star had broken from their pattern to lay eggs upon the earth, the stargazers would have noticed it long before the eggs fell.

Which is all to say, Tyk has no idea how the larvae will relate to each other. Should they be gathering them together at all?

Smon seems excited for the plan. Or perhaps worried about the plan? Does she want to go or not? They don’t have enough shared words to talk about something like that.

Smon needs to learn more about the world. The hive need to learn more about Smon.

Tyk leaves Smon to go talk to Keyat.

“Let everyone know,” she tells him, “I’m bringing Smon to see the hive.”

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