THE GIGAS

pg.5

⚠ mini page ahead: answering some burning questions you may have been wondering about at the end😆.

My feet slid across the lonely barren landscape. A stumble barely averted.

Alone and with a broodling in tow.

The sharp wind teared at my unprotected flesh.

My breathe abated in my nostrils, the crystalline air scratching at my throat and impeding my epidermal respiration.

Sleep comes calling once again, the stiff crystallization of tissue beginning and a cocoon slyly reforming over my epidermis.

Spreading like the leaves on a fresh spring branch.

Perseverance and persistence cling to my soul.

All for the love of the two beings that have yet to decide their own fate. I will my limbs to move and tear at my cocoon.

For several days I watched her form in suspended animation as the drones healed all her wounds.

It was despairing and all encompassing...

The dark entrance of my lair coming within view, wide open and inviting.

A Sprint burst from my limbs towards it, the strain immense.

The welcoming air inside warmer than the outside weather.

I can not rest...not yet.(@minipurse)

Safety is a protocol perimount to be completed before each hibernation, a vulnerable state in which to find oneself in without a proper  queen to hold vigilance.

A long sliver of stone laid across the entrance floor hidden, a seal preparation that was made years ago when I first dug out my home.

With much force I rip it from its stubborn position.

The flesh upon my face tingled as blood forced its way into it and my hands stiffly clinged to the rough edges of the slab, clumsily adjusting the blockade to the entrance with numb fingers.

The nesting instinct overtook once it was put into place, a staccato gait creaking in my limbs.

The sweep of my lair was slow and arduous in such a condition. My anxious eyes, bulging from their sockets at every detail.

But there was no creature to resolve or disturbance to be had.

Slowly my senses dulled. The dim light overhead growing distant.

Instinctually my body stumbled to our resting place,
A private chamber next to my beloved's dedicated room.

My allotment  of supplies neatly  organized across my smaller chamber as I sat down.

The bed, a slick surface polished to a perfectly slippery reflective dipped into the stone.

My processes slowed down even further with breaths more ragged than the last.

My eyes shutting but still blindly remembering to play the small recording I had saved just for this moment. The only momento for the small lives that should have been. In abject darkness, my hands slid across the recording's surface.

My past younger voice lulled across the air, playing our ancient scriptures in a soft rhythm.

My first recording for my first cluster of broodlings.

Any other would have scrapped this recording. But I could not.

The melodious voice of the only other being who was like a sibling to me sung the next verse. Ktil, he too is gone from this life, another who shared the same fate at the hands of that same queen.

Our voices mingled together. A duet frozen in time, looping forever.

Just a small note: our dear commander never slumbered together with sage. He always waited for sage to close her eyes and show signs that she was in deep sleep so he could go sleep comfortably in another private chamber.

Sage never witnessed him coccooning at any time,yet.

He always made sure she was asleep and safe before leaving her to hunt.

The first meal they ate together was coyote!

He dearly loved to play with sage's hair while she was asleep, de-tangling and brushing it out.

And yes because he was so deeply in hibernation he didn't recognize  his own voice or that of ktil.

I think he is a total dream boat, if it wasn't for the background of how they ended up in each other's lives.

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