The Bugs

[Ares Land]

(There was a drawing there, but y'know, it was ugly)

[evmdbm]

I'm quite looking forward to "a Day in the Life of a Bug"

So is there a human colony on Orenda? Do human trade with the Bugs - and what do they trade? Bugs are I imagine keen to get their hands on bright shiny new technology without having to go through the bother of having to invent it themselves...

[Ares Land]

I'm quite looking forward to "a Day in the Life of a Bug"

So is there a human colony on Orenda? Do human trade with the Bugs - and what do they trade? Bugs are I imagine keen to get their hands on bright shiny new technology without having to go through the bother of having to invent it themselves...

Not colonies per se, but there are research stations and a permanent human presence.
Relationship with the Bugs are difficult. Human researchers try to avoid trade, but the Bugs like to make statements to the effect of "that's a nice research base you've got here. Shame if something happened to it." or "what's a nice team of exobiologists such as yourselves doing in the bad parts of the forest?" and need to be paid off somewhat.

We'd see this as protection racket, but to the Bugs humans are encroaching on their territory or making them work -- being an informant takes time! -- which some colonies are willing to tolerate, but not without compensation. They do even protect humans from rival Bugs on occasion.

I suppose most of the trade is in ideas rather than technology... They'd love for instance to get their hands on some guns, but they understand our unwillingness to give some away -- after all some guns could end up in the hands of their rivals...

Worryingly, Bugs are extremely interested in the wormhole link back to Earth... (But then again some humans feel that Orenda should be colonized!)

[Xwtek]

Now, I'm interested with the human attitude toward bugs. But please expand the language first.

[Ares Land]

Hmm. I think we need a tie-breaking vote

(Which provides me with a convenient excuse for being late! Sorry about that, by the way, but both kids and work have required a fair bit of my attention last week)

[Ares Land]

So I was in the mood for some Bug linguistics, so tonight we'll talk about alien syntax.

Alien syntax

It's more interesting to cover a bit of syntax first; besides the morphology is too horrific to contemplate right now. (the morphology of Bri:n language is heavily fusional, with a lot of irregularities).

Syntactic roles.

The basic sentence order is:

Target - Locative - Reference

There are two open (so, excluding particles) lexical classes: attributes and locatives.
Target and Reference are attributes, Locative is, well, a locative.

The sentence gives the location of the target, using the reference as a landmark, or reference point complementing the locative.

au:lnstzain-zuu rauc-jazi sku:'u:l

city-generic.singular trek-north mountain

There's a city some distance away towards the mountain.

You can have sentencial targets with the relativizer sn:

au:lnstzain-zuu rauc-jazi sku:'u:l sn: t:t: ghln

city trek-north mountain REL seize hill

There's a city, some distance away towards the mountain, on top of a hill.

We may represent it that way:

[city some distance away towards mountain] sn: seize hill.

The use of t:t: 'seize' provides some insight into Bug semantics. Orendan predator tend to jump on their prey, and hold it still using their talons. Bugs are sensitive to motion and that sense is as important to them as sight (it's what those 'whiskers' and 'antennae' are for), t:t: is a kind of representation of the rythmic motion of the tail, held out for balance and the motions of the mandibles.
This gives a very vivid image of something alive, digging into the hill and drawing sustenance from it. We'd say the city is perched on a hill.

Anyway, you can have sentencial references as well:

uunz-sn: h:h:-zi sn: au:lnstzain-zuu rauc-jazi sku'ul sn: t:t: ghln

river-DEF meander-north REL city trek-north mountain REL seize hill

"The river meander southwards, where there's a city, some distance away towards the mountain, on top of a hill.
city meander-south sn:[[city some distance away towards mountain]sn: seize hill]

And you can chain several locatives:

uunz-sn: h:h:-zi i:nl-zi sn: au:lnstzain-zuu rauc-jazi sku'ul sn: t:t: ghln

river-DEF meander-south under REL city trek-north mountain REL seize hill

"The river meander southwards, under the place where there's a city, some distance away towards the mountain, on top of a hill.
city meander-south under sn:[[city some distance away towards mountain]sn: seize hill]
Note that locatives must agree with each other in cardinal points, both h:'h: and i:nl take the 'southwards' marker

Attribute phrases are in many ways anologues of verb phrases, and likewise they can be modified with a relative.

uunz-sn: dn: i:ln au:lnstzain-sn h:h:-zi

river-DEF REL2 under city-DEF meander-south

The river that is under the city meanders southwards.

river-DEF under city-DEF + river meander-south river dn:[under city-DEF] meander south.

Center embedding

au:ln'stzain-t d: uunz-sn: d: iisp huhuk gau d: ain d: bhruasji-tln d: tiun ka:ka: i:ln rauc-jazi sku:'u:l

city-DEF that river that cross forest-DEF that between building that human-PL.DEF that sky fall inside under towards mountain

The city above the river that crosses the forest between us and the building of the humans that fell from the sky is to the North towards the mountain.


the city [that the river [that crosses forest [that between [human [sky fall] in] under] towards mountain

We don't normally construct sentences like these; they don't really parse naturally for us, but the Bugs construct that kind of sentences frequently enough; it seems that they parse language like a mental map, or a mental landscape.

Anaphora

Bug languages don't have pronouns; they have different strategies for anaphora.
In the language of Bri:n, you can build an anaphora for a noun by taking the last phoneme, excluding inflection, applying a series of rules and suffixing the definite marker.

au:lnstzain (city) > stsint

For instance:

au:lnstzain-zuu rauc-jazi sku:'u:l / uun'z-sn: i:ln au:ln'stzain-'t

city-generic.singular trek-north mountain / river under city-DEF

There's a city some distance away towards the mountain. The river is under the city

au:lnstzain-zuu rauc-jazi sku:'u:l / uun'z-sn: i:ln stsint

city-generic.singular trek-north mountain / river under it

There's a city some distance away towards the mountain. A river is under it

In effect, it's as if we said "The river is under the C".

The same formation is used when the anaphora is used as a target or reference:

stsint rauc sku:'u:l

C-DEF trek mountain

the C is towards the mountain

For locatives, the rule is simpler: the anaphoric a 'be there too, be there as well' is used

stsin't rauc sku:'u:l / uunz-sn: a

C-DEF trek mountain / river-DEF too

the C is towards the mountain and so is the river.

Loops

So far Bug language has pretty clear analogue with human languages. It works within a familiar structure even though the nodes aren't quite what they are in human languages.
But the language of Bri:n at least has one oddity that don't quite fit human syntax: the looping anaphoras.

t refers to the previous immediate target:

[gloss-"river meanders itself"]uunz-sn: h:h: t[/gloss]
The river meanders around itself.

I glossed it as a reflexive and for the most part that's what it is, but consider:

uunz-sn: i'isp huhuk d: alan t

river-DEF cross forest that on.top it

The river crosses the forest above it.

The "long loop" z: refers to the first target in the sentence.

It's probably easier with an example:

au:lnstzain-t gau huhuk rauc-jazi sku:'u:l bn-ia hashassn: a:n uunz-sn: i:ln z:

city between forest trek-north mountain ranges-east sea open river meander.south under LOOP

The city is separated by the forest from the mountains that range eastwards until the see where the river that meanders south under it empties.

Again, that sort of construction is quite common and paints a kind of rough map of the surroundings. Or a very precise one, for that matter: I've spared you the overlong sentences, most of the cardinal points and wind direction markers, the center-embedded description and some finer nuances that would allow the listener to draw a very precise map of the surroundings, complete with major resources, from such a sentence.

The anaphoras can also be used for such mental picture as:

au:lnstzain't dj:r huhuk a z

city inside.egg forest also loop"

The city nestles into the forest and the forest nestles into it -- or The city and the forest are entwined.

dj:-r is kind of a synesthetic representation of a Bug egg: the core meaning is that city grows into the forest, and trees grow inside the city and that both nourish each other.

Kill all humans!

OK, so this is all very good for painting vivid mental landscapes, but how exactly does one say what does what to whom?

For the most part, you don't. The bugs mostly don't care. When they say:

ug:l ji:ngr tk: huhuk

dead cattle short.distance forest

There's a dead domestic herbivore in the forest

They just assume that it'll be taken care of, butchered and put in the larder. It's not terribly alien, by the way. We do just the same thing when we say 'there's food in the microwave', we assume the person we'll talking to will eat it at some point. The Bugs just take the logic a little bit further. $

At best, you'd have a laconic response such as:

t cai

loop towards.speaker

I'm on it.

But still. What if you need to know who is taking care of the herbivore right now? Or what if the beast isn't dead yet, or will be dead in the future?

That's where the CTAM (case-tense-aspect-mood) markers come in.

Here's a short list (it goes quite a bit longer, but these are the basic ones.

ERG - Ergative the agent or tool used. An animate/instrumental.
DONE - Factitive - the result of an action -- equivalent to an absolutive and a perfect.
NEED - The Bug or object that needs to be affected. A dative + future.
REPORT - The source of an information. A causative + fact.
FOR - Benefactive. Anything inderectly affected.

All of these markers apply to attributes, target or reference and never to a locative.

So, finally, we can say: "KIll all you humans!"

ug:l-kai-i:n bhrua'sji-i:n-t-ai:n dsi

dead-DEF-COLL-NEED human-NEED-DEF-PL.COLL towards.listener

All the humans on your side need to be killed.

Or even:

ug:l-kai-i:n bhruasji-i:n-t-ai:n dsi as-un cai

dead-DEF-COLL-NEED human-NEED-DEF-PL.COLL towards.listene food-FOR towards.speaker

All you humans need to die so I can eat on you.

Or even:

ru:-anhau dj:-r au:lnstzain-un-t d dsi rauc-jazi uun'z-sn: / bi ug:l-kai-i:n bhruasji-i:n-t-ai:n dj:-r ain rauc-juk cltlt

queen.PL-REPORT egg city-FOR / REL towards.you-INST trek-east river / then dead-DEF-COLL-NEED human-NEED-DEF-PL.COLL egg building trek.south LOOP.REF

According to some queens in the city, it is necessary that you (*) should trek east along the river and then go kill all the humans in the building and go back west to the city.

Note that every word in that sentence fits into the basic Target - Location - Reference template. Even as action or reported speech is described, it is still framed as a locative.

By the way, d dsi, that which is towards you is about the closest you can get to a personal pronouns, it is used, though in that context a Bug would probably omit it (if a Bug is best suited for the task, she'll figure out herself.)
cltltis a loop anaphora, refering to the first reference in the sentence, in that case, the city.

Anyway, that's about enough Bug for one post -- I hope you enjoyed it!

Now, I'm interested with the human attitude toward bugs.

Well, to put it shortly, they're in turns fascinated (another sapient species!), afraid (they're strong, tough and very agressive!) or horrifed (they eat their own dead! they eat us!). Sometimes there are doubts as to whether they're truly sapient (maybe they're just smart animals).

Or, as someone else put it, they're sci-fi horror material. I'm hoping to write stories about them; they'd be sort of a cross between The Mission and Aliens.

[Ares Land]

OK. I'm truly sorry about the pun. Actually, this is about sex determination.

Initially, I thought the Bugs would be haplodiploid like bees, ants and wasps, but ultimately I wasn't satisfied with that idea. (It's not attested in vertebrates, for one thing).

I spent entirely too much time thinking about this -- and this post is mostly for my amusement, but still.

Sexuate bugs (males and queen) are actually triploid, which means they have three sets of chromosomes instead of two.
Males produce haploid sperm, with only one chromosome.
Females produce diploid sperm, with two chromosomes.

Schematically, for a given allele, this works about this way:

Code: Select all

Male		Female	Offspring
ABC		DEF		
A		DE		ADE AEF AFD
B		EF		BDE BEF BFD
C		FD		CDE CEF CFD

But... the female gametes DE, EF, FD are actually viable in their own right, producing diploid individuals DE, EF, FD. They are part-clones of their mother (there's still meiosis and recombination involved, actually)
In ancestral proto-Bug populations, these could reproduce, but produced haploid gametes: D, E, F

But! A given diploid female - let's call her DE - (diploids are female for reasons I'll get into later on) shared only half her genes with her offspring (diploids weren't able of parthenogenesis like triploids were).
But with her triploid siblings, DE shares, for any given allele
ADE, BDE, CDE > 100%
AEF, BEF, CEF, AFD, BFD, CFD > 50%

WHich means she's 50% related to her children, but 66% related to her siblings. Which means she actually disseminate more of her genes by helping care of her triploid siblings than to reproduced herself. So reproducing isn't advantageous to her...
So triploid males remained males, triploid females became queens, and haploid females lost the ability to reproduce and became workers.

Sex determination is XY, just like us. So here's what happens with the sex chromosomes:

Code: Select all

Male		Female	Offspring
XXY		XXX		
X		XX		XX (diploid)
Y				XXX (female)
				XXY (male)

So diploids are always technically female (they don't share any genetic material with a male) but sterile.
Technically, we could say that Bugs have three sexes: XX worker, XXX female, XXY male.

Oh, how does such an diploid-triploid with partial parthenogenesis arise in the first place? Well, something much like this occurs in amphibians and lizards when closely related species hybridize. (So if you ever hear of eusocial frogs, well, you heard it here first).

[Pabappa]

I like this. I'm curious what the sex ratio is in this population? Are the XX's the majority?

Also, I think there's a tendency for animals with more chromosomes to be physically larger than those with less, .... so .... unless some other trait overrides it, the XX females will be smaller than both the XXX females and the males.

[Ares Land]

I like this. I'm curious what the sex ratio is in this population? Are the XX's the majority?

Also, I think there's a tendency for animals with more chromosomes to be physically larger than those with less, .... so .... unless some other trait overrides it, the XX females will be smaller than both the XXX females and the males.

Yes, in Bugs proper, the XX worker vastly outnumber the males and queens. There's about one male for two queens, and one queen for five hundred to a thousand workers.

In related species, queens usually get by with a handful of workers.

Males and queens are always larger than the workers, indeed. The extra bulk provides them with an advantage: the males are solitary predators, the queens need extra bulk and larger muscle and fat reserves as they do most of the heavy reproductive work. In Bugs propers, workers range from about 1 meter (80 centimers in some cases) to 2 meters; males are a little taller, around 2.3 meters, queens reach 2.5 meters, or even up to 3 meters.

That exercise was interesting in an unexpected way; I used to think of the males as well, drones: useless most of the time, diminutive and limited. They're actually very strong physically, and pretty smart as well (if fairly asocial).

[Pabappa]

So, does this mean that the heavy manual labor needed to keep society running is assigned to the people* least physically equipped to do it? That could lead to some significant resentment, I think .... although if the workers are literally 99.9 percent of the population, they may get their way more often than not. I think you could handle this in a lot of different ways. Very interesting idea.

*Using the term broadly here.

[Salmoneus]

It's a clever system, in that I can see why it would encourage eusociality.

However, I feel I should point out that you don't actually need chromosomal hijinks to 'justify' eusociality, which can evolve with an ordinary XY system. As, indeed, it has!

[Ares Land]

You have to look at this from an evolutionary perspective. Evolution doesn't really care if you break your back propagating your genes, as long as you propagate as much as you can

A worker actually propagates just as much of her genes doing manual labor as the queens do having sex and laying eggs.
Or to put it another way, evolution provided Bugs with different emotions than we do; they can feel resentment but not in that situation. (In much the same way, we resent waking up to feed the baby but we seldom fail to do so )

Besides, I believe the workers are actually better at manual labour. They're not as muscular as the sexuates but they have better fine motor control, for instance.

As for who gets their way, you can check out my earlier posts, but basically more often than not, the workers run the colony, the queens only chiming in occasionnally.

[Ares Land]

It's a clever system, in that I can see why it would encourage eusociality.

However, I feel I should point out that you don't actually need chromosomal hijinks to 'justify' eusociality, which can evolve with an ordinary XY system. As, indeed, it has!

I agree with you (termites are another very notable example) -- but it was more fun that way! Plus, I had decided upon a mostly-female society and I didn't want to change that.

Another advantage: this means that eusociality evolved several times in the Bug lineage, which gives more eusocial species, about which I'll say more later.

[alynnidalar]

So, does this mean that the heavy manual labor needed to keep society running is assigned to the people* least physically equipped to do it?

On the flip side, the heavy manual labor is assigned to the people who appear to be most likely to be cooperative and work together, given that male Bugs are solitary.

[Ares Land]

bug.jpg (75.15 KiB) Viewed 13426 times

Another bug drawing. Still ugly, but better than the previous one.

A few anatomical notes:

- Why the creepy long fingers? Well, it seems that the Bugs evolved from an animal that was capable of flight, or at least very good at gliding. Several Bug relatives can fly.
- Bugs have Roswell Alien black eyes. It's an adaptation to a nocturnal lifestyle. Just like owls, they can't move their eyes, so they move their heads often, and can rotate them to very impressive angles.
-The two small nostril-like openings below the eyes are actually heat sensors; the nostrils are the long slits below.
- Speaking of angles, you'll note that the head is a little assymetrical, and kind of skewing on a side. That is not entirely due to poor drawing skills. The ear holes (not visible) and the motion-sensing vibrissae are set in assymetrical location; the Bugs can locate the source of sound or motion by tiliting her head.
- The head is pretty huge. That's not really to house a huge brain. The head's size really serves two purposes: to allow large air cavities (the Bugs can't breathe through their mouth, so they store air to be used for extra aerobic effort. They also communicate using these cavities), and to carry powerful jaws. In a way, the Bugs large head is analogous to a hyena's large head -- and ancestral Bugs probably occupied a similar ecological niches. And just like a hyena, the Bugs' jaw can crush bones.
- The 'beak' actually opens laterally, like insect mandibles. Anatomically, they're actually arms, attaching to the chest, and enclosing the neck. The jaw and mandibles are homologous to forearms and hands. The mouth can open very widely and Bugs can swallow their smaller prey whole. A Bug eating is a pretty disturbing sight: she opens her beak in that 'flower mouth' configuration usually seen in horror movies, crunches her food rather than chew and swallows huge chunks whole. If we ever establish diplomatic relationships with the Bugs, it's probably best we avoid the diplomatic reception thing;
- The tail looks odd and sort of broken. And does it have claws? Again, this is not entirely due to poor drawing skills. The tail is actually a repurposed limb. Vertebrates on Orenda are heptapodal: two limbs make up the jaw, four make up the arms and legs, and the seventh has been repurposed as a tail in pretty much all species. Except Bugs and relatives, who occasionnally repurpose their tail as a third leg. (Note the tripodal resting posture).
- The red vibrissae are both motion sensitive and, probably, sexual display. This Bug is a worker, actually, so they're not terribly useful as displays: male Bugs have huge, horn-like tufts of vibrissae.
- The Bug is covered in scaly armor. That's not because she's a Tough Warrior Race Gal, but more mundanely, protection from parasites. Parasites are a terrible nuisance when huge groups live closely together. It's actually made of coarse, dense hair. The scales expand in winter to trap air for insulation, and collapse and grow denser and horn-like in the summer, to allow perspiration to deposit on them.
- The scales are paler and smaller on the face, forming something like a mask. We believe it serves to concentrate sound -- in effect, replacing ear pavilions.

[Vijay]

Still ugly

Please!

[Xwtek]

As comparison, bee's sexual determination system uses haplodiploidity and csd gene. Male bee has identical csd gene, either because it only has 1 gene (from haploidity), or because both the drone and the queen has identical csd (meaning it's inbreeding), although the latter is sterile and is then killed. Queen bee and worker bee is identical chromosomally. They're only different in upbringing. Queen bee is fed royal jelly exclusively, while the rest switches into bee bread after some days. Also, like Bugs, the colony is mostly run by the worker, not queen.

[Ares Land]

Yep. And actually most worker hymenopterans are perfectly capable of laying eggs -- they're just unfertilized, and workers police each other by eating the eggs. Some species actually produce 'anomalous' eggs, called trophic eggs, the sole purpose of which is to provide nutrition.
(The Bugs feed each other on milk produced in their digestive tracts. But related species do produce trophic eggs.)

Whenever possible, I've tried to come up with alternate evolutionary paths, though. That's a different planet, after all!

[Ares Land]

Not much time for the poor Bugs...
(I'm still working on the life story of a not-quite-average Bug worker... But I'm swamped with work these days).

Anyway, another Bug drawing!

IMG_20191108_134159.png (135.17 KiB) Viewed 11949 times

I just drew it hastily in half an hour over lunch today with an half-used, broken felt tip pen and, you know, I think it's one of my best ones!
Can you recognize the models I used?

If anyone has any drawing advice, I'd be very grateful. (I'd love to do one of these in a realistic style, with life-like skin texture and color, but it's a little too ambitious for me).

[Ares Land]

Hm. The Bug's life story is turning out a lot longer than expected. So maybe I can post it in installments?

The life story of a bug - part one.


Nanny Saberjaw examined the eggs carefully: a dozen large, dark, leathery eggs, like sacs made of leather, sticking to each other in a long chain. Mother Root, the ancient monster that had produced them lay on the ground of her cave, half asleep. Nanny Saberjaw chose four eggs for sacrifice : she was young, but still versed in the old ways of midwifery, and she had decided that the four largest eggs would not bear fruit. She slashed each of these four in one quick, surgical motion of her claws. ‘We give life so we may get life’, she intoned, and she presented the sacrificial eggs to Mother Root. The old queen devoured them eagerly, and then promptly fell asleep, laying down on the soft carpet. She would sleep for two days — egg-laying was an exhausting process, even for such a poor clutch. The queen’s mandibles were covered with drool, blood and egg yolk: Nanny Saberjaw licked those dutifully, and spat on the eggs, adding a bit of her own milk. She said the old words of blessing and placed them in a basket. It was a poor clutch. Sure, young queens laid fewer eggs, but old Mother Root, in her prime could lay forty or fifty eggs and she alone, produced a third of the eggs in Bri:n. It wasn’t a good sign.

Basket in hand, Nanny Saberjaw left the old cave that was Mother’s Root den, and entered one of the great nursery building. ‘I need a new cradle, a new cradle I say, a new cradle for Mother Root’s young’, she sang as she inspected each of the great boxes full of eggs, juveniles and rotting vegetable matter. On the side she found a cradle that was appropriately ripe. The sisters in the nursery had done well, the old eggshells and shed scales had been cleaned, the cradle, a meter long and fifty centimeters wide had been filled with autumn leaves. The leaves were barely recognizable now and Nanny Saberjaw, clicking with approval, placed her hands in it. The process of decomposition and fermentation gave off a comfortable warmth and the cradle’s temperature was perfect for the eggs. She placed Mother Root’s new daughters in the nest, buried them under earth and leaves.

One of the eggs was much larger than the others and in fact it had barely escaped sacrifice. In a larger clutch it would have been eaten. Instead, it kept warm and moist in the cradle and the little creature inside grew until she was strong enough to bite at the membrane and tear it open. The little creature inside peeped and protested loudly in surprise at the sudden feel of cold air, at the intrusion of bits of leaves inside the shell. The cries caught the attention of a young sister. The nurse took the eggs, and started taking the leathery membranous shell apart, until the small being emerged. She started climbing eagerly along the nurse’s arm, searching for the mandibles. The nurse opened her mouth, spreading the feeding arms far apart and the newborn started licking eagerly at the milk. She was covered with red down with soft shells underneath, trembling and clumsy, with head, hands and tail so large ti looked like there was nothing in between. When she finished eating, she regurgitated a bit of her own milk: witches’ milk, baby milk and the nurse ate it dutifully. Then she fell asleep, and her elder sister laid her down with care on the nest of leaves.

Autumn was coming to an end when she hatched, and she grew fast during the winter. She was born in the small month of the Rope, and so she would be named Ropemaker, daughter of Root, daughter of Bri:n. It was the custom in Bri:n that workers would get a name when they were born. In other nests, workers earned a nickname later in life, or lived with no names at all. It would take her a long time to learn her own name. To her mind, there was no difference between her and her little sisters. Even the nurse-sisters were a part of herself.
She had everything the young of her kind could have desired; she was growing in the great nave of a Nursery of Bri:n, and that meant comfort and luxury. The nursery was half buried, comfortably dark, warm and moist and on the whole grew all sorts of mushrooms good to eat. It smelt faintly of acrid secretions and decay, a sweet homey smell that Ropemaker would alway associate with home and companionship. She played rowdy games with her nest mates, until she grew strong enough to jump out of the cradle and into another one and play there with newfound sisters there. The huge vault echoed with the joyful screams of the young. Often a familiar would come into the nursery: a small hairy creature jumping on two legs and begging for milk. So the children fed the animals with a few drops of milk, and often enough an adult sister would give her more of her milk. Satisfied, the familiar would lie down to sleep, only to be assaulted by half a dozen juveniles, eager to pet her and the animal would retread to her hidden lodgings.

Soon she was large enough to climb the walls and the pillars of the nursery to the windows that opened near the roof of the half-buried nursery : one of her first memories was of walking outsize, surprised by the wet cold of fresh snow under her talons, and of getting back inside, shivering, to the warmth of the Nursery.
Sometimes she would visit her mother, Old Mother Root, along with her brood sisters — they never did anything alone, if a little one went somewhere, her cradle-mates were sure to follow. Mother Root was extraordinary large and old, her body dark with age and her eyes milky white. She dwelt in a cave, the very cave Old Queen Bri:n the Twice-Born and her sister had first used for shelter after they were chased from Halsi:. That cave had been the nest of an ogre. Ogres were very much like people, said Mother Root, but mean, dirty with awfully ugly faces, and they lived alone with only a few children around to aid them. Mother Root made the children feel the scratches on the wet cave-walls, where the ogres trimmed their claws. Bri:n the Twice-Born and her sister Ri:n trapped and killed the ogres one by one, and then went into the cave to kill the ogre-mother, larger than they were and full of evil and cunning.

The children worked themselves up into a frenzy of terror, thinking of the ogres, creatures just like people but mute, and with an evil face that ate babies during the day. But the nurse-sisters weren’t afraid of the ogres and dismissed Mother Root’s stories, and soon enough the fear disappeared and the little ones calmed down. How could they remain afraid when the daughters of Bri:n had no fear of ogres? The very memory of ogres disappeared — it would be many years before Ropemaker thought of the ogres again.

She had little sense of herself as a person, distinct from her brood sisters and distinct from the other people of Bri:n. Yet she was aware of a slight difference — she was growing more quickly than the others. When spring came she was almost as tall as her nurses. The people of Bri:n mostly slept during the winter, there was little to do anyway, but as the snow began to melt, the colony went into a frenzy of activity. There were repairs to be made, food to hunt, tubers to be planted. The children made themselves useful as best they could. Though her skin was still soft and she not shed her baby down, Ropemaker was already helping in the nursery. She was still clumsy, but she could carry leaves and clean as well as the nurses.

The sisters began beating on drums as the full Red Moon approached, and soon enough the Shepherd came. At first, Ropemaker was afraid of the Shepherd. She knew very little about her. She made herself useful, the nurses said, by caring for the behemoths that strayed too far from the city. She was very tall, taller than any other sister, except for the mothers, with an impressive crest and long twirling hair. She had a beautiful singing voice and she knew all of the old songs of Bri:n and accompanied herself with the lyre. The Shepherd was a nuisance, but harmless, her older sisters said. The Shepherd stayed a whole night and a whole day, and at midnight, under the crimson light of the Red Moon he went dancing some distance away. There was a lot of excitement and giggling as the queens went outside to dance with him. At dawn, the taller sisters kicked the Shepherd out without much ceremony.
The Shepherd, she learned, wasn’t a sister at all. He — for the Shepherd was a ‘he’ — was a brother, just like the annoying kid they called the Biter. Ropemaker liked taking care of the babies, but she didn’t care much for the Biter. He was taller than she was, but still lazing on a nest of leaves — he had an entire cradle for himself! — and whining like a baby. Worst of all, he would attack the nurses with his mandibles. The Shepherd was different, he had a strange sort of charisma and she had loved the dances and the feast and the party in honor of him, but she felt strangely relieved when he had left the nest. ‘He’s just annoying.’ said Nanny Saberjaw when Ropemaker or one of her sister asked her why they had chased her. To tell the truth, he hadn’t been any trouble at all. During his stay, when he wasn’t dancing and singing, he just sat somewhere, humming quietly to himself, looking contented and happy. Yet he disturbed their peace, he wasn’t a part of her in the way the sisters and the mothers were.

When Old Queen Bri:n Twice-born and her sister had defeated the ogres and salted their flesh for their young, they began building their home. The two of them went hunting and attack a large wild behemoth. It was Ri:n who struck the killing blow, but Bri:n who skinned and butchered the huge monster. The two sisters fought fiercely about that. With the bones of the Behemoth and his dried skinned, Bri:n the Twice-born fashioned their house, and then forbid Ri:n to enter it. Her sister had been lazy, she said. The two sisters fought each other fiercely: the Twice-born bit her sister in the neck and Ri:n was dead. Old Mother Bri:n cried for her sister, twenty days and twenty nights and her tears became the Snake river. She cried for so long that she forgot to eat, and died inside the belly of the beast her sister had slain. But when spring came she came back from the dead. That is why she was called the Twice-Born. The seven first workers had hatched from miraculous eggs: Leaf-cutter, Mushroom-farmer, Harvester, Saber-jaw, Fire-kindler and Ropemaker. In this way the city of Bri:n was born.
The bones of the slain behemoth still served as the scaffolding and pillars of Mother’s Root nursery.

Old Mother Root had not gone out to dance with the Shepherd, a fact that caused considerable dismay in the city. In fact, Mother Root never left her cave anymore, and when the children came to visit, she could barely remain awake long enough to greed them. Ropemaker and her brood sisters brushed her skin and fed her with their own milk, but Mother Root wouldn’t move. She was terribly sick, and it was clear she would not be cured.
Mother Root died at the end of the summer. Ropemaker and her brood sisters expected a huge fight — in the old tales, there was always a terrible fight when an old Queen died. That was how Bri:n the Twice-Born and her sister Ri:n had been chased out of Halsi:, after all, and later when Bri:n had her full complement of workers and had raised young queens of her own, she had sent her warriors to Halsi: for revenge. The daughters of Bri:n killed every queen, worker, male and child from the traitorous city and feasted on their flesh and bone.

But no such thing happened when Mother Root died. They all ate a small, symbolic morsel of her and then she was taken to the graveyard, outside, where she would fertilize the earth. The queens offered milk to Auntie Wildmushroom, the eldest among them and one of Mother Root’s sisters and that was all.

Every winter the city would become very very still and they spent most of their time in their buried vault and airy towers. Then males came with spring, sometimes it was the Shepherd, sometimes the Hunter, or the One From the Mountains. New children were born, old workers died. In the heat of summer nights, the older workers went to war or on hunting raids.

Ropemaker still took care of the young ones. The Biter had left the nest in anger, much to everyone’s relief.
She loved dearly all of her young charges, but her favorite was Stoneknife, a young gyne and a daughter of Auntie Wildmushroom.