As Rose awoke one morning from uneasy dreams she found herself transformed in her bed into a monstrous vermin. She lay on her disgustingly squishy side and if she lowered her head a little, she could see her peach torso and legs almost stretching away from her.
Her pedipalps along with half her legs were inexplicably absent and at the end of each remaining limb, five smaller digits seemed to hang there helplessly as she looked.
“What’s happened to me?” She thought. It wasn’t a dream. Her room, well, Sophodra’s storage room which Rose was using as a bedroom, seemed gargantuan to her. Rose guessed the distance from wall to wall to be roughly the equivalent of some entire bladders. An orchideo, roughly the size of a building, was laid upon a seedbox. Rose had found it in her room the day before and Sophodra said she could use it. All she had to do was hook it up, a lengthy process, but not necessarily a challenging one. Below that rested a scattering of flowers, any one Rose could’ve used as an entire bed, rather than bedding.
Rose became dimly aware of the curious fact that she could see the flowers at all despite them being all the way on the other side of the room and not being able to smell them at all. [1] The flowers themselves seemed to have also changed in the night, becoming a colour that Rose had never seen before. They were now a warmer colour, if still pale. It was like the sensation of a gentle breeze over your body, not strong enough to chill you, but to clear the air of any scents that stuck around too long, like the memory of an old friend’s name, just at the tip of your tongue, like the feeling that no matter how busy your life is, you can always find happiness in the smallest moments.
Rose felt a layer of skin slide over her two eyes, she was sure she had only two now, and kept them covered. She wanted to stay there, in her world of darkness where she can drift back to sleep and wake back up as herself again.
It didn’t work, each new feature of her body she discovered while laying on the floor motionless was like a thorn in her side, preventing her from relaxing more than a few seconds. The curtain of fur that grew straight out of her head, the way air seemed to rush in and be expelled from her mouth via some unknown force [2] and she could practically feel the slick oils coating her entire body. Rose felt a tightness as every muscle in her body clenched her breathing became shaky, as if each exhale had to stop and think for a moment before truly committing to leaving her. She was disgusting, a horrible creature that someone could step on and barely think anything about it. A wetness crawled down her cheek and deposited itself on the floor, Rose opened her eyelids and her enhanced vision now looked like a blurry smear, she flickered her eyelids closed and then open and the blurriness seemed to dissipate and a small gush of wetness joined the first. Rose leaned her head to look at the floor. Fluid was leaking out of her eyes, was she bleeding? The liquid was clear, but Rose couldn’t remember what colour Gub blood was. Rose didn’t feel any pain, Rose wondered briefly if Gubs even felt pain, but a memory of Sophodra flashed into her brain and scolded her for asking such a question. Rose clenched her eyes shut as another wave fluid escaped them. Rose remained like that for several minutes, salty water pooling beside her head as she wondered if she was injured. The tears stopped, as if someone tightened a faucet on her head and Rose realised her muscles were now untensed and felt as if a burden of stress has just been lifted.
Rose opened her eyes again and felt her eyes rotate in their sockets to look down at one of her new appendages. It was one of the ones closer to her head, with five splayed digits that had something that reminded Rose of chitin at the tip of each. Rose focused her mind on moving the longest one in the middle, to uncurl it so that it was pointing directly away from the limb it was connected to. Within a few seconds the didit reacted, obeying her commands, but not without taking the one to its left along with it. Rose tried bringing it back so that it would touch the flat plane that all the fingers seemed to sprout from, the one to its left responded again, almost as if there was an invisible strand of silk connecting the two of them. [3]
Rose tried moving all of her digits, left to right, in order and accomplished the task in only a handful of tries, she flexed all her fingers outwards making the appendage as a whole as flat as possible, then she clenched her fingers together, making them resemble a tightly crumpled lump of silk. She moved onto where the appendage was connected to its limb, and found that the joint was surprisingly flexible, supporting around 90 degree movement in all directions, allowing her to move her hand in a circle around it. Next she examined the joint in the middle of the limb, it was much less flexible, like a hinge, it allowed her only to change the angle at which the two halves of her arm was connected at, from where they could touch each other, all the way to the point they resemble one long, unbroken limb. She tried to then move her arm around the joint that connected to her abdomen? thorax? She didn’t know what to call it, but she found that the floor she was resting on impeded her movement of her arm, so very carefully, she took her other arm and planted it onto the floor, flexing her muscles she was able to leverage her torso upwards and manoeuvred it so it was parallel to the floor.
With the full range of her arm’s movement available to her, she concluded they were quite similar to her pedipalps. With careful adjustments of her shoulder and elbow, she found she could move her hand away and towards her, while keeping it completely level. With further experimentation, she found she could use it to touch any part of her body, to the furry top of her head, to the bottom of her feet. Speaking of which..
Rose hadn’t tried moving yet, her first impulse was to crawl with her four remaining limbs, but she would never crawl with her pedipalps and she knew Fire Gubs only walked using two, Rose could now see why; the limbs were disproportionate in length, meaning that if she wanted to crawl she would either have her torso tilted towards the floor, meaning that there’d be a disproportionate amount of her weight supported by her hands, which were clearly grasping tools rather than ones for support, or she could rest her weight on the joint in the middle of her leg, but that could damage that too. Her only option seemed to be to somehow balance on a quarter of her usual amount of legs and propel herself forward with them, how hard could it be? Gubs did it all the time.
Rose examined her legs, they were reminiscent of her upper limbs, a ball and socket joint where they connect to the torso, then a hinge joint, then an appendage with five digits connected to it, though her legs were a lot less flexible, which was completely fine with Rose. Looking at her foot, it was truly a bizarre appendage, with its oblong-wedge shape and flat bottom Rose suspected she was supposed to stand on. Rose moved her torso above her legs and shifted them so her feet were touching the floor, and very slowly, very carefully extended her legs, pushing her body straight up, only stopping to shift her weight or to prop herself up using her arm to avoid falling. After a few minutes she managed it, sort of. She was standing in an extremely wide pose, with her feet pointing in perpendicular directions, one arm extended straight out, and the other hovering over the floor, ready to catch her in case she lost her balance. Rose inched her feet closer together, stopping periodically to get acclimated to the new pose, until eventually she stood more or less in the confident, upright posture of a Fire Gub. She scanned her room and saw the flowers again. She oriented herself towards them and tried picking up her back foot and lurching it in the direction of the flowers. It didn’t work as she planned , in the split second without her other foot for support, her body started falling towards the floor. Once she planted her foot onto the floor, she found herself instinctively stretching her arms out to the side and pin-wheeling them around, miraculously, she regained her balance and recovered her posture.
Learning from her mistake, Rose shifted her weight to her front leg, practically standing on it, then lifted it, and brought it down in front of her. She only had a second to celebrate her success before she felt a vibration so strong it caused her to lose her balance and crash to the floor. Looking back she saw a giant praying mantis at the door.
Rose never saw Sophodra in so much detail before, she was aware of every bump and crevice on her exoskeleton, she could pinpoint exactly where her antennae were waving in the air and she had never noticed those black dots in her eyes before, [4] something about them unnerved her to her very core, she couldn’t explain it. Paired with the fact she couldn’t smell her at all, couldn’t read her emotions or even if she was saying something at all, it made her employer feel unnatural, alien, threatening. Sophodra faced Rose, seemingly noticing her for the first time and started crawling towards her. She seemed to be taking her time, each step advanced towards her much slower than Rose expected, like She was stuck in a cobweb. [5] As the insect approached, Rose involuntarily stood up and took a few steps backwards. Rose knew she needed to call out to Sophodra, to let her know it was her and maybe help her get back to normal. She didn’t notice herself subconsciously taking in a deep breath.
“Soph-” The surprise itself cut the word off in her throat , it gave her vertigo, the sensation of feeling vibrations that travelled through the air with as much ease and freedom as scents do. She raised her hands to the sides of her face and felt her ears between her fingers, then covered them completely as she heard a new sound, one so intense it made her press her ears into her head to attempt to make a physical barrier between her brain and the noise.
It came from Sophodra, it was the sound of torrents of water, washing away anything it came across, it was like a tyrant being able to silence others with just a glance, it was the instant and unavoidable destruction of lightning, it was the sound of monsters downwind, [6] it was something that Rose recognised it the the most core portion of her brain. It was danger.
With coordination Rose didn’t know she had, she pivoted on her foot and flung herself away, each leg was a mechanism, a spring whose sole purpose was to generate distance between her and Sophodra, each step’s momentum was carried forward into the next, her arms swung back and forth to counterbalance her strides. Rose pushed off the ground with each foot, briefly becoming airborne until the next caught her on her descent. Beads of liquid appeared on her forehead and her heart was beating faster than it had ever before in her life, and her lungs inflating and deflating at almost the same pace. It was the closest you could get to flying without wings. Rose looked ahead, despite how fast she was running and for how long, she was only nearly to the flowers. Rose felt her foot catch something and she looked down, it was one of the flower’s roots, something so small she had never noticed it before, never even seen it before, but now it was as insurmountable as a stone wall. With her front leg being unable to move out of the way, her back leg collided with it, causing her to topple forwards and collide into the ground, hard. She slid to a stop underneath the pink canopy of the closest flower. Her sides stung, her legs ached and there was a throbbing pain where her head impacted the ground. Her heart was still beating at the same rate, despite Rose being unable to use its energy, she breathed in and out rapidly, trying to recover from the pain. Rose tilted her head up, the flower’s stem was within reach, Rose clenched her teeth, pushed against the ground and stretched towards the stem-
Rose felt something hard press into her back and the ground being pulled out away from her as she was lifted into the air, without thinking Rose grabbed one of the flower’s petals as it passed her, it failed to stop her movement but Rose was left with a fistful of petal as she was torn away from the flower and carried somewhere else.
The Unknown nature kept Rose plastered onto Sophodra’s tarsal claw, her inexperience with how her new body moves kept her from maneuvering around to get into a better position. Sophodra’s constant back and forth swaying stride didn’t help either.[1] Her heart was thumping in her chest hard and the world was spinning around her. Rose looked down at the crumpled mass of petal in her fist and brought it to her face to see it better. She could distinctly see the intricate grooves and crevices on the surface of the petal, and even feel them underneath her fingertips, despite not having any tactile hairs on them.[2] But she couldn’t smell it, almost as if it wasn’t there at all. Maybe she wasn’t doing it right, Rose closed her eyes and felt air enter through the two holes on her face just above her mouth, and fill her lungs. She smelled… something, she wasn’t sure it was there at first, but she expelled the air from her body through her mouth and inhaled the air surrounding the petal again. It was faint, like how she imagined the ghost of a flower to smell like.
Rose took in her surroundings, she was definitely outside of her room now, and had entered the main area of Sophodra’s nest, the room yawned above and below her like a lime-green abyss. Previously, a fall all the way to the bottom would have shaken her up a bit, but wouldn’t leave her with any lasting damage, but now Rose doubted the fall would be so harmless. Rose looked up at Sophodra’s unfamiliar looking head. Where was she taking her? Without her pedipalps to detect pheromones, Sophodra’s emotions or intentions were completely unknowable to her.
It wasn’t long until Rose found an answer to her question, as that dreaded wall came slowly into view. At first, it looked just as she expected it to look, irregular cubbies embedded into the wall, with a transparent cover so you could see its contents without opening it. Behind it, Rose could see the scattered silhouettes of firegubs, until that changed. Sophodra crawled towards the wall at an agonizing pace, the wall in turn seemed to slowly grow larger, until it filled her entire field of view, until she was dwarfed by just a single cubby. She was in front of the wall now, Rose could even see the blurry figure of a firegub behind the transparent wall, just barely more than a body’s length away. Sophodra’s other claw crept into Rose’s view, cracking open the lid of the enclosure directly beneath her. Even with her dulled senses, the concentrated scent of firegubs made her recoil. The enclosure was almost fully open now, the hinged lid resembling the maw of a giant beast in Rose’s mind. She flopped against Sophodra’s tarsal claw, trying to gain purchase, she wrapped her arms around the appendage, clinging onto it for dear life.
Rose felt her entire body being lifted higher, her fingers burned with how tightly she was gripping onto Sophodra. She looked up at Sophodra’s face and once again she felt her gaze being drawn directly to Sophodra’s eyes, almost as if that would make a connection. Rose felt another mass of air being conjured from her lungs, being kneaded by her throat and molded by her mouth until it came out as a word.
“Please”
Suddenly Rose was accelerating downward, towards the enclosure. She tried to cling on with the last of her strength, but her grip failed her as Sophodra’s claw stopped suddenly, but Rose’s new body didn’t get the memo, separating from the mantis and falling into the enclosure’s gaping maw.
Rose thudded against something that emitted a sharp, loud noise that briefly drew her attention for some reason. She looked up to the outside world, only to catch a glimpse before the opening closed and was sealed away. Rose became aware that while the object she landed on was soft, it felt as if it contained countless hard, small objects inside it. She looked down and nearly jumped out of her skin; she had landed directly on a firegub. Rose scrambled to get off, accidently striking it with her flailing limbs before managing to escape. Rose retreated and felt her back collide with a wall. There were half a dozen firegubs in the enclosure with her, and they were all staring at her. It was unnerving being able to tell that she was the focus of their undivided attention, normal eyes could see in their entire range without moving at all, but these ones had to be directed at what their user wished to observe.
Rose had never seen a firegub without its plant-based coverings before and Sophodra had failed to mention that their pale, furless, soft bodies were vaguely reminiscent of larvae. When she looked at them Rose saw reflections of her brand new, twisted form. Hair that cascaded down their heads and around their shoulders. Limbs arranged in poses that displayed the comfort and confidence that their owners possessed. And resting on their chests were two masses of fat, each with a spot in their center, that Rose felt her eyes being drawn to. Sophodra called them mammaries, and there was supposedly something unique about human mammaries that Rose couldn’t quite remember.[3] Rose realised that she let her gaze rest on them for longer than she intended and averted her attention. She looked down at her own mammaries, as exposed to them as theirs was to her. Rose could now understand why they wore those garments, and wondered if it was at all similar to the behavior of bagworms.[4] She wondered what it’d be like to wear her own coverings, made from leaves, or maybe flowers, so she could hide away her new body.
One of the firegubs broke the tension by advancing towards Rose, she had yellowy fur and was slightly shorter than the others, Rose retreated half a step for each of her determined strides. She stopped when she was just over arm’s length away and made direct eye contact, Rose felt a mysterious droplet of liquid roll down the back of her neck.[5]
“Is that a petal? I’m tired of using fruit skins all the time, I’d buy it from you if you’re willing to sell.”
Rose’s mind reeled, somehow she read the tone of her voice as friendly, but the barrage of sounds that she threw at her suggested otherwise. She had barely a chance to recognise the noise as information before the firegub had its mouth closed and was looking expectantly at her. Rose tried to listen again but the sound was gone, vanished into thin air in the same moment it was uttered. All that was left of it was her memory of it and the silence it left behind. She looked at the gub’s face, trying to parse any information as to what she had said. The muscles around her mouth that contorted it into sort of an upward crescent were slightly more relaxed, as if she wasn’t putting in as much effort to maintain it. Her eyes were darting back and forth between looking directly at her eyes, or down to her hand. Rose followed her line of sight and found the petal clutched in her grasp. Did she say she wanted to do something with it? The thought was something Rose figured was worth pursuing. For the next few seconds she stared blankly at the firegub for several seconds before her brain was finally able to produce some useful information. Rose was certain it said that it wanted to purchase the petal from her. But that information was wrong, it had to be. Something wasn’t right, Rose’s stomach began to feel queasy as she felt the desire, the need to communicate with this gub, to learn more. In a process that was already starting to feel familiar to her, Rose carefully crafted a question using the enigmatic sound-based language. She expelled it from her mouth, accidentally saying it a tad too hastily and loud.
“You have money?!”
The firegub rested its hands on its waist and moved its pupils around in an exaggerated manner.
“Well, not on me right now, obviously. I meant that if I ever get out of here, I’d pay you a respectable amount for it, with interest.” The firegub was speaking with confidence and ease as if proposing a deal between two vertebrates was completely normal.
“I wouldn’t take her offer if I were you,” A voice called out from somewhere else in the room, “Thea’s been keeping track of how much she’s been spending, and if she has as much as that implies she would’ve never joined this line of work in the first place.”
The firegub that interrupted was lounging against the translucent wall. She had areas around her body where her skin was discolored or perhaps even melted? It was the worst on her arms and midsection. The way she sounded out each syllable was different to how the firegub that approached Rose, or even how Rose herself spoke. It was difficult for Rose to understand what it was saying unless she paid close attention.
Rose rubbed the torn petal between her fingers, trying to massage some of the creases that formed while she was clutching it earlier. She looked back up at the firegub that had made the offer. Her hand was outstretched and her fingers were bent slightly, as if they were eagerly waiting to coil around the next object placed in its palm. Rose felt herself bring the petal close to her chest.
“Umm.. no, I don’t…-”
Rose knew what she wanted, she thought she did. But wasn’t practiced enough with speaking to articulate her thoughts clearly. Or was it a good idea to deny the firegub? What if it got violent if it didn’t get the petal?
Just then, an authoritative voice popped into the conversation.
“Leave the new girl alone, Lesta.”
Rose craned her neck to see around the firegub, the one that spoke was standing near the back wall, her posture was rigid, but not stressed. Her hands were placed on her midsection and her eyes were glaring directly at Rose. Her glare uneased Rose and put her on edge, it carried the air of someone who was dangerous, but diligently practiced restraint.
The firegub that wanted to take the petal shifted its posture to match and stepped to the side, arms pressed to its side. “Yes, maam.”
The new firegub strode towards Rose, stopping at a much more reasonable distance from her. The fur on her head was rich, brown and shaggy, but it did nothing to take from her aura of composure.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
Rose hesitated, should she say her name? Rose couldn’t think of a reason why she shouldn’t. After all, they were just gubs. What could she lose by telling them?
“...Rose”.
Her own name felt alien in her mouth. Rationally, she knew the word meant ‘rose’, but having a personalized sound to refer to herself needed some getting used to. Even if it meant the same thing.
“Rose, huh? Lieutenant Margate. You’ve met Lesta already.” The woman turned to regard the other people in the cell. “This is Claire and Thea,” she then turned to a pair of firegubs that rested a small distance from the others, “and that’s Vinnia and Kiri.”
Margate brought her attention back to Rose, “So what’s your story? You don’t look like someone well equipped for the wilderness, so which haven are you from? How did you get caught?” Her eyes were locked onto Rose’s and there was a tone in her voice that made Rose believe that these questions weren’t to satisfy her personal curiosity.
“I’m not from a haven, whatever those are, I got caught by… well, it’s a long story.” Rose’s shoulders slumped, she averted her eyes to protect herself from the human’s gaze. The incessant questioning made her uncomfortable, she didn’t want to be here, trapped in this cage, in this body that doesn’t make any sense.
“That doesn’t make any sense, it’s unlikely someone like you could survive outside a haven, and even if you did, you would at least know what one is.”
Rose felt her heart rate rise, and she thought she saw the walls closing in on her. She could’ve sworn that Margate was getting closer to her, despite her feet being firmly planted on the ground.
“Plus, we have all the time in the world to hear your story, so how about you just start from the beginning?” She nodded her head forward, encouraging Rose to speak.
Margate wasn’t that much bigger than Rose, in fact she suspected the firegub might even be slightly shorter than her, that didn’t stop the feeling that she was looking down at her, analyzing her. Rose’s first thought was to just lie, make something up, pretend to be amnesiac. Until a part of her brain reminded her that she shouldn’t care what these gubs think about her. She should just say something to quiet them down, and work from there.
“I’m a tarantula, alright!?”
The effect was almost immediate, Margate paused, her hand resting on her chin and her eyebrows furrowed. Lesta and the others exchanged concerned looks between themselves. Margate asked a follow-up question.
“What does that mean? Is that the name of your group?” Margate asked.
Rose found herself adjusting her posture, straightening her back and looking down at the human.
“I don’t expect you to understand, but I’m going to tell you anyway.” She paused, taking in a deep breath, she held the undivided attention of the firegubs around her. “Until I woke up today, I have been a tarantula, an arachnid, my entire life.”
With that, Rose managed to pique the interest of every single human in the enclosure, they slowly moved to get closer to Rose, until they were arranged in a half circle around Rose, with the wall still behind her. Once again they glanced between Rose, each other and Margate, reading their expressions, and trying to gleam what would happen next. Except Margate, her eyes were fixed firmly on Lesta.
“Lesta?” She inquired.
Lesta had an answer ready for her.
“She’s not joking, she completely believes that what she’s saying is the truth.” Rose was taken aback, she didn’t expect the firegubs would have to validate that she was speaking the truth.
The human that Margate referred to as ‘Claire’ spoke up, “Sacre Bleu, she’s out of her mind.”
Her statement was met with unanimous silence. Rose noticed they once again all looked to Margate. It unnerved her, that all of these beings would routinely look to one person, almost religiously.
Margate took a moment to compose herself, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. When she opened them again, her gaze was steely and unwavering.
“Do you pose a threat to me or my women?”
Rose didn’t know what she expected, she couldn’t tell if her tone was completely accusatorial or only mildly so. Regardless, she didn’t want to find out what would happen to her if the gub thought she was an enemy, so she decided once again that being honest was her best choice.
“No”
Rose worried that she should’ve said more, defended herself a little bit, or given some more detail, but her thought process was interrupted by Lesta.
“That’s the truth as well, Lieutenant, it’s your call on what to do with Crazy Eights.”
Margate regarded Rose, her demeanor changing from an interrogator to an authority figure as she turned to address the humans around her.
“Standard procedure, we’ll sleep in shifts so at least one of us is awake at all times. I don’t believe she’s dangerous, but I want a pair of eyes on her in case I’m wrong.” She scanned the troop of humans in front of her. “Claire, you take first watch.”
And with that, the gubs finally let her be. She released the tension she was holding in her muscles and scanned around the enclosure and found an empty corner. Stretching her arm out to the wall to brace herself, she clumsily made her way to it. She sat down, bringing her knees to her chest and holding them closely. She felt two points of pressure build behind her eyes, just like when they leaked water before in her room, but right now, nothing came forth.
It was as if they were afraid of the other beings in the room, it was a shame, she could’ve used some emotional release.
It was maybe a few hours later when one of the firegubs wandered over and sat down beside her. Reflexively, Rose scooted away from her, just outside of elbow-bumping distance.
“Hey, how are you doing?”
Rose couldn’t remember this one’s name. Normally she would prefer to be alone when she was feeling stressed like this, but something was different, about the situation? About her? Rose found herself replying to the human with less hesitation than she expected. Rose didn’t want to think too deeply about that.
“Not well at all really, uhh, and your name is..?” Rose tried smelling her name off of her at first, of course that was stupid, this wasn’t a person who applies name pheromones to themselves. Luckily, the human didn’t seem to notice her slipup.
“Kiri,” the firegub provided, “and don’t worry about Margate not trusting you right now, that’s standard practice for her. It took weeks for her to come around to me and Vinnia.”
“It’s not her I’m upset about, it’s just… the situation I guess.” Rose said.
“You’d probably feel better after eating something.” Kiri said, and held out some kind of glistening object towards Rose. It was a tan colored wet ball that Rose assumed to be plant material of some kind. In her other had was a nearly identical, but slightly smaller object.
Rose was famished after all of the events of the day. She looked at the chunk of fruit that the human was holding. Was it clean? Safe enough to eat? Did she care enough for it to matter at this point? She reckoned that not eating would probably be more dangerous for her than most diseases she might pick up anyway.
She gingerly accepted the food from Kiri, muttering some words of appreciation that she didn’t quite understand the meaning of. The fruit was soggy and nearly saturated with liquid. Juice coated the palms of her hands and ran down her forearms, causing them to become uncomfortably sticky. Rose noted that despite how sensitive her appendages were to things like texture, she received no information about how it tasted. Rose brought the food up to her mouth, she deliberately avoided thinking about her mouth too much until this point. It was a bizarre cavity nestled right behind her face filled with countless immobile bone protrusions and a tentacle-like muscle in the middle of it, which she got more than enough practice using when she was speaking to the other humans. Even now she found the amount of saliva in her mouth building, her body knew what it wanted.
Rose sat there, unsure about how to actually start eating. Grinding it up and sucking it into her mouth like how she usually does was probably a bad idea.[6] The only way that she could get that kind of suction force in her new body was by using her lungs, but that presented a risk of inhaling some of the food.[7] She was smart, she could figure this out. She controlled her tongue, surveying the inside of her own mouth, taking in all the details she could. The bones in her mouth reminded her of the serrated segments on her fangs, and her mouth now was probably big enough to hold some of the food to be crushed. So, that was the first step, put food into mouth.
In retrospect, it seemed simpler than what she made it out to be.
Rose carefully inserted her fingers into the fruit and tore away a chunk of it about the size of her thumb. She brought it to her mouth, and slipped it past her lips. It was sweet, very sweet. It took her a moment to realise that she was tasting using her tongue. It seemed redundant, being able to taste something only after it enters your body. But she had to admit, there was something satisfying about it. Using her tongue she moved the food between her teeth, and bit down, separating it into two roughly equal segments. Carefully she positioned the two pieces beside each other and bit down again, releasing the juices trapped within the segments. She repeated this motion a few more times, feeling the juice run down her throat, until she was confident enough that it was in small enough pieces to swallow.
Rose looked down at the mass of fruit in her hands with a tiny sliver missing, and considering her current appetite, she would have to come up with a new strategy to quicken her pace. Glancing across at Kiri, Rose saw her biting into her own piece of fruit directly, removing the portion of food she wished to consume with her teeth. Rose thought that she could do that, easy. She brought it to her face and sunk her teeth into it, juices started streaming past her chin and down her chest. As she took the rest of the food away from her face, she realised that she overshot. Her mouth was filled by too much food, not giving her enough margin to maneuver it around. It was as if she bit off more than she could chew. Could she spit it out and try again? But Kiri was sitting right next to her, so instead Rose toughed it out, gnawing away at the unwieldy bite until she managed to swallow it. By then, the muscles in her jaw were sore, and Kiri was already finished.
“So, you said you were a tarantula earlier.” Kiri observed.
Rose noticed that the way she phrased that question implied she didn’t believe her, not entirely at least.
“I did, and it’s the truth,” Rose insisted, putting the last remaining fruit into her mouth.
“I’m not calling you a liar, I’m just curious,” Kiri defended, “For example, what species?”
Rose swallowed, “Grammostola Rosea”
Kiri didn’t ask a follow up question, but instead gave her a quizzical look.
“You probably don’t know it, I am- I was the only one”
Kiri stood up abruptly, “No, it’s not that, I’ve heard of the species, it’s just- it’s getting dark and I’m tired. If you don’t mind, I’m going to bed.”
Rose watched Kiri start to move towards the other humans, which were themselves getting ready to sleep, all except Claire.
“Have a good sleep.” Rose called up to Kiri, ”Thanks for keeping me company[8].”
Kiri turned back, “Goodnight, Rose.”
With her hunger sedated, Rose realised her eyelids felt really heavy. With a sigh, she leaned back against the back wall and closed them. Rose found rest easy, her limbs went limp, her breathing eased into a steady rhythm, and lastly, her mind cleared, sleep taking her at last while she clutched the petal loosely in her hand.