***
The next week was very busy. The female put all the males to work rebuilding the camp into a proper city. Since we had no queen, it seemed a futile effort, but it kept everyone too busy to think about the battles they had lost, and many found hope in the idea that we could return to normal lives.
She was gone the entire time. Wilson seemed happy to take command of the construction projects, while I spent the time talking with everyone in camp to find some idea of how we might learn to speak with the aliens. My reputation had grown again with the retelling and re-imagining of my role in the battle. She gave me her sword to wear while she was gone, and as she hoped, that led everyone, including Wilson, to see me as her voice in her absence. That meant that when I talked people listened. When I asked for their help, everyone took it as their most important task to find an answer for me. I dreaded the thought that I would have to tell her we had come up with absolutely nothing when she returned at the end of the week.
At the end of the week she did return as planned, and brought with her no less than twenty two other females. Needless to say, no work was done at all for the next few days as every male in camp was overcome by their presence. A few weeks ago, I might have been just as lost as the others, but now I could only see one female among the crowd. She introduced me and the others swarmed around me clearly fascinated by a male who did not fawn in their presence. When I thought they might devour me, she managed to direct their attention to the new city laid out before them, and they all flew away to claim their own quarters.
When we were alone at last I tried to return her sword, but discovered she was already wearing another. She insisted I keep this one and took it upon herself to teach me how to use it. Although I could see no reason to learn the use of a girl's weapon, I would accept any excuse to spend time with her. The weapon was made of a metal I didn't recognize. The grip strapped over my strong claw and I found that even if I tried I could not cut through the handle. That gave me great confidence in wielding the blade, and in no time it became as natural to use as my own claws. There was another dance for the sword similar to the dance with the spears, and now we spent our evenings practicing that dance together, then lying together in her chambers at the city center as we talked about the past, and dreamed about the future.
Dreams never work out just as you might hope. One day, one of the other females returned to report that the aliens were moving in our direction. In a few days they would destroy our new city just as they had done so many times before, and we would be driven out into the wilderness again.
It was Nub who saved us this time. A few days before he had suggested to me that even the aliens should understand the universal language of mathematics, and even though I really didn't understand how we could get the message of, "Stop destroying our cities," across using only numbers, I brought his plan before the council of females who were ruling our new city as a group until a single queen could be chosen. They agreed that since we had no other plan, this plan was the best one we had, and Nub found himself in charge of implementing it.
He took over the best of the work crews and taught them how to build geometric figures. Soon the entire city was surrounded by oddly unnatural structures. The hope was that the aliens would recognize some of the shapes before destroying them all, and if they looked closely enough they would see that we were here and spare our lives if for nothing more than entertainment value.
With news of the imminent approach of the aliens, the council decided that we should place a few more of the geometric symbols in their path as far from the city as possible in the hope of slowing their approach by means of curiosity. For every minute they were admiring our work, we had another minute to retreat out of their path.
I set most of the people to moving our supplies to the other side of the river. From the experience of the females, we knew that the aliens took several days to as long as a week to cross a river. That would be vital time needed to begin our communication.
Nub and his construction crew needed scouts to warn them when the aliens were approaching too close. Of course I volunteered Wilson.
"We all know that Wilson is the bravest of us." I declared, and he was unable to muster that look he always gave me because he found himself surrounded by the other females. Before he recovered from that scrutiny, he found himself on top of the far hill watching for the approach of the aliens.
I could not resist climbing to the top of the next hill west of Wilson to see the approaching aliens myself. Nub's crew had already built three large mud shapes here and as I climbed onto the flat top of the mud circle, I lost the will to move, terrified to see two male aliens approaching. In moments they were there above me. One of them was barking a string of vibrations into the air from inside its large circular nose as it gestured wildly with its weird claws toward the shapes.
I dropped my spear and drew my sword taking a defensive position at the center of the circle. The second alien grasped its nose with one claw and lifted the circular part with the two thick whiskers completely away from its face long enough to boom back at its companion through what appeared to be a small mouth with great square teeth. Its nose covering snapped back into place as it inspected the triangle to my right, glanced at the square to my left, then bent its legs and leaned down to look closely at me. I held my sword between us hoping that I could get in a single sting before it captured me, but it only looked at me. I could not move. I knew that if I turned my back to run it would capture me as easily as the first alien I had met back in the caverns.
My thoughts flew to her. Would she appear to rescue me again? Would this alien pop me into his pouch and carry me away, never to see her again? The back side of the alien's bizarre claw reached toward me, but did not quite come within reach of my sword. For a moment I thought it was going to brush me off of the top of the circle, but it must have seen my sword and changed its mind. It extended a single appendage at the end of its claw, the other four appendages bending unnaturally back. As the alien moved its claw left then right then left again. I followed the motion with the tip of my sword. Then it made more of those roaring vibrations toward its companion who also bent down to get a closer look at me.
Suddenly I realized that this was exactly what I had been hoping for. The aliens were watching me. This might be my one chance. Slowly I lowered the tip of my sword and scratched out a neat triangle in the dry mud surface between us.
The closest alien roared loudly and stood with a speed that belied his size. The other alien joined in his agitation, and they reverberated at each other, stomping around for several seconds, before returning their attention to me. Slowly the first alien bent down before me and reached out with its single appendage. It scratched a crude rectangle in the dirt next to my triangle. Victory. Communication was established. Now, I just needed Nub to continue. I turned to look for him, but instead saw that nearly the entire camp was moving up the hill toward my position, led by the entire council of females. What were they doing? They were all supposed to be waiting across the river. If I didn't start a peaceful dialogue at this very moment another battle was likely to break out when they arrived.
I turned my attention back to the motionless alien behind me. It was watching me intently. I scratched out a proper square next to its crude rectangle and again it roared at its companion. I watched with horror as a third male alien approached at a hurried pace from the hill where Wilson and Nub had been working. This one was much slimmer than the other two and had a mass of long thin fibers hanging thickly from the top of its head. Its bark vibrated the air at a much higher frequency at these two while making wild gestures back toward where it had come. The second alien from my audience bounded off to follow the third back to see Nub's latest work.
The lone remaining alien leaning over me took the opportunity to scratch out another crude triangle. I decided to hurry along the message that Nub had taught us. Next I scratched out a shape with five sides. I wish I had paid more attention to what Nub h
ad called that. Then, before the alien could react, I quickly scratched out a hexagon, I remembered that name for some reason, then a seven sided shape followed by an eight sided shape.
I wasn't sure what reaction I expected, but from its body language I think the alien was expressing either joy or fear. For all I knew of the aliens it may have just been gas. Then I realized that the alien was no longer looking at me. It was looking at the mass of people arrayed across the hill behind me. I was a little intimidated by such a show of force myself. My mind scrambled for something to defuse the possibility that the warrior females would attack. I sheathed my sword and picked up my spear. With a loud flourish I called the men below me to attention and began the stick dance. To my great relief, they all joined me in unison. The site of five hundred well trained soldiers moving in unison, must have been too much for the alien because when I turned back to face it, it was gone.
***
I nestled into the warm embrace of my queen. No one had been more surprised at the council's choice of queen than she was. And no one had been more surprised at her choice of consort, than I was. Since the beginning of the peace, our city had flourished. She had chosen to name it New Erowhen after her lost home, and I had cultivated a lovely garden in the royal courtyard to remind me of my lost home.
The aliens had placed a long line of tall metalic posts just beyond the hillside with Nub's shapes, and the female aliens would not pass that line. Every day several male aliens would amble up to the hilltop to watch in wonder as a small group of men entertained them by drawing various shapes in the dirt, then performing the stick dance. It was a good thing that the aliens were so easily amused.
A few teachers had been found in our camp and they had been assigned the task of teaching the aliens to read. Nub believed that they might be intelligent enough to learn such a simple task, but I doubted it. He had directed workers to lay out a long line of slate stones across the top of the hill where I had first communicated with the aliens. Then as a small group of the aliens watched, we had laid out hundreds of small items along the hilltop and drawn the symbol representing each of those items with chalk on the slate. That seemed to make the aliens exceptionally agitated, but they had eventually settled down and to my great surprise a few of them seemed to be learning a few of the symbols. Perhaps one day we would be able to ask them where they had come from. Why they were destroying the world? Why did they wear those odd round covers over their nose and mouth? Perhaps even how could they mate with those horrible mindless yellow monsters?
A few of the other females had all flown up or down the river to become queens of their own cities. Four others had remained here as soldiers, and the rest had gone to be soldiers in the other new cities. They found that they could mark their territory by building Nub's shapes on the hills around each of the new cities and the aliens would soon place their own metal territory markers just beyond.
Nub and Wilson had both been spirited away by other females to be consorts in the other cities. I found that I missed them both terribly, but my queen could make me forget anything when she chose. I suppose I would be able to find time to visit them if I wished, but for now I could not imagine any reason to leave the embrace of my queen for more than a few hours.
Life was good. I had everything I could ever have dreamed of and more. I had no cares, even knowing that one day it would have to end. As the primary duty of the Queen, she would inevitably come to me one day overcome with the need to produce children. I would happily surrender myself to that joy as was the primary duty of the Queen's Consort, after which she would bite my head off and devour my body, necessary nourishment for the hundreds of eggs she would lay. Still, I couldn't imagine a more blissful way to end such a perfect life. I had finally found the one thing that I could do better than anyone else.
Thank you for reading Chitin. I would appreciate if you could take a few minutes to leave an honest review detailing a few points that you liked and disliked about this story.
Magi
The Mistaken
Parity
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