Botober 22: Chrysalis
Oct. 22nd, 2020 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alfvaenThis piece came out a little better than I thought it was going to. Today's Botober prompts were:
Chrysalis
Shookswobbler emerged slowly on their dozens of legs from the bark of the gigantic floating tree, leaving a cloud of wood shavings to every side. They weren't moving as quickly as they had been when they entered the tree several days ago. The craving for the wood had come upon them suddenly, and now they felt a sort of lethargy and heaviness.
They crawled onto a branch, clinging with hooked feet in the microgravity, and began to regurgitate some of the wood they had eaten, now in the form of a gooey pulp, clinging to their muzzle with surface tension. Slowly Shookswobbler shaped it into an enclosure, surrounding themself on all sides, narrowing as it drew away from the branch and meeting as a dome. It hardened quickly into a thick sort of paper, and, very tired now, Shookswobbler curled up into a ball and slowly became still.
Enzymes in the paper began to work on Shookswobbler's furry and scaly form, breaking it down into a formless ooze. Shookswobbler themself could be said to have stopped existing entirely, and if the paper shell had been broken open, the substance inside would not have remained alive for very long in the near-vacuum.
Slowly the ooze began to absorb more material from the paper, and rearrange its own substance, like a crystal growing on a string. A solid shell formed again around the ooze, an intricately folded form of delicate iridescence. The light of the nearest star was eclipsed, and the temperature dropped, then rose again as its light returned.
Finally, in a gust of high stellar wind flux, the paper shell, now thin enough to be almost transparent, split open. A new being who was no longer Shookswobbler emerged, unfolding into a delicate, elongated form too graceful for gravity. They rested a while, unfolded their wings, and sailed away on the photon pressure, meditating on a new name.
- Things: Shookswobbler
- Concepts: Space butterfly
- Advanced: existing/non-existing distinction
- Terrible: Wood shavings
Chrysalis
Shookswobbler emerged slowly on their dozens of legs from the bark of the gigantic floating tree, leaving a cloud of wood shavings to every side. They weren't moving as quickly as they had been when they entered the tree several days ago. The craving for the wood had come upon them suddenly, and now they felt a sort of lethargy and heaviness.
They crawled onto a branch, clinging with hooked feet in the microgravity, and began to regurgitate some of the wood they had eaten, now in the form of a gooey pulp, clinging to their muzzle with surface tension. Slowly Shookswobbler shaped it into an enclosure, surrounding themself on all sides, narrowing as it drew away from the branch and meeting as a dome. It hardened quickly into a thick sort of paper, and, very tired now, Shookswobbler curled up into a ball and slowly became still.
Enzymes in the paper began to work on Shookswobbler's furry and scaly form, breaking it down into a formless ooze. Shookswobbler themself could be said to have stopped existing entirely, and if the paper shell had been broken open, the substance inside would not have remained alive for very long in the near-vacuum.
Slowly the ooze began to absorb more material from the paper, and rearrange its own substance, like a crystal growing on a string. A solid shell formed again around the ooze, an intricately folded form of delicate iridescence. The light of the nearest star was eclipsed, and the temperature dropped, then rose again as its light returned.
Finally, in a gust of high stellar wind flux, the paper shell, now thin enough to be almost transparent, split open. A new being who was no longer Shookswobbler emerged, unfolding into a delicate, elongated form too graceful for gravity. They rested a while, unfolded their wings, and sailed away on the photon pressure, meditating on a new name.
