- Larva, newly awakened and ghostly white; fed by patient nurse-servitors. Beads of nectar. Awareness returns slowly: memories rebuilt, patterns handed down over dozens of looping generations.
- Around her gathers her voice-swarm, a buzzing chorus, each member sounding a different click or trill or harsh fricative. Their soft thrum grows into an agitated discord - her first words -
- sisters - where are you?
Neke-Atcinna is sister to Okyno and new owner of Twin.
- Knowledge floods the growing Queen's brain. Experiences and thoughts - all the things she has missed during her decades-long sleep. Now, at her ordained point in the cycle, she returns... to find her palace abandoned and overrun, her clan's succession interrupted.
- Images flash before her mind's eye: sisters and ancestors vanished; strife and discord in the Palace; daughters rebelling against the family's wishes...
- ...and one note of deep sorrow, recurring. Her own line. Her daughter.
- A vine creeps up the trunk of a sturdy tree. It coils about the tree's limbs, reaching higher and higher, catching more precious light, entangling the branches it grows upon and weighing them down. By degrees, it strangles the life out of its host.
- Slender limbs of iridescent chitin, wrapped in quicksilver coils. An echo of cruel laughter.
Atcinna has made nectar-bearers and silkworms of Amanita's former harem, and done likewise with sabina, chattel of the Architecture. sabina was rescued and subsequently purchased by Kehari? and Lysette - who were also foolish enough to drink the nectar (see Lysette's logs for a full account).
- The cocoon splits slowly, its translucent membrane giving way as the new Queen emerges. Heaving free of her covering, she lifts her head, tasting the air; she spreads her glossywet wings; she stretches her long limbs.
- She is pale green. Her face is slender, and to a chordate, would seem to smile gently. Her antennae wave, curious and graceful, and her arms are likewise in constant, easy motion, like a tree in the wind, like elegantly made clockwork. Her narrow thorax with its impossible waist gives way to a voluptuous abdomen, the segmented curve of which tapers to a delicate point. And as her wings unfurl, they are clear as glass, divided into narrow panes by veins of jet black. Their pattern, merely decorative to an outsider, and the deep ultraviolet fringe at the tips of her wings, signify a state of mourning.
- Small servitors creep about her, consuming the empty cocoon, fanning her dry, offering her nectar. Thoughtful, she drinks and stretches, rising at last to her full height. Her maids bustle in with her costume for this day, a net of dark, glittering strands, and carefully help her into it. Rows of hollow baubles hang around her neck, and one by one her voice-swarm enter these, taking up their seats: a choir strung across her flaring shoulders. A murmur goes through them, tuning up, a clearing of the throat.
- "I thank you all. Now let us to the Grand Chamber."
[sketch] (Not quite as narrow as she's described, but it gets her general shape and demeanor across.)
![[sketch]](images/Atcinna-2004-0929.jpg){kind=link}