Work Text:
With great sorrow you plunge your chainsaw into the heart of the last tree in your lawnring. Although the emotional toll is also high, your immediate regret is because this results in a disgusting medley of parasitic juices rocketing into your person. Some of it gets into your mouth. Bluh.
There was a great temptation to leave off the culling of your garden trees until later, or use some other method to treat them, but you feared greatly for your oasis as a whole, and the health of all your various plants. You are not sure if the contagion could morph so aggressively, but you do so like to play it safe when it comes to taking care of what’s yours. This is Alternia. Anything could happen. It often does.
Plus your computer is broken and you have nothing better to do.
This whole day you have spent shredding and uprooting the infected trees. Tomorrow you plan to pile and burn them. Perhaps the various injected liquids have changed the properties of the wood enough that the fire would display an unusual color. You think briefly of commencing your bonfire at night and dressing for the occasion, but you are afraid it may draw the attention of musclebeasts, or worse. Besides your own safety, you have your lusus to think about. And it’s not like anyone would be around to see you, obviously resplendent in the fireside light, which would perfectly highlight the yellow of your eyes and play off of the black of your lipstick, which, if you were lucky, might smear with the application of some lips to yours-
That daydream sure got off track! You make one last great cut into the trunk of the tree in front of you before tearing the resulting sections out of the sandy earth.
You’ve grown stronger as of late. A sweep ago you would not have been able to process all these trees in one day. This pleases you, for though you have little taste for roleplaying, it is fun to imagine yourself as a heroine of the shadows. One needs strength, after all, in order to both save dashing romantic interests as well as maintain the arrangement of various plants.
For now you heed the call of hygiene. The clothes you shed are, unfortunately, an absolute loss. You clog the shower drain with the viscera of your various trees. You sit at the edge of the ablution trap and contemplate violence.
You end up using the scraper designated for sopor slime removal to finish cleaning yourself as best you can, and fling all the waste into the trap. Somehow the wardrobifier detects your less than pristine state and dresses you in plain work clothes as it did this morning. The trap’s drain makes some horrible gurgling noises- you have to do something about that. You dig out a box of dehydrated velvet worms from a closet. Using these things is always so, so grody. Still, it’s better than the mess in your bathroom right now.
You take a few of the cleaning products out of the box and put them in the sink, then turn the tap on. They absorb the water and grow to normal size, but you still have to activate them. You score a line in your palm with a claw and squeeze out some green blood onto their bodies. Very sensibly you resist the urge to lick your hand and instead disinfect your wound then wind a bandage around it. After a minute or so, the creatures start to squirm, looking for food. Typically onychoporans are hunters, not detritivores, but these were engineered for hivehold use. You dump them into the trap.
A cup of tea sounds very nice right now. You head to your food preparation block and put water in the enameled grub-case kettle to boil. Right now your favorite blend is one of dancing trolls and evening primrose. The sun is setting. The primrose flowers growing in the windowsill audibly pop open and the dancing trolls on the counter detach from their pedicels and make a run for it. You smash the delinquent flowers to prevent their escape; you have grown used to their tiny screams. It’s very good tea!
The tea and a hearty dinner of meat and grubloaf cheer you. You peek into the ablution trap and find most of the slime gone and the velvet worms engorged with their efforts. Leaving them overnight is probably okay, and in the morning you can take them to the garden and feed them to your mom. She’ll be happy for the treat, and the velvet worms will have processed the remaining parasites by then.
The day’s labor has made you quite tired, but though your muscles ache your mind is still restless. Perhaps you can do some planning for the quilted jacket you wanted to make. You have too many fabrics and it would be a good way to use some of the excess cloth. Just think of it- all the different colors you’ll be able to integrate into one piece! The various texture that will come from the quilting! The neon piping you’ll add to the edges! Plus, after you reduce your ridiculous fabric collection to a more manageable size, you can start to think about ordering some grubs genetically modified for silk production, and weave your own cloth with patterns more to your taste. That is, any patterns. Most trolls just don’t understand aesthetics like you do.
These happy thoughts are interrupted by a scream like the shattering of your chainsaw through glass.
For the most part, the undead stay clear of your oasis, which is why your mom guided you to this location to plant the seed of your hive in the first place. An occasional interloper will stray from the roving hordes, and though the zombies are dangerous, you can probably handle one on your own lawnring.
You pick up your lipstick and go outside.
Both the moons are already up, envy pink and calm green. The breeze that tiptoes through your hive is now waltzing through your hair and making your clothes ripple. Besides the current danger, it’s a very nice night.
With its cries as a guide, you find the zombie running along one of your perambulating lanes. As you get close, you can see that it is the remnants of a young blueblood, around your age. Your heartbeat spikes even as you see that the horns aren’t right. It takes advantage of your momentary confusion. The zombie darts inside your reach with the chainsaw and clubs you with hands laced together. Perhaps it was a fistkind in life. Though you stumble, you manage to lower your weapon and strike back with a forearm to its head, knocking loose some teeth from its maw. It staggers back, and you use the heavy fuel tank to bash its body to the ground. You hear cracking noises. Once a troll is dead, dehydration rapidly reduces muscular and skeletal integrity.
You put a foot on its pelvis to pin it down and jerk the cord on your chainsaw. It starts up with a purr. The zombie is tearing your skirt with its claws, scoring lines in your calf, kicking out at your other leg in an attempt to fell you. You grit your teeth from the pain, squint to protect your eyes, and bring the blade down. The undead’s clamoring quiets as you bisect the head; its movements still as you shear off all the limbs.
Your body is alight with aches and the pain in your leg. You switch off the chainsaw. The quiet helps you realize you have a headache. Seeing your lusus amble over, you wave off her concern and head back into your hive and up to your respiteblock. You don’t even bother to take your clothes off before sleeping, just add a jar of goldcup poppy extract to your sopor and sink in.
You have another full day of chores tomorrow.