Sidus
by
Shannon Barber
Listen, Professori. Welcome learned one to my home.
Oh no, no, I am no spider. I will not burn you, you are my biographer. You are my flameless mouth in the world. The Beholders and Scriveners have seen now you shall tell.
I am born of The World. Like all my brothers and sisters, we are made here and die here by blade or stick or the magic.
I am only one, I am a child here.
Oh, you, no need to flatter me. I know to your eye how I must look.
What’s that?
Gender, yes. Not in the manner you understand. I am for our purposes female male rather than male female.
It means that I am the vessel of young. Male females can carry no young.
Yes, to your eye we all look female. We have evolved to be pretty things, a nightmare wrapped in the pleasing architecture of what in the world is read as female. Someday I would like to meet our Generist. What an eye for form and beauty they have. Their terrors speak to elegance and wonder.
I Sidus. I am female male Sidus. I am the maker of more of us and the crucible of the unwary.
Anatomy? Of course, how rude of me.
This, look closely, but not so close your face hairs burn, is the Fire of Consciousness. As you can see, mine burns close to my skull. I am less gregarious than many of the others. My secrets are closely kept. This is not where the danger lives. Now step back, inside here is the danger.
In my throat lives the Hunger. The Flames of Avaricious Absolute Need. We must feed the flames, we must give the fire what it screams for. You see we are not mindless ravening things, we are not the creation of a simple Generist, our maker is well- suffice to say our maker has great scope and vision.
Forgive me Professori, I am perhaps too eager. I don’t mean to stand so close to you.
I- oh oh dear.
I am so sorry. I did not mean to do that. I don’t even know how that happened my flames are sated. I must say, you are lovely while you burn. I wonder will all your knowledge burn with you?
Now you will die.
Before you are ash and smoke may I tell you a secret?
The World will-
Oh, damn.
Goodbye Professori. May you burn with your brethren, and let the fires keep you warm.
Dammit – I wanted to hear the secret. Of course, I’m not sure it would have been the truth.
“In my throat lives the Hunger. The Flames of Avaricious Absolute Need. We must feed the flames, we must give the fire what it screams for. You see we are not mindless ravening things, we are not the creation of a simple Generist, our maker is well- suffice to say our maker has great scope and vision.”
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I think the conversational back-and-forth and the second person POV works well for your tone, Shannon. And I think you could write an entire chapter on “You are my flameless mouth in the world.”