Over the next several weeks Myrio began to regain his will to live. He was still stuck in a hell of a situation, blind and helpless underground with a bus-length monster and a belly full of eggs. But at least now he had a distraction.
Ever since he had stumbled upon the beast’s language, he could not stop thinking about it. There was very little to hold his attention in the den. There were the random pains of his body, bruised and malnourished and still stuffed with eggs, and he was happy to be distracted from all of that. So he listened. The beast was noisy. It spoke to itself frequently, as if narrating its own activities and thoughts to an imaginary audience. When it spoke, Myrio would carefully listen. He would pick apart the strange strings of hissing and clicks and hums. He would find phrases and would memorize them, trying to divine what they could possibly refer to. It was not easy, but he had nothing else to do, so within a day he had a whole head full of memorized ‘centipede words.’ He only knew the meanings of a few though.
The fateful word that he had repeated back to the centipede that time, when he had first realized the creature’s intelligence, turned out to refer to the fruits he’d been brought. The centipede brought them to him frequently, keeping him hydrated and fed. And everytime it returned to the burrow with the water-filled plants it would repeat the word. He had also figured out the word that meant “prey.” Occasionally, the centipede would return with food for itself. Myrio could not see what it had caught, but he would hear the wet noises of it eating. He would also recognize a word he could only guess referred to the meal. So he had learned “fruit” and “prey.”
It was like this for a long time. A very strange relationship where Myrio would listen and recognize certain phrases, but could not derive any meaning from them or do anything with them. But he wasn’t all that interested in what the creature was saying anyways. He was far more interested in the simple fact that it was speaking. He let himself entertain the notion that this centipede was using intelligent speech. If that were true, it meant it was not a mindless beast, but a thinking being. How intelligent could it be? And what was the nature of that intelligence? These were still mysteries. But Myrio felt comforted, or at least distracted, to perhaps not be utterly alone in the universe. At the very least, there was one other conscious being. Even if it would eventually kill and eat him, there was a primal solace in knowing that.
Weeks went on like this. Or at least it felt like weeks. Myrio had no accurate gauge of time. He could barely tell the day and night apart by the change of temperature in the den, and he’d lost count of the days quickly. He would not be rescued, so why should he have cared about time? Mostly he slept.
When he did not sleep, he either listened to the monotonous language of the centipede or, when it was silent or not in the den, he would think of his old world and everything he’d left behind. He hadn’t had much by the end of that life. If he had, he never would have allowed himself to be drafted into their desperate hibernation program. He was living in poverty, with no friends or family left. The world had been falling apart. Still, he missed human faces. He missed food, real food. He missed talking. He told himself that he was fortunate. The poverty of his old life only made it hurt a little less when it was taken away. But sometimes, when he was alone in the den and could not sleep, he would remember his mother’s face and weep.
Then there were the eggs. He tried very hard not to think about them. And he was successful, mostly. If he did not move around much, he would not feel them and could put them out of his mind. But when he had to eat, or move to the makeshift toilet he had dug out in a far corner of the den, he would be reminded of their presence by the sharp stabs of pain in his gut. He had tried to remove them more times then he could count. But they would not budge from inside him. They were fixed tightly in place. He somehow was still able to get food through his body, but if he ate too much it would cause horrible aching for hours. So he ate small amounts of the fruit he was brought over time. When he could not distract himself from the horrible reality that he was a living egg sack, he would have nightmarish visions of the eggs hatching, the larvae bursting out of his stomach or eating all his organs while he writhed in agony. He thought he had nothing more to lose, but when he thought of those things, he realized that at the very least he could hope for an easier death. There was nothing he could do but avoid thinking about it. He hoped that the eggs might die inside him anyways. This couldn’t be a very natural method of incubation for the species.
Eventually, Myrio grew restless. He could not stand another day of staring into the dark and doing nothing. His body had healed and was eager to be used again. His desire for stimulus of any kind began to outweigh his fears. It was only a matter of time until he again attempted communication with the centipede.
It was on impulse when it actually happened. It was a particularly cool night in the den and he could not sleep. The centipede had been leaving more frequently lately and for longer periods of time. Myrio began to feel something akin to loneliness in its absence. Having the creature beside him helped remind him that he was in a den, not a grave. So after hours of trying to force himself to sleep with no success, the sound of pointed legs punching earth coming from the entrance of the den was welcome. It had returned without meat again. It quickly flung a few of the fruit it had gathered in Myrio’s direction before coiling tightly. It was curiously silent, which was uncharacteristic. It was usually so noisy after a hunt. Myrio did not have any reference for centipede behavior, but he guessed that this might be frustration. It was almost as if it was pouting. Strangely human for a bug.
The silence began to annoy Myrio. Listening to the creature’s strange language was his only form of entertainment and he had come to expect it. But the centipede seemed intent on staying silent. Boredom turned out to be a good motivator, because Myrio found himself trying to provoke the creature into speech. He whispered the word he’d said last time, ‘fruit’, but there was no response. He repeated the word again, louder this time. Then again, even louder. The centipede’s upper body suddenly lifted off the ground, turning to stare at Myrio. Once again, both beings pondered the other, wondering if the strange creature before them could possibly be like themself, or if this was just a fluke event repeated again. The centipede must have decided on the latter, because after a brief moment of tense silence, it returned to its coil. Myrio waited for any further reaction and got nothing. It appeared that any suspicions of the beast’s intelligence he’d had were simply delusions he’d gotten too caught up in.
He was ready to give up when the horror of existential loneliness struck him. His belief that just maybe this thing he was now living with had a mind, that had been comforting to him. And now it felt like that comfort was being ripped away. Complete solitude in the universe was feeling that crept back through him like ice crystal stabing their way through his veins, en route to his heart. As dread and despair began to set in, he decided he wasn’t going to let them take hold. A fierce impulse to prove he wasn’t alone overcame him, and he began to hiss.
He hissed and clicked and began to spit out every word he had memorized from the strange language he’d been meticulously analyzing for the past few weeks. They tumbled out of his mouth, his tongue and lips struggling to form the strange alien sounds, but not stopping. His throat burned, but he only spat out the alien words louder. It was the most noise he’d made in weeks and it was liberating. He couldn’t stop himself. He reached a feverish pitch, spiting out a string of words whose meanings he did not know and which could not have possibly made any sense. But his goal was not to make sense. He only sought to accomplish one thing, and he was desperately set on it. He cried out in an alien tongue, attempting to piece through the dense suffocating void that separates all conscious beings from all others. He was attempting to do what all intelligent life aches to do. He was trying to sooth the ever present loneliness of existence. He was trying to connect.
He knew he must have sounded absurd to the centipede. He did not even know if he was properly replicating its language at all. And of course, there was a chance that it might decide to silence this noisy thing in its den through lethal force. But if there was a chance to break through and make any connection in this desolate wasteland, even with a monster, he realized now that he would take it.
He was screaming now. The ugly sounds tearing up his throat as tears rolled down his face. His hands shook as all his emotion escaped him in a vicious torrent of sound.
And then he was silenced by the beast as it snatched up his body and pressed him into the wall, it’s sharp front-end legs cutting into his shoulders. Myrio’s first thought was that this was the end. That it would all be over soon. But the awaited killing blow never came. The creature just held him there, studying him. Myrio did not know if he was imagining it, but ever so faintly in the darkness, he thought he could see six little beady eyes staring into his own.
“Prey” it hissed. Two short high-pitched hisses attached together. One of the few words he recognized. It seemed to be waiting for a response.
“Prey” he hissed back, attempting to mimic the sound as best he could.
Another unbearably long moment passed as both creatures wrestled with the recognition of the other.
The centipede raised one of its longer front claws and tapped it squarely against Myrio’s chest.
“Prey.” It said again.
Myrio got the message. He slowly brought his own hand up and placed it on his chest,
“Prey” he said in its tongue and then, in his own, “I am... prey?”
With this exchange, loneliness was replaced by a million questions regarding the other. The possibility of communication expanded the realm of interaction beyond anything either of them had ever considered possible.
Somehow, Myrio understood that the creature did not intend to eat him. It was trying to communicate, but it was also perhaps naming him? Assigning a sound it could use to refer to this unknown thing it had discovered. Myrio could not argue that it wasn’t fitting.
“If I am prey…” Myrio muttered in his human tongue, “then you… are…” He brought his hand away from his own chest, and placed it against the belly of the centipede, hoping that the message was understood.
The centipede remained silent for a time and Myrio guessed it did not understand.
But then, it spoke its own name.
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