First I knew only hunger. My family would bring food for me and the other larvae to greedily devour until we were strong enough for the change. To be born again as something much greater. When the time came, instinct drove me to spin myself a coat of silk, a blanket under-which I was to sleep, dream, and change. Finally completed with my cradle, I slept and listened as my body grew and changed. At first, only impressions came to me. Emotions and thoughts I had a hard time even comprehending. But as I changed so did my mind, it stretched and made room for everything I would have to know for my life among my family.

     I heard her. The queen, my mother, my ruler, my love, my commander. All human words inefficient to describe what she was to me. To us. Through her song I learned how to speak to our people, as well as the words of the four limbed. I learned of our hive, our queen's goals, our way of life. This place had been established for cycles innumerable. My queen, at least the fifth in a line of great mothers that provided will and guidance to all of us. At last, when my body was complete and I felt myself waking from the long dream, it was time to come into my new world. My birthright.

     Although, as I struggled to free myself and wake, the song abruptly changed. Where I could feel the queen inside my mind I now felt emotions I had not known before, so powerfully I felt they threatened to split my head. Anger. Fear. Hatred. Pain. Anguish in it's purest raw emotions burned through my new mind, I could feel my queen's will pulsing as much as the emotion. I struggled and pushed against my cocoon turned prison. I must go. I must save her. I must free myself. As the emotions and will reached a crescendo, the agony being too much to handle, I ripped though my shell just has the world itself was shattered by a dying scream of her. Of the queen. Of all of them. And I let my consciousness mercifully slip into oblivion.

     Yet, against everything that had happened. My mind stirred. Battered and torn, hanging by a few mere threads, it was somehow unbroken. As I awoke I felt empty. The great space my mind had made to accommodate the will of my queen  now lay empty. Too much space, too little of myself. Yet, in the empty expanse that was left behind there was something completely new. A little spark in the dark. A want. A will to do something. Was this..... My will? I took in my surroundings for the first time. I was in the changing vaults, the many chambers lined with cocoons much as my own. But I felt nothing from them. The gently pulsing I knew should be present now still and cold within them all. And then for the first time, I rose and took in my new form.

     I stood upon my hind and mid limbs, bringing my forelimbs up before my eyes. As I saw my hands, one large digit that curled in the middle to grasp and two smaller on the side, ready to help me hold. As I inspected my antennae came down and played upon their surface. I took them in as the thin whip like appendages dances across my field of view. They took in the smells of the chamber. The earthy and slightly sharp scent of myself, the soft mulled scent of the cocoons surrounding me, and the trails left behind by my kind to tell my what this chamber is and was to be. But all was quiet. All was still. The emotion came alien to me, but at the same time I knew it was my own. Something one of my kind should never feel. I felt alone.