All I ever wanted was to eat my Mother.
We are what we eat, and we eat what we are. It’s the cycle of life; as guaranteed as the eclipse of the twin moons, as instinctual as emerging from the catacombs. All Daughters are raised with the understanding that, if chosen as a successor, they will consume their Mother and leave nothing left. It is the natural way. Daughters deal in what is natural and naked. But I am not natural. My primordial destiny felt out of reach, like the spindly tree branches grasping for the moons. It was obvious my sins didn’t end at being the runt of the litter. I didn’t belong.
I have only four limbs, and only two eyes. My throat is narrow, my teeth are dull, and my chest bears only one pair of breasts. But the worst, most damnable of all: my back is barren. Only pale, unblemished skin clinging to my spine. My Sisters, just as our Mother, had backs dotted with beautiful, yonic stomata. My tallest Sister was blessed with the most, virginal and puckered tight. She would always incessantly flaunt herself, preening her delicate flaps of skin. On the other end, I was cursed to possess just but one birth canal, cleft inconveniently between my hind legs and hidden amongst vulvic folds. How could I ever sustain a colony? A Mother that consumes more than she creates will doom a bloodline.
Should I have been shown mercy, I could have been swallowed whole by Mother, dissolved back down into the black lifeblood in hopes of producing a better Daughter. Or I could’ve been dismembered alive by my Sisters, divided equally among them as a treat after a long, gruelling lune of pre-birthing. Eaten not as flesh to reincarnate, but as meat to fill their bellies until the next nascent. As Mother says, you can’t feed your womb if you don’t feed your body.
But a fate far worse felt inevitable. The ultimate perdition, and what I feared most, was exile. To be cast out, too anomalous to eat, left to rot as unconsumed flesh. Shunned from the bloodline, unworthy of even the sweet embrace of Mother’s stomach. And yet, she had kept me in her brood. Mother was merciful. I thought perhaps she could see something in me that I couldn’t. Some flicker of potential she was mulling over. Mother’s wisdom was as plentiful as it was mysterious.
Our first pre-birthing ritual began on luna minora’s waning crescent, far sooner than I would have wanted. But on that night, we were graced to tread upon the Fertile Glade: hallowed ground encircled by tall, pillar-like trees. Mother was radiant under the plenilune light, undisturbed from the canopy of branches surrounding the clearing. She was just as the moons: full, round and unabashed to pierce the darkness. Mother’s flesh, pale as milk, made the impending spectacle all the more captivating. Kneeling in a row on the mist-laiden grass, my Sisters and I were blessed to bear witness. Mother let out a guttural rumble, her skin bubbling and rolling. I was transfixed by the depth of her stomata, ruckling and dilating as gelatinous orbs emerged like black pearls with a pop. They slid down Mother’s corpulent hills of flesh—leaving dark, wet trails—and plopped onto the ground with a splat of fluid. Her entire body rippled in waves, pushing out the stragglers with admirable strength.
After her delivery, her many legs buckled in exhaustion. Her body fell, the mist blooming around her from the impact, but we did not dare approach her. Watching from afar with great reverence, I studied the gaping orifices on her back, winking and seeping. I thought, perhaps I was just a little premature. Maybe my skin was just too tight, and my stomata were waiting to blossom. Maybe that’s what Mother saw in me, maybe there was hope yet to serve my purpose. I looked at the litter before me, imagining a future where I could be as fruitful. While a few of the newborns stayed pacified in their fetal sacs, many more began to hatch. They wriggled and rolled on the foggy ground, the thin blanket of mist coddling their skin from the dry atmosphere. They stretched out their limbs, grasping at the air, and opened their eyes to the dark, star-speckled sky.
The younglings’ chorus of gurgling, burbling, and clicking echoed through the forest. They cried out for the warmth of Mother, shrieking at the unfairness of their own existence. Their cacophony melded into a discordant dissonance, intertwined with a subtle but painfully noticeable ringing in my ears. As the din swelled, I felt my whole body quake. Even the trees were shivering. The crescendo climaxed with a loud crack, a dozen trees encircling us splitting at the base of their trunks. The raucous children finally fell silent. From within each bisected tree, a soft red glow emanated from the brood tunnels below. From the largest tree trunk, a hand snaked out and grasped the barkーa hand like mineーand out came the Caretaker.
His presence always felt surreal and ineffable, because it was more than just a hand. He had the same defects as I did: only four limbs, only two eyes. We shared the same long black hair, and the same ten fingers. But the differences were undeniable. In the same spot as my misplaced cloaca, he possessed an extra appendage. But strangely, it didn’t seem to have a purpose. It never moved in tandem with his arms to wrangle Mother’s new litter, and it never appeared to function as an antenna or proboscis. It always just swayed gently as he walked, knocking against his thighs. As always, he wasted no time wrangling together the newborns. He assisted those still encased in their thick membranes, and pacified the more aggressive younglings that were testing out their fresh claws and teeth. The Caretaker gingerly took them into his two arms and slid them down into the ruptured tree trunks, one by one. The warm, wet walls of the brood tunnels beneath the earth kept the babies safe, as they were swallowed into the catacombs.
I remember my awakening, floating in the liquor of Mother’s womb. The memory has waned since then, but I can still recall how the world looked from inside. Everything was a blur of shadows, veins pulsing overhead like black lightning against a red sky. It was a sanctuary of warmth, every contour of my body wrapped in a blissful yolk. I remember being fed to the brood trees, feeling weightless yet secure as I descended. Darkness surrounded me until I reached the caverns, aglow with luminous stalactites and smoldering oil lamps. With the piercing of a claw into my sanctum, a rip, and a squelch of fluid bursting forth, I was born.
Even before hatching, there were signs I was defective. Most younglings can free themselves of their membrane casings, clawing and biting their way into the world—only to be hit with the cold air and realize they had just destroyed the one safe haven they had ever known. When a child struggles to shake loose their yolk, that’s when the Caretaker takes action and rids them of the remaining placental scraps. However, for my awakening, I did not try to free myself. Life inside was heaven; how could I ever want for more? But once detached from Mother, had I not escaped, my birthplace would’ve been my tomb. Were it not for the Caretaker, I would have starved.
That is where my memory begins to fade, blurry like the world through the womb. It resonates in my mind as a dream; all of my movements were automatic and I accepted every new bizarre facet of the world without question. Listening to Mother’s voice resounding through the catacombs, enlightening and edifying us to the ways of nature. All of us that return to the surface remember this: the underground is both a nursery and a crypt. All that reside there grow to be cannibalized, consumed by their own progeny, or their own Mother. We learn that we are both alive and dead; alive in the moment, but destined to die. It’s only a matter of time until one becomes the other, and the cycle repeats. It is reflected in the sky, as the lunar phases wax and wane. The pale light of moonfed becomes the sepulchral darkness of moribund, only to rise in nascent when the moons brave the sky again.
On that night we were blessed by both, beaming with light. As one of the Daughters, it was important to witness Mother’s miracle of creation—to understand the weight of life, of our impending duties—and to witness the Caretaker. He serves the most important role in the colony, second only to Mother herself. The firstborn of all neo-Mothers, he is tasked with corralling the younglings in her stead, the one who brings them Mother’s milk. Once the chirps and cries of the newborns faded into the brood trees, the Caretaker turned to Mother.
Approaching her, he gave us a nod in silent acknowledgment. We had been told that Daughters should not expect to ever receive more than a passing glance from a Caretaker, as we are a reminder of their inevitable usurpation. And yet, his eyes always stopped on me. With only binocular vision between us, we couldn’t pretend our gazes didn’t meet. It was clear our similarities never ceased to perplex him. Ironically, fewer eyes had made his emotions easier to notice, and yet harder to read. Was it confusion? Astonishment? Disgust? The rest of his face never betrayed his stoicism, and before I could study his features any further, he returned to Mother’s heaving body.
He knelt at her side, gently caressing her. Mother’s girth deflated with a suspirious groan, yielding to his touch. He spoke to her, just audible enough for us to hear his silken sibilants. The tension in Mother’s body melted away, and she lay there in repose, relaxed and content. The Caretaker returned to his earthen portal and climbed back in. But before joining the younglings, he flashed me one last inscrutable look. He snapped his fingers again, and like a flower blooming in reverse, the trees resealed themselves to stand erect as they were before. After the creaking and crunching of treebark, only silence was left in the wake of Mother’s labour. She clicked twice with a baritone warble and poised her limbs to stand. The muscles and joints unfurled in her legs, femurs and tibias untangling. Bearing her great weight on her knees and elbows, she rose from the fog. Her ascent was crooked, stilted, laborious. We all knew Mother’s reign was coming to an end. The unspoken reality weighed on us as the mist weighed on the grass.
My Sisters and I averted our eyes, mine looking to the moons. Luna minora’s crescent peaked out like a sickle on the horizon, but luna majora stood high and luminous. She appeared as a milky disc amongst the void. And yet, right at the blade’s edge, I could tell the waxing gibbous had just begun. There was only a quarter left before moribund. I had no time to waste. Mother turned her back to us, signaling the end of the ritual, and slowly hobbled away. My sisters followed suit, dispersing out of the clearing in the opposite direction. I stayed still, my eyes still fixated on the moons. My Sisters chittered and stifled laughs, but had learned not to waste time questioning “the runt’s” strange ways. As their silhouettes melted into the dark forest, I rose to the balls of my feet and quietly followed Mother’s footsteps. I envied her gait, however stiff and creaking her movements had become. I watched each leg move synchronously, her many rows of teats—swollen with sacred milk—swinging as pendulums. I tailed her cautiously for about ten paces, but stopped in my tracks when I heard her speak.
