Tickling Earwigs
©Phil McFadden 2008
She stirred, unsure of the reason. Had there been a change in the tone of the thundering roar from the autopass, or had he moved beside her? Whatever, she was awake now and she knew as always that she wouldn't go back to sleep without resolving the pressure in her bladder, her doubts about the sounds outside, and something else that was bothering her, though she couldn't name that. She tickled the Earwigs' tails and they slowly (she imagined, reluctantly) but obediently withdrew. Sounds instantly flooded her ears: mostly what she pretended was a waterfall of drumming river (the autos) but also the lapping of the real water. The Earwigs were fourth generation and remarkably effective -the thunder of the autos had been reduced to a faint drone by their ultrasonic vibrations inside her ears. It was said that the first Earwigs - total silence-inducing - had become dissatisfied with their diet of wax and skin detritus and become carnivorous, but this was an unpleasant rumour and Cil had long ago dismissed it. Kaj, however, harboured terrible nightmare fears that her own Earwigs would one day grow too fond of the flavour of her skin, and venture deeper. She switched her thoughts to her physical discomfort, stroked the Spong which she had favoured earlier, and relaxed.
The sound on the autopass was constant, as it had been these past 3 days of their holiday. Each traveller was keeping to their allotted schedule, in their bizarre delight devouring the kilometres in their uproarious passion, hosting Nighlighters now in the darkness. The occasional whoop of pleasure was soaked up in any case by the Throngs and subsumed into the glow of their own appreciation of the never-ending race.
So what was the other thought unfinished, which had troubled her enough to wake in the deep of night?
She gently probed with her fingertips the ridge around her brows, caressed the edge of her top lip and along her fultrum to the base of her nose. She returned to the labyrinthine angst with which she had wrestled at evening, before Cil had told her to lay down and ever so softly placed a Reafe over her nostrils… always as a child she had been able to meander through her doubts, sweeping aside the troubling fears with assured resilience: but now it seemed that she repeatedly found herself looking into dead ends, impossibly entangled in the awful responsibilities which had never before been hers. Though they now lived in the Heartland, the various taxes had somehow to be paid; the money to buy the next generation of zgrubs had to be set aside from the Glomerate’s payment, and noone could promise that the harvest would be adequate, though the stock was all kept pure & nourished with the highest quality feeds, treated with the prescribed pesticides -and the weather had been fortunate. Even now, having been granted an interlude in the lagoon, she felt fearful that Cil’s brother would take too lightly the tasks they’d set him: that so many things could go wrong… she returned to the scheme she had been nursing to lay pipes with which they could drain the diagonal central bog and thus irrigate the out-lying fields. The directions, depths, numbers and sizes of pipeworks lay in a constantly adjusting fretwork in an almost tangible vision held in her mind, and for a long while she realised the difficulties, posed degrees of subtle and major modifications, struggled with costings and compromises and consequences and eventually opened her eyes wide in exasperation.
Cil could let it all submerge: nothing seemed to trouble him these days.
He was still, embalmed in somnolence with a Reafe over his nostrils.
Kaj sat up. Her gills momentarily flared as she regarded him. He seemed less human to her than he had those nine years before, when they had all but devoured each other. She stretched her arms straight upwards, felt the tiny hairs on her forearms stand up in their turn, smelt the faint muskiness of her armpits, felt the drawing up of her breasts. In the moonlight her skin was phosphorescent green, her hair an even more impetuous flaming red, and had he woken he would have found it impossible not to ravish her: but deep in the dream he was completely oblivious of her waking writhing and she emerged from the pool, sprang onto the deck and leapt across the lawn, trailing sparkles of rainbow hued vapour as each limb followed the core of her motion, cartwheeling and pirouetting, swaying and darting around the garden. Her dance was unrehearsed, spontaneous. As she moved so her anxieties were transformed, and she felt in some way that her fears as well as her delight melded into a universal similitude of being: her totality in some way assuaged by the dance.
Only Ve and Saa observed, not in her spectrum and so unobserved themselves. Saa leant even closer, exuding bliss as she observed in every detail Kaj's movements. “Aaaae, Ve”, she murmured, her features almost as mobile and expressive as Kaj's limbs. “Aeeeh”, concurred Ve.
Eventually Kaj collapsed exhausted at the edge of the garden, only metres away from the dyke. She breathed deeply but slowly and in settled rhythm through her perfect comma nostrils, held the breath as she savoured the scent of the night stock, and gently exhaled. An aeon seemed to pass before she again inhaled, and her body seemed to sink into the sward almost as it had into the pool. Even if only for a short time, something was appeased and she felt in some way free.
An interminable pause, and Saa beamed at Ve. “Tickle her again, Ve”.