"The kvesh were once like the ones you know. Dull, savage, depended on each other in small colonies throughout the wild. Those of us found by humans would be tamed and turned into slaves. This is the story I was first told by the Red Lobster, the first of us to touch the Needle. When the sky fell, he found the Needle and upon touching it, his mind was whole. It was like a fog that was there for centuries had finally been cleared."

"That's his name?" Fila asked.

"We don't have names, as we don't consider ourselves more than the colony."

"But you have a name," Nomada said.

"It was given to me by a human. It was very hard to communicate without names."

"Yeah, that's the point, so why would you guys not have names?" Fila asked.

"My belief is that the kvesh identify themselves in opposition to your kind. Therefore, everything we do is a reflection of you, and so the Red Lobster did something he believed humans would never do. He decided to share his power."

Bug still remembered that day. The Red Lobster was Green then. He came with his colony, four lobsters from the city. They carried the obelisk on their backs, like pillars supporting what would be all of kvesh's kind bridge to the heavens.

Bug's queen was the first to feel the Needle's light. Though the Lobster operated on a higher level, his pheromones signaled calm and tranquility and reduced the mantis' urge to predate. The lobster signaled something to his queen before she touched it. She was wrapped by a cocoon and when she emerged she signaled the entire colony to come, come touch the Needle as she had never felt more warm, more pure, more love. And so Bug came with the rest of his colony touching the Needle. And before Bug underwent Metamorphosis, he learned what the Lobster signaled to his queen. "You shall see the light soon," and Bug did. The fog had finally cleared and Bug could see what his queen saw. Freedom.

They went from colony to colony, spreading the light together, growing in numbers and intellect. The colonies promised now that they were intelligent not to hurt each other despite the natural urge of the spider to kill the mantis and really every other creature. They promised to share resources and to protect one another in a way the humans never could. The colonies hunted from for creatures like the mawlers and humans, and when they could not find any of them, they ate chitara fruit and bark. Kvesh can eat anything, it's one of the great benefits of being one. But as the numbers grew even more, the leaders of the colonies figured that things needed to change. That the kvesh needed a home, that they needed to be able to find a place where they could work together in a more unified fashion. Where they could organize the kvesh into groups, each with different goals, but the same home to return to. And so the Nest was built. The mantis and dragonflies became hunters and guards, the spiders and centipedes became builders, the butterflies and lobsters the ones who organized resources.

Bug, however, was not chosen to be a hunter like his brothers and sisters. No, his wise queen saw that he was more fit for a different role. One member from each species was assigned as one of the kvesh who was meant to translate the Nitich language. Bug was not sure why he was chosen or why they only chose one from each species, but because his queen demanded it of him, he would do the task gladly and do it well.

The translators struggled greatly, for their minds were not attuned to the human language. They could hear it but all it sounded like the rain pitter-pattering on a lake. Fast but meaningless. They had been working on this captured human for months, but no progress was made, and Bug was disappointing his queen. He knew that his queen would not punish him or hurt him, for she was always compassionate and kind, but he did not want to disappoint her even a little bit. Bug tried communicating with the human by pheromones, believing that the human might have a weakened ability to use them, for they had a big nose. He believed just like a spider has poor eyesight despite their many eyes, or a butterfly still flies worse than a bird despite its bigger wings in proportion to their body, the human might be deceptive.

But the human did not understand Bug at all. Its face got red, and its eyes watered. Bug later learned that these were signs of anger in humans. Apparently, they find the smell of a kvesh's pheromones overwhelming. But in that moment Bug found the key to understanding the human. When it was angry, it emitted its own pheromones it just didn't know it did. But Bug did. Bug worked on reproducing the sounds it made when given different emotions. The first Bug learned was "Fuck off" and "Fuck you," both words said when the human was angry. He learned when the human was happy after being given food it would say "Thank you". When the human was sad, it would say nothing at all. It was found that when the human was left alone, it would speak to itself, which allowed for great results. Bug used this method to start to catalog the Nitich language. But two years into the experiment, the human stopped talking entirely. And so that first human was eaten.

The second human was when Bug started experimenting with speaking the language. Though he could understand what the humans were saying, it was much harder to speak the language. They did not have the same components as humans did, and so they had to learn different methods. Bug theorized with the other translators on ways to do so, maybe tapping mana crystals together? But it was ineffective in making the necessary sounds. So they went to their own bodies, each looking for different ways. All the kvesh had ways of producing sounds, stridulation, clicking parts of the body, expelling air from spiracles. Bug was the last method and thus was the best at talking, and so he took charge as the first to speak to the humans.

"He...llo" Bug said to the second human. The human did not respond as Bug expected, but instead dropped its jaw while signaling shock. So Bug learned that was human body language for shock. The first few times Bug came to the human, it refused to speak to him, but he came every day, making sure he was the one to give the human food so it would open up to him. And every day, Bug said "Hello," getting better every time he practiced. It took one week for the human to speak to Bug.

"Hello," Bug said.

"What are you things? Why do you speak? Why do you bring me food? Am I a prisoner?" the human said.

Too many questions at once. Bug did not know how to answer. Speech was still very hard.

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"Hello," was all that Bug could muster. It was the only thing he practiced. But he continued to come every day, and the human would speak to it even when Bug could not answer it. But Bug made great improvements quickly, as he spent day and night dedicated to being able to speak to this human.

"Hello," Bug said. He had spent 2 years talking to this human at this point.

"Hey bug, what is your name? I haven't asked you this entire time. I feel bad just calling you bug all this time."

"Kvesh have no name."

"Well, I'll call you Bug. You are Bug, I am Ensifera Orthop. We are developing rapport, are we not?"

"Rapport?"

"A connection. We're getting to understand each other a little more, wouldn't you say?"

"I am understanding you more, yes." Bug said. He felt the human signaling something more, but he was not sure what it meant. But Bug was understanding the words that he said more.

"Well I'm wondering what can I do to get out of here. You see I have a family on the outside, and I miss them very much."

"A family?"

"Do you not have a family? Everyone has a mother, I'm sure even a creature like you."

"The queen birthed me, I feel positive feelings towards her."

"Just positive feelings? Not love?" the human asked.

"What is love?"

"A question humans have been asking for millennia," the human said, chuckling. "It is positive feelings, but a little more. It's the deepest positive feelings you can have for something else. It's warmth, it's joy, it's a feeling that you would do anything to feel again after you've felt it once."

"Like the Needle's light."

The human snorted.

"The Needle is nothing compared to what I'm talking about. It's like twenty needles stacked on top of one another. That's what I feel for my family, so I'd love to see them again."

"A family is a group of humans? Like a colony?"

"Exactly, a family is like a colony of humans, and you wouldn't want to be separated from your colony, now would you?"

"What colony are you a part of? I am mantis, and you are?" Bug asked.

"I'm an Orthop, as my second name implies. My family is one of the Great Eight Families of Nitich. Nitich is like... a bigger family made of families."

"Like our home!" Bug cried.

"Yes, exactly like your... home."

"Do you have a queen too?"

"We do have a queen, though I'm not sure how relevant she is ever since ice started falling from the sky. I've never really been one to care for tradition though. It's all quite stupid, isn't it? I mean, the queen is the same as us, and yet everyone pretends as though she is from a sacred line blessed from Poda herself. It's ridiculous." The human shook its head from the cocoon. That meant disagreement.

"You aren't loyal to your queen?"

"I'd say I'm as loyal as we need to be. Some of the families like the Apis and Formicids are more extreme than us. It really depends on where you come from. Speaking of where you come from, I would love to go back there."

Bug shook his head, signaling his own disagreement. "My queen wouldn't like that."

"Come on Bug, fuck tradition, fuck the monarchy, be your own man, your own kvesh," the man said.

"The queen is responsible for my life, she is everything, she is the colony."

"Ahh, so you know love, too. Good for you Bug. But just think about it."

And Bug did. He thought all night about what to do. In his conflict, he went to the one person who always gave the best advice in times of loss and confusion. The next day Bug was scheduled to teach the colony heads Nitich. He had been doing so since the times of the first human, and they had been making good progress.

"Hello," Bug said to the heads.

"Hello," they all responded. The Red Spider and Red Cricket had the most trouble with reproducing human speech. The had to rub their legs in a way that felt unnatural to them, causing them to speak more slowly. Bug advised that they skip words but retain the important words that would allow a human to understand them.

At the end of Bug's lesson, he asked the heads, "Can we free this human in exchange for another one? He has a colony of his own that he wishes to take care of." He directed this question at his queen, but she was not the first to answer.

"Release the man? Are you insane mantis?" The Red Lobster said. He was the first and fastest to learn Nitich from the colony heads. Bug believed it was because he spent so much time among the humans as one of theirs. "He is to be used to learn his language and then we will eat him, as we did to the last human and as we will do to every human that comes after him."

Bug's queen touched the Red Lobster's claw, getting him to stop. "Why do you request this Bug?" She asked in Nitich, continuing to practice even after the lesson was over. Her voice was ever so gentle and comforting. And she was such a dedicated student, he was so lucky to be her teacher.

"The man pleads to me every day about seeing them. It's become all we talk about. I cannot learn any more words if we only cover this subject."

"Well then we feast," the Red Lobster said, "If he's no longer useful to us we will eat him. Was the man able to tell us about any settlements of humans?"

"No, he is a human of the wilderness, he is in fact searching for his own settlement. But he will not harm us. The human is kind."

"There's no such thing. You are a kvesh from the wilderness and never experienced a human's wrath or punishment. I've watched them mistreat kvesh for fun, mistreat their own kind for fun, kill their own kind, even members of their own colonies. They are as kind as they need to be." The Red Lobster concluded.

"What if... send human... follow him... find settlement," the Red Spider said.

"They will find a way out. You give them an opportunity and they will destroy everything we have built," the Red Lobster said.

"I trust Bug," Bug's queen said. "He was the one with enough judgment to decipher the human language, and so he has enough judgment to see whether a human is good or bad."

"Well, you are just a hunter, you have no idea about the state of our resources in terms of food and mana crystals. We will not make it many more years at the rate our population is growing. We have no food. We have no humans in reserve. We cannot afford to let a human go regardless of whether he's good or bad for us. You know nothing."

Bug signaled anger and attacked the Red Lobster for daring to insult his queen. He slashed his blades at its neck, but it did not pierce through.

The Red Lobster signaled amusement, "The human has corrupted him into irrationality. A mantis who would attack one of his own, let alone a colony head much more powerful than him clearly has poor judgment, and so his request should be denied. A human would decide to kill you for this, but we are kvesh, we do not kill our own. I vote we remove him from having contact with humans entirely and that he be prevented from getting any mana crystals from this point forth, as he is a danger to the colonies and a danger to himself."

The other colony heads signaled agreement. Bug's queen signaled reluctance, but was outvoted, and so Bug was now an outcast in his home. He was the only mantis who had no task, no role, and worst of all he had disappointed his queen. The human was executed only a day later, but Bug was forbidden from coming to the feast and so he roamed about aimlessly for 5 years. He was considered outcasted from the other kvesh and even the other mantis were repulsed by him, never deigning to talk to him. He was still a part of the colony but he was alone.

He wondered what the newer translators were doing, what they had discovered, what they had learned from the humans. Were there any settlements after all? How were the Orthops doing without Ensifera? Why him? Why was he the only one punished? Had he not done everything they asked? One time. He only deviated from the colony one time, and he was ousted entirely. He wished he could be like a human, to defy the queen and live. It was all the Red Lobster's fault. And two new feelings that Bug had never felt were born within him, both as bright as the light he felt when experiencing Metamorphosis for the first time, curiosity, and hatred.