In the pit which reached far below the lowest tunnels of the Colony, the Queen's lost daughter lived in darkness. When she was not gathering food and was not repelling the small beasts who would scavenge what she had gathered, she would wedge herself deeply into the tunnel which she had found and had not dug, where she had first made new thoughts in resting. Her tunnel drove into the walls of the pit, and so the pit was made Outside, and her tunnel Inside. Resting tightly in her tunnel was a good labor, because within it her feelers could be tucked along her sides where they were hidden. In her tunnel, she ate and watched its entrance, and she never sleep-traveled.
The Queen's lost daughter would wait there for as long as she was able, until she was hungry. Then she would find those things which had the smell of food on them, and these things she brought to her tunnel in quick and unsettled labors. She had learned of two times in this labor, and these were times of waiting and times of need, and she learned that in times of need fear came also. She was often afraid, and this made her times of quiet and comfort very precious things to her, because they were small and easily fouled. It seemed to the Queen's lost daughter then that if she ate more food, she could keep the times of need away for longer. But she was only able to hold so much inside her, and so she would protect the food she had gathered with biting from her jaws. And when fear was deeply within her, her jaws were slick with venom, and her labors were made less burdensome.
As she passed these times of fear and need, she learned in her labors the rules of the pit. These were the rules of size and speed and sound. Small could not defeat the large, the quick would escape the slow, and the quiet could outlast the noisy who were heard by many. She learned also that her size and speed and sound were not always the same, and that these could combine to keep her food and remain settled. She could stand high upon her legs to seem larger. She could move suddenly between stillness to seem quicker. She could clatter her jaws, and drag her legs along her sides, and open her shafts to be louder. The large could be repelled when they learned of her seeming speed and loudness, the quick could be caught if she seemed small and quiet, and the noisy would not approach those who seemed large and with quick feelers.
The Queen's lost daughter found that as she followed these rules, her fear would be resting and buried. But fear could not be chased away or repelled by any effort. Sometimes, when her food was piled high and she had been settled for a long time, fear would return to her with strength it had gathered during her long comfort. She would shake and shiver terribly then, until she had left her tunnel to bury fear beneath new thoughts, new learning, that could be made only Outside with flicking feelers in unsettled air. This seemed to the Queen's lost daughter to be a time cleaning.
During one of these times of cleaning, her feelers found something new. It was a scent, like that of food or of intruders, but when it came to her feelers her thoughts were then clinging to it. It called to her without sound and filled her thoughts with a terrible wanting. It was a smell much like her own, but with a taste that shared a warmth across her from her eyes to her hindmost parts.
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That welcoming smell was faint and difficult to follow. It moved with the gusts that would coil around her when she was not in the safety of her tunnel. She searched for it with the terror of hunger, and found that it was stronger when her feelers were lifted away from the pit's floor. It was then that the Queen's lost daughter welcomed her first thought of climbing, because it would lead her.
She had not learned the height of the pit's walls before that time, and she had not counted her steps. From above, curls of that sweet leading smell lifted her feelers up from the crowded pit. The scent carried her thoughts away, and when they returned they were more potent than comfort, and heavier than hunger. And these thoughts that had been to good places brought answer to her fear that had always gnawed her middle and weakened her legs.
In the pit, she had lived beside fear. And now she felt its grip around her thoughts, having learned what was beyond it, and she learned of its threads that were binding many beasts that were unlike her in the pit. The smell brought all her thoughts to the edges of her insides that seemed foul to them then, and they learned much of that smell, for it lacked the sourness of fear and brought welcome from a place where fear would not follow.
She filled her stomach with foul food from the floor, and she was now hateful of it, so that it was a painful eating. And so the lost daughter of the Queen began to climb.
Her first steps up the walls of the pit were eager. She followed the scent and it led her in the manner of fresh and warm food. The walls were not so smooth that she could not hold them, but it was a difficult climbing.
The higher air was colder. She smelled fewer things then, and beside the welcoming scent from above was only her own. She became confused, for she had never known her own smell in the absence of others, and she learned that hers was foul beside others. Up she climbed, upward into the empty dark where there were none beside her.
Fear had not left her, and it wished for her to stop her climb. But she could not climb downward, for her legs had learned only of going upward. They became burdened and could not carry her, and she bit into the walls to cling on until they could move again. Fear was then attacking her, and it drove deep between her good thoughts with promises of broken legs and of her helpless killing, but she refused to end her climbing, because she she would not return to what was below that was learned to be foul and familiar.
When the Queen's lost daughter could no longer count her steps, and she had lost the time that had passed since her first steps up the wall, she despaired. She was hungry. Her legs dragged beneath her, they hung limply and burndened her. Her jaws then seemed as legs to her, and they walked in single steps so that her climbing would be done.
And as fear seemed so close to victory, she learned of speaking.
“Leave me!” she said through jaws in stone. “I will climb to a place where you are silent.”
She saw a brightness high above where the walls ended. Her legs bent beneath her and did push again. Her thoughts crashed against her fear then, and it was broken into small parts, and these were gentle in their surprise, having never been broken apart before. She climbed on, her thoughts gathering many promised things, until at last her jaws could open.
She felt smooth and strange ground under her, her strength left against the walls of the pit. She was blinded in bright light and surrounded by clear and distinguished scents. There were colors here, and few things were not strange. And for a time she was deaf in this place where she had no learning.