To taste was not to consume. To taste was to enshrine. To taste was to environ and preserve.
He advanced through the jungle, papillae rubbing against sour bark, glossy leaves, and burning fungi. No mammal or reptile dared stand close to him, for they knew him, and those who were caught by his tongues left no more descendants behind. He tasted countless lizards, snakes, birds and elongated, arborous mammals. Even the agile monkeys got caught sometimes, in the unfortunate occasions where they didn’t notice the sea of stems and tongues creeping under the bed of dried leaves, among roots that couldn’t escape, trees condemned to a slow death.
Leclerglossa, such was the name Unkindness had given him, and he remembered it. Not fondly; not with hatred, either. A name was unlike colors, or sounds. Every wavelength had a taste, and so every vibration of the air. But Unkindness had not produced a sound nor shined a light when she unleashed a name upon him. It had been an etch in the mind, words of torture engraved into his very core. To grant him a thing he couldn’t taste, there was no deeper cruelty. Of course, he didn’t think in terms so Felsian, they are merely to illustrate the distress such a reality caused him.
All that he couldn’t taste wasn’t there. So the light was there, and the wind was there, and the jungle was there, and the smells were there, and the sounds were there: all different flavors; all equalized under the tyranny of the tongues.
Yet the name… the name was aberrant. An idea not born from sensorial input nor from the need to taste more of the world. Foreign, alien, invading, infectious. However, one would qualify it, an idea so abstract didn’t belong into his mind.
And Unkindness knew of this suffering, but she didn’t budge. A name that hurt was a name worth having. Not one like Zaburanatea, that was outright insulting, born from disdain. No. For Unkindness loved the masterworks. How could she not, being the one of them capable of loving? Masterworks, Misshapen, Felsians, and even Mother and Father, all victims of creation. Compassion meant hope for a godless world, a world where the ones that could were released of their misery.
And those that couldn’t, victims of a Ratchet so uncaring, they deserved a name to carry, even if it hurt. The ones that Felsians found and lived, those had names given by the brothers and sisters of their forefathers. The ones they wouldn’t in a long time, those she had to name instead. For this she incarnated flocks of birds, as all birds Felsian knew had a name, and so did their groups. An unkindness of ravens, a dole of doves, a crown of kingfishers. Names purloined, names loaned, if only to feel she was worthy of one.
And all Masterworks were worthy to transit eternity in possession of a name.
Leclerglossa didn’t hate it, for he could not. Hate had no taste, hate didn’t exist. His distress was as alien and unintelligible as the name. He lived in a world of candy sunlight and piquant cries. Tomorrow? Tomorrow had no taste, either. Tomorrow didn’t exist, either. Yesterday was just a recollection of that was had already been tasted and stashed away.
And today… today a new flavor landed upon his papillae-covered main stems and pentafurcated tongues. Each tongue enjoyed two appendixes at each side, and an elongated central section tapered towards a set of lips, from which an isodichotomous pair of smaller, trifurcated tongues emerged now and then.
In other words, his five-pointed major tongues, inserted directly on the fleshy stipes that held him together, had each two minor tongues, each forked in three sections: little, undulating tridents of muscle.
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And all tongues were prehensile, perfect tools to envelop that which needed to be tasted but never eaten. Like the new flavor carried by the wind, one that mixed with that of burnt wood and river water.
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The words were a whisper, yet they woke Ald up as the cries of Kali would have: alert, sweating, as if from a nightmare. “He comes for you, Ald,” the mellifluous voice of Unkindness had given form to inside Ald’s mind. A raven watched him smiling with white, wriggling tongues in the place of their teeth. A little whistle came from the bird’s throat, such that Ald had to resist the urge to strangle that abhorrent bird.
His sleep had been short and unrestful, but soon enough, his mind picked up on the meaning of the words. “Who comes for me?”
“He has no Felsian-given name. Know that what he catches, he never lets go. To get caught is not to die, Ald. That’s what makes him a Masterwork.”
Ald scrambled for his feet and turned his head back and for the, trying to cover everywhere, not knowing what to look for.
“Where does he come from, upriver or downriver?”
“Do you plan on running, Ald? You don’t know where you have to go. In have not revealed that to you yet. What if he is in the way?”
Ald dedicated a snarl at the raven. “Then I will have to find another way. I am not facing another Masterwork. Where does he come from?”
“He will arrive in an hour or so, Ald, we have time. We always have time.”
Ald picked the bird up from a wing, and it laughed as if it shouldn’t hurt. “Where does he come from, Unkindness!”
“Downriver and inland. He has a tongue for each hair on your body, a span of stalk for each step you have taken since you were born. A papilla for every flutter of butterfly wings this cloudcryforest has ever seen.” The raven drooled laughter out of his monstrous beak. Its saliva vibrated with innate mockery.
Ald grabbed his bag, tied it over his shoulder and contemplated the remains of the disgusting meal he had had last night. The aural lilies were gelatinous, sour, and acidic. He could harvest a few for later, but a part of him preferred to take chances with starvation. That part said that Unkindness would not let him die, not as long as he was useful to her. Useful how? Was the question that gnawed at the back of his head.
“Unkindness, what is my purpose?” he asked after cogitating a few moments.
“In which frame of reference? Because you have a purpose as a farmer, a purporse as a blacksmith, a purpose as a caretaker, a purpose as a son of Mother…” she began enumerating.
“As your chosen laboratory misshapen,” he spoke, and the words felt like lead teeth escaping from his mouth.
“None. To grant you one would be to force your hand. I value the choices you make, Ald, as much as the carrot on a stick I hold in front of your eyes. Save Felsia? Save the Felsians? Or don’t do a thing. A choice that is completely yours, if you follow the path I reveal, if you arrive to the place where you will be able to choose.”
“If there is nothing specific I am chosen to do, I am not a chosen one as you say. You said you needed a pureblooded Felsian. What for.”
The raven smiled with all his tongue-teeth.
“That’s the beautiful thing: whatever you do, you entertain me, and you walk blindly towards a conclusion that will bring me maybe juicy joy, maybe sour woe. I won’t box you, Ald, I won’t tell you how to liberate Father now and here. But if you want to one day know, you better avoid the tongues, you better avoid becoming his licking toy.”
Ald stared towards the place here the Masterwork was supposed to be coming, and then sighed. He didn’t want to introduce himself in any place of that jungle. Thick and overgrown, that green mass told tales about treacherous thorns, potent poisons and venomous vermin.
Yet, saving Kali’s future needed him to face that and more, and staying in that beach seemed to be a sentence that, at best, meant death.
“Guide my steps across the overgrowth, Unkindness.”
“You need no guide. Part ways with the Worldvein; Father awaits inland. That’s all you need to know.”
Ald grabbed a dried branch he had reserved to stoke the fire and quickly carved some runes on its far end. A rushed job would be better than traversing that world of moonlight-eating canopies with no torch.
A few minutes later, he parted, leaving the raven behind, for he knew Unkindness would be there without a real need to follow.