Moriah woke. Her eyes fluttered open as her mind engaged and she started remembering. Crystals glowed above her as she lay on her back staring upwards. She remembered the queen almost becoming a zombie, but then opening up to give birth to four new queens.

No that was not right. A queen and her warrior-peers. The girl felt a mild confusion at the back of her mind as to how she knew that, but ignored it as she pursued her thoughts.

The warrior peers had attacked her somehow. That had hurt way too much, she decided. No, wait, they did not attack, right? They tested? Yeah, something like they evaluated me. “Huh,” she grunted aloud as her thoughts chased each other in her mind. “Well, I’m still alive, so does that mean they were okay with what they found? Really, why do I even know all of this?”

Something on her stomach attracted her attention, but even though she tried to move her head to look down, she just kept staring up at the ceiling without so much as a twitch. She moved her eyes down without moving her head and thought she saw something move. A moment later she felt something prick her jaw and a tiny head popped up. And then a few more pricks and three tiny crystal spiders . . . . Nope, those are totally ferrets. Who the heck started calling them spiders anyway? I am so calling them ferrets from now on. So, three tiny crystal ferrets were now standing on her face.

She stared into the oversized eyes which took up half their tiny faces. Still half awake and befuddled from everything that had happened to her, she still knew these three: Radar, Jonal, Xian. They were the warrior-peers that had attacked, er evaluated her.

And as her gaze fully settled upon them, she saw herself reflected in them. The image of herself wavered and abruptly a multitude of different scenes and images flickered in her mind’s eye. Moriah sucked in air as memories of many multiples of broods threatened to overwhelm her through her newly formed link with the three infant peers.

“Ugh,” she groaned. She closed her eyes, but that did not stop the deluge. Eye contact had initiated it, but apparently was not at all necessary for the process. Her hands twitched and she found she could move them, if slowly. She brought her good hand up and rubbed her temples. She wished they would take it slower themselves, that is, she wanted the peers to flood her mind with their information a bit more piecemeal.

And the deluge changed to a soft, steady stream.

Moriah let out a sigh of relief and opened her eyes again. She shifted her hand from her temple and gently touched each peer on its head with her index finger. She really did now their names. None of them had protrusions on their bodies, but she could still tell them apart. Radar’s skin was a light blue and a bit transparent. Its cute little snout was a bit shorter than the other two, and its eyes very dimly shone bright red. Jonal’s skin was also blue, but a bit darker and not transparent at all. His ears were larger than the other two, and his left one was slightly flopped forward. His eyes dimly shone a rich green. And finally, Xian’s skin was black and a bit transparent like Radar’s. His eyes dimly shone a brilliant metallic blue. His tiny ears were quite expressive, twitching this way and that as he stared are her with intense excitement.

Moriah dropped her fingers to touch her cheek and willed the three creatures onto the back of her hand. They transferred without complaint or hesitation. The girl grunted and groaned as she then struggled to sit up. Once sitting with her back supported by a boulder, she placed her peers onto her lap.

The child’s eyes widened as that hit her like a load of bricks dropped from a cliff. These three had accepted her as their queen. They were her peers. Her warrior-peers. She was their queen.

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“I’m a queen, huh,” she muttered. That was so weird, no matter how you looked at it. “That totally came out of nowhere, right?”

She gently, lovingly scratched each of their heads. “You guys are actually pretty darn cute, aren’t you.” She sighed, her scratchy eyes drooping.

The three hissed at her when she began to slide back into unconsciousness.

Moriah eyes snapped open and she snapped her first command. “Don’t ever try to bite me, do you understand?” The force of the command staggered the immature minds of the small crystal ferrets. Never had such a powerful, concise and overwhelming command been given by a queen, as none of them had ever used a spoken language before. They cowered in submission.

After several minutes, Moriah struggled to stand again and staggered to the old queen to eat, sharing the bounty with her new guardians. Xian paused in his feasting and looked at his queen. You are wounded, he conveyed. You should heal yourself. As queen, you may do this. He began eating again, having fulfilled his duty in informing his queen of her ability.

Moriah stared at the little spider, perplexed. She knew that he understood the difference in their race, so why did he think that she had the abilities of a true crystal queen? Frowning, she ate a little more, glancing at Xian narrowly. Finally she sighed. The twirp’s self-assured confidence would not allow her any peace until she tried. He was so absolutely sure she could do it because she was his queen.

She sat down away from the fenguar and held her arm tight against her body. Closing her eyes, she thought how wonderful it would be if her arm stopped hurting and got all better. She thought this for a long time. Snorting, she opened her eyes. “See, you twirp? It didn’t work.” She moved her arm to prove, braced for the pain. She raised it all the way over her head before she realized that it no longer hurt at all. Moving it this way and that, she gasped and stared at Xian. As a queen, she could not apologize for not believing him, but she felt sorry all the same and determined to listen better to her peers next time.

Standing, she moved back to the dead queen and ate some more. The spider gunk really did taste good. She wondered if the fenguar would be good too. Taking the lesion knife, she gathered up a pile of spore and fried it well done, pleased that the knife obeyed the picture she formed in her mind. While the spore remained inert (not carnivorous) until it germinated, she did not want to take any chances. She did not want to be eaten from the inside out.

Tasting a bit, Moriah gagged. “Yuck! Awful.” It tasted like a cross between desert sage brush and kerosine. She stuck out her tongue and tried to wipe the stuff off with her sleeve. Still, she remembered that it had some really good benefits to eating, so after a moment forced herself to eat a little more. “Not near hungry enough for this,” she gagged and wiped her tongue again and then scooped spider gunk to wash the disgusting taste from her mouth. “I need water. W-A-T-E-R.” She danced around fanning her mouth, her tongue and lips burning and feeling larger than they ought.

She scrambled over rocks and out a tunnel, the path to a nearby pool of water appearing in her mind. The peers caught a ride hooked onto her clothes. Glad I can remember this stuff, Moriah thought, though it confused her since it did not feel like she had ever been to the pool. Plus, the perspective of her memory seemed wrong. And other crystal ferrets had been there, larger ones. She did not remember going to the spring before, yet she did, she thought, maybe. Shaking her head to clear the confusion, she stood in the cavern entrance where the pool lay.

The water glistened just like she remembered, fed by both hot and cold springs of fresh water. Slurping water from the cold spring to quench the fire in her mouth, she tried to think.

More memories assaulted her sanity, memories of giving birth, of eating crystal, of exploring caverns and tunnels, of fighting other queens and peers, losing and winning, of peers and children and death. Everywhere she looked, every turn of her thoughts overlaps with ever too much information and her consciousness began to fade.

“No! I am Moriah LauTrebuea.” Moriah screamed, clutching the hair at her temples and shook her head back and forth, muttering to herself to retain her identity. “My father and mother are musicians. I love music. I am a warrior. I am a girl. I have human brothers and sisters. Human. I am HUMAN.” She dropped to her knees, smashing her hands into the ground. The memories continued to attack her mind and sanity despite the pain from her hands, so she began smacking her forehead against the ground too, until blood ran free and she knocked herself out.