Someone You Can Build a Nest In

by John Wiswell

It was the older families that clutched most of the wealth, even though it was harvested by the laborers. What the laborers got out of it that kept them from eating the rich, Shesheshen didn’t understand. She was a mere monster.

If humans got used to the presence of gods, they’d probably hunt them for profit and glory and other nonsense, just as they did to monsters.

She’d hit the river with all the elegance of cream pie against a brick wall.

She wasn’t kind because of some angelic virtue. It was insecurity. It was an adaptation to cruelty. Shesheshen wrapped her arms around Homily and held her to her chest for a moment, mourning the realization that she’d fallen in love with someone’s pain.

Next, she squeezed the offspring around its middle with those powerful hands of hers. Many of its tendrils released her and retreated inside its body. Looking down into the offspring’s mouth, Homily said, “You can cry. You can ask to be held. But you cannot hurt me just because you’re hurting. All right?”

“It harms you because it wants to be inside me. It is resentful. It wants to dissolve.” “And you won’t let it die. I know. I love that about you. Now come here, and let me check you. Are you that color on purpose?”

“I’m not intimidated by books. I would crush them in a fight.”

Shesheshen did not grasp what a botanist was. It was some kind of intellectual herbivore.

Time was the sort of thing you had to care about when you belonged to more than yourself.