Source: [Death Among the Widows, a Xenologist's Nightmare (vol 4)]
Author: [Juv the Fragile]
Date: [~7,335 years]
Content warnings: [explicit violence], [explicit matriarchy]
Please note that both footnotes and inline notes have been added; however, this story assumes some familiarity with the complex system of Widow titles.
The Song of Sarya (Stanza 1)
Now I have told you this story before, my Daughters, but I will gladly tell it again.
Long ago in the Age of the Queens, beyond the sea and on the other side of the suns, there lived a Daughter named Sarya. Though she was mature [literally: her carapace had hardened] and had taken part in many mating ceremonies, her small stature had kept her from becoming a Mother. Because of this, she had become an outcast among her own covenant. "Where are your Daughters, Sarya?" her sisters would taunt. "Why are your blades dry? Are the males too quick for you*?"
Sarya the Daughter bore this teasing with a good nature, but it began to wear upon her as season followed season and year followed year. Finally, in the last year of her fertility [literally: of her second cycle], she was able to take a male and become Sarya the Widow; in this way she began to expect offspring [literally: became inhabited]. She laid her eggs when her time came, sealed them up as custom demanded, and spent day and night standing guard over them. For she did not trust her sisters; she knew that if she ever left her nest, she would return to find it opened and her eggs crushed.
Though she was now a Widow and nearly a Mother, her sisters continued to mock her. "Your eggs must be so small, Sarya the Widow!” they teased. “You will never get a Daughter that way!“ Though they passed her nest many times they forsook their duty and did not bring their sister food, and after many days she was faint with hunger. "How will you feed your Daughter?" they mocked. "She won't survive a day!" And though Sarya the Widow did not have the strength to answer, she refused to leave her nest.
In the fullness of time, and when Sarya the Widow was nearly dead of hunger, her eggs hatched. The battle was short**, and when the keening of the surviving Daughter was heard Sarya the Widow began her final work. She marveled at the violence of the scratches below her as she poured every last drop of her strength into her task. And thus it happened that Sarya the Widow became Sarya the Mother; for by the time the first new blade speared upward into the light of the sinking suns, she had prepared a meal.
When the other Widows arrived that night, they found a surprising sight. Lying atop the nest was the body of a Widow, stripped of its carapace. Feasting upon the flesh was the largest Daughter any of them had ever seen***. She was so black she drank the light of the moons like water. Her eyes shone with the light of five hundred twelve stars. Her blades were strong enough to break stone yet sharp enough to split a leaf dropped upon them. She chittered at the gathering of Widows through fearsome mandibles, and with every bite of her mother she grew larger.
The Widows murmured among themselves. “Daughter!" said one in the traditional greeting. "We bid you welcome!"
The Daughter, being newly hatched, did not answer but continued to eat.
The Covenant marveled at her size and strength, and still she grew before them! "Daughter!" said they, "Since your mother has died, we shall name you ourselves. And you shall be welcome among us!" For the addition of such a fine young Daughter would make this Covenant the envy of the highlands.
"What was my mother called?" asked the Daughter in a voice like rain.
The crowd of Widows stirred to hear a Daughter to speak at such a young age. Finally the eldest [literally: the most heavily scarred] stepped forward. “Her name was Sarya the Widow****,” said she.
"Had she no other title?" asked the Daughter.
The Covenant conferred among themselves uneasily, for they had not intended to honor her in this way. Still, they did not wish to anger such a fine young Daughter. "We have decided," said they at last, "that she shall be remembered as Sarya the Protector.”
"Very good," said the Daughter. "I shall take her name as well. But instead of Protector, I shall be known as Destroyer. And now, I shall extend to you the same mercy which you extended to my mother."
And those, my Daughters, were the last words that Covenant ever heard. But that is a story for another night.
* Though the exact physiological details are jealously guarded, statements such as these give us unpleasant glimpses into the nature of Widow reproduction.
** The significance of this unusually short battle would not be lost on any Widow. As a multi-day struggle between siblings is nearly universal, this is our first hint that the new hatchling must be fearsome indeed.
*** Evolution's most popular strategy for preventing species from killing/devouring/etc. their progeny is to make the young of the species particularly attractive, i.e. cute, to the mature specimens. Since mature Widows are known to occasionally consume one another, the prevailing theory is simply that the young are poisonous and the mature are not.
**** Here we find another hint that would be obvious to any Widow reader: by denying Sarya the title of Mother, the spokeswidow is insulting her even in death. Note that the storyteller did not make the same mistake earlier in the story.