"Goodbye, goodbye!" he called, until he could no longer feel the vibrations of her departing hoofsteps through the ground. This must have been very irritating for everyone else.
*******
It took another few hours - hours largely filled with attempts of varying success trying to find all the wonderful Kin who had helped him in order to thank them; he'd ended up having to recite a list of shout-outs for those he hadn't been able to locate, but needs must and it was better than nothing, even if perhaps he hadn't been able to locate them because they were no longer there. It took another few hours before Shroud was finally on his way, but on his way he was.
It would be a long way. He was going home to the Zikwa caves. He could have gone in by Ghost Thistle's Mound, but once you really got into the caves, it was such a maze, you could hardly call it a shortcut. If the expedition had remained in the mountains, perhaps it would have been a slightly shorter way - but much tougher going, he'd reckon. Long way as it may be, trekking back from the middle of the Swamp, it was still a pleasant one, filled with the Swamp's sweet bounty, and much more temperate.
Well.
Maybe not right now. It was still really cold.
Still, he mused, as he paused, beckoned by the smell of sweet berries, for a quick lunch before moving on, a pleasant one.
He was going home to his darling Maggot, and his dear mother, whom Maggot had been taking care of, all this time. He hoped it hadn't been too hard. His mother could be quite the handful, the one day of the month she came alive. And it had been just about a month or so since they'd left for the mountains. It was amazing timing, really, that their entire adventure had managed to miss his one day a month.
In that moment, Shroud experienced an emotion that felt very much like hubris.
"Oh, f-"
Was all he managed to say as his limb froze mid-step, before his jaw also locked up, and the entirety of him tipped over into the muck.
Shroud did not fear death, but he did fear this. Or more than fear, he dreaded it: this day a month that made a prison of his body. He could hear the chorus of crickets; the chirp of frogs, the slosh of the marsh, the call of a bittern farther in the brush, again and again and again.
The passing swish of a pluming tail, the fumbling thud of a hard carapace, the six-legged stride of some confident beetle; he could feel the wet press of the marsh into his skin, into every seizing muscle of this body he could not move.
From a distance, he might have been mistaken for a large, felled branch.
His mother was like this, every day of the month save one. She never spoke – except she could move, but so barely, so lifeless, only enough to take the barest bite from time to time, that she might as well have never moved at all. He could not move at all, when he was like this. His flesh locked up in a way hers didn't seem to. He thought perhaps it was because his was only one day a month, and so it had to cram all of that rigidity into one day all at once. And he was the lucky one, he knew – he knew, because, just to think it: every day save one of every month, unmoving, un
living, while all around, you heard, and felt, and saw…
Shroud did not fear death, and, if he had to spend as much of his life as unliving as his mother, he might have welcomed it.
But, for him, it was only once a month. And how he lived besides.
How he had lived.
This, too, would pass.
He listened to the call of the bittern, and dreamed of flying.
*******
It was many days yet before he stepped through the mouth of the cave he shared with his mother, but he did. He was sprightly, hale and whole. The mud of the marsh had been long washed off in some handy stream – though he might not have looked quite so different for it.
"Hello, Mother," he called, cheerfully, trotting over to nuzzle against her wan, unmoving warmth, "I'm back. I'll tell you all about it later."
She was on the other side of the cave from when he'd left. Her once a month, it seemed, had too come and passed.
"Hello, Maggot," he hummed fondly, as his chittering cave worm skittered against his legs, "how's my girl? Thanks for taking care of mother, you're a peach."
It was good to have gone, and it was good to be back.
He pressed his nose into the plates of her face, but Maggot clicked her mandibles, and skittered towards the mouth of the cave.
"What is it, Maggot?" he asked, following, "has Condolences fallen down the sinkhole again?"
But he did not get so far as the sinkhole before he was stopped, near the mouth, by the fumbling thud of a hard carapace into his shins. It took him a moment, then a moment more, before he had felt enough to understand: the gentle curve of a beak, the unmarred bump-bump of a hard-shelled back.
"Why, it's you!" he cried, full of pleasure, "you were there all along. Did you follow me all this way?"
Maggot chittered, and clicked her mandibles, tapping her little legs over the newcomer.
"Come on in," he smiled, content, "you found me, after all."
END