Chapter Text
At first she finds herself weary, it has been long stagnate seasons since there was anything but sealife and its water, the walls and what lies beyond, her home and their prison.
Time was not a constant the elder leviathan had often considered, at least not until she became innately aware of the tragedy of the first arrival.
Occurring beyond the confines of her cage, tragedy she was helpless but to watch..
At first she warily assumed the inquisitive presence to be more of her wardens, come to continue studying her, to pick up the stalemate their fallen kin died halted in.
Were they so desperate to take what was not theirs to have that they too would perish reaching for the same delusion, to pilfer more from the stagnant lives they had already ravaged..?
A gift she would never give would be lost to greedy hands unable to take...
And yet she still pitied them despite how they had ruthlessly stolen so much from her..
Her life, her future, her child...
She gave little concern to this anomaly at first..not for those who would eventually perish like the last, but realization comes far too late, the brooding leviathan notes the presence of a new struggling species as unique, tragically their existence is brief even more susceptible to the affliction that slowly consumed her failing body from the inside out, falling to its rage in a mere whisper of the time it took to consumed her wardens...
She sings a song of despair for them, yet she is skeptical that they would hear her anguish, and if they had, would they be as deaf as her wardens..?
Perhaps had they discovered her false sanctuary they would have aided her and she them..
She would have liked such company...
When the second falling happens, many of the strange creatures parish similar to the first but few manage to linger, they scatter and fade like the gulls above the forgiving seas.
But even then many end up afflicted, others fallen prey to the warden's sentinels, they cull them mercilessly, indifferent and unnatural beasts, hopeless to resist the nature her wardens intended for them.
Creatures deaf to empathy...
She's inclined to assume they would all perish, but they didn't...
He didn't.
He comes to her in his own time, but his arrival is absolute, guided by her insistent call, both intrigued and eager to meet a creature that would understand their plight, his desperate search for a cure had led him deep below the world she was familiar with, the scars marrying his body told of another face of her often submissive guests.
Not that she was ignorant to the true nature of the creatures within her tank, but to see the result of it was enlightening.
He was long ill, already his flesh was tainted, scared from her home's cruelty, his insides sluggish with sweet rot just barely concealed by his silicone second skin.
A small but resilient creature, brooding and impulsive, eager to aid her, eager to rid his system of the poison that claimed her wardens,
He was dying but so was she.
Their alliance was beneficial and she had no qualms in aiding him, he had managed to achieve what she had begged for a millina within a single fleeting week...
In truth she assumed he'd leave when she admitted that..her eggs...they would require more time then she initially assumed, an eternity of sleep was hard to shake...
They were slow to rouse..
And yet much to the lonely empress's pleased surprise, her little companion lingered, a small base situated at the bottom of her home!
It was small and clear, its glass clicked against her mandibles like ice!
Their fleeting story quickly devolved from an alliance forged through desperation to a friendship of hope, patience and understanding..
Perhaps more.