Scorpion
Steam |
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Far in the dry depths of a small cave deep in the roots of a seventy-foot flame tree, a female scorpion lay waiting in the gloomy shadows on the mountain slopes above Orchid Pond. She was waiting for the rain to stop, for she craved the hot sun and wanted to take her brood of seven segmented offspring to the warm trunk of the tree and indulge in a hot bath of softly rising steam, as rays of sunlight dried the soaked wood.
As she crouched on her spidery legs, her belly resting on the wood of the tree-cave, she sensed that the shower outside had ended, and she waited for the softly dripping sound of raindrops to recede. Her long segmented tail, with its poison-dart tip curved into a graceful crescent above her shiny, clean back.
Clinging tightly to the cracks of the scorpion's segmented back were seven chocolate replicas of her in miniature, their tiny pincers dangling like Chinese wood chimes as they slept. The deep sleep of the innocent was upon them, and occasionally, one and then another would twitch, and clamp a pincer in mock battle as their dreams unfolded. They clung completely relaxed, being secure in their trust, only the strong, gripping claw at the tip of each leg secured them tightly to the back of their mother.
Tipping each tiny tail, contained in a pressure sack inside the end segment, was a mini-drop of golden poison lethal enough to kill creatures fifty times their size. An injection dart, piercingly sharp, adorned the poisonous last segment of tail; it was capable of injecting either large or small doses of fluid upon contact with soft, yielding surfaces.
The baby scorpions resembled nothing so much as tightly girdled, tiny armadillos, their clean, segmented bodies catching rays of errant light and reflecting them as dim twinkles in the shadows of the wood cave. They were three weeks old, and they immediately became alert as their mother gave an alarm-clock rattle with her tail segments to awaken them.
As the rain outside had finally subsided, and the downward flood of water past the entrance hole to the dry cave had stopped, the female chocolate scorpion was anxious to escape this dimness and make her spidery way to the fresh sunlight. She lifted her heavy pincers, muscular and fatally sharp, and carried them on curving, outstretched limbs in front of her as she started down the sloping cave floor toward the light.
Although she had no recollection of the fact, the scorpion parent had once been the only surviving member of just such a brood of brown babies as she now carried on her back. One of a gaggle of six chocolate-clone siblings, she had wobbled happily after her mother in a follow-the-leader line to hunt and forage inquisitively in the forest trees for mites, snails, or such edibles.
Her mother had been meticulously clean - as was she - and had insisted on every baby taking a steam bath with her whenever possible, which had been practically every day. They scrubbed their shiny carapaces with strong, handsome pincers, which gleamed in the sun as if polished with wax.
Usually her mother had kept to the trees where juicy, nourishing insects came to dine on the succulence of the flame blossoms in the sunlight.
Once daily they would follow her to the forest floor, if it was dry enough not to be distasteful to their finicky natures. There they would capture a host of creatures which flourished in the mosses and dark hiding places in the shade; and one day, when she had been last in line, her mother had led them down to alight by a hiking trail which wound through the rain forest.
Two boys had appeared, and she, being the last in line behind her mother, had been able to slip quickly and unnoticed into a deep crevice in a tree trunk, from where she had witnessed a cruel act.
The boys, intent on the line of crawling creatures, had missed seeing her hasty retreat into the crack in the tree, but her mother and the trailing offspring had not been so lucky. The boys had quickly and efficiently encircled the small group of scorpions with an enclosing ring of lighter fluid, and as the young female watched from her hiding place, they had lit the fluid with a lighter. Her family had found itself trapped in a flaming circle of death.
The mother scorpion had frantically scampered around the inside circumference of the flaming circle, seeking a way of escape from the inferno. Finding none, she had returned to the steaming center, and before the eyes of their hidden sister, had picked each of her brood up,one by one,and with tail arcing over her back to descend in front of her, had stung each baby to death before the flames could torture them longer. Then, as the flames closed around her, she had stung the life from her own body by piercing her own bright eye.
This instinctive, multiple act of unpremeditated euthanasia- suicide was beyond comprehension to the hiding young female scorpion, but she was terrified of the searing heat from the flames, and remained hidden deep in the crevice of wood, hoping her family would return and find her. All the remainder of the day, long after the disappearance of the two humans, she stayed hidden, lonely for the company of her siblings and hungry for the reassurance of her attentive mother. Finally, when they failed to return, she had ventured out into the moonlight and discovered their charred remains in a blackened circle of charcoal.
Terrified and alone, she had fled on trembling legs down the mountain, sometimes climbing aloft into a tree to dive nimbly on to the next. She scampered on for hours through the misty moonlight, finally to discover a cave at the foot of a flame tree on the steep mountain slope above Orchid Pond. There she had made her home and had thrived in lonely seclusion, never daring to venture again to the feared territory of the ground beneath her adopted tree. She always scampered aloft to the safety of high branches immediately upon leaving her root-cave.
One day, fifteen weeks ago, a chocolate stranger had made a handsome appearance; entranced by his gleaming physique, she had felt deep stirrings of mystery as she had inquiringly stared at this magnificent male. Then, instinct surmounting her cautious nature, she had hesitatingly approached him as he waited quietly on a sun-dappled limb.
Cautiously, inquiringly, she had timidly explored his hard body with her tightly-closed pincers, while his own moved in a scraping caress over her. Then, in a final rush of understanding, she had slowly grasped his pincers in an easy clutch of submission. Their dark tails moved up and forward to meet and hook together into a graceful dome above them. As they held one another in this three-point embrace, they waltzed mincingly around and around in dancing, circular patterns on the high limb of the tall flame tree. The glistening dome of their bodies formed the outline of a hollow chocolate drop as they danced the twirling waltz of scorpion romance; and intermittently, for three days, they had waltzed in mincing, twirling circles, until the consummation of chocolate emotions was complete.
Then a querulous foreboding had gripped the female's heart, and she had unconditionally chased her lover from her territory, not allowing him to return within her sight again. This response to an innate mother-instinct from deep within the depths of her was necessary for the guaranteed survival of the row of chocolate babies now adorning her shining back as she made her quick way out of the mouth of her root-cave.
High into the towering flame tree she scurried, with 14 bright eye-stones shining alertly and inquisitively behind her as they made the hurried ascension. When she stopped on the broad, horizontal surface of a tree limb near the top, each tiny scorpion made a faint, audible tinkle as it released its grip on its mother's back.
Quickly, they scampered off by various routes and ran with a soft rustle of chocolate legs to find a slowly steaming sunbeam, and bath in lavish splendor beneath blossoms of flame in a scorpion steambath high in the heavens. Each was destined to survive and produce a succession of chocolate wind chimes to play a rustling, metallic rhumba on the high breeze above Orchid Pond.
(c) 1993 Carson Clippard