she keeps one arm pressed into herself—but she is not cowering in the corner, no! She is in the very act of hurling a food bar into the containment chamber.
The hearts of Shenya the Widow nearly explode with relief and love.
But she has no time for reflection. The Librarian, for its part, has already absorbed the food bar and is reaching for more. It has now extended outside its grav field, an act she has never before witnessed, and in another second it will fulfill its purpose. Before Shenya’s murderous gaze, more red—an actual mouthful of her little one—swirls and disappears into its silver surface.
Shenya the Widow was angry before, but now she transforms into rage itself. She is a whirlwind: a murderous, single-minded, beautiful dance of razor edges and darkness. She is heedless of the damage to her own body. She destroys three of her blades, one after another, attempting and failing to hack through the questing silver rope. She loses an entire limb blocking the Librarian from sampling her little one’s leg, and the gleaming mass removes and absorbs that piece of her without reaction. Her fifth blade shatters against the containment chamber’s manual controls, but they respond instantly and the double hatch slams shut on the silver arm. Shenya stabs the next control with a stump of a blade and the pressure drops painfully. With a massive thump that she can feel through the floor, the silver pseudopod is sucked out of the cargo bay. From within its chamber, the Librarian is ejected into the void of space at ninety meters per second.
Widow collapses beside Human, already restricting fluid flow to dead and missing blades but of course allowing her pain receptors free reign. She is already feeling that post-battle high that she hasn’t felt in years. Pain without fear, sings her mind, that is the Widow way. She can hear the ancient chant of victory, and she knows she has done well. Her mood continues to rise on the tide of chemicals her body is now producing. These will be good scars, yes, just as the chant says. They will be beautiful scars. Honorable scars. The most dramatic decorations that she has earned since she became a Daughter herself so many years ago. She opens her own mouth and hearts to join in—
And then the chant dissolves into a string of poorly pronounced Widow profanity, and a food bar explodes against the Librarian’s closed containment hatch. Shenya the Widow watches—rapt, mandibles still ajar—as half the bar slides to her own dripping blades. Somehow her addled mind has waited until this very second to wonder: who is leading this chant?
Shenya the Widow can see in nearly all directions at all times. Unlike the little one, she does not need to face what she is looking at. But she becomes aware of a magnetic pull, a force that draws her face up toward that of the Human. She cannot stop it any more than she could halt the flow of chemicals from her various glands. She meets that small gaze with all the mingled awe and love that a Widow can produce.
And the little one gazes back. It holds its wounded limb to its side, half of its small form slick with red fluid. It is weaving on its feet, and its face is wet. But it’s the gaze that Shenya the Widow cannot avoid. She has spent three and a half years learning how to read those eyes, and now she can read their message in perfect fidelity. There is pain there, yes, but there is trust as well.
“Mother?” says the little one, sinking to bloodied knees.
And Shenya the Widow feels an intensity of emotion greater than anything that she has ever experienced. It is higher than her most towering rage and hotter than every instinct that haunts her jointed body. It is a detonation, an eruption, the ignition of something hundreds of millions of years old. It gathers all her objections, all the reasons that this cannot happen, and it sweeps them away. For the first time, she realizes: She will do anything for this little one. She will murder. She will defend. She will give her own body blade by blade and she will do it laughing.
She hauls herself upward on shattered blades and the stumps of limbs. She brings her own face to her little one’s, her trembling mandibles nearly touching that small mouth. “Do you wish to call me Mother?” asks