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A million years ago

"Water?"

The pheromone bubble burst on their body membrane releasing a spray of the compound bearing their name.

One by one, a million eye-spots blinked open and arranged themselves into a calm spiral underneath me. I clung onto the swaying spherical head of the sporangia, connected to my sibling's body below by a long slender stalk. Inside the thick walls of the sporangia slept their offspring, dreaming of the world that awaited them.

"Why are you still here, little sibling?" Their question bore into me as the pheromone bubbles dissolved into my membrane. "The Behemoths will begin feeding soon. You must leave."

"I wish to see your offspring hatch," I quickly pushed out a reply into their membrane, hoping they would let me stay.

Their eye spots scattered into disarray from their calm spiral formation. They looked confused.

"Why?"

"I do not know. Perhaps I would like to have someone to keep me company when you are gone."

Their eye spots swirled back into the spiral formation and blinked.

"You will molt one day too, Ferrous Oxide, and you would have to leave them behind," they said. The pheromone they used to address me was saturated with sweet, hydrated ferrous oxide.

I wondered if I would ever feel it again, feel their pheromone bubbles bursting on my membrane, calling my name. My eye spots clumped together in sadness, theirs followed suit.

"You must leave, Ferrous Oxide. It is not safe."

The currents of the liquid methane ocean tasted of bitter sorrow from our alkaline pheromones.

My sibling had molted into an adult some starlights ago, while I had remained a larval mimic. I remembered their amorphous body spasming and trembling as the metamorphosis began, rooting them onto the ocean floor as they grew into our gargantuan adult stage, their pseudopodia consuming everything in their path in a hormone-fuelled feeding frenzy. Water had likened the pain to that of being melted and reforged in a hydrothermal vent.

Their vast body now covered most of an ocean shelf and it had taken me twenty starlights of swimming in the form of a Behemoth to see all of it. Our parent would have been proud of their size.

Adults of our species would die within a hundred starlights of molting and in the wilderness of our methane seas, predators like the Behemoths drove that number down to a bare five starlights if the adult was lucky. Inside my sibling's sporangia, I could feel the impatient neonates getting ready to disperse.

Bitterness bubbled up within my ectoplasm again.

"I wish I had molted with you, I wish we could have spent our last starlights next to each other."

Water's body membrane trembled as they sent out a saline pheromone indicating pain coursing through me, "We cannot always have what we wish for, Ferrous Oxide."

My sibling was hiding their torment; I could see the pods of Behemoths descending upon their body and feasting on them from further away. The green fluids of the ocean grew darker as the predators' fins mixed my sibling's ectoplasm into it.

I felt my body membrane grab onto their sporangial stalk more tightly. The eye spots further away from the stalk trembled and slowly faded one at a time like dying stars.

"Have you fed?" they asked.

They were trying to send me away again.

"I am not leaving."

"I simply asked you if you had fed."

I slid down the stalk and gently hovered over their membrane. Their eyespots cleared a spot for me to land. Their body membrane had grown brittle over time, threatening to break under the smallest of pressure. I was careful to not stretch it and hurt them.

"No, I have not," I said, adding a tinge of acid to my pheromones to sting them and express my annoyance. "And I will not be leaving until your offspring hatch."

"I am not going anywhere," Water insisted. "You can feed yourself and come back."

"I am not hungry." I watched the pheromones fizz on their membrane and sink into the rippling darkness of their ectoplasm. Their eye spots blinked and steered clear of my path as I glided over their body membrane to the next towering stalk and its sporangia.

In the ocean dyed a deep gold by the setting stars above us, an Alpha Behemoth raised its large dorsal fins and bellowed to its pod mates to retreat. As the pod sailed over us, hungry Behemoth calves swam closer to their parents who fed them my sibling's half-digested matter and mates nursed each other's wounds with their twin tongues.

"Have you swam with them, Ferrous Oxide, the Behemoths?"

"No Water, but you have," I said, flattening myself against their surface. Their steady constant stream of pheromones and their warmth were slowly lulling me to sleep. My eye spots flickered as I struggled to stay awake.

Their eye spots circled me in an excited dance, albeit at a slower pace than usual. I had heard that story of theirs over a thousand times, but I would do anything to keep their stream of thoughts flowing. Water loved telling stories. Above us, the ocean surface rippled with the night winds.

"Yes. Wise beasts, ancient, fortitudinous. Behemoth lives are measured in thousands of starlights, Ferrous Oxide, and they stay together as a pod the whole while. Calves are birthed alive by their females and are nursed by their males till they become adults, who mate and stay within the pod till death claims them. To leave the pod is the ultimate dishonor, a venomous sting to those who had raised you."

The field of their sporangia swayed gently in the currents, twisting and turning as the smaller herbivores brushed past them to graze on the algae growing on their stalks and surfaces.

"I had summoned them before I molted," Water confessed. Their eye-spots flinched as my pheromones of shock stung them with their acidity.

"Why would you do that, Water?" I asked, my membrane spiking up with rage.

"It is an honor they chose to bestow upon me despite my truth, I had swam with them as one of them after all. The pod had insisted they consume me before my flesh rotted so that they carried parts of me in their flesh and bones. It is a Behemoth tradition to eat the dead and let them merge into your being. Your pod never abandons you, no matter what you are, till death and beyond."

I fell silent and retracted my spikes; Water was unreasonable at times. To think they would consent to something so horrifying as being eaten alive. I pressed myself flat against their body and pushed a stream of bitter sadness and saline pain into their ectoplasm. What they had done to themselves wasn't fair.

"Ferrous Oxide?"

"I am angry at you. Do not talk to me."

Bubbles of helium and nitrogen fizzled underneath me. Why were they laughing?

"You are always angry at something, little sibling, angrier than the volcanoes down south."

"I am not," I retorted. It would take more than their sweet effervescent laughter to calm me down this time. "Your penchant for getting into trouble would be infuriating to anyone with a sane and working nerve web. Our parent was right, you are a menace to all mimics."

Arguing with my sibling could wait until the next starlight.

"Do not vex me further, Water, I am going to sleep now."

"Alright then, as long as it calms you down."

"You rest too," I said. Their eye spots blinked in unison. "You must be tired."

I snuggled close to them, letting their pseudopodia wrap around me in a warm embrace. I intertwined my pseudopodia with theirs like I had done over a million times. The waves of their pheromones that cradled me became my sanctuary.

"I am sorry, little sibling."

"Too late for apologies."

Alkaline bitterness clouded the ectoplasm surrounding me. I immediately felt horrible.

"Water," I began. "What did the Behemoth with a swollen vocal organ say to his mate?"

The bitterness was immediately neutralized by curiosity.

"I do not know. What did he say?"

"He said, 'I lobe you behe moth.'"

Immediately, I found myself cushioned within a cloud of frothy helium and nitrogen bubbles. It wasn't even that hilarious but it did the trick.

"That was 'behe' good, Ferrous Oxide. Very silly."

"Thank you. As you can see, I am not always the angry one. I can be entertaining too."

"How did the Behemoth get a swollen vocal organ?"

I popped a few of the larger bubbles around me with my pseudopodia.

"I do not know. Maybe he ate a very stubborn adult mimic and got sick from their extremely persistent proteins wreaking havoc in his system."

Water added more bubbles to the froth as they chortled.

"My proteins would never do harm. In fact, I think they gave him a good sense of humor."

A stream of bubbles left my ectoplasm without my volition. Water noticed that and as if to tease me, smothered my body with more froth. With every waking pulse of my nerve webs would I miss all this shared joy.

"Rest now, Water, I shall find you something nice to eat tomorrow," I promised them. Their affirmation flooded through me.

"You as well, it is unwise to starve," they reminded me.

Sleep was turning my pheromone production sluggish. My eye spots couldn't stay open for much longer. I condensed my matter into a dense spherical form, nestled safe within the thick layers of my sibling's pseudopodia.

That nightfall, I dreamt of metal Behemoths, dancing shadows and oceans filled with water.

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Word Count: 1615

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