Through the Eyes of the Beast Chapter 1

Mating

By John Kastronis

The particles of dust that made up the void between planets created a feeling all over her body that was not unlike the wind many terrestrial beings felt. The giant being cooed happily as it traveled the gap of space. Her race was the oldest beings in the cosmos, having been born in the primordial soup that followed the creation of the universe. They were majestic in all ways, holding in their claws power that other beings couldn't even dream of. Lavos was their name and they were born of creation.

A ripple went down the "shell" of the creature. There was an unfamiliar sensation cascading over her body. The spines on her back rippled. She opened her enourmous eye and it darted back and forth, trying to understand what was happening to her body. Maybe it was hunger, she thought. Spotting a lone asteroid field, whirling in the emptiness of space, bound together by their mutual gravitational attraction. The lavos cruised toward it at sub-luminal speeds.

She was lucky. The asteroids were silicacaceous, mainly composed of magnesium and iron, two elements that are important to the health of her race. She decended upon the lifeless rocks, scooping them into the gaping maw on the underside of her body with the insect-like feet on her rear. She devoured several of the asteroids and was soon full, but the sensation didn't pass.

Worriedly, she sped off from the asteroid field, hoping that there wasn't anything wrong with her. The lavos lived long life spans, by mortal reckoning. Many lived close to 90 million years. The oldest known lavos to have lived was near 120 million years old when it died. But diesease wasn't an unknown to her kind. Too often they encountered some new form of bacteria or virus that would ravage a lavos and leave it an empty husk, floating through the void.

The thought of floating endlessly through space haunted her as she sped through the universe. Thousands of years passed (a mere blink of an eye for her kind) and she gradually began to forget about the sensation that once rippled through her to her very core. Now only an occassional shudder would wrack her. These shudders weren't unpleasant sensations, but they did worry her. They were an unknown to her.

Then, suddenly, she felt a strange energy she had never felt before, coming from a nearby solar system. The energy made her shudder like never before. The energy called out to her and she had no choice but to answer. Turning, began to move towards the source of the energy as fast as she could. It took her only a hundred years to reach the source, though it seemed as if it were an unbearable eternity.

What she found was another lavos, this one a dark blue, in contrast to the red undertones in her body. The lavos turned to her and cooed happily at her. She new now what the sensations were. They were a maternal urge, the instinct burried in each one of her kind to seek out a mate and continue the majesty of her species.

The male flashed multicolored lights from it's eyes, pleasing her greatly. It's spines undulated in paterns, making his back seem more beautiful than the largest nebulae, more powerful than the greatest novae. Together, the male and her copulated amidst the stars, bursts of energy showering from one of them at odd intervals. After a brief period of rest, he left, off to fertilize another female of the species. Males were much rarer than females; thus they were the ones tasked with mating.

She felt the larvae that would one day become one of her own kind begin their slow growth in the spiny egg sacs that lined her back. She needed to find a nest...

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