Day 12 ~ The Queens' Dream Revealed
by Jo Rebeka on 07/25/11
Emma stirred restlessly in her sleep, and her eyes opened into the inky blackness of the night time nest. Moist sand from the curving tunnel wall drizzled down her back as she tried to turn without disturbing her sleepmates. Dozens of black legs shuffled as weary Fritizens shifted, moaned soft protests and rearranged themselves. Emma gazed sightlessly at the blank wall above her head.
For an unsettling moment, she felt as if she might be the only ant awake in all the world, but then she felt the steady drumming of the night crew overhead and in the tunnels around her, gathering food, clearing tunnels, and nursing the babes in the maternity ward far below. Emma exhaled gratefully... it was calming to know that even when Ant-ioch sleeps, it is still awake, and no ant is ever alone.
She drowsed a while, lulled by the endless activity around her, but then she heard it again, that plaintive sound that must have first woken her. It was hard to discern through so many tunnel walls, and over the gentle snoring of her close comrades and the steady laboring of her more distant comrades.... but she heard it, a wordless cry, the sound of running feet, and then the sobbing, the pitiful lonely sobbing.
Emma jumped to her feet. This was a voice no ant can ignore... even in incomprehensible despair, that voice was unmistakable~ it was the voice of her queen. She rushed blindly toward it, her heart pounding in her tiny chest.
****
Inches below, the Queen's attendants tried to soothe her as she roused from restless sleep. She was offered sugar water, fanned with blades of grass, and her fretful limbs were gently stroked by her minions.
The Prime Minister rushed to her side, accompanied by the Queen's scribe.
"What is it, Majesty?" the Prime Minister inquired solicitously, "Another dream?"
The queen turned her head to the wall and let out a low, ragged sigh tinged with despair.
"Yes, and it was the same as before," she responded tersely.
****
No one could make sense of it, and the tale of the dream filled those few who heard it with a painful foreboding. Something like that could surely never happen to their precious monarch! Using the telepathy that rules much of ant society, the Queen had shared her dream only with her closest advisors. All others had been barred from the throne room, lest this terrible image be carried afar and seep into the collective unconcious of all Fritizens.
As her eyes drifted shut, the Queen saw it again. Each time the dream began with some variation of the same scene. She was a young Queen again preparing for her Honeymoon flight which would end in the establishment of her fair city, Ant-ioch. The dream images were jumbled, but it always ended the same way.
There she was in the chamber, preparing for the ceremony. She could feel her transient wings like it was yesterday, but when she looked up to meet her winged consort, instead of a handsome drone, she laid eyes upon this:
Though she assumed he might be quite handsome by human standards, she could not help herself. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound would come out.
****
The Chancellor's soothing voice broke through her delirium, and she awoke, trembling, but safe inside her sleeping chamber, surrounded by the lovely faces of her own kind.
