Creatures of the Compact
Burrowers i
by NewTrickyNuisance
TW for abandonment, hurt/comfort with emphasis on the comfort, mild philosophizing (it’s not actually that much but still), and not capitalism but definitely like. a very poor understanding of the ecosystem. mice people don’t know the circle of life but they do know that being out of the ground is dangerous as hell.
“You know,” Fall coos, “I adore your little incisors.”
Tooth groans, tail twitching as another wave of irritation slips over them. They have no other choice, do they? “Thank you,” they say flatly.
Fall smiles, waving her tail in slow, languid arcs. She moves like an ungrounded thing — unnatural, flowing, slow as the churning Earth. There’s a level of strange, predator grace to the bulk of her tail and the flex of her legs. “You’re really very sweet, you know?” she bends down, easy as can be, and scrapes a dental-comb made of rough bark through Tooth’s pelt.
Grooming. Actual grooming, fur-to-fur, with a beautiful queen-sow. The kind that would probably rule over a colony, if she actually played by those rules.
Tooth shudders, helpless to stop it. “Thank you,” they say, “for cleaning me.”
“It was my pleasure, soft-dirt.”
When Fall walks them, they keep themself two paces behind her. They wonder if she knows they’re the lowest of the low. One of the wounded or weakened surface-walkers, sent away so the colony doesn’t waste resources, no use to anyone at all. All they do now is let themself be fed and let themself be ordered and let themself be coddled in return for nothing at all.
No dedication. No…no work. Just a simple, sweet contentment. Tooth could fall into this, they could drown in this, more luxury and care than they’ve ever known given by a plant-sow who doesn’t seem to know this isn’t how the world works. Maybe the trees live different lives. Maybe the spirits of those trees, kind spirits like Fall, don’t understand mortals like them.
The crowds part around them. They can never tell if it’s because of Fall, because they’re clearly a recent sacrifice brought back below ground, or because they belong to one of the surface-spirits.
Above-ground spirits are always malevolent. Trees, vines, leaves…those are awful, terrible things. They keep their tastiest parts beneath hard-shelled bark and even the easy food is nothing but a lure to the surface, a trick to trap gullible fools outside the safety of a tunnel. Mosses found in underground rivers, roots found beneath the Earth, fungi which grow and feed so easily they can be cultivated even by clumsy hands…those are fortunate. Those can make good spirits, nurturing spirits, beautiful spirits.
Fall is made of leaves and flowers and sprouting, green things. Fall smells like food and shelter and the sun-baked, dangerous surface. Fall smells like Tooth, kept alive by the surface, made accursed by survival. Fall sounds like a creaking tree as it falls when she purrs and it makes Tooth want to run before they’re crushed, but then she curls up tightly around them and they know there is no escaping from the comfort.
They’ve never been trapped and safe before. It’s a strangely awful feeling. Worse than they ever thought something riskless could feel.
Am I happy? they wonder.
Maybe this is just what happiness is, they think, and I’ve never felt it enough to understand.
“What are you thinking about, scuttle-bug?”
They blink up at their spirit, knowing they’ll never be the same as this awful and beautiful creature.
“Where…” they wonder if this will be the question that ends them, that finishes all of this waiting, that leads to their predator pouncing. If this is where the pain starts. “Where did you come from?”
Fall smiles so widely that her tail could kick up dust clouds, if there were any dust in this strange spirit-den. If the house didn’t look like home, with the danger scooped out and the predators missing and soft green grass in place of soil. “I’m not sure I could explain this to you,” she says, still visibly giddy. “I’ll try but your kind…you don’t understand the world very well. You don’t teach each other very thoroughly.”
I wasn’t taught at all, they think bitterly. “Can you still…try? I need to know.”
“Do you?” Fall asks, sounding odd again.
Trilling and light and…fond. Is this taunting? No, that’s not right at all. Teasing. A kind of teasing they’ve never had a chance to get used to, teasing without cruelty, safe but wrong.
They think about what Fall has told them. What Fall has claimed to do. “I want to know this,” Tooth says softly, feeling a bit foolish for trying, “I want to know more about you.”
Fall blinks slowly, curiously. “I am here,” she purrs like a crackling fire, “to give you everything you want.”
“I want this,” they repeat. “I…I’ve been good, I think? I’ve done what you wanted. Can I please — can you let me have this? Just this one thing?”
Fall treats this the same she treats everything Tooth does — by leisurely smothering them. “You’re such a good little pup for me,” she coos, “I’ve never seen such a docile sophont this early on in a {Caretaking Movement} before. I’d like to hear you beg. I won’t press if you don’t want to but hearing you ask for something is…well, you’ve made it into something of a rare treat for me.”
Tooth cocks their head to the side, trying to see if li’s actually genuine. She looks genuine, like she would love nothing more than another request, but it makes no sense. Burrowers like being asked to do things, they like being useful, but this is a spirit of the world who shouldn’t look so desperate for anything from someone like Tooth. “I want it. I…very much want this,” they say awkwardly. It feels a bit humiliating, which may be part of the point. “Please, Fall, I’m desperate? I really want it. I’ve been so curious about you and your kind and how — how it all works. I can’t do this on my own, I need you — I want you.”
Fall leans in closer, strange eyes gleaming in stranger ways. This close, they can see that it’s not just a paleness but a strange transparency. Green flickers on the surface, distorted like reflections in a moving river.
Tooth has always been weak. Weak with smelling, hearing…their senses were never quite enough to make them useful, so they were easily ignored and even more easily exiled. They’ve since learned that their sight is better, keen in a way that most [burrowers] aren’t. It’s never felt like a gift or blessing but now, staring eagerly into the endless expanse of their owner’s eyes, they feel more grateful for it than resentful of what they lack. Here, in this moment, with this sow, feeling this strange unknowable thing…
This. This may be happiness. And if it isn’t happiness, then it’s something better than the sorrow they’ve learned to swallow down like rising bile.
“We’re older than ancient,” Fall says. And her voice is sweet sugar, spun silk, the softest thing they’ve ever heard. Distant to the marvel of writhing greens and strange powdered yellows and shattering dark grays. “When we first…hatched, for lack of a better word in your language, we were dumb creatures. Over the generations we learned but we started out as plants, not unlike the grass below your paws.”
They hum their assent. Maybe if they keep pretending to pay attention, the sight won’t stop and the happy won’t end and the empty won’t start all over again. “Paws,” they echo.
Fall purrs, safe and warm, so safe and warm. “Yes, pup. You do have paws,” she says. So soft and silky. So nice and warm. “We tended to silly little things like you, and grew better and better at it. You’re right, you know,” she unravels, vines brushing against fur and bark combing through pelt in a way that leaves Tooth incoherent. “We are tricksters. Our every little leaf is purpose-built to lure in helpless little pups like you to the surface.”
They need more. They want more. Tooth opens their mouth, ready to talk, but Fall fills them with sap so thick it has to be chewed through and then there’s more pleasure, more good, more happy. Silk and soft and sweet. So natural it hurts. It shouldn't be natural — nothing so wonderful could be natural in a world this cruel — and yet it is.
“If I’ve done my job right, I’ll have to explain this a second time,” Fall surrounds them. The air they breathe is filtered through their leaves, the space so small and cozy and perfect, the vines writhing against them like living bodies, a colony made of one perfect queen-sow. “The surface is dangerous, for creatures like you, but there are things that see the sun as a source of all life and the trees as wizened, caring things. We make that true, little pup. And we’ll keep making it true, until the whole world feels like this, until the concept of suffering is snuffed out like a faltering fire.”
Scared, Tooth thinks distantly, I should be scared. But fear feels dull and pain is banal and…even if the world is about to crash down all around them, they’d still have felt like this. They would have been happy, been full, been right for at least a moment. Even if the world ended in the next few seconds, that fact would remain unchangeable and this memory would remain divine. “Thank you,” they manage, before Fall can silence them, “I…thank you. Thank you.”
“You’re so sweet,” Fall coos, “I know you’ve been wary, in that tiny little head of yours. You can deny me, you can curse me, but it doesn’t matter— I can see all the useless little thoughts in you, all the tiny rebellions you thought you could hide. We would’ve ended up here no matter what,” she rasps a tongue across their head, too dry to be flesh but too perfect for that to matter. “You, under me, right where you belong.”
Tooth opens their muzzle. Maybe they plan to say, This isn’t fair. Maybe they plan to say, You didn’t finish explaining. Maybe they plan to say, Please don’t ever leave or I want you so bad it hurts or Please, my name is Gnashes-With-Tooth, call me by my third name, it’s yours, all of it is for you—
But it doesn’t matter in the end. Petals-Fall-Softly tears through their mind like a wildfire, stroking them from head to tail with a thousand leaves that twitch and flutter and writhe against skin that feels so suddenly sensitive, so abruptly needy.
Tooth squirms and it doesn’t matter if it’s a final struggle to get out or a struggle to somehow get closer, because Softly holds them tight, until they can’t twitch a single muscle.
Tooth is a good pup. They were never going to be anything but.
Quick thing: Burrowers are basically hobbits and rabbit people. Imagine tiny little halflings who can stumble on all fours and you’ve got them right.
Each have three-part names, the third used by loved ones and the burrower themself, the second used as a signal of respect, and the the first used in casual conversation. They have odd little teeth called dental combs shaped perfectly to, well, comb! They have tiny paw pads on their little feets and nubby bunny tails and they sacrifice their weakest to the surface world. It’s a really big problem, actually.
Gnashes-with-Tooth has a really bad 2nd name because they were not expected to ever gain enough respect for second-name usage. Petals-Fall-Softly is an absolutely edgy name for these little rodent people — evil surface plant AND a second name that could be used as an actual name. Their equivalent to naming a human guy ‘Lord Wolf-crusher.’
@ashttu The aliens in affini-verse are honestly some of my favorite that I’ve seen around. There’s so much room to make funky little creatures and throw them at the affini. Tooth especially came from me thinking ‘What if the usual HDG fic played out with one of the aliens?’ They’re very much an alien suffering from alien issues, with a POV that’s very specific for their species but emotions that are (hopefully!) relatable.