A Slug's Life [F(?)TSD]

A wonderful odor filled the air, and J. Swivington Slug
pushed hir threadlike body through the jellied walls of the
egg mass and dropped through the air.  Unlike many of hir
siblings, who missed their target, dessicated, and died, hse
landed in the pool of viscous goo below, and so survived.

More than surviving, hse feasted on the goo as it dried,
thriving and adding body mass along with the other fortunate
members of hir birth cohort until hse was a perceptable slug
shape instead of merely a thread shape. Hir tapered handsome
body was twentyfold its birth mass as "Swivy" slid out of
the shallow container once cupping the now thoroughly
digested goo, and began hir trek across the gray expanse of
the sidewalk to the greenery beyond, with teeth reinforced
and stiffened by the heavy calcium content of the goo, now
sufficient to attack that greenery with all the appetite a
slug can bring to bear.

Among the leaves and fronds and blades and petals of the
formal garden, Swivy ate as only a slug can do, radular
teeth sawing herbiage into goo then swallowed to become to
slug flesh.  Swivy had a long, long way to go to reach the
cigar-sized mass of the adult slug, so hse spent almost
every waking hour eating, either down among the low plants,
or else up among the tree leaves.

Unnoticed by Swivy, the mess on the sidewalk was cleared
away, a real estate transaction negotiated and affirmed, and
into the house at the top of the sidewalk moved a member of
Shellhome's other dominant species, one H. Hardshell
Egglesworth, known to hir friends as "Shellie". The formal
garden was trimmed and tailored, the sidewalk swept, the
dwelling tidied to compensate for the short time all had
been untended, and soon all was beautiful and orderly again,
in the search for perfection that every member of Shellie's
race of Ovoids held dear.

Each morning, Shellie would tuck hir briefcase under hir
external gripping appendage, walk the 42 measured paces to
the curb from the front door, and be swept off to the office
in the next passing NestMobile.  Although Shellie was of
full adult circumference upon taking up residence, over the
intervals, hir maturation continued, hir exoskeleton
hardened and thickened, hir external organs: maw, visual
band, respiration orifice, gripping appendages, ambulatory
appendages, and genital-cloacal passage, connecting with
minimal disruption to the strength of the exoskeleton to the
internals of Shellie's handsome Ovoid body.

Thus it had been for eons, since a rash of neotony in
response to severe environmental pressure and lack of
nourishment for the larger form had turned a once huge race
of saurians backwards through ontogony until what was left
was, let's face it, a race of walking, talking, intelligent
eggs, the Ovoids, ranging in color all over the spectrum
from white to black to brown to red to blue.

Looking somewhat like a mix of Mr. Potato Head and Humpty
Dumpty, Shellie and hir race were an anomoly in the
universe, a species that never made it past the egg phase.

Romance, as it will, entered the lives of both our
hermaphroditic protagonists, and too soon to tell, each was
stuffed with the reproductive choice of its destiny.  For
Swivy, this led to more time spent in the trees, observing
the daily rituals of Shellie, calculating with Swivy's
genius class brain the proper placement of each cluster of
eggs in jelly strands to assure optimal trajectories in the
prevailing westerly winds, plus a few backup placements in
case the wind should unpredictably shift around to the east,
anchoring those strands and tugging leaves to wrap around
them and keep them moist until the fullness of time would
call them to disgorge their waiting contents, threads with
the potential to become slugs in their turn.

Shellie began feeling stuffed, as growing immature Ovoids
displaced more and more of Shellie's internal organs.
Shellie knew, from office gossip, that something was in the
wind, but didn't know quite what.

At last the appointed hour of the appointed day arrived, to
Shellie just another day to get up and go to the office and
design and implement with compass and french curve things
the essense of Round, but to Swivy a day calling for all the
nobility in the cause of the next generation of which
slugdom was capable, and one last set of Einsteinian
calculations at a frantic pace.  As Shellie left the house,
briefcase gripped close, attention lost in the morning
newsfax, planning the day's activities, Swivy, lurking in
the grass at the precalculated ideal spot, timed hir rush to
perfection, and arrived on the precise bit of pavement where
Shellie's foot was about to alight.

Oops!  Shellie stepped down, lost hir footing, slid on a
mess of squished slug to the rough spot in the sidewalk,
caught a heel there, flipped up into the air and came down
with a quite satisfyingly lethal "crack", all exactly as the
late unlamented Swivy had foreseen.

Out of the shattered shell ten, no, eleven immature Ovoids
lifted themselves. Three others failed to endure the birth
process, and had burst to become one with the goo that was
once Shellie's innermost self. Among the survivors, leathery
teguments barely able to support their still-churning
interiors, ambulatory and gripping appendages stiffened and
became usable in the drying air.  They wiped the icky gloop
from themselves in their initial preening.  Thus was
confirmed the universe's ancient wisdom, that eggs, at least
shelled eggs, if they intend to be fruitful, must _hatch_.

Off the young decendents of Shellie wandered, to be taken in
tow by the dedicated nurse Ovoids waiting in readiness
nearby for this Day of Shellie's Ripeness, thence to be fed,
educated in the science of all things Round, and helped to
become proud new members of the Ovoid race.

In the scattered pieces of Shellie's exoskeleton, pools of
Shellie-insides festered in the heat of the day, sending
their ambrosial aroma high into the trees.  There, from the
waiting egg masses, new adventurers launched themselves
threadlike into the air, hoping in their turn to be
successful at leading A Slug's Life as their noble and
self-sacrificing ancestor Swivy had done.

xanthian.

Destinies intersect.  All die.  Oh, the fecundity!



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