riptide_asylum (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
riptide_asylum) wrote2010-07-20 02:15 pm
riptide_asylum) wrote2010-07-20 02:15 pm
Entry tags:
"Voyage of the Glowtide - Part I" (Glowworms)
Title: Voyage of the Glowtide (1/3)
Rating: PG
Summary: glowworm!Cody has decided to go down in the history books, by making the first successful sail across the lake. Surely nothing can go wrong!
1.
"Nick, will you calm down and just trust me a minute? Look, I'm telling you, this is gonna work!"
"What is, Cody? The fact that you're planning on jumping into cold, deep water armed with nothing more than a piece of downed greenery?"
The two glowworms stood glaring at each other on the rocky shore of the vast underground lake bordering their colony's home. Cold dark water lapped at two of Cody's feet; one was being used for gesticulating and three others were already aboard the wide green leaf he was planning to float across the lake's surface.
Unless Nick had a say in the matter.
"All I'm saying, man, is that you don't know if this idea of yours is gonna work, and--" Nick swallowed hard, eyes fixed on the bug of his life. "--And you remember what happened to Christopher Columbug and Ameriglo Vespucci, right? Cody, I couldn't take it if something like that happened to you!"
Cody grinned, stirring a cloud of silt with one foot. "Guess you'll just have to come with me, then, won't you, Nick?"
"In that thing? No way, pal. No way. That thing's a death trap. If bugs were meant to swim, we'd have been born with gills. Or fins." Nick folded two of his arms across his carapace and regarded his partner narrowly. He and Cody had been best friends since they were larvae, but it didn't mean he didn't sometimes want to pull Cody's legs off sometime, one by one. Mostly for his own safety. Nick had never met a guy who could find trouble so easily.
Cody tossed items from the pebbled beach over the side of the leaf, which sunk a little lower every time. "Moths, in case of seasickness. Leftover huhu, in case we're hungry. Moss, in case you get cold out there, buddy--"
"Me? Cold? Nick Ryder doesn't get cold, man, doesn't know the meaning of the word."
"Two acorn caps of dew. Two cocoons, which can be reinflated in case we capsize. Which is not gonna happen, Nick, 'cause I've thought this whole thing through, down to the very last detail."
Nick picked up a package of dried, folded material off the shore. "What's this?"
Cody snatched it out of his hands. "That's just a little experiment of mine, okay?
"Really, Cody? You think it's gonna work as well as some of your other experiments? Like that time you decided you could keep fire in a bottle and nearly burned down Slugaways? Or that other time you thought you could build a revolving door from a bottlecap? It took me nearly a full day to get you out with your wings intact."
Cody turned back to the boat and the provisions with a little more care than strictly necessary. "They would have grown back," he said quietly.
"Look man, I'm sorry. If it wasn't for you, I don't know what I'd do. I certainly wouldn't have those great barrel-roll knots you figured out for the moth traps, huh?"
Cody looked over his shoulder, brightening only slightly.
Nick clapped his hands together briskly. "Okay, it's settled then. When do we take off?"
Cody turned around and threw his arms around Nick, who leaned into the embrace happily, nuzzling. Cody pulled back with a smile, letting one of his hands trail down the side of Nick's thorax. Nick's abdomen began to softly glow.
The soft cough behind them echoed off the stone walls and the two glowworms sprang apart guiltily. Nick looked up and rolled his eyes. "Aw no, not you too, Murray. Tell me you haven't been encouraging him."
Higher up on the beach, a large gray spider stood blinking at the two of them from behind thick, multi-lensed glasses. "You have to admit, Nick, it is a pretty neat proposal. If Cody manages to sail across Lake Waitomo, he'll be making history! Not to mention all the really boss scientific data he'll be bringing back!"
Cody grinned and threw an arm round Nick's shoulders. "See, buddy? We'll be doing this as a favor to both science and history."
Nick looked back up the beach at the newcomer. "While your enthusiasm does not go unappreciated, Murray, what are you gonna do when all your data's at the bottom of the lake?"
Cody made a short, angry noise and pulled roughly out of Nick's embrace, stomping down the beach into the water. He checked the green waxy hull for imperfections he knew darn well didn't exist.
"That's the best part, Nick!" Murray's enthusiasm didn't sound in the least bit diminished and Cody allowed himself a quiet smile.
"It is?" Nick sounded uncertain and Cody could just picture him, arms folded across his chest.
"Sure! See, I've developed this really neat underwater breathing apparatus that I've been dying to test out, and--"
"Murray, can you refrain from using the word 'dying' in this conversation? It feels like a bad, you know, omen or something."
"Sure, Nick. Sorry about that. So, I have this spider-contained underwater breathing apparatus I've been...working on. If Cody's leaf capsizes, I'll have enough air to jump in, swim to the bottom, and pull you guys to the surface. You just have to remember to hold your breath."
"Good advice, Murray. So tell me, how deep you think the lake is, anyway?"
"Well, that's actually one of the pieces of data I'm hoping Cody brings back. It would be such a boon to the scientific community if we finally had some accurate measurements."
"I'll try to keep track while I'm holding my breath," Nick muttered.
"How will you do that, Nick? Did Cody show you how to use the depth gauge and the psi meter? Or the--"
"Ssh! D'you hear that, Murray?"
Cody whirled around. Nick was staring up at the dark, unknowable roof of the cave, far above.
Death moths hadn't been seen in the area in some time, thanks to Nick's mothtraps, but you could never be too careful. There were still whisperings around the colony: sightings, imagined sightings, rumors of them, tales told to naughty larvae at bedtime. And of course, there had been more than a few glowworms who had disappeared with no explanation...
Nick and Murray stared fruitlessly up at the inky blackness, but all was silent save the haunting winds that rushed intermittently through the cave's opening and the lapping of waves against the shore.
"You didn't hear anything?" Nick asked Murray. The spider shook his head.
"Hey Cody, you hear anything?"
But by that point, both Cody and the leafboat were too far away for his words to be anything more than a faint murmur of regret.
---
Cody turned his face to the wind and closed his eyes. Beneath his feet he could feel water pushing against the underside of the leafboat's hull. Smiling, he trailed an arm in the chilly lake, then shook the icy drops from his sensitive limb. The Glowtide was fast and sleek, the biggest, firmest pohutukawa leaf he'd been able to drag home.
He'd been planning this for months: the right leaf for the boat, the firmness of the mast, the shape and weft of the gossamer sails, just the right amount of beeswax to seal the hull. It was the trip he'd dreamed about all his life.
A sudden gust of wind, cold and crisp, tore through the cave, moaning past the limestone cliffs and the surface of the lake rose and fell like a sigh. Cody shifted his weight, listening to the water's complaint as relayed through the Glowtide's delicate hull. The tiny craft leaned perilously to one side then righted, finding its way over the surface of the dark water. Cody grinned, and the wind continued, gentler now, rushing past him in a chorus of whispers. He tugged gently on the sliver of teak that served as a rudder, and the leaf spun lazily in an arc, its green prow pointed now back at the shore, and the lights of home.
Cody squinted at the barren shoreline extending down from the soft glow of Slugaway's. He could make out the shape of Murray's huge, round body and the glint of light on his glasses pretty easily, and if he squinted, he could just make out a much smaller shape. Cody's grin widened. Nick. The best friend a bug could have. Nick appeared to be waving, so Cody lifted a leg and waved back.
Cody's grin faltered. Nick was waving awfully fast, two of his legs moving frantically back and forth above his head.
A wave of icy green water slammed into one side of the boat and Cody clung to the side as it tipped perilously.
Leaning hard in the other direction, Cody hauled on the rudder with all his might, feeling the rigid bones of the leaf straining against the powerful lake. The wind picked up, at his back now. Still straining against the rudder, Cody extended a foot and managed to hook it over a tiny string. He gritted his teeth and used his toes to pull.
The dark, folded package Cody'd been so secretive about earlier split like an overripe fruit and a cloud of gauzy white material billowed out, blossoming above the boat.
As it rose, the Glowtide's port edge dropped back into the water with a sharp slap.
Then the wind caught them.
The giant cocoon filled like a lung, and the tiny boat shot across the surface of the water. Letting out a wild yell, Cody grabbed up a string trailing from the new sail, feeling the wind tugging hard. He yawed between it and the rudder, feeling the Glowtide obey his slightest movement, his every impulse.
Grinning, Cody leaned to the left, and the Glowtide executed a lazy righthand turn, the sharp green prow swinging triumphantly towards shore. The wind lessened slightly and he drifted, staring wonderingly around him. It had worked.
Cody whooped with joy then pricked up his ears, thinking he heard an answer from the shoreline.
The whole cave now appeared new before his eyes: the cluster of soft green lights high on the wall marking his village, other clusters, other villages speckling the wetly glistening cliffs, the tiny snare-strands waving in the subterranean breeze, a whole complex web of cracked paths connecting everything. And all of it surrounding this vast, magic body of water.
Cody looked over his shoulder and grinned. Out at the heart of the lake lay a ring of dark, forbidding islands. Long considered desolate and unreachable, they were suddenly within his grasp. It had worked. It had all gone exactly according to plan. He couldn't wait to tell Nick.
---
"Murray, what do you mean 'he made a funny sound and then just keeled over'?" Cody slapped gently at his best friend's cheeks. Nick's eyes remained firmly shut.
"Well Cody, that's just my unbiased reporting of the events as they occurred." The big spider peered anxiously over Cody's shoulder at Nick's prone form. "First the unusual noise, then the falling over. You think he's okay?"
"Nick? Can you hear me, Nick? Come back, buddy!" Cody wailed, his slaps increasing in intensity.
"Ow. Cody, how is hitting me going to improve my hearing?" He struggled up on several of his elbows. "And why am I lying down?"
Cody straightened up and put some hands where his hips should have been. "Apparently all the excitement of my triumphant, revolutionary voyage round the lake was too much for you and you fainted."
Nick peered up at him. "Did not."
Cody stomped a foot on the rocky shore, dislodging several pebbles, which rolled down toward the water's edge, coming to rest in the thick, clinging mud at the waterline. "No? You just decided in the middle of my groundbreaking journey--"
"Don't you mean water-breaking?" Nick got heavily to his feet, running an arm over his head gingerly.
Murray put a long, spindly leg on each of their shoulders. "Guys, guys, come on now, let's not fight at a time like this."
"There's a better time?" The two glowworms spoke in unison, then glared at each other.
"And just what do you two little gatherers think you're doing with that--that contraption out there?" Village elder Quinlan made his way precariously down the loose pebbles of the beach, leaning heavily on his cane. One of his nearly 700 daughters held his other arm, and another dozen or so trailed along behind them in a flittering herd. Nick and Cody automatically took a step closer together.
"Quinlan!" Cody called cheerily. "Did you see it? I got out on the lake! I built a boat! I--"
"What I saw, Cody Allen, was a bug old enough to know better endangering himself with yet another juvenile caper most worms grow out of when they shed their pupa!"
Cody's face fell. "But Quinlan--"
"Butts are for sitting on, Allen, and that's exactly what you seem to do best. Anytime you try to get off it, you're too busy with these childish pranks of yours to ever get any work done! I've had it with you guys! What was the plan for this last one? Fall in the water and convince everyone else in the village to leap in after you?"
"But--but--"
Nick put a supportive arm around Cody. A wave of disappointed trills swept through the assembled lady-bugs. "Wait a minute, Quinlan, don't you think--"
"Yes, I do, but apparently the two of you have some trouble with the concept!" Quinlan had begun breathing heavily, leaning hard on his cane. Another two of his daughters came up to lay restraining hands on his carapace, clicking with concern. Quinlan brushed them away angrily. "I don't want to see either of you out here again, especially not with this crackpot excuse for a scientist--" Nick and Cody ducked as Quinlan swung his cane up to point at Murray. "--with you. You know, Bozinsky, I had high hopes for you, I really did. When you first came to join the colony I said to myself, I said, 'Ted, that spider's really gonna make something of himself, yessirree boy.'"
Cody looked at Nick in time to see his partner mouth Ted?. He bit back a snicker in response.
Quinlan swung quickly back in their direction, coming down heavily on his cane. Cody gasped.
The elderly bug's abdomen went a dyspeptic, murky green. "Laugh it up, Allen. Go right ahead. Because when I'm through discussing your future with the rest of the village council, you'll be laughing out the other side of your mandible..." He leaned forwards and tapped the cane against Cody's thorax. Cody squeaked and nearly stumbled on the loose pebbles in his haste to get away.
"You know the deal, Allen," Quinlan said in a low voice. "You're either a trapper like Ryder, and you deliver, or you're taking home some of these daughters and getting on with it. Which means a life outside that nice, fine nest you two boys are so proud of. Give that some thought."
Nick tightened his arm around Cody protectively. "Lighten up, Ted."
The chorus gasped in unison, and Quinlan gripped his cane so tightly it snapped right in two. He stumbled, but a trio of dutiful daughters scrambled forward and caught him before he fell. The noises Quinlan made were not pretty and Cody trembled at the guttural clicks and hisses. But Nick's arm was tight and sure around him, and his partner wore an expression of calm amusement.
With a final enraged click, Quinlan, leaning heavily on his daughters, turned and stumbled back up the beach toward the lights of the village. His progeny followed in clusters, each of them tutting or clicking disapprovingly in turn, all except the very last girl, who, blushing ran up to Cody and kissed him on the cheek before giggling and fleeing in the dark after her sisters.
Cody sat down with a startled thump.
Nick, hands in hiplike places, glared down at him. "You okay there, tough guy? All the excitement get too much for you?"
Cody nettled and, scrabbling legs dislodging pebbles, scrambled to his feet. "I'm not gonna dignify that with an answer."
"Good. 'Cause I think I already got it." Nick nodded at Cody's pinkened abdomen.
Gasping, Cody whirled around, blushing furiously out at the lake.
"Guys, guys," Murray remonstrated, "come on, let's not fight." He sighed and a sad look appeared in all his eyes simultaneously. "I think we've caused enough trouble for one day, don't you?"
"I'll say. Look, what say we go have a drink at Snugaways and celebrate not getting killed in the name of science," Nick said. "How's that sound?"
Murray hooted. "That sounds great, Nick! I'd love to. Can we--"
"Yeah, Murray, we'll sit on the patio. They still haven't fixed the door from the last time we tried to fit you through it."
"I can't believe my calculations were wrong about that, Nick. I really thought it would work."
"I know you did, pal. But think of all the fresh air we'll get while you redo 'em, huh?" Nick turned and put his arm on Cody's shoulder. "How 'bout it? You ready to hoist a midge-tini, babe?"
Cody stood and stared out at the middle of the lake, consumed by the memories of those heady few seconds of flying across the cold green water. The dark islands in the middle of the lake seemed to mock him with their distance. So close, they seemed to say, and yet--
"And yet you were lucky you didn't get yourself killed, baby." Nick leaned in close and nuzzled Cody where his neck met his carapace.
Cody blushed. He hadn't realized he'd been thinking out loud.
"And I'm damn lucky you didn't get yourself killed," Nick said softly. "Don't think I don't know it. Now leave those islands where you found 'em and come on. One drink then we'll grab the boat, pack it up and head back to the nest and do some real celebrating. How's that sound?"
After a few seconds, Cody nodded. "Okay, Nick. Sure."
"That's the spirit." Nick gave Cody's shoulder a friendly shake as he steered them up towards the path leading along the cliff-face to Snugaway's. "C'mon. First round's on me, 'kay buddy?"
Murray sprinted leggily along ahead to secure them a spot outside at one of the few tables that could accommodate him. Then, with a long, last look over his shoulder at the now-placid surface of the lake, Cody let Nick guide him to their favorite watering hole.
Rating: PG
Summary: glowworm!Cody has decided to go down in the history books, by making the first successful sail across the lake. Surely nothing can go wrong!
1.
"Nick, will you calm down and just trust me a minute? Look, I'm telling you, this is gonna work!"
"What is, Cody? The fact that you're planning on jumping into cold, deep water armed with nothing more than a piece of downed greenery?"
The two glowworms stood glaring at each other on the rocky shore of the vast underground lake bordering their colony's home. Cold dark water lapped at two of Cody's feet; one was being used for gesticulating and three others were already aboard the wide green leaf he was planning to float across the lake's surface.
Unless Nick had a say in the matter.
"All I'm saying, man, is that you don't know if this idea of yours is gonna work, and--" Nick swallowed hard, eyes fixed on the bug of his life. "--And you remember what happened to Christopher Columbug and Ameriglo Vespucci, right? Cody, I couldn't take it if something like that happened to you!"
Cody grinned, stirring a cloud of silt with one foot. "Guess you'll just have to come with me, then, won't you, Nick?"
"In that thing? No way, pal. No way. That thing's a death trap. If bugs were meant to swim, we'd have been born with gills. Or fins." Nick folded two of his arms across his carapace and regarded his partner narrowly. He and Cody had been best friends since they were larvae, but it didn't mean he didn't sometimes want to pull Cody's legs off sometime, one by one. Mostly for his own safety. Nick had never met a guy who could find trouble so easily.
Cody tossed items from the pebbled beach over the side of the leaf, which sunk a little lower every time. "Moths, in case of seasickness. Leftover huhu, in case we're hungry. Moss, in case you get cold out there, buddy--"
"Me? Cold? Nick Ryder doesn't get cold, man, doesn't know the meaning of the word."
"Two acorn caps of dew. Two cocoons, which can be reinflated in case we capsize. Which is not gonna happen, Nick, 'cause I've thought this whole thing through, down to the very last detail."
Nick picked up a package of dried, folded material off the shore. "What's this?"
Cody snatched it out of his hands. "That's just a little experiment of mine, okay?
"Really, Cody? You think it's gonna work as well as some of your other experiments? Like that time you decided you could keep fire in a bottle and nearly burned down Slugaways? Or that other time you thought you could build a revolving door from a bottlecap? It took me nearly a full day to get you out with your wings intact."
Cody turned back to the boat and the provisions with a little more care than strictly necessary. "They would have grown back," he said quietly.
"Look man, I'm sorry. If it wasn't for you, I don't know what I'd do. I certainly wouldn't have those great barrel-roll knots you figured out for the moth traps, huh?"
Cody looked over his shoulder, brightening only slightly.
Nick clapped his hands together briskly. "Okay, it's settled then. When do we take off?"
Cody turned around and threw his arms around Nick, who leaned into the embrace happily, nuzzling. Cody pulled back with a smile, letting one of his hands trail down the side of Nick's thorax. Nick's abdomen began to softly glow.
The soft cough behind them echoed off the stone walls and the two glowworms sprang apart guiltily. Nick looked up and rolled his eyes. "Aw no, not you too, Murray. Tell me you haven't been encouraging him."
Higher up on the beach, a large gray spider stood blinking at the two of them from behind thick, multi-lensed glasses. "You have to admit, Nick, it is a pretty neat proposal. If Cody manages to sail across Lake Waitomo, he'll be making history! Not to mention all the really boss scientific data he'll be bringing back!"
Cody grinned and threw an arm round Nick's shoulders. "See, buddy? We'll be doing this as a favor to both science and history."
Nick looked back up the beach at the newcomer. "While your enthusiasm does not go unappreciated, Murray, what are you gonna do when all your data's at the bottom of the lake?"
Cody made a short, angry noise and pulled roughly out of Nick's embrace, stomping down the beach into the water. He checked the green waxy hull for imperfections he knew darn well didn't exist.
"That's the best part, Nick!" Murray's enthusiasm didn't sound in the least bit diminished and Cody allowed himself a quiet smile.
"It is?" Nick sounded uncertain and Cody could just picture him, arms folded across his chest.
"Sure! See, I've developed this really neat underwater breathing apparatus that I've been dying to test out, and--"
"Murray, can you refrain from using the word 'dying' in this conversation? It feels like a bad, you know, omen or something."
"Sure, Nick. Sorry about that. So, I have this spider-contained underwater breathing apparatus I've been...working on. If Cody's leaf capsizes, I'll have enough air to jump in, swim to the bottom, and pull you guys to the surface. You just have to remember to hold your breath."
"Good advice, Murray. So tell me, how deep you think the lake is, anyway?"
"Well, that's actually one of the pieces of data I'm hoping Cody brings back. It would be such a boon to the scientific community if we finally had some accurate measurements."
"I'll try to keep track while I'm holding my breath," Nick muttered.
"How will you do that, Nick? Did Cody show you how to use the depth gauge and the psi meter? Or the--"
"Ssh! D'you hear that, Murray?"
Cody whirled around. Nick was staring up at the dark, unknowable roof of the cave, far above.
Death moths hadn't been seen in the area in some time, thanks to Nick's mothtraps, but you could never be too careful. There were still whisperings around the colony: sightings, imagined sightings, rumors of them, tales told to naughty larvae at bedtime. And of course, there had been more than a few glowworms who had disappeared with no explanation...
Nick and Murray stared fruitlessly up at the inky blackness, but all was silent save the haunting winds that rushed intermittently through the cave's opening and the lapping of waves against the shore.
"You didn't hear anything?" Nick asked Murray. The spider shook his head.
"Hey Cody, you hear anything?"
But by that point, both Cody and the leafboat were too far away for his words to be anything more than a faint murmur of regret.
---
Cody turned his face to the wind and closed his eyes. Beneath his feet he could feel water pushing against the underside of the leafboat's hull. Smiling, he trailed an arm in the chilly lake, then shook the icy drops from his sensitive limb. The Glowtide was fast and sleek, the biggest, firmest pohutukawa leaf he'd been able to drag home.
He'd been planning this for months: the right leaf for the boat, the firmness of the mast, the shape and weft of the gossamer sails, just the right amount of beeswax to seal the hull. It was the trip he'd dreamed about all his life.
A sudden gust of wind, cold and crisp, tore through the cave, moaning past the limestone cliffs and the surface of the lake rose and fell like a sigh. Cody shifted his weight, listening to the water's complaint as relayed through the Glowtide's delicate hull. The tiny craft leaned perilously to one side then righted, finding its way over the surface of the dark water. Cody grinned, and the wind continued, gentler now, rushing past him in a chorus of whispers. He tugged gently on the sliver of teak that served as a rudder, and the leaf spun lazily in an arc, its green prow pointed now back at the shore, and the lights of home.
Cody squinted at the barren shoreline extending down from the soft glow of Slugaway's. He could make out the shape of Murray's huge, round body and the glint of light on his glasses pretty easily, and if he squinted, he could just make out a much smaller shape. Cody's grin widened. Nick. The best friend a bug could have. Nick appeared to be waving, so Cody lifted a leg and waved back.
Cody's grin faltered. Nick was waving awfully fast, two of his legs moving frantically back and forth above his head.
A wave of icy green water slammed into one side of the boat and Cody clung to the side as it tipped perilously.
Leaning hard in the other direction, Cody hauled on the rudder with all his might, feeling the rigid bones of the leaf straining against the powerful lake. The wind picked up, at his back now. Still straining against the rudder, Cody extended a foot and managed to hook it over a tiny string. He gritted his teeth and used his toes to pull.
The dark, folded package Cody'd been so secretive about earlier split like an overripe fruit and a cloud of gauzy white material billowed out, blossoming above the boat.
As it rose, the Glowtide's port edge dropped back into the water with a sharp slap.
Then the wind caught them.
The giant cocoon filled like a lung, and the tiny boat shot across the surface of the water. Letting out a wild yell, Cody grabbed up a string trailing from the new sail, feeling the wind tugging hard. He yawed between it and the rudder, feeling the Glowtide obey his slightest movement, his every impulse.
Grinning, Cody leaned to the left, and the Glowtide executed a lazy righthand turn, the sharp green prow swinging triumphantly towards shore. The wind lessened slightly and he drifted, staring wonderingly around him. It had worked.
Cody whooped with joy then pricked up his ears, thinking he heard an answer from the shoreline.
The whole cave now appeared new before his eyes: the cluster of soft green lights high on the wall marking his village, other clusters, other villages speckling the wetly glistening cliffs, the tiny snare-strands waving in the subterranean breeze, a whole complex web of cracked paths connecting everything. And all of it surrounding this vast, magic body of water.
Cody looked over his shoulder and grinned. Out at the heart of the lake lay a ring of dark, forbidding islands. Long considered desolate and unreachable, they were suddenly within his grasp. It had worked. It had all gone exactly according to plan. He couldn't wait to tell Nick.
---
"Murray, what do you mean 'he made a funny sound and then just keeled over'?" Cody slapped gently at his best friend's cheeks. Nick's eyes remained firmly shut.
"Well Cody, that's just my unbiased reporting of the events as they occurred." The big spider peered anxiously over Cody's shoulder at Nick's prone form. "First the unusual noise, then the falling over. You think he's okay?"
"Nick? Can you hear me, Nick? Come back, buddy!" Cody wailed, his slaps increasing in intensity.
"Ow. Cody, how is hitting me going to improve my hearing?" He struggled up on several of his elbows. "And why am I lying down?"
Cody straightened up and put some hands where his hips should have been. "Apparently all the excitement of my triumphant, revolutionary voyage round the lake was too much for you and you fainted."
Nick peered up at him. "Did not."
Cody stomped a foot on the rocky shore, dislodging several pebbles, which rolled down toward the water's edge, coming to rest in the thick, clinging mud at the waterline. "No? You just decided in the middle of my groundbreaking journey--"
"Don't you mean water-breaking?" Nick got heavily to his feet, running an arm over his head gingerly.
Murray put a long, spindly leg on each of their shoulders. "Guys, guys, come on now, let's not fight at a time like this."
"There's a better time?" The two glowworms spoke in unison, then glared at each other.
"And just what do you two little gatherers think you're doing with that--that contraption out there?" Village elder Quinlan made his way precariously down the loose pebbles of the beach, leaning heavily on his cane. One of his nearly 700 daughters held his other arm, and another dozen or so trailed along behind them in a flittering herd. Nick and Cody automatically took a step closer together.
"Quinlan!" Cody called cheerily. "Did you see it? I got out on the lake! I built a boat! I--"
"What I saw, Cody Allen, was a bug old enough to know better endangering himself with yet another juvenile caper most worms grow out of when they shed their pupa!"
Cody's face fell. "But Quinlan--"
"Butts are for sitting on, Allen, and that's exactly what you seem to do best. Anytime you try to get off it, you're too busy with these childish pranks of yours to ever get any work done! I've had it with you guys! What was the plan for this last one? Fall in the water and convince everyone else in the village to leap in after you?"
"But--but--"
Nick put a supportive arm around Cody. A wave of disappointed trills swept through the assembled lady-bugs. "Wait a minute, Quinlan, don't you think--"
"Yes, I do, but apparently the two of you have some trouble with the concept!" Quinlan had begun breathing heavily, leaning hard on his cane. Another two of his daughters came up to lay restraining hands on his carapace, clicking with concern. Quinlan brushed them away angrily. "I don't want to see either of you out here again, especially not with this crackpot excuse for a scientist--" Nick and Cody ducked as Quinlan swung his cane up to point at Murray. "--with you. You know, Bozinsky, I had high hopes for you, I really did. When you first came to join the colony I said to myself, I said, 'Ted, that spider's really gonna make something of himself, yessirree boy.'"
Cody looked at Nick in time to see his partner mouth Ted?. He bit back a snicker in response.
Quinlan swung quickly back in their direction, coming down heavily on his cane. Cody gasped.
The elderly bug's abdomen went a dyspeptic, murky green. "Laugh it up, Allen. Go right ahead. Because when I'm through discussing your future with the rest of the village council, you'll be laughing out the other side of your mandible..." He leaned forwards and tapped the cane against Cody's thorax. Cody squeaked and nearly stumbled on the loose pebbles in his haste to get away.
"You know the deal, Allen," Quinlan said in a low voice. "You're either a trapper like Ryder, and you deliver, or you're taking home some of these daughters and getting on with it. Which means a life outside that nice, fine nest you two boys are so proud of. Give that some thought."
Nick tightened his arm around Cody protectively. "Lighten up, Ted."
The chorus gasped in unison, and Quinlan gripped his cane so tightly it snapped right in two. He stumbled, but a trio of dutiful daughters scrambled forward and caught him before he fell. The noises Quinlan made were not pretty and Cody trembled at the guttural clicks and hisses. But Nick's arm was tight and sure around him, and his partner wore an expression of calm amusement.
With a final enraged click, Quinlan, leaning heavily on his daughters, turned and stumbled back up the beach toward the lights of the village. His progeny followed in clusters, each of them tutting or clicking disapprovingly in turn, all except the very last girl, who, blushing ran up to Cody and kissed him on the cheek before giggling and fleeing in the dark after her sisters.
Cody sat down with a startled thump.
Nick, hands in hiplike places, glared down at him. "You okay there, tough guy? All the excitement get too much for you?"
Cody nettled and, scrabbling legs dislodging pebbles, scrambled to his feet. "I'm not gonna dignify that with an answer."
"Good. 'Cause I think I already got it." Nick nodded at Cody's pinkened abdomen.
Gasping, Cody whirled around, blushing furiously out at the lake.
"Guys, guys," Murray remonstrated, "come on, let's not fight." He sighed and a sad look appeared in all his eyes simultaneously. "I think we've caused enough trouble for one day, don't you?"
"I'll say. Look, what say we go have a drink at Snugaways and celebrate not getting killed in the name of science," Nick said. "How's that sound?"
Murray hooted. "That sounds great, Nick! I'd love to. Can we--"
"Yeah, Murray, we'll sit on the patio. They still haven't fixed the door from the last time we tried to fit you through it."
"I can't believe my calculations were wrong about that, Nick. I really thought it would work."
"I know you did, pal. But think of all the fresh air we'll get while you redo 'em, huh?" Nick turned and put his arm on Cody's shoulder. "How 'bout it? You ready to hoist a midge-tini, babe?"
Cody stood and stared out at the middle of the lake, consumed by the memories of those heady few seconds of flying across the cold green water. The dark islands in the middle of the lake seemed to mock him with their distance. So close, they seemed to say, and yet--
"And yet you were lucky you didn't get yourself killed, baby." Nick leaned in close and nuzzled Cody where his neck met his carapace.
Cody blushed. He hadn't realized he'd been thinking out loud.
"And I'm damn lucky you didn't get yourself killed," Nick said softly. "Don't think I don't know it. Now leave those islands where you found 'em and come on. One drink then we'll grab the boat, pack it up and head back to the nest and do some real celebrating. How's that sound?"
After a few seconds, Cody nodded. "Okay, Nick. Sure."
"That's the spirit." Nick gave Cody's shoulder a friendly shake as he steered them up towards the path leading along the cliff-face to Snugaway's. "C'mon. First round's on me, 'kay buddy?"
Murray sprinted leggily along ahead to secure them a spot outside at one of the few tables that could accommodate him. Then, with a long, last look over his shoulder at the now-placid surface of the lake, Cody let Nick guide him to their favorite watering hole.