Auspur {2021} by irr. app. (ext.)

Auspur {2021}

[eie dig057]

1. Auspur

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Wandering ears, twitching mouthparts, restless limbs always in search of the satisfying outpour of cellular engineering; when eyelets are weeping abundant tears of gratification, when the sugar endures in the fluids of the fleshy parts, when the periphery has cracked and the outer layer is shed: every point on the curve merges with every other point on the curve, so let the festivities begin. A black eye soaks up all the colour, a red eye searches for movement in the undergrowth, a listless green eye is unsettled by a shadow. The eyeless are excluded from this exchange, but they are not unfortunate because of it: there is a sprawling, boundless territory available to those that are not governed by light.

Under the shade of countless hindquarters, a lot can be gathered and a lot can be shed -- but much farther down there is a region of immaculate cold, equally removed from the effulgence of the sun and the flaming iron wheel at the core. Grit and ash and crystals feel the relentless embrace of history, yet will never re-experience the incredible forces that first brought them together: amalgamated by energy, disgorged by wayward continents, only to be left to dissipate across empty centuries. Still, this phlegmatic terrain is both where the parade begins and where it ends. If a lump of proteins simmering in a calcified urn is alive, how can the incandescent gases at the center of a star not be alive?

A form slouches over the situation, soaking in the rising vapour through its gelatinous outer sheath: a ruddy, rubbery, pinkish membrane, just marginally translucent enough to give a hint of the branching, twisting, interweaving networks contained inside. Embellished with layers of gorgeous muck, the tableau is irresistible. A network of soft, pale filaments interpenetrates everything, above and below and -- should we dare to look -- also within. It provides a destination for both ends of the coil: that which receives what is left when the histology departs will give it all back when the occasion arrives.

Tough but flexible bristles extend from under an iridescent green carapace that is occasionally spattered with tiny, glistening instances of purple and orange whenever the surface collides with a wandering smear of daylight. Minuscule granules are caught up in the bristles: both the ones that are desirable, and a scattering of others that manifest contrary desires on a different but intersecting course. Mostly, the carrier is oblivious to the purpose of it all. The tiny spark in a tiny head sees itself spectacularly magnified in every proposition, and then inexorably reflected back from every direction.

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