Never

Chapter 2: The Meeting

The memory of the mysterious silent warrior remained for several days hovering around Orchid's head, causing all kinds of feelings and desires that a mantis -especially a leader- should not feel. An insane curiosity to know more about that individual and the desire to leave Fungal Wastes and look for him.

These thoughts did nothing but torment the poor mantis. Relations with insects outside the tribe were strictly forbidden, the mantis hated crossbreed insects and anything that led to one's birth was avoided at all costs. Based on this, the prohibition of mating with foreign bugs was created, a rule that applied to everyone regardless of the nature of the relationship. For one, although her late niece had been interested in a female bug and obviously among them they would not be able to have eggs, either she was not able to live her romance and faced the drastic law of mantis.

Only impartiality was sought. It would be unfair for homosexual relations to be allowed, and heterosexual relations not to be. On the other hand, the mantis also did not want their culture based on strength and power to be tainted by other people's thoughts. That's why Orchid felt so dirty thinking about the silent warrior in that special way, for the mantis mentality this was something horrifying.

In her own way she tried to calm down, convincing herself that this was only a passing thing, a mere sexual impulse caused perhaps by the concern she had lately of finding a male that would give her strong descendants. The strongest male of the tribe had been already claimed by Lavender, her older sister. Although that was not too much trouble, because between the mantis there was neither marriage nor fidelity, what did exist was honor and respect. If she wanted to get the paternity of that individual, she could ask her sister for permission. That was not frowned upon and was a common practice, however the idea of resorting to it embarrassed her greatly.

On the other hand, her sister's partner would be very powerful, but the poor bug was uglier than a rock. She knew that things like physical appearance shouldn't be important, but she wanted a handsome insect, at least for her first time. Was she be being too capricious?

Despite all her doubts, questions and all the shameful fantasies that the young warrior caused her, Orchid would have been able to forget him. The distance and time would have killed that small little flame of passion that opened its way in her chest, without an effective bond or contact beyond a fleeting glance in the distance, everything was destined to end in nothing.

The silent warrior almost never passed through the Mantis village, he used other routes to reach Deepnest and although he sometimes wandered through Fungal Wastes, it had not happened that they had met.

Yes, that whole affair of her crush could have become nothing more than a distant dream, but things didn't turn out that way.

One day The Mantis Lords received the great surprise that the very queen of Deepnest requested an audience with them. In the five years that she had been ruling, they had never had the opportunity to see her, they had heard of her, they talked about her great strength, her severe character, her fair acting and the respect that her people professed and the insects of other tribes, so they were so curious about her.

Probably because of the enmity that mantis had traditionally had with spiders, neither party had made the slightest effort to contact the other, but Queen Hornet seemed determined to establish friendly relations with all the kingdoms, including the tribe of mantis.

However, despite everything they had heard from the queen, she herself was extremely disappointing. Hornet was all that a mantis despised. She was a crossbreed, half spider, half worm. Worm! Sure, she was the daughter of the legendary Pale King, but that wasn't enough to dull her dirty blood, besides the mantis had never revered that monarch. She was also very small. How could a creature of her size impose respect? Is it that the inhabitants of Deepnest were crazy?