Fit for a Queen

A.N: I have used * to indicate Wraith telepathy.

He sensed her approach as a pricking at the edge of thought. The small irritation in his mind grew toward familiar dissonance as the young queen’s arrogance forged ahead of her physical presence. Not yet old enough for her own hive, she was nevertheless constantly attended by a little coterie of Wraithlings, held willingly within her grasp, their blind adoration surrounding her complacent self-regard, like a thick, cloying layer of rotting detritus.  She would drop them like hot coals as soon as she could, he knew.  As soon as she felt her mental powers straining at the bounds of her mother’s command, she would take what mature blades she was able to wrest from her parent hive’s control and form her own court, leaving her immature followers bereft of her arrogant, petulant mind.

She entered, her train of disciples in her wake, her chin lifted haughtily, her lips curled back in a disdainful sneer.

*Zephyr!*  She slipped her cold tendril into his thoughts, marking his name with scorn.

*Frostvine,* he named her in return, carefully devoid of any mental inflection.

She hesitated, then, and he felt her mind coil within itself, preparing to strike out at his, as she had done so many times since she had followed him from their mother's womb, to be greeted with joy and pride where, at best, he only ever received tolerance and a vague sense of disappointment.  She did not strike.  Instead, her gaze travelled over the contents of the chamber, her distaste at the accoutrements of humanity showing in the contemptuous tilt of her head and the delicate twitching of her long, narrow-tipped fingers.  Spikes of command projected from her consciousness and her small subjects scattered to do her bidding.

Zephyr resumed his activities.  He stirred the contents of the pan before him, careful to move the spoon around the perimeter so that the sauce would not stick and burn.  If he stopped, even for a moment, he had learned that it would thicken where it was closest to the heat and then, even if he resumed stirring, it would be lumpy and unpalatable.  As he moved the spoon in slow circles and figure-eights, Zephyr allowed his mind to float vaguely past his determination to prepare this human meal and he maintained an impassive gaze as Frostvine issued her peremptory commands and chastised with quick lashes of thought.  

They had only come for the iced products.  The shiny steel equipment and stores of packaged food that the Atlanteans had given them would have gone unused were it not for Zephyr.  Drones had been detailed to prepare the nutritional paste daily, the bland mix that most of the hive now subsisted on, and neither Frostvine’s clique nor the mature Wraith of this hive would demean themselves with the act of learning to prepare and cook meals.  But Frostvine had conceived a liking for the frozen animal milk and so Zephyr’s culinary adventures were regularly disturbed.

She held a colourful receptacle in one hand and excavated its contents with a small spoon, her pointed tongue delicately licking as her jade green eyes rested upon Zephyr. He dropped his shoulders, his mind swirling indeterminately with the rise of steam from the cooking pot.  Her cold amusement tickled the surface of his thoughts and then she was there, in full force, her will vibrating in his skull, the sudden intensity hazing his vision.  He bent and slipped past her attack, in his own inimitable way, with the elusive, floating drift of thought that had given him his name.  He felt her anger and dared not smile.  She came again, even though her body remained loose and languid, her attention apparently absorbed by the creamy, cold foodstuff.  His vision juddered as she tried to force him to kneel, to bow to her superior strength, but he simply conceded, diverting his thoughts to a private place, where, indeed he was forced to kneel, but divorcing the action from the muscles that would have allowed the abasement in reality.  She withdrew and could not prevent the angry hiss that issued from snarling lips.