Totem Animals: Porcupine

Porcupine

Porcupine's trail through the woods leads straight to his feeding tree: a giant, solitary hemlock growing out of the shallow depression of an old moraine. Porcupine feeds on the tree's pinecones, bark, and needles high up in the crown at night, and at the morning's first rays, he climbs down and enters his underground den, whose chambers wind among the hemlock's ancient root system.

Today is an unusual day for porcupine because he must replace his lost quills. There are only two ways a porcupine can lose its quills: through battle or by by dark deed. The reason porcupine now shivers unprotected as a rat under his tree is that he has killed his brother in cold blood and stolen his beautiful wife. She is kept now in his dankest cavern, unfed until she submits to his will, which she has not.

Porcupine decides to replace his lost quills with sea urchin needles, since the beach is not very far. In the tidal pools there are many shiny black sea urchins. Their inky spikes sparkle in the misted light. Porcupine collects and glues the urchin spikes to his hide, and soon he is resplendent in borrowed black needles. Satisfied with his new armor, he makes the hike back to his home tree.

Eager to impress his captive, he unlocks the dungeon door to show his brother's wife his resurfaced exterior. But before he can complete a single twirl, she attack, ripping out the narrow quills. Naked and bleeding to death, she buries him alive inside her once prison.

If porcupine is your totem animal, commit no dark deeds and you will be fine.

You Bring Me Down

Totem Animals: Horseshoe Crab

Horseshoe Crab

Horseshoe crab is the oldest of all animals. He has been here since just after the earth formed through the coalescence and compression of billions of cubic meters of interstellar dust.

Horseshoe crab arrived as a seed planted in the center of a meteor that plummeted into earth's primordial ocean. There, the seed awakened, and out crawled horseshoe crab - the planet's sentinel creature.

Underneath its brown shell, the crab is delicate. Its legs are soft, feeling the ocean's floor and using its modified front legs to collect food and pass it to its mouth.

Horseshoe crab's tail traces pathways in the sand. Infant snails, eels, manta rays and sea cucumbers follow the trails to learn what they are and how to live.

When the crab dies, it washes up on the shore and releases its blood. The blood seeps into the sand where it hardens and forms chunks of corlithian- the mineral used to treat sadness in whales. Its blood is blue - the only blue blood of any creature on earth. The first blood.

Totem Animals: Owl

Owl

Owl is the world's stealthiest animal, and the most deadly on wings. Its mastery of the element of surprise is unparalleled, and it applies this tactic with invariable success. Every part of the owl's body is designed to make it absolutely silent. The owl's feathers are hand-woven by faceless beings who live on an underground moon, where all owls are assembled. These being beings are responsible for creating all nocturnal animals, which include owls, bats, raccoons, scorpions, mink, moths and the lemurs of Madagascar, which are their specialty.

The owl's dish-like face funnels sound to its earholes, which are installed asymmetrically in their skulls. This asymmetry allows owls to triangulate in on their prey in the darkness of night. An owl's ears are so sharp, it can hear a mouse peeing on a cotton ball.

Owls also receive weak messages from ancient satellites put into orbit by now-extinct races. The owl's whisper these messages to their prey before crushing them in their talons and eating them.

Totem Animals: Frog

Frog

Frog holds the world up from beneath his secret pond. Each fall, frog swallows all the mud he can hold, collecting it with his long, sticky tongue. The mud contains the memories of all life that came before. For the world to continue, frog must remember anew each year. He consumes the mud for several weeks, filling his stomach until it presses all the other organs aside. Just before burrowing deep under the pond floor to hibernate over the winter, frog takes one last gulp of mud, and along with it, a single oyster's pearl. During hibernation, he will digest the mud, taking it into his cells and remembering each plant and animal whose liquefied remains make up his special sustenance. As the days get warmer, and the mud in frog's stomach is gone, all that remains is the pearl. He swims to the surface of the pond, and spits it into the sky where it becomes spring's new moon.

Naked Mole Rat Digging Towards the Moon

Intro

Its dark. So dark not a single photon of light will penetrate your world for the duration of your lifetime. You will not lay eyes on...anything. For without light, and without true eyes, there is nothing for you to see. Your teeth are full of dirt, as they should be. You are built to dig, miles and miles of tunnels and chambers underground. You are a member of the only animal species whose social structure resembles that of honey bees - with workers, drones, and even a queen. Your queen lives deep within the dark recesses of the colony in the nuptial chamber, where she, fat and white, extrudes naked more rat after naked mole rat. Ever excavating, you look for food- tubers- the starchy roots of vegetation soaking in the African sun above. One tuber can feed your whole colony for months. But for the last several months, neither you nor your coworker naked mole rats have found any tubers and the group is hungry. You have been eating your own excrement for several days now, recycling it through your gut so many times that it is practically sterile ash.

Day 458

Digging continues. We haven't had a tuber in more than 92 days. The colony is lethargic, conserving resources. Other than digging, the workers sit still, falling into and out of torpidity. I had a strange dream today as I rested, my metabolism grinding to a peaceful, frozen pace. I was in a large cavern. There were mole rats everywhere, gathered around a large banquet table. On the table were candelabras, crimson cut glass wine goblets, china dishes and fine, ornate silverware. Giant platters of tubers of a strange variety I have never seen before were being served. The mole rats were gorging. They were growing fatter and fatter. So fat that their bulk started pressing against the walls of the cavern. Then, with a deafening crack, the cavern split, and light from the surface came pouring in. The mole rats squinted their vestigial eyes. The yellow light burned them. Slowly, they realized that they could see each other. Then I woke up.

Day 461

Last night, the colony voted to begin digging in a new direction. Its a direction we've never gone in before, in fact, we have a voided digging that way, but since we haven't found food in so long, things are getting desperate. We're going to start digging towards the west, where there is a good possibility that there could be another naked mole rat colony. If we come into contact with the western mole rats, war is assured. We haven't warred in many years - since long before I was even a pup, I am told. I'm afraid of war, but the colony is starving. Two mole rats died in the last few days, and our colony is down to just fifty of us. I helped take the corpses to the burial chamber. We pushed the bodies to the back wall, and then packed dirt against them. Untold numbers of dead mole rats are rotting behind those walls. They even contain the bones of my parents, but I try not to dwell on that. I'm feeling weak and vulnerable, emotionally. I'm trying to keep it together, but things are grim.

Day 463

I was in the toilet chamber today rolling around in the colony urine and feces to reapply the group scent. While there, I overheard several mole rats discussing the likelihood of finding fresh tubers towards the west. They seem to think the queen is crazy for initiating this change in digging direction, and that she may be ovulating or perhaps carrying an especially large litter. I don't know. All I know is that I'm hungry enough to risk possible warfare if it means finding some food. I cannot cope with having to eat my own shit anymore. There's nothing digestible left, and unfortunately, I'm a picky eater and refuse to eat anything but my own brand. We will be coming very close to the western colony tomorrow. I've bargained for a position as sweeper towards the rear, so I won't see any actual digging tomorrow. Thank God, my ulcers couldn't take that kind of stress.

Day 464

The colony was fraught with fear today. We were so close to the western group that we could hear them talking. The queen ordered a stop in working so she could maneuver her distended body to the front of the new tunnel and try to make out what they were saying. Since I was nowhere near the front of the tunnel, I can only write down what I heard from others, which is that the western colony is flush with tubers, and that their queen's harem of males are fat and lazy and barely even bother to feign interest in their queen, but she can't get rid of them because they are her first cousins and something about inheritance. I couldn't really tell. Our queen's males are robust and attentive, as they should be. I'm glad I'm not in the western mole rat colony.

Day 645

The inevitable has happened. We are at war with the western colony. We were digging one of our larger exploratory tunnels when the ceiling collapsed and we broke through into one of the western mole rats' chambers. Luckily, no one was in there at the time, and we were able to plan a coordinated attack. It seemed we were in their toilet chamber, so we were able to camouflage ourselves in the enemy's scent. They never smelled us coming. Our first objective was to kill their queen. A scout and a group of ten mole rats were sent to locate her. The rest of our rats huddled near the breech, waiting to be called into action. From what I have heard, the queen was killed easily, as her harem of males fled upon realizing they were under attack. They were killed as well. It was then that the western colony mustered a weak defense, but the element of surprise is a powerful tool, and we quickly decimated their entire colony. Tomorrow we remove the corpses and enlarge our domain to include the new territory. The western rats were indeed flush with tubers. They must have hit a rich vein, for one of their larger chambers was filled to the top with food. Our rats our refreshed. The new tubers ensure our survival for many years. I am glad the war came and went quickly.

Day 650

I had another dream tonight. We were at war again, but this time I was fighting at the fore. We had breached the queen's chamber and there she lay- pushing out milky white sightless pups one after another. Except the pups were some sort of monstrous larvae. I picked one up in my jaws and crushed it with my teeth. Blood coursed down my neck. Soon, I was drowning in an underground cavern of blood. I rose closer to the ceiling, and started digging towards the surface. When I broke through, it was still dark - I believe it is what they call "night." I was able to focus my eyespots to some degree on the sky, and there hung a glowing white round tuber - of a type I have never seen before. I began digging furiously towards it. Then I woke up.

Naked mole rat

Naked mole rat

Put on some clothes

Come up to the surface

And sit in the sun.

Unearth your queen.

Extrude her exquisite body

From your darkened chambers

And let her feel the light.

Nucleus