Eat My Heart Out

We haven't quite gotten there yet, but there are bug-people in Shadowplay, one in particular whom we'll be spending a lot of time with. She's got a human boyfriend, whose family has been very worried about him ever since he ran off to live in the woods with a giant bug. It’s a love poem, then, for the insect priestess Elie Nine, from Cannan Calidus. We can only imagine he read it to her; it’s so hard to read with compound eyes!

They say that all men love a pretty girl:
the sweetness of her laugh, her gentle grace,
the youthful softness of her hands and face,
the sparkle of her eyes, her golden curls.

But my love’s eyes are darker than the sea -
she has a dozen, varying in size,
deeper and more liquid than a maiden’s eyes,
eight above and four below the knee.

My love can capture the world in her claws.
My love is always singing in my head.
She devours every skin I shed,
she liberates me from the old world’s laws.
My love will eat my body when I’m dead…
one last time, I’ll go to heaven in her jaws.