Two Dark Moons by Avi Silver

Author:Avi Silver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: queer, hopepunk, found family, coming of age, ecofiction, dinosaurs, young adult, fantasy, family, aromantic, neurodivergent, non binary, non-binary, jungle
Publisher: Molewhale Press
Published: 2019-07-12T16:00:00+00:00

“Okay babies,” Sohmeng said, catching the moss- coloured egg she had tossed into the air. A dozen little eyes watched her hand, unblinking. “Let’s see if any of you have learned a godless thing.”

She steadied her feet, readied her arm, and pretended to throw her very best throw. The hatchlings went barrelling into the forest while Sohmeng cackled, shaking the egg still in her hand.

“Never gets old,” she snickered to herself.

From behind her came a curious noise, and Sohmeng turned to see one last hatchling, smaller than the rest, without any throat stripes. The little sãoni looked from the egg to Sohmeng and back, tilting its head.

“Oh, you sneaky thing!” She crouched down, tutting in mock reproach. “Fine, it’s yours. Size really isn’t everything, huh? You just might be the smartest of the bunch.”

The hatchling opened its mouth ridiculously wide for the egg, and Sohmeng laughed, stroking between the little nubs that would eventually become head spines. The hatchlings had provided her a source of entertainment during her long convalescence, and she’d grown fond of their antics. She chirped a friendly sound to the sãoni, who responded with a squeaky trill of its own.

“Sohmeng Par?”

Sohmeng looked up mid-chirp to see—

“Oh godless—”

—a hardly-clothed Hei returning from the Ãotul where they’d been bathing. She fixed her eyes determinedly on the hatchling, cheeks tingling. Hei was about as self-conscious as a toddler when it came to nudity, and brazen as Sohmeng was, she’d discovered that she had a certain weakness for well-toned weirdos.

“Yes, Hei the Stubbornly Nude?” she responded, patting the hatchling with newfound fervour.

“Have you seen my makeup?” They half-heartedly tugged on their sãoni skin top, leaning down to dig through the shelter the two of them had been sharing.

“You buried it under banana leaves so the babies wouldn’t get into it.” Not that it was helping. More often than not the hatchlings would stumble over, slick with charcoal and palmfruit oil, looking far too pleased with themselves. She reached back, pushing aside the leaves and handing the small bowl to Hei. “If you’d use some silvertongue, they’d leave it be.”

“But if the smell stuck, they’d never go near me again.” Hei clicked in gratitude nonetheless, and was just about to scoop up more of the concoction when Sohmeng swatted at their wrist.

“Wait, wait—you’re seriously going to slap on more of that without cleaning off the old stuff first?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. Hei blinked, looking from the bowl to Sohmeng as though no one had ever mentioned to them that skin needed to breathe. For all Sohmeng knew, that might have been the case. “Feel your skin, you still have oil streaked all over! Weren’t you just bathing?”

“I . . . rinsed it?” they replied, confusion wrinkling their brow. “But I didn’t scrub it like the rest of me. I’m just going to be putting on more makeup anyway—” At Sohmeng’s open disgust, their shoulders dropped in defeat. “Do I have to?”

“Do you want to keep squishing your face against mine?” Sohmeng asked matter-of-factly. Hei rubbed at their nose, which had very quickly gone pink, and nodded.

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