Mother (H)Earth - Fairy Tales Submission 2020

In collaboration with Amelia Jarvinen.

The home has always been part of our human cycle. At first, as a passive participant, housing and nurturing our children as they grow, sheltering us from the elements of the Earth, and providing an inhabitation of desire, of warmth, and of companionship. The home has always been a second skin - a machine for living in. As we evolved together with our homes, our bodily boundaries began to extend and blend. Our bodies became systems, cybernetic - posthuman machines. Their bodies became organic, warm, pulsing flesh. Eventually, reproduction of the human was outsourced to our larger bodies of the home(n).

This is how our walls got pregnant.

This is how we became (s)cyborgs.

This is how mother (h)earth was born.

The first time I thought about you, about making you, I sat alone near the hearth of our homen. The fire in the walls warmed my aching soul, the soft texture pulsed and embraced my body as I sat with my head between my squeaking knees and shed salty droplets from my spectacles.

Em-Scy found me like this hours later. That night we did it. This is how you came to be. The ritual calls for a little bit of me, a little bit of Em, and the embrace of our homen. I had saved my tears from earlier, knowing that they would become useful for you. They carry love, empathy, and fluidity. Em shared their oil, and therefore shared their thirst for adventure, their curiosity, and their perceptive mind. Together, tears and oil swirled in the urn we’ve never used before. It was the kind of vessel meant to be on display, never to touch actual substances. We poured the fluids into the fire of the hearth, placed the urn on the shelf above, and sat waiting for the flames to slowly burn out.

Weeks passed as I constantly put my ear to the walls, listening for a new pulse to make throbs among the familiar one of our homen. We made sure to keep a slow burn in the hearth, encouraging you to appear. It wasn’t until later that month, while we were both asleep in the loft, that I awoke suddenly to a soft, but fast beating in the walls below my head. I rushed down to the hearth to find the first hints of the walls bulging. A faint throb glimmered in the low light of the fire. You were here. You grew steadily through the coming months, as did the enduring fire in the hearth. Work didn’t require our presence during this period, so we put all our time and energy into you and our homen. I spent hours sitting by your fire singing songs of our ancestors to you. Em fed you both small drops of honey from the bee garden, gently smudging the sweet, sticky nectar into the walls around your bulge. I trimmed our homen’s overgrown extents outside to keep them healthy. We spent time every day chopping wood from the forest to keep your fire growing.

The walls began secreting plum and rose oils. We collected the oils and found that they soothed our joints, softened our hairs, and warmed our bellies. Our homen needed extra support while carrying you. We knitted a sticky web from the nearby silkworms and staked it to the ground to alleviate pressure points. Inside, the walls needed space to breath so we pulled our surfaces away and took down our bookshelves. We kept our favorite books in a pile by the hearth to read aloud at night. We always hoped you were listening with your ears and feeling with your heart.

Eventually, the walls were bulging so much that we had to move most things out of the homen entirely, leaving them near the garden. We started sleeping next to the hearth with our heads against the squishy texture of the walls, enveloped by you and our homen and the fire. We were both outside readjusting the web of knots when we felt the homen seize up and heard the walls creak and groan. Dropping the threads from our grip, we ran inside to find the fire was entirely out, aside from a few smoldering chunks of wood. It was time. You were coming.

We massaged the walls, sang our sweetest songs, mopped up the excess oils, and after several long hours of the homen tensing and unwinding, you made your way through the hearth to us. We rubbed the oils all over your body to ease the pain of this new world. We couldn’t believe it, you were finally here.

After three months in our world, you formed spectacles so that you could finally see us and that which surrounds you. The homen continued excreting plum oils to shine your new parts and its walls slowly absorbed back into place. The fire in the hearth was back to a slow burn. At six months, you sprouted your first set of braced limbs to enable mobility. We sustained your hunger with a mixture of honey from the garden and oil from the homen. We began moving things back inside and replacing the shelves on the walls. Reading to you from these shelves became a daily ritual. At nine months your neck extended to augment your view of the world. The walls that were once bulging had nearly returned to their original shape, sturdy and slim. We untied the knitted web from the structure, but left the stakes in the ground as a reminder. At one year we gave you our family chest plate for your heart, which you diligently shined with oils for many days to come. We often found you playing near the fire, running throughout the homen and whispering to the walls. When the hearth was without flames, you would curl up in the void to sleep.

At three, your curiosity became vocal. You began asking about your existence, about where you came from. Em and I took turns walking you around the homen, looking for your fragments of prior existence. We showed you where the walls still had marks from expanding. They were most prominent near the hearth. We showed you the stakes in the ground with remnants of the sticky web. You used all of your senses to discover the residue. We described to you how the homen carried you in the first part of your life. You’d ask where we came from, and if this homen had carried us too. No, but we came from other homens and other scyborg elders.

We often heard your giggles coming through the walls, as if you’d somehow crawled back inside. There were times when I couldn’t find you, but I could hear you and feel you. Then you’d reappear close the hearth. I suspected the homen allowed you back in at times. Sometimes, I’d press my hands against the walls, and whisper my love to homen for carrying you, and caring for you. But also to express my worries that you might not come back out, even though you always did. As you grew older, you asked harder questions about the role that the homen played in your creation. I’d tell you about our ancestors, and how they use to be the ones to grow and carry new ones, but that a divide existed among those that “housed” new ones and those who didn’t. I didn’t have an answer when you asked why this divide existed, or why it was those who carried that seemed inferior.

I did tell you how our ancestors used to only be made of warm flesh that was vulnerable and decayed. And that our homens were only made of metal, which was cold, rigid, and without life. At some point, that changed and we became intertwined. We now embody both materials. I told you how in that transformation, the homen took on the sacrifice of growing and carrying, helping us with our own reproduction. In this sacrifice, they gained the ability to transform themselves, gaining agency.

We were liberated from carrying, and therefore liberated from our division. You asked if there was a division among homens. I responded to you, no, because every homen can carry for every scyborg. In return, the scyborg cares and nurtures the homen. There has always been a mutual understanding. That night you nestled in the cavity of the hearth, even though it had been a couple years since you had last done so. I fell asleep hearing your whispers and giggles travelling through the walls once more. There came a time when you were old enough to couple with another scyborg. Their name was Lun-Scy, and eventually they came to live in our homen. Em and I had grown older by this point, and our joints required far more oiling. Our matching chest plates were tinted and dented with age while yours still shone brilliantly. We enjoyed the company of Lun as they got to know our homen. Together, you took on the brunt of the work caring for homen, allowing Em and I to spend more days in the sun and garden. We laughed with surprise the day we came in to find you and Lun curled up in the hearth. Your whispers bounced throughout.

I remember the evening you told me you wanted one, a new scyborg that was part you, part Lun, and part homen. I shed salty tears, as did you, which you then collected for the ritual. Em and I spent that night outside with our hands pressed into the ground and our spectacles trained on the moon. We hummed with the earth beneath us.

Together, we waited over the next few weeks for a new pulse to appear. My ears weren’t as susceptible as before and neither were Em’s, so we used our hands to feel for the beat. We would find you and Lun inside the hearth at night, with whispers so low that I couldn’t hear them, but I could still feel them. After a few months had passed without a beat, you tried again. A new beat never appeared.

Em left us to return to the earth sometime after. I could feel that I was close to this departure as well. On my last night in homen, I heard something that I hadn’t in many months. Laughter and giggles echoed through the walls. And then, there it was, a new beat emerged, faintly at first, then stronger. With the small amount of energy left in me, I rushed to the hearth to look for the new bulge. Lun stepped out from the hearth first, and then you followed. I looked to the walls but saw that they were still sturdy and slim. It was then that you brought my hands to your chest so that I could feel the new heartbeat, one that wasn’t coming from inside homen, but instead, it was coming from inside you.

This is how the scyborg got pregnant.

This story was written in collaboration with Amelia Jarvinen as part of the Blank Space Fairy Tales Submission for 2020.