Nadia & The DuneBellies
Nadia Pinkerton was not your average girl. Born into a tribe of excitable creatures called The DuneBellies, which, for those of you who don’t already know, occupies the underside of Saturn’s second moon in a terminally upside-down kingdom called “Mystopia.” Upside down, not just figuratively. Saturn’s second moon was not one for revolving.
The distinguishing feature of The DuneBellies is that instead of bellybuttons, they are born with “dugouts.” Fist-sized spherical concavities below the rib cage that house their “GestationalGemstones,” commonly known amongst tribal members as “PoochPrisms.”
When DuneBabies are born, the tribe comes together in ceremony around a spitting violet fire, placing all their held beliefs into the Mothermold, forming a sort of epoxy, supercharged cabochon. The crystallized gem is then fixed with specialized glue made from the first spittle of the DuneBaby, ground into a trickle of gritty, rose-colored sap from the Sickamore tree (native to Mystopia), and placed in the dugout to activate the child’s governance system.
99 percent of the babies produced by DuneBelly coupling result in the clinical, bright white glue that holds the PoochPrism happily in place. Each night, the prism is removed and set on the nightstand. Each morning, a dab of the SapSpit concoction secures the jewel in place again.
But Nadia Pinkerton had not been so lucky.
(Original artwork:) You can purchase prints here.
Her PoochPrism Ceremony had been an absolute disaster. The spittle collected at her birth had screwed her parents' faces into such plasticine horror, that she knew she’d never be able to forget. Not even though DuneBellies are known for short-term rememory loss. No. Nadia recalled the trauma like it was yesterday. The iridescent orange river leaving her small new mouth looked nothing like her friend's holy translucence (she knew from the insufferable and incessant accounts jeered around the second-period lunch table. “My,” she thought. “They do drone on about the most uninspiring pigwash.”)
Never mind that the gem produced at her Violet Ceremony, the one molded from her tribe’s LiquidLawLanguage, did not solidify to fit her ghastly six-sided concave. Everyone else had a perfect circle.
It was as if, by all accounts, Nadia had been born on the wrong planet.
Each morning, she woke up. Each morning, she hoped some ButterFaery had snuck in at night and reformulated the useless glue in her bedside drawer. Somehow spellbound the prism into six-sided submission. But each day, Nadia woke to the same circle. Each day, the same old glue. Each day, pretending everything was ok. Each day, the lie stole something from her.
Meanwhile, much to her chagrin, her sister and brother had no issue with their lacunae. They were greeted after school each day with smiles and chocolate-chip-core-stabilizer-cookies. While Nadia continued to wilt into something she didn’t understand by forces beyond her capacity for knowing.
One day, on the way to school, juggling her books in one hand, trying to wrangle the enemy into submission with the other, Nadia tripped over a FringeLion boobytrap and fell into a hole that appeared to have no bottom.
She wondered how she was falling down and up at the same time. But she shrugged and committed to this random turn of events, as this was decidedly the most exciting thing that had happened to her since throwing a winning three-pointer from the halfway line in the last two seconds of the Ask-it-ball championship game in middle school. Ah. Her dad had been so proud.
In all the commotion and the flailing, Nadia lost hold of her gemstone, which slipped up the bib of her plaid uniform jumper and proceeded to lodge itself into the mushy intestinal wall of this seemingly eternal orifice. She waved goodbye to it as best she could, given the circumstances. Though not at all sad. Suddenly, without a sound or warning, something jarring caught the flesh of her bottom, jolting her bones into an awakeness not previously known.
She caught herself and, once adjusted, began to rub at her eyelids with impish fists. Like she was trying to clear smoke from her mother’s favorite pair of cheaters. She rubbed them once. Twice. Thrice. And in the end gave up. No matter how hard she tried, she wouldn’t have believed them.
But sure enough, staring back at her sat a creature she’d seen in dreams and fairytales but never in a million years believed to be true. The skullcap of Nadia's mind swung sweetly open.
And the mythical creature began to speak . . .
. . . to be continued.
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Even though dunebellies were supposed to have very poor short term memory. They only live to the age of 10 in human years. (each year the equivalent of an earthly decade).