In Their Nature

(we, now)

When the sun sets, listen for the symphony that rises from the lake. You should recognise that operatic, croaking swell. A tale you’ve certainly been told before.

Perhaps you’ve waded into the water, perched by the bank, or sat far up the mountain—it doesn’t matter exactly where you are. The volume gives this amphibian chorus universal reach. That’s how you’ve picked it up on previous occasions. Your ears prick, whatever distance away, and you catch the familiar start of the story.

The one about the noble frog who offered to carry a scorpion across this lake on its back.

And since you’ve already witnessed this aria once or thrice, you know it ends with the scorpion stinging the frog and dooming them both. Because that’s just in our vicious nature.

#

(she, then)

The frog said to the scorpion, “You seem so very lonely out here.”

Crouched awkwardly on the soggy shore, the scorpion considered the frog poking his head out of the lake. She didn’t recognise him, as they had never interacted before. Her folk usually kept to their own shelters, tending quietly and assiduously to the space they were responsible for.

But a recent spate of waterlogged houses had forced them into the open. Flooding had soaked deep into the earth; the residential burrow walls had started to degrade. The scorpion had tolerated it for a couple of days, but she could only hold her breath for so long.

As soon as she emerged outside, she found the frog watching. As if waiting for her.

#

(we, now)

There are many different ways to tell this story.

In the quieter pockets of night, between bursts of ostentatious caterwauling, our experiences linger in silent mists of pheromones. Sometimes, the dusting of our chemicals settles indelibly into the particles of the earth, seeps into fissures cracked through rocks. Not destructive like the deluge pervading our homes, but the commemorative stamping of a chronicle that speaks across generations of us. It blends and mingles with the environmental elements, a communal testament to where we’ve been.

These records of our history remain, if you know where to find them.

The burrow at the end of this crescent still contains remnants of her, the fabled scorpion, on its dirt walls, despite the numerous floods that have weakened the structure over the years. Our underground homes stitch through the entire shoreline. Dots of humble caverns arc along the lake’s edge, one contiguous village that nonetheless spans a long perimeter; we live spaced out— the residents of this neighbourhood never coming into direct contact with those across the water.

But we all belong to the same community, a chain that maintains itself over centuries by remaining unbroken. Together, we trust in each other to preserve our heritage.

You may catch molecular traces of long-distance correspondence on the breeze—those snatches of our conversations filling the ecosystem’s airwaves even when we can’t greet each other face-to-face.

Often, we retell this tale of one of our ancestors.

#

(she, then)

The frog lifted himself onto the scorpion’s disintegrating soil. “We could cross the lake in just a few minutes,” he said, palpating the damp mud between his webbed toes. “Don’t you want to get to know the rest of your folk in person?”

Curiosity suffused the scorpion’s neural ganglia, prompting her hesitant response. “How would I make it to the other side?”

“Well, you should hop onto my back.” The frog reversed onto the bank. His hind legs stretched like a ramp, encroaching into her yard.

“Oh no, I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not? You’ll be waiting around for your house to dry out anyway.”

She manoeuvred tentatively onto his back. “Is this really all right for you?”

“Just don’t sting me,” he chuckled.

“Of course I won’t.”

It is strange to think of a legendary hero as fallible. Before she could second guess her decision, they were off, the scorpion suspended on the tiny island of the frog’s back in the middle of the lake, unable to swim herself.

From this vantage point, she finally noticed the amphibian fleet flanking them.

Their skin bore the telltale striated uniform of the Poison Darts. Bits of grass and floating bark withered before them like insubstantial foam. The frogs sucked water into their mouths, spewing streams with the same peculiar corrosiveness that had crumbled her community’s domiciles.

#

(we, once)

It wouldn’t have been the first time we were squeezed out of our habitat.

Our forebears once dwelled in the oceans, stretching out to fill enormous volumes of underwater space. So vast and imposing were their bodies that they didn’t yet require the stinging tails, the ones that evolved after we fled the Great Dying—when lava boiled the seas, forcing our ancestors to claw out of the poisonous volcanic water and to seek refuge on land. Our forms shrank to fit within the boundaries of our modest new burrows; our metasoma stretched and turned venomous to protect our fragile bodies in an unfamiliar world teeming with hostile ecosystems.

The history of displacement is etched into the fabric of our anatomy.

#

(she, then)

The scorpion bore our ancestors’ legacy in her tail. In the tale, her stinger descended, a definitive death knell passed down through generations of survivors.

“Why would you do that when I’m the one carrying you?” The frog thrashed, desperate with pain and disbelief, nearly knocking her off his back. “Now you’ve condemned us both!”

#

(we, now)

Although their larvae emerge aquatically, amphibian ambition extends onto our land. It hungers for these neighbourhoods that have flourished under our care, for a place that has become habitable only after we have nourished these once-barren banks across combined lifetimes.

We are familiar, now, with the frogs’ intentions. They study our mannerisms and flush us out. They try to use us as camouflage, carrying our bodies on their backs to disguise their motives, to wedge a hole through the integrity of our circumference, threatening the very community that transformed this place into the thriving area they covet.

But there was a time when we didn’t know.

#

(she, then)

In our folk’s legend, the scorpion’s warning took the shape of a sacrifice. She alerted us to the frogs’ advance; her action gave the rest of us time to notice, to react, to form a collective wall that wrapped all around the lake like an exoskeleton.

Along the shore, our lethal tails were poised to strike as we watched her grapple futilely with the roiling, toxic masses before sinking down below.

The overwhelming prospect of our unity intact drove the frogs into retreat. We made our banks impenetrable; we used our bodies to protect our homes.

The frog flotilla returned to the water. However, they refused to surrender the narrative victory in addition to the territorial one—they told anybody who would listen about the malicious, self-destructive temperament that would precipitate our own downfall.

You’ve probably heard this about us, too.

#

(we, now)

The evidence of our living exists in our continued struggle.

Even if we are driven out of oceans and displaced from this land, or vilified for the instinct that keeps us alive, we’ll pin our legacy to every dimension of the universe we touch. You will find our stories tucked into fossilised sea parts, under a desert rock, tattooed upon the skies.

We immortalise our mythology with celestial interpretations, imprint our martyr onto the constellations. We wake to the stars, Scorpia’s protective outline twinkling down at us no matter where we are. A reminder to sustain the community circle and hold our mutual places beside each other.

And thus, we survive another night.