Groin boil

DEVODIE [applying a poultice of fermented soy flavonoids to the chronic erupting boil near Reptily's groin]:

I feel guided to tell you that I know you ate my baby. 

What guides me to to tell you that I know you ate my baby is to better demonstrate my devotion to worship and serve you and your purpose as good and fragrant Craw of La Mthyuh. 

I mean if my dog or one of my other kids ate the baby, our entire community would be horrified, my husband and I would probably get a divorce, and I might commit suicide taking out the dog and the remaining kids with me. 

You know that famous line from the shiv joints, "I've had enough! I'm packing my bags, taking the the children, and moving back to uMgungundlovu!"?

REPTILY-ILY:

Actually the line was, "I want to seek something more! I'm packing my bags, leaving you with the kids, and catching a red eye to anywhere that's not Tlatelolco." And that's the legendary truth of La Pegyuh-uh we're talking about, not some wigged out vulgate performance for shiv-heads at a shiv-dive. So stand up straight! 

DEVODIE [dropping to knees]: Oh, I humbly beg your pardon, my majestic mistress of the

REPTILY-ILY [heaving a sigh]: Stop it. Say, what's this about a baby, and how dare you insinuate that that I would care whether or not your particular child may have been one of the very many babies that have been honored to pass through my bowels except to congratulate you on your auspicious and delicious sacrifice?

DEVODIE: I am grateful for your congratulations and the horror, I mean honor, you have bestowed upon my generations by eating my baby. And because you are a knower of legends, I'm sure you may have heard tell of the Mulled Twins of Dupecock? 

REPTILY-ILY: Whadda you mean? The Mulled Twins? Whadda you mean, every mother's son in the greater chanklands knows the legend of the Mulled Twins of Dupecock. I as much as anyone can well remember the horrifying experience of our sister Connie and what happened after she ate one of the Mulled Twins. I above all should know Connie's legend and have taken great care to learn from it. 

DEVODIE: What did you learn, my mistress?

REPTILY-ILY: You want to know what I learned? I'll tell you what I learned. I learned never to eat the other damn Mulled Twin, that's what I learned. What's it to you? 

DEVODIE: The other Mulled Twin, my mistress. He was my

REPTILY-ILY [burping painfully]: Sorry, what was that? You were saying? Oh, my. I reckon I've eaten you as well. 

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[Trans. note]

If Reptily had not eaten the mother of the Mulled Twins of Dupecock, she may have been able to extract more specific evidence supportive of any best next steps. For example, she could have learned that Connie's response to having a Mulled Twins-related blurping incident was, understandably, to go ahead and eat the anomalous life form she'd been thinking was just an inflamed groin boil. In Reptily's case, however, eating the blurp anomaly would be a fatal and permanent error, since the blurp had emerged as Reptily, herself, in her missing years, which had now become years that were existentially crucial to the present moment. 

This day in the legend of Reptily-ily at least helped its eponymous hero to understand how Missy had come to be. Were they sisters? Was Missy a tumorous mimic, an invasive nightingale phylum picked up during one too many intra-The Crack transitions? All those questions were now moot. She had eaten the other Mulled Twin, and now, her childhood self was clearly trying to begin a happy life journey with the tools in the toolbox that the Biggest Tool of All had given her to work with (like the other K trans-special blends, Reptily-ily had been an adult since before the beginning of recorded history). 

"If I did have a childhood, I wonder what I was like?" Reptily was wondering one day, soon after unknowingly gobbling down the remaining mulled twin during a Days of Destruction scarring fire hustle. It was the holiest festival. There were snacks everywhere. How was she to know? 

As she continued to reflect on life and the nature of the lie that is time, there was a blurping sound, and a wet slap. There on the floor of her private bay at Friends Hangar lay Missy, a topless, big-city ingenue waking up for the first time in the slime of a wet, stinking clam-like half shell the size of a Volkswagen. 

Phyllis [trans.]