Mimick
Legacy Name: Mimick

Mim was different right from the start.

Hers was the last egg to crack in a cluster numbering an impressive 150 mantis hatchlings. While her siblings were using their vibrant green bodies to blend into the surrounding foliage and snatch tasty passing insects, Mim's bright pink skin gave away her position to all but those bugs with the dullest wits and weakest legs.

She didn't mind in the slightest. So what if her breakfast was made up of an old moth with crumpled wings instead of a tangy dragonfly? There was something in life so much more important than food.

There was love.

It all started with the Great Silver Thing she encountered while hopping her way through a patch of tall grass. Amazing smells were coming from its body, strong food smells that were attracting most of the local fly population. Mim watched in awe as a giant made a sacrifice to the Great Silver Thing of a noisy cylinder. A few drops of sticky brown stuff fell from the cylinder to stain the grass brown. Mim dipped a cautious claw in to have a taste.

The brown rain was sticky and very sweet. Mim was determined to win the affections of the Great Silver Thing that had already won her greatest devotion. She did her best to form her body into a round, opening her mouth as wide as she could. The next time one of the giants came to make an offering, she would share in the wealth.

It was fortunate the park's next visitor only had a crumpled paper wrapper to throw away or Mim's story would have ended before you can say "squashed mantis".

This new offering wasn't nearly as good as the brown rain. It had a sticky yellow paste that was much too salty for Mim's taste. The flies really seemed to like it though. They praised the food stuff in the annoying, buzzing monotone of their kind.

"Yumcheese...mycheese...mineminemine...getyourstinkinglegsoffit...minemycheese!"

Mim stuck around to admire her first crush for many days but even a patient romantic gets tired of eating nasty flies for very long. Her dear one never responded to the music she made with her legs and seemed not to care in the slightest when she captured a passing spider with an especially impressive lunge. (Hard as she tried to maintain the exact position of the Great Silver Thing, hunger would sometimes allow her instincts to overpower her devotion.)

Perhaps the Great Silver Thing wasn't so great after all.

She hopped along a wide gravel path until she came to a mighty lake in which two smaller giants were stomping their big feet. Their yells were as impressive as thunder but it was not these monstrosities that drew Mim's gaze.

It was a pink kitty keychain on the girl giant's backpack. Mim reached out a careful claw to tap this new wonder on the nose. It bobbed its head up and down in a welcoming gesture.

Mim mimicked the motion of the Pointy Ears Pink Bobber perfectly. This creature was pink, just like her. It had to be a new mantis friend she could tell stories to.

She would have sat there for days nodding back agreeably at the PEPB if not for the boy giant. His huge hands very nearly scooped her up. Her reflexes saved her at the last second, sending her flying through the air to land on a floating leaf that scooted the length of the puddle in seconds. When her improvised boat hit shore, she was off like a shot, hopping through the grass without ever once looking back.

Loneliness soon set in, sending her out to once again scout the wonders of the park.

She came to a place where the air was fragrant with the sweet nectar of flowers. Great green hedges with tiny white berries enclosed a half-acre of flower beds lovingly arranged by gardeners that came from all over the world to add a little piece of their homeland to the world-famous Unity Garden. One could enjoy the sultry lull of the tropics, the arid aroma of the desert and the musky perfume of the forest all in one pleasant afternoon walk.

The spiny branches of the hedge provided a perfect vantage point for Mim to look out on this new place without the threat of giants or their four-legged monsters. (She had seen several dogs from a distance and noted their way of stomping careless paws down on anthills, killing generations without any awareness of their own carelessness.)

Bees were everywhere, calling out encouragement to fellow hive members or warning away rivals for the sweetest nectar treasures.

"Thizz izz a good spot. The queen will be well pleazzed. Watch it there. I smell an intruder. Stingerzz at the ready, Green Blossom Squad. Red Leaf Hive izz known for their brutality. Thizz could get sticky in a hurry."

The angry clash of two hives going to war was more excitement than Mim cared for in her daily routine. Clearly, this was not the home for her.

The colored pebbles that made up the walkway for the giants felt rough and strange under Mim's feet. She made a few daring leaps for the nearest patch of grass, desperate to get away from the unnatural surface.

Lilac crocuses waved in a gentle breeze, throwing Mim into alternating light and shadow stripes. The slender stems were a maze to be navigated. It was while she was picking her way through the unending ranks of green sentinels that she stumbled upon the Round White Shiny.

It had been tossed aside by the careless hand of a small giant a few days before. On its plastic face were buttons in all sorts of colors, each of them with the face of an animal. Mim had only meant to use the Round White Shiny as a sort of bridge to get through a particularly sticky patch of mud but when her body came down on the red button, a voice spoke in a cheerful tone.

"Can you name the animal that makes this sound?"

Then came the cheerful chirp of a cricket.

Mim was fascinated. The Round White Shiny had spoken to her! Granted, the cricket's voice coming through in that tinny voice had an atrocious accent, but Mim could recognize a greeting when she heard one.

She spent the rest of the day trying the colorful buttons and mimicking the many sounds they made. Try as she might, she simply could not perfect the meow of a cat or the moo of a cow but she was getting pretty good at cricket chirps.

It was in the midst of this most current love affair that the worm came into her life.

He'd lived in the same rich patch of soil from the time he broke his eggshell. All he asked of the world was an occasional rain shower and a steady stream of good things to eat in the soil. What he did not like was to have his days interrupted by those rude human visitors that came to stomp through the park with their flashing picture boxes and their spiky shoes.

The Round White Shiny had been a particular source of irritation. Careless squirrels would step on the surface at all hours of the day, waking the worm from a sound sleep as they ran for their trees with chattered insults hurled over their shoulders. He poked his head above the dirt, fully expecting this to be another blasted furball come to make his life miserable.

When he saw Mim, he did a double take. A pink mantis? Who ever heard of a pink mantis? A green mantis, now those were downright dangerous. They wouldn't usually look down from those tall legs at a humble worm in the dirt, but when times were tough, any bug might find themselves in that lethal grasp.

Mim hopped to the black button, filling the air with the whinny of a horse. Whatever shreds of fear the worm had initially felt were soon dispersed by this odd bug's behavior.

"Do you mind?

Mim froze in place. It had finally happened. One of her lovers had spoken back! She hopped rapidly from pink to purple to yellow, causing a string of sheep, pig and dog sounds to rise from the speaker.

Irate now, the worm crawled all the way to the surface and began to inch his way over the side of the Round White Shiny. Mim froze when she saw his pale head appear in her field of vision.

"For two days I've had to listen to this blasted child's toy squawk and screech. Surely even a bug as odd as you has something better to do with her time than play with a human thing."

Mim's feelers waved in the wind as she thought over what the bug had said. "Humans? What are humans?"

"The great ground pounders who ruin perfectly good dirt for their own odd ends. This infernal contraption we're standing on was designed to please one of their children. You'll often see their children stomping about with a pack on their shoulders or a dog barking at their heels." He slapped the yellow button to make his point. A dog's joyful barking filled the air. "That's the sound a dog makes. All of these are animals that humans have put to their uses...well, except the cricket. No respectable bug would ever serve the wishes of man."

Mim was fascinated by this new bug's knowledge of the giants...no, the humans.

"Did humans make this place?"

"Most of it, yes. The trees and grass were here before but it was humans that added in all these flowers...about the only good they did for this planet if you ask me."

Mim told the worm about the Great Silver Thing (a human garbage can that draws nothing but pesky flies) and the Pointy Ears Pink Bobber (another human toy, one that will undoubtedly break, fall to the ground and kill some innocent insect that just happens to be passing by.) The worm (who was quite a pessimist) found that he liked having an audience that would listen wide-eyed to his hundreds of complaints. He could have sat there for the rest of his short life running through an endless stream of what was wrong with the world.

For Mim's part, she soon grew tired of that cranky worm. Her opportunity for escape came shortly after a heavy rain, when the worm excused himself to take a good, long feeding beneath the soil. ("Nutrient-rich dirt is the only thing worth living for, in my opinion.")

Mim couldn't get away from the Round White Shiny fast enough.

She found no shortage of bugs to eat among the flower beds but she was unhappy. When she stumbled over a Black Ridged Circle, she barely waved her feelers at it before moving on. The many angles of a Crinkly Sunlight Ball didn't get so much as a blink of interest. These were human things that would never return her love and she was tired of having her heart broken.

Then came the day when she forgot every former infatuation in the light of true love.

The flower stood alone in a cluster of baby's breath. It was a rare pink orchid imported from overseas, a tribute to an old gentleman's lost love. Its petals were the exact pale pink of Mim's skin. Its stigma was the rich golden-yellow of the tips of her own antennae. Though nearly five times her size, there was not a doubt in Mim's mind that this was the mate she'd been seeking for so long. This was without a doubt her soul mate, the one she would never leave.

Her lover caught tasty treats and held them in a sticky substance, providing her a snack whenever she felt the slightest bit hungry. He captured just the right amount of rainwater in his petals so she could have a drink at any time. When the sky clouded over and the winds were rough, he sheltered her in a little hollow that was just the right size for her slender body.

She, in turn, spent her days mimicking the exact curve of his petals, the slight tilt of his stem and the gentle wave of his leaves in the breeze. When he turned his face to the sun, she followed his lead. When he shuddered and closed his body against the night, she would curl into a tighter ball. She was his double and mimicked him in all things.

He never said anything to her but Mim didn't mind in the slightest. True devotion can be shown as easily in silence as in mushy declarations. Every night before Mim tucked herself into his velvet arms, she would recall for her lover the adventures that had led to their meeting. Some nights when the wind was still and the moon lit the petals of all the neighboring flowers, she could swear she heard three sweet words from her lover's lips.

You are home.

Credits
pet page byHPY
Story by Pureflower
Mimicks pet art byBretagne
Background wallpaper found here http://sf.co.ua/id156015