Merry Rooijmas
| Ancestor: | Descendants: |
|---|---|
Orange: Internal cavity (Gut, Birth canal & Anal water jet opening)
Green: Lateral line (Mechanoreceptors with tiny hairs)
Blue: Olfactory (Chemoreceptors)
Yellow: Eyespots (photoreceptive rod cells)
Pink: Mating display (Nacre deposits)
Red: Communication lines (electroreceptors & scattered electric organs)
The giants who journeyed up the column towards the heavenly lights have split from those who remained in the dark abyss below, from scrapping baleen for more marine snow, they filled their stockings with little living delights. Exposure to sunlight brought out their pigment, reflecting the green of the sun as it picked, and breaking their form into separate figments, the fading red of their shell made their size hard to predict.
But with 35 years to grow a cradling shell, very few made it through juvenile hell, and as most of their lives they'd go down in a bite, many could not find a partner under the northern light. In those silent eves, they were nearing extinction and would have become a historic omission, if it wasn't for that first parthenogenic spark, submitting their lives to the path they'd embark on. Neither wholly mother nor father, and under a desperate condition, in the depths of their chamber they'd bear identical children. Attaching themselves to the fins on the back, the virginally birthed won't risk becoming a snack. Much like their parents, they'd do the same, but they wouldn't break off when new children came. Like a binary tree, they extended and grew, each child branching into two. Each zooid was a Rooij, and together a Mas, and as one they would live as a Merry Rooijmas.
Like the arms of a squid from another time and space, they'd collectively swing in and out to get the water displaced. As the arms would reach out and the mouths were exposed, collecting all their baleen could enclose. As they'd swing in, they'd pucker their lips, and attach to dimples by their parent's hind cheeks. To not be a burden for the parents to bear, they've become one and live to share. As the morsel-rich water floods up through the progeny, it jets from the rear of the Rooij topping the colony. Once again the motions repeat, though they wouldn't go blindly towards a defeat. Fuzzy lateral lines would account for the flow, controlling their motion with a large middle fin, and as chemoreceptors told where to go, a cover of rods took the light in. As the last and first fin tied parent to child, electro reception networked a mind. No longer indiscriminate light, together they were able to process a sight. Each member had a small voice in the choir, in the spirit of one they would follow the path they desired. The Rooijmas spirit will transcend the lives of each member, through fragmentation they'd resurrect their collective center. If tragedy falls, their sacrifice won't be in vain, they'd break to reform a symmetric frame.
Yet not every Rooijmas is a clone of the first, there's a value in making your gene pool diverse. As a Rooijmas will pass by another, they will break off their youngest to mate with each other. To not make a mate flee from an incoming shadow, to not give a Rooijmas a reason for fright, dotted nacre refractions conveyed it came from a fellow, breaking the shadow with heavenly light.