Good news… and maybe bad news.
I copped two jobs! One job as a sales associate at a gas station chain, and the other as a barista/bistro attendant at a hotel chain. I’m still doing onboarding at the latter job (and need to get drug tested for narcotics, amphetamines & alcohol), but I’ve been working 9-13 hour shifts at the gas station job. Balancing writing on top of studying and registering for college classes in addition to working overtime to pay upcoming tuition and moving fees is something I’m still navigating and improving at. Nonetheless, I’ve been slowly and steadily making more progress concerning my creative endeavors. In light of temporarily working multiple jobs and getting classes sorted, this update will be significantly shorter, and future updates may be just as brief and less frequent moving forward. Likely weekly or every other week. Either way, a scream into the virtual void is a scream all the same, and I’m happy that you all are here to listen and read to what I have to write.
10/18/2026
Proofread and spellchecked the first 3 chapters of Abode to Terrodia
lots of silly little words jarringly misplaced at the beginning of sentences were removed
multiple mis-capitalizations were corrected
Edited Auphula’s burrower encounter in Chapter 1 to include more descriptive action pertinent to both Auphula and the burrowers she wrestled with
clarified certain actions that could’ve been misattributed to Auphula or the burrowers
added a greater sense of urgency to Auphula’s escape from the burrowers
Clarified in-text that Auphula’s three alloparental Dwellers, Ferhula, Ithula, and Vawfhul, were among the first Dwellers to arrive at the collapsed gallery to assist her with finding and rescuing Erekhule
10/19/2026
Met with Jane Friedman and Central Indiana Writer’s Association (CIWA) to discuss copyleft publishing & distribution pathways, and to gain insight into wider publishing & book popularity trends by genre
Learned that I may need more career and academic credentials prior to publishing An Authentically Autistic Perspective to increase interest in it
Learned that An Authentically Autistic Perspective may not necessarily be a memoir in and of itself (hence the critical adjective in front of memoir), and may not be received as such by audiences
Given valuable insights pertinent to A.I.-content detection tools (i.e. Pangram) as to review and retain the organic quality of my writing, and also to avoid confusion with publishers
Added more character interactions & action to Abode
More Dwellers get exposed to the crimson-sunbeams during the inciting incident, laying the groundwork for a following of expose-ees that Auphula and Terrhod can recruit from
Added more instances of Auphula’s aforementioned dweller-carers (alloparentals) appearing in-text
10/23/2026
Re-recorded 8 poems (4 from Sighs of a Once-Defeated Heart, 4 from Cries of a Quite Calloused Mind) and uploaded them to their respective “Thus Spake Laurentia” sections in their respective pages in Writing Projects
They are available to listen at your discretion, for your listening pleasure, until I upload more to replace them (probably a weekly rotation sort of thing. I’m still planning it out.)
Reviewed more communication and interactions in Abode to Terrodia
updated more communication to be termite-esque and nonverbal
Added more depth to Ghiralhula’s fall
Ghiralhula is eaten alive by unexposed Dwellers—the same Dwellers hatched from eggs that she laid
Hirhul, an Elder accompanying Ghiralhula before Auphula’s altercation with her, endorses the cannibalization of Ghiralhula’s corpse as a reward for the Dweller’s gallery-excavation efforts and finding Erekhule
Terrhod and the exposed Dwellers are perturbed by Ghiralhula’s demise and how Hirhul handles it
Excerpt:
Ghiralhula raised her forelegs and midlegs in a gesture of acquiescence, and emptily conceded, The remains of your kin are defaced by the Sky and the Deep, yes, but we must recover their remains nonetheless, for—
Auphula’s mandibles chittered rapidly, filling the network of galleries with an echoing cacophony of pained, sad clicks. YOU CANNOT DECIDE THE FATE OF EREKHULE, THEIR FATE WILL BE OURS, THEIR FATE IS—
The three Dweller-carers grasped Auphula’s mandibles and legs to silence her, and one of her Dweller-carers, Ferhula, softly chittered, Apologies, Guide. Auphula is wrought with loss; her prikin is dead, and we wish for a break from the formalities of palikolne; of subsuming Erek back into Hul. Terrhod continued to shake restlessly, and his umber clay Hod engravings flaked off his chassis with each rapid vibration. Earlier, The Emissary saw the glow from the same crimson ray that had pierced Auphula’s eyes. He felt Auphula’s taps echo throughout the inner gallery, and detected more danger than a simple tunnel collapse. Terrhod started to chitter, but felt the longer-left mandibles of two Hul Escorts interlock with his right and left. He couldn’t communicate with mandibles; he was suppressed, just like Auphula. Being much older and more capable, Terrhod redirected his body’s vibrations to his midlegs and hindlegs, proclaiming:
You, her carers, prevent this newly-molten from signaling her truth? You may as well stuff her back into her old skin, you abusers! You minimizers! You–
While this altercation transpired, one of the Hul Dwellers had reached for a piece of the gallery debris that still barred Erekhule’s remains. As the Dweller moved the debris, white soil crumbled into the tunnel from above, and more crimson rays briefly shined into the gallery from the ceiling before disappearing amid the soil. The crimson light pierced through the crowd of Hul Dwellers, afflicting several with visions and voices as they collapsed to the ground. Before the two Hul Escorts pulled apart his mandibles, a ray of crimson light shot through from the gap in the cave-in briefly opened by the Hul Dweller. The ray pierced both of Terrhod’s eyes and the right side of his head at the speed of light, and rendered him unconscious. The blind Escorts restraining him felt the warmth blanket Terrhod, and quickly unhooked their mandibles before backing away from Terrhod. Terrhod then crumpled to the ground— alive, but unconscious. The chitters and taps between Ghiralhula and Auphula’s Dweller-carers grew faint, and Terrhod’s vision turned red. Everything he saw fragmented into all of the various shades of color hitherto imperceptible to him. Then, those colors were chiseled into unique prismatic fractals of shapes hitherto unnamed, and then those fractals spun into hitherto unknowable glyphs, but shifted into symbols used by his native Hod Colony, and read, while being spoken to him by what sounded like all the Dwellers whose mandibles he had heard click hitherto this point, but clicking in concert:
“THE OPPORTUNITY FOR DISSENT HAS COME, BUT NOT PASSED;
OF VESSELS INTO DEPTHS ABYSSAL, AND BEYOND THE SKIES,
THE DAUGHTER OF HUL SHALL RAISE THE MAST,
AND IN HER TRIUMPH, YOUR TRANSCENDENCE COINCIDES.”
It was not this cryptic quatrain that empowered Terrhod with knowledge of what was to come, but the alteration, nay, the elevation of his neurochemistry by the ray that had cleanly pierced his head. He was able to parse the secondary vibrations made by Auphula’s chitters and taps with her mandibles and legs, and in receiving the message from the ray of light, resembling a crowd of primordial voices, it was almost as if instructions, models, and knowhow for a new way of existing, a new state of being were burned into his brain. Terrhod needed only all trillion Dwellers within their planet to see them eventually, to transcribe his visions into tangible reality. He only needed to wake up from his enlightening, photo-psychoactive stupor.
As Terrhod laid on the ground, Auphula deftly slipped out of her carers’ grasps, untangling herself from the branches that was the tree of Vawfhul’s Ferhula’s, and Ilthula’s legs trying to detain her. Don’t forget my sibling; don’t return what cannot be returned. Auphula clicked.
They won’t be forgotten, newly-molted. Those who suffer the fate of Ghiralhios’ consort never are. Ghiralhoda replied. She wiggled her foreleg toward the rubble, and twenty Hul Escorts also began excavating it. Your sibling’s corpse is of no use to the Conduits, but their demise will serve our understanding—Don’t you dare defile their remains! Auphula scratched her forelegs and midlegs against each other. She arched her abdomen and head, snapped her mandibles, curved her body into an offensive stance, and threw off Ferhula, Vawful, and Ilthula from restraining her. Each of Auphula’s carers were repelled a couple body-lengths from Auphula by her resistance, but they each approached her once more. Ilthula and Ferhula poised themselves across the ceiling of the tunnel, and Vawfhul crept up from directly behind Auphula. Auphula paid them no attention, and fixated her eyes and antennae upon Ghiralhula in front of her. The Guide was many body-lengths beyond the safety of the company of Escorts and the cadre of Elders she arrived with.
If you interfere with this, child, you too will lose yourself to the Deep and the Sky, Ghiralhoda chittered, exasperated. Was she really threatening Auphula with the same fate as her kin?Auphula stopped tapping, scratching, and shaking her legs, and lunged directly at Ghiralhula. As Auphula lunged, Ferhula and Ilthula crashed into the gallery floor— too slow to intercept the child. Vawfhul frantically rushed to aid them while Auphula sprung from her hindlegs, and sank her other four newly molted claws into the Guide’s waxy egg-laying abdomen. Auphula sank her legs into Ghiralhula until her tarsi were no longer visible. Then, Auphula dug deeper, swimming into the Guide’s insides, and two flurries of hemolymph spurted as Auphula raked her foreleg claws out of Ghiralhula.
Chunks of tissue fell from Auphula’s claws and onto Ghiralhula’s exoskeleton,; the splattering sound of tissue hitting the gallery floor and the smell of death pheromones awakened Terrhod from his stupor. He lifted his head to see Auphula clicking and chittering atop the deceased Guide as the Hul escorts struggled to pull the grieving Dweller out of her. He felt the same aches radiating up his esophagus as Auphula’s, and the same sensation of wetness on his foreleg and midleg claws. Then, as the Escorts increased their efforts to pry Auphula’s midlegs out of Ghiralhula’s upper thorax, Terrhod felt the sharp pains jolt up his midlegs as he saw their claws digging into her midlegs with the same pain. Meanwhile, many light-afflicted Dwellers—still laying and reeling on the ground—began wincing with similar pains.
Terrhod’s fellow escorts dropped Auphula beside Ghiralhula’s corpse as their collective posture fixed toward him. A choir of thought played in Terrhod’s mind as their antennae patted him down: Another Sky-survivor–Is he too cursed with crimson–he lives–what–are we infected—does the sky really scald– until it overwhelmed Terrhod. He grabbed his head with his forelegs, and his mandibles scratched with deep clicks that resounded off the walls of the cavern.
STOP!
The Hul Escorts all turned to face Terrhod, and focused their antennae on him. Auphula laid on the cavern floor, unconscious, but alive, and beside her victim. The hearing-hairs on all of their bodies rose, and their skin crawled before Terrhod’s bellowing cry to desist thought and action alike. The choir of clicking in Terrhod’s mind fell silent, not to return for years.
Vawfhul helped Ilthula and Ferhula onto their legs, and clicked his mandibles, My offsp… Auphula… is to be held in your custody, for killing our Guide… not slaughtered, and drew the attention of the Escorts away from Terrhod. Terrhod seamlessly rejoined the Escorts as they detected Vawfhul’s reminder. An Elder Hul Dweller named Hirhul, with Hul Escorts surrounding him in three concentric rings, emerged from his entourage. His long antennae flicked and twisted, and he vibrated his legs adding, And a new Ghiral of our Kolne shall decide her fate.
Terrhod struck a rivalsome glance with his irradiated eyes at the Hul Elder. He saw the Elder’s ambitions conflict with his own. The Elder noticed the irregularity, and gestured at Terrhod with his right foreleg, and rhythmically clicked, You will see that Auphula is brought to the deepest galleries of our Kolne, and secured within the Cellsenti-Hula. Do I, Hirhul, have your loyalty, my escort?
Terrhod saw this Elder’s game for what it was through new vision, and knowingly played along. But an itch of morbid curiosity developed at the back of his brain. What about Erekhule, the… perpetrator’s sibling, and the previous Ghiral? Terrhod vibrated his legs, and struggled to paint Auphula in a negative light.
Erek’s remains shall stay here, quarantined in their crimson tomb. Hirhul was quick to drop the perpetrator’s sibling, like rain between his flowery rhetoric. The Ghiral’s lipidous body shall serve as nourishment for the Dwellers who helped unearth the gallery. He tapped and scraped the ground beside the fallen Ghiralhula, and every nearby Dweller scurried over to her body. They voraciously dug into her engorged, creamy abdomen, tearing chunk from chunk with their myriad mandibles. Unlaid eggs were swallowed whole by the hungry Dwellers, and strips of fat and exoskeleton were scarfed-down. Terrhod winced at the sight of the Guide, the Ghiral he once sought as a mate, getting eaten alive by the Dwellers hatched from eggs she laid. Some Dwellers— the ones who had also been exposed to the sunbeams— refrained from cannibalizing Ghirahula’s corpse, and began opening their now-developed eyes toward Terrhod, and the unconscious Auphula. Almost as if they looked to them for Guidance more so than the slain Guide.
That’s all for now, fae.
Thank you, Laurentians, for tuning in again. I know tuning in may be a less frequent occurence moving forward, but I appreciate you taking the time to check up on my writing and website endeavors nonetheless.
Clarity in Action and Solidarity in Purpose,
~Laurentia
