To Kiss the World Through a Veil of Lead

Nutrition I

You are navigating around a thick atmosphere with your rigid rotating limbs. You move large chunks of vapours so you can occupy their place, a task both difficult and pleasant. Your body is almost completely made out of volatile elements kept together by weak chemical bonds; most of your energy goes towards maintaining such bonds stable.

You stop. You feel your limbs weaken and see part of them condensing, falling down as droplets and disappearing in the abyss below you. You wait until the limbs vanish completely, giving place to gaping sockets that communicate directly with your entrails. Using these holes, you suck the substances in the atmosphere. Vapours enter you; since they have higher densities than your internal composition, they sink to the bottom of your body. You slowly become bicoloured and biphasic: the top half of you is pearly white, the other a deep purple. Once you are fully satisfied, you seal the sockets where your limbs used to be. And then you start spinning: first horizontally, then vertically, then on both axes.

The gases mix, but not in a uniform way. You create five limbs, this time flexible pseudopods, and painstakingly begin to penetrate yourself with them. You go for the dense purple fumes, removing them from the inside of your body and then removing from them something else, something foreign. You throw that something away, reinsert the remainder inside you and watch as it pleasurably mixes with your body. You repeat this process for a very long time whilst the detritus drifts away and blends with the atmosphere once again.

Energy flows through you again after this meal. Puffing, compressing and expanding, you detach your pseudopods. They fade out in streams of condensation. You once again project rigid limbs and move forward by rotating them.