[the day of Part 3 -- Hide the Snail]

The kidnapper had not come back, even when the Voidmother started to get thirsty and the lights flicked off outside her prison. She had begun to quietly panic, in that subdued sort of way that one did when they had expended too much energy to do much else other than sit there and stare blankly at the ceiling. In fact, she had not actually moved since she'd settled down in her kidnapper's absence -- not a muscle out of place. The simple fact of the matter was, Sunny didn't think that someone stealing her away would much care about her well-being.

Around her foot, layers of hardened mucous had slowly begun to form. Slime made hard, firm -- like a second shell. She hoped she had enough of it, as she carefully pressed the still-wet edge to the stone and kept her foot pressed loosely against the rock and the epiphragm as another layer dried off in the not-damp-enough air of Canis. (She was trying to make it happen anyway.)

A seal was formed, and she paused to chew a small hole in with her radula so that she could breathe before sealing herself in the flexible membrane to rest. She would be in and out of consciousness in a dreamlike sort of state until she was found, but she'd be able to survive here without eating or drinking for a month or more -- a handy trick, especially when chrysalis could save her the rest of the way. Distantly, she offered her familiar a thought -- a gentle sort of thing, more feeling than words, to communicate a not-so-urgent come find me. (And somewhere in Cetus, nervous and pacing, the Voidstrider understood that her Mother would be okay, at least for a little while -- and was comforted, as much as she could be, by the knowledge that they'd probably both be okay.)

/exit voidmother to aestivation, sans kooru