14. Melonne’s anatomy is as follows. After her separation from the yellow ribbon, she was no longer the dominant force of her body. She was marginalized by a new system made to recover from her temporal exposure to the endless, yellow substance. This system established its authority with its superior capacity for organic processes. It enveloped bone marrow to make a skeleton of 205 bones, and then it cushioned its work in fleshy muscle. It strung nerves between vertebrae and fingertips in imitation of the Amazon’s fluvial network, along with channels for blood, air, and hormones. It judges space and time with a thermometer, barometer, hygrometer, and a wind vane, and then dictates the body accordingly. Melonne refers to it as Lliope. It does not refer to Melonne.

Lliope delicately constructed skin, hair, and hooves to complete an exterior sensitive to sensory stimulation. Lliope processes sensory inputs through a great (but finite) mass of items. Like triangle, arrowhead, avian, claw, red, brown, grounded, strata, condense, orange, tiger, nuclei, atom, lenses, bend, degrading, reptile, me, scale, to, rectangular, laying, blue, purples, streams, gauze, bilateral. Lliope’s repository of items makes a complex network of associations that are recorded, recalled, repressed, and repeated.

Lliope has only surrendered the territory of facial contortion to Melonne, though she only proves her inferiority when challenged to make appropriate expressions. So far, Melonne has lost every power struggle she has engaged with this oppressive force in her body.

End of part one.