Dwaniis

(2, Third Nunning Calendar)

Foxy pulled his paws out of his pants pockets and gestured broadly to the immense floating object. He might have been about to hug it. With his whiskery cheeks and his red and white pinstriped suit, Foxy looked like the Happy Hunting Grounds’ solution to Santa Claus. He and the iguanodon were standing in an observation deck on Passport Station, at the edge of the Kishwa Galaxy. Taxchan's voice was still unpracticed, much more like a sneezing than speaking. He asked, "Is it a moon?"

"The last Dwaniis, baby! They call it Mu Merai. Looks like a big spunk cell, doesn’t it? All bulby at that end -" Foxy drew little circles in the air as he instructed Taxchan on the Dwaniis' anatomy. "An' it’s got all this whippy equipment at that end." He replaced his paws in his pockets and blatantly adjusted his dick before rocking back on his heels and making his new patent gnome-leather shoes squeak. "I guess it is a giant gamete, but, uh, it's got nothin' to fuck. Shit, I wonder what that’s like!" The fox was clearly excited by the prospect of sex on such a cosmic scale. "And, despite the tail, we don’t even know for sure if it’s a sperm or an egg or what. Yours now!"

The Salvage Gardens of Mu Merai had been created by the Nunning Hospitalers to host Last Ones, the final individual representatives of species forms. It had been sheer unintended irony that the perfect candidate to host the Salvage Gardens themselves was itself among the Last: specifically the last Dwaniis. No one operating within a thousand emm-pee-esses of Syllabium had any kind of clue about where the giant thing had come from, but it was taken as a reliable bit of tradition that there had once upon a time been many of the things, and that they were merely immense gametes, procreational appendages for some greater beings, gods who remained unfathomed in the minds of the the universe's living species.

Mu Merai had been likened by many unto a free-roaming moon; such was its size. Bigger than many planets, there were hundreds of Salvage Gardens, or more, thriving on its surface. Its hardy exocellular membrane gathered ambient light and channeled it through the malleable endocellular sky; it transformed the forever-starlight of space into the days and nights required by planetary life cycles. The sky above each Salvage Garden was customized to replicate a specific light cycle on a distinct planet. Intracellular membranes allowed the regulation of individual atmospheres, and pores in the external membranes permitted the safe introduction of ships and materials to the planets surface.