<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/8/89/Onnecamug1.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Onneca de Goni<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Unknown<br/><strong>Date:</strong>August 11, 1875<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Heat of the afternoon<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Bodega de Goni<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Agatha<br/><hr/><br/>"¡Hola!" she called from the shelves, letting her voice guide Aggy into the avenues to where she was writing. She had a bright smile on fight sight of Agatha that frazzled once she caught sight of the inventor's ruined clothes. Any other church marm would be making a fuss and scolding Agatha for the condition she had allowed herself to fall into. Onneca was only reminded of the state of their clothes after every adventure into the foothills as girls, and how Onneca's madre- the laundry woman- used to bring them by their ears and make them stand in the river in their white underlinens while she washed those dirty and sticker-clung clothes. She giggled, even though she shouldn't.<br/><br/>There were still dimples in her cheeks as she turned to the jar and handled it to show Aggy her specimen. "It is a beetle, si?" she began, ever so helpfully, at the beginning, perhaps too accustomed to speaking to children. "I think it is like the ones that bite miners who faint in the night." It was a silly legend told by drunks who woke up with bloodied faces and shredded backs that she retold. Everyone knew those men had probably just tried to steal an ornery mule and invented the whole thing. "There are so many different beetles. I will have to look in my books. I think he looks like the June bug, but he is able to go into his shell." The jar gave a little slippery spin in her fingers to see if the beetle might lose his balance again. When he didn't, Onneca did not force the issue. She would not be cruel.<br/><br/>And there would not be much to learn until such a time as the beetle died of natural causes. Even if her inclination as a scientist was to dissect and understand the beetle's place on the chain of life, her instinct as a nurturing woman was to care for it as a pet. She passed the jar to Aggy just like they'd used to pass the queer and curious things they found in the hills- the fossilized wood and chunks of amber, the flint arrowheads and glittering quartz that nobody really appreciated. Few here in Gomorra would appreciate the discovery of a new species of beetle, but perhaps the scientific minds out east would see the merit in a synanthropic species with the ability and motive to chew through human flesh. Knowing scientists, they would call it<em>Onneca's beetle, </em>and people would be cursing her name every time one sank in its mandibles.<br/><br/>"Mi madre would give you such a scold for tearing your dress. She would scold me too, for picking up beetles. Do you remember when we would have to stand in the water like mewling calves? I do not know if it is better or worse to be scolded in Spanish if you do not understand it." Onneca got up from her writing and fetched a handful of pins to tidy up Aggy's hair and relieve the summer heat from her shoulders. She was in the business of making women feel beautiful. This came as naturally to her as crazy ideas must have come to Agatha. "Oh, but she passed on before I came out to the Maze. Did I tell you? She died peacefully, it was not a shock. She was very fond of you." All of it, God's honest truth. "I think she expected we would be friends forever."