The Bayou Sisters Saga: A Story of Love, Corporate Evil, and the Extraordinaire Bayou Family by Andre Michael Pietroschek - HTML preview

Chapter 2: The Cost of Wearing Skin M

The cabin sits three miles back from the main channel, hidden in a thicket of cypress and tupelo so dense that the path to it would be invisible to anyone without generations of knowledge. Snuggles leads them there, her feet finding the subtle trail that isn’t quite a trail, the way that follows the lay of the land rather than cutting across it. The others follow, dripping, still in the process of settling into their human shapes.

The transformation always leaves them disoriented. Their human brains

are smaller than their alligator brains in some ways, larger in others. The proportions are wrong. The sensory apparatus is inadequate. Sniffles, once inside the cabin, has to sit down for a moment, her hands shaking. Caffeine withdrawal, maybe, or the aftereffect of forcing her spine to

compress into human dimensions. Or maybe it’s just the grief of ith becoming something she’s not, something that requires constant correction, constant lie-telling in the language of human behavior.

The cabin is sparse but lived-in. A wood stove for heating and cooking. A w e table made from reclaimed cypress. Shelves holding water-testing kits, naturalist journals, and reference books about alligator behavior. But also: a laptop, a satellite internet connection, and human documentation.

Snuggles has a driver’s license. Sniffles has a social security number. ted ffic Bubbles has an employee badge for the nature center where she teaches third-graders about ecosystems they’re currently destroying.

Sniffles runs water for coffee. Her hands are steadier now. The tremors iO ea

pass. She’s become an expert at managing the physical symptoms of

transformation, the way human bodies rebel when forced into shapes Cr ob that don’t align with their biology. She measures out grounds, fair trade, organic, the kind of ethical consumption that feels like a joke in a world that’s fundamentally unethical. She fills the kettle from their filtered

supply. They have to drink filtered water. Tap water makes them ill. M Snuggles sits at the table, her shoulders curved in a posture of exhaustion that’s beyond mere physical tiredness. She’s holding maps. Old maps, from her mother’s naturalist journals. Maps marked with nesting sites, feeding territories, and the deep water channels where their mother used to hunt. She’s marking new data on them. Crossed-out locations. Red X’s for destroyed sites.

“Forty acres at minimum,” Snuggles says, her voice rough with disuse.

Speaking in human language requires different throat muscles and a different intention. “That’s how much nesting ground we’ve lost in the last six months. I’ve been documenting it.”

Sniffles pours hot water over the grounds. The smell of coffee fills the ith cabin, almost too rich, almost overwhelming. In alligator form, scent is a complete language. In human form, it’s just… smell. Diminished.

Translated into a crude approximation. w e “The new intake valve,” Sniffles says. She’s been awake since they emerged from the water, her mind already processing, cataloging,

analyzing. “The one at Global Ventures Two. I saw the engineering plans ted ffic at work. They’re running a direct discharge now instead of through the treatment facility. The runoff goes straight into the basin.”

“How long has it been running?” Snuggles asks. iO ea

“Seven days. Maybe eight.” Cr ob

Snuggles closes her eyes. Forty acres of nesting ground. One week of M direct chemical discharge. The math is simple and devastating. Sniffles brings the coffee to the table. They drink it without sugar, without cream. Human rituals. They don’t need it, their metabolisms are efficient in ways human bodies shouldn’t be, but they drink it anyway, because maintaining the human form requires maintaining human behaviors, and humans drink coffee or tea.

Bubbles emerges from the bedroom where she’s been changing into

clean clothes. She’s wearing jeans and a flannel shirt that’s seen better days. Her hair is still wet, drying into waves that catch the cabin light. She’s the most fully human-looking of the three when she’s dressed, the way the clothes hang on her frame, the way she moves with a kind of

predatory grace that almost reads as human athleticism. ith “The egrets are nesting in the southern channels,” Bubbles says without

preamble. “I saw them two days ago when I was out doing the wildlife w e

survey. There’s a family, mama and four chicks. The water temperature’s wrong. The pH is wrong. The whole channel smells like death.”

“You went out there?” Snuggles’ voice is sharp. “Alone? In human ted ffic form?”

“In human form, yes. Doing my job. The nature center is conducting a iO ea

bird count for the state. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Sniffles doesn’t respond. There’s a tension there that sits under the Cr ob surface of all their conversations, the fundamental incompatibility of their plan. They decided, years ago, after their mother died, after

understanding the scope of what was happening to the bayou, that they M would maintain human form, would learn the human systems, would try to work within those systems to create change. To observe. To document. To provide evidence that human systems could be made to care about something other than profit.

But the observation requires proximity to the systems. And the systems are destroying everything.

“Let’s eat,” Sniffles says. It’s not an answer. It’s a deflection.

They make a simple meal. Rice. Vegetables. Fish that Sniffles caught and smoked last week. They eat without much flavor, without real hunger.

Their metabolisms in human form are slower than in alligator form, more ith efficient, and less demanding. But they eat anyway, because maintaining the human form requires maintaining human routines.

Sniffles picks at her food, her mind somewhere else. She’s been working w e at her consulting job for five years now. It’s the perfect position, really, she has access to environmental reports, engineering plans, and water quality data. She can see the scale of destruction documented in official

channels, all the paperwork proving that Global Ventures and companies ted ffic like them know exactly what they’re doing, know exactly how much they’re contaminating, and do it anyway because the fines are cheaper than the fix.

The knowledge is paralyzing: Because it means the system isn’t broken, iO ea

it’s working exactly as designed. Toxic leadership in command. Cr ob “There’s someone at work,” Sniffles says quietly. “An environmental

lawyer. He’s been reaching out, asking for information. He’s trying to M build a lawsuit against Global Ventures.”

Sniffles looks up from her plate.