It was a dumb decision, but I wasn't old enough to notice yet.
He wasn't any bigger or stronger than the rest of the lot, which didn't guarantee him the best lusus. And he smelled funny too, almost like meteor. That was obviously impossible. He probably just came out of his little cocoon just like every other troll. It wasn't as if he was the only funny smelling wriggler either. The caretaker of the mother grub remembered at least a few others like that. It was easy to tell which wrigglers probably weren't going to make it, because the custodians that wandered to pick up their grubs and build the hives strayed away from the different ones.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a larger troll grab one of the grubs and run. The mother grub screeched and wailed. Of course, he wasn't old or smart enough to process what this meant. He was too busy being lifted from the ground by a large creature.
It didn't matter if the wriggler smelled like shitty space rocks, the creature made a beeline for the little guy. Maybe it was because the two of them shared the same eyes and found solace in each other. Anyway, the custodian had to wait for the little guy to figure out how to communicate to the carpenter drones what he wanted his hive to look like. It was practically encoded in a trolls' genes, that they learn how to do these things quickly. And after a while, he did, but there were too many flaws in the structure. The little guy was a pretty terrible architect.
They built it anyway.
It was just perfect, a shitty hive for a shitty-blooded troll with shitty eyes and a shitty lusus. Just the shittiest little slice of paradise ever. The little wriggler didn't decide to put his hive where most trolls his caste did. Usually, mustard-bloods would put all their hives close together, but he put his hive in the middle of scenic nowhere. There wasn't any reason why he did, it was just an available spot that looked nice. Would this decision bite him in the ass later? Possibly.
The sun was coming up, so the custodian took the tiny wriggler inside. Due to the fact that he was a lowblood, they didn't get much space in the hive. Even though it was just built, the floors creaked and the doors didn't work. The windows were squeaky, the ceiling looked like it was going to give at any moment. The paint wasn't peeling, but not all the walls were fully covered. If this was how a regular mustard-blood's hive was, then what the hell were the maroon and brown bloods' hives like?
Suddenly, the little tyke's lusus started storming all around the hive, acting ridiculous and insane. He was too young to understand or do anything about it, so he hid under a table until the raging lunatic fell asleep. That took roughly an hour. He crawled out from under the table and saw something at the door. Still a wriggler, he couldn't really open the package or do anything with it, so he went back under the table and slept.
A few nights later, he got out of his wriggler state. It took a while to get used to less limbs and a less confining body state. But something told him he should go check out the package. That something was his lusus. He might not have been able to speak in full words, but he could at least offer some nudging in the form of intense screeching.
Anyway, he slowly opened the box and found an oversized shirt in it. Instantly he lifted it over his head and noticed the sign on it. It was two vertical bars that looked like columns, complete with two bars on the top and bottom. Well, that was probably his identity. This was important, somehow he knew that, but he still didn't understand how or why it was. He was more worried about the fact that his lusus left his fucking window open for days. Lousy goddamned lusus. The other unsettling thing was that a colony of bees had entered into a corner of his hive. Now the hive was even shittier than it previously was!
But he noticed that his lusus was eating the honey of the bees. Oh yeah, food. Maybe bees in his hive weren't such a bad thing. And if his lusus was eating the stuff, why shouldn't he?
The little troll walked toward the honeycombs, shot a look at his lusus, and licked the side of the combs.