You are listening to a Clarks World magazine podcast with your host and narrator, Kate Baker.

Greetings, Clarks World Citizens. I hope this podcast finds you extraordinarily well.

This is our fourth story for the month of February 2021, issue 173. As always, I hope that you

are faring well. I hope that you were warm, healthy, and happy. Or this is serving as some sort of

escape. I want to thank you for your ongoing support of the magazine. If you can,

please go to patreon.com for slash Clarksworld. You can see how you can be a part of the Clarks World

community. We can't do this without you. And thank you if you've already shown your support.

The story is titled Mercy in the Mollisk, Ms. by ML Clark.

Canadian by birth, ML Clark now calls Columbia home. Clark is the published author of Science

and speculative fiction stories and analog Clarksworld in light speed, as well as in three years'

best anthologies, among other publications. Other writing projects include poetry, reviews, essays,

and a novel in the universe of to catch all sorts of flying things and leave taking.

You can find more about ML Clark at magiklark.org. ML Clark is no stranger here to Clarksworld,

having multiple stories in our magazine, getting all the way back to November 2012 with Aquatica.

Most recent stories include September 2019 to catch all sorts of flying things, March 2020,

leave taking, and June 2020, nine words for loneliness in the language of the umau.

So my dear listener, I hope you can sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

One, the eggs.

The man woke on the wrong side of the shell and had to extricate himself carefully.

Less to get any of the humus mucous over his nostrils and mouth. This was easier said than done

on account of all the bugs still hanging around topside. In his rides more amorous phases,

his odor was deceptively sweet, and local fauna flew right into its sticky exposed undermass.

...