2024-06-15 - North

Moss has been keeping up its usual stream of consciousness attempts to speak to these others for what now feels like its entire existence. There are lulls where it rests and rises where it tackles the task again with increased intensity, but it tries not to stop when it can help it. How else will it know exactly when it's been successful?

You are closer now. When will you be able to hear me? I love you. I wonder what you will have to say to me.

It's easy to get the impression that this is a long-running habit, as long-running as any habit can be for such a short existence.

Hello hello hello, I am here. Are you ther .... -- Nutshell pauses, jolted into a kind of semi-alert state that interrupts its own stream of consciousness.

The mind voice is clear, strong, flecked with longing. I hear you. I am not-mother. You are not-mother. I am me. Who are you? It waits for a response. But there is a limit on how long it will wait before it returns to telling everyone (everyone!) that it is here.

There is much to be said of an egg who burns brightly to be able to be seen from so far away. At least, it assumes there is a great distance between it and whatever else is out there. There is very little concept of space, except that sometimes Mother is gone and sometimes she is here. It knows there are others like it out there, too. Mother talks to them sometimes when she does not talk to it.

So it pushes outward, burning brightly, throwing its Heat out to anyone it can reach, or that it hopes to reach. There are no words at first, only the intense heat that never seems to dissipate despite its reach. Suddenly, a voice that is distinctly not its own calls out. Who are you?

Who is it? Tasted Fire. Its voice is like its Heat, warm with a touch of embers crackling. Are you like me? A question it had begun to wonder... was anything like the egg? They had to be! Right?

The Others that Caramel detected, those that bobbed along just outside of its reaching thread of eager consciousness, suddenly felt accessible. No longer so floating and separate. Very real, and near as the sand. Caramel jumped at the opportunity to connect, its voice warm and fluid, with a touch of polite sweetness remembered as an afterthought. Mother was Charm, after all. To be so blatantly hungry for contact...

...oh, Caramel could barely hold back their palpable excitement.

Hello to all of you, I am as you are! Separate from Mother - I am here for you. You are not alone.

With that, Caramel would send out a gentle, bubbling wave of heated, sugary comfort.

It was one thing to reach and reach and reach without end - it's another entirely to be met with equal enthusiasm, and Moss has no idea how to handle it at first. It stirs, shifting its soft shell, and listens. Three others, a number it's been fond of... But what does it say now? One of them has a heat that reminds it of Mother, but the others remind it more of itself. We are like each other, it confirms, partially to itself and partially to the one with Mother's blazing heat. It doesn't know what else to say, doesn't have the words or concepts yet to answer a question like 'who,' but its excitement and adoration is clear in the soft, lazy creep of its mind.

I hear.

And oh the thrill of casting out words and getting a response. Responses. Nutshell so wants to communicate but has so few words to do so. But with every interaction it learns, chattering out a mix of sense and nonsense, and always the same wistful over tone. One dares to wish.

Nutshell has no difficulty distinguishing between the different sendings - it understands emotion, is drawn to emotion.

I not alone. Welcome(welcome). Hello. I like. I not alone. Yesno. I hear I here.

Call, and then response. Others around me are not the same. Call and daring pause and then response. Has it discovered .. PLAY?