2024-06-15 - QUITE DEMANDING ATTENTION

The happiness, the warmth, the welcome. All of this suggests that if the inhabitant within Canyon is the reason for The Mother being here, it is not blamed for being at fault. The Mother wants to be here, perhaps more than she doesn't want to be here. It doesn't know why. It simply is itself.

It strains to understand. It doesn't know how to know why. How to find out anything. Unlike Mother, it cannot leave, even if that was all it wanted.

That is not all it wants. It has no idea what it would be leaving to. There's a vast, solid unknown out there, and the awareness of all that is unknown is as oppressive and crushing as many miles worth of layers of dirt and stone and bedrock.

At some point, there is a breakthrough, an earthquake, the inhabitant within Canyon surging through the vastness of the unknown, leaving a crack in it.

Yes, this clutch is coming along nicely.

Words! Language!

The inhabitant within Canyon cries out, Oh! Mother! Nicely! Mother nicely? Mother coming along nicely?

The Mother does not respond. She does not seem to hear the inhabitant within Canyon at all. But how can it hear The Mother if The Mother can't hear it too?

MOTHER! ME! IS ME! the inhabitant within Canyon screams.

The Mother says, not in response to it, Yes, they're quite demanding of my attention.

MOTHER! YES! ATTENTION! DEMANDING ATTENTION! IS ME DEMANDING ATTENTION! QUITE DEMANDING ATTENTION! IS ME QUITE DEMANDING ATTENTION!

Despite all the effort the inhabitant within Canyon is putting into yelling, The Mother prattles on, not acknowledging it at all.

Can she not hear it?

Or does she not want to talk to it?

It whimpers, Mother? Welcome? Is me welcome?

No response.

The inhabitant within Canyon falls into subdued silence.