2024-06-22 - Why Ask If Not Do?

It continues to listen in on the conversations around it, focusing always on Mother but more and more often on this other presence that often accompanies her, more often than almost any of the others. It - he? - is similar, but different. He is fond of Mother, but not quite in the way it and its beloved others are. He's not interesting enough to reach out to, and so it doesn't bother to try, but he is interesting to listen in on. He says things it does not understand more often than Mother does and seems to draw her into saying confusing things as well.

Most confusing of all is when they say things they don't mean. Another mind - strange, foreign, fascinating - approaches, asks to approach further. Whoever it is gets no closer, and it finds itself frustrated. Why ask and then not follow through? What was the point?

It doesn't mind not understanding these outside minds, it finds. Nothing they say is of much interest, nothing they feel is relevant to it, they say things they don't mean and mean things they don't say. It listens, satisfied by doing so, and does not strain to wrap its own mind around the goings-on and double-meanings of the world outside anymore. It will understand them eventually, it is sure.