2024-07-11 - Guilty Pleasure

Guilt was such a strange sensation to pick up, and it was not one that Jjezreth understood. It had picked up on the difference between hungry and full, and knew eating was the way to get from one to the other. It had yet to experience hunger itself, there was still enough in the egg to keep it fed a while yet, but it had needled around to get a grip on what hunger was.

It felt bad. It wasn't quite pain but Jjezreth thought it could cross a line into pain easily. Eating prevented that. More than that, the meat Mother ate was warm and tender – something that she enjoyed tremendously. Eating was good. Pleasurable.

So why did Mother feel bad about it?

What was wrong?

Jjezreth didn't understand. It didn't understand.

There … wasn't enough? Not for everyone? How could that be? The thing Mother ate, herdbeast her mind had provided, had been filling for her. But there was not meat for everyone? The word ration was strange and the concept in and of itself was baffling – if something was needed why couldn't more be had? It traced the source back to ranches and holders as a place where the herdbeasts came from but what exactly those were seemed abstract. All that Jjezreth understood was that it was a place elsewhere that had herdbeasts too.

How was there not enough? Jjezreth didn't understand. Even when the information was picked from Mother's mind and laid out plainly Jjezreth truly didn't understand.