2024-07-12 - [5.5] Evidence of Absence

There and not.

Absence and presence.

Courth still flicks from mind to mind like a telepathic tourist, gathering data from how the minds feel or don’t feel against his even if they refuse to answer his questions (demands), but when he suddenly finds a gap where he expects life it makes him pause. There’s a second where he’s almost angry – has someone taken them? Spirited them to somewhere special? Were they being told secrets that the rest of them were being kept from?

It’s not until Gwillanth’s grief hits him that he realises they are not somewhere else physically, simply…Somewhere else.

Where, exactly? The same nothing they went before? ’Is it between? Do you hear them wherever between is? Waiting? Is that why their shells must go there?’ Pertemarth can’t answer, and Courth’s tut is a sharp burst of neurons as it always is, but it’s just rote performance while he thinks. It means less data to gather from the clutch as a whole, and he regrets this but…Gwillanth is truly sad, and she hears even less of them then they do of each other. Understands them less, but feels them more, perhaps. He doesn’t miss them. The change is more annoying than their actual absence is sad and that…

Is he supposed to feel that? Should be mourn the siblings he never knew beyond their loudness, quietness, and now the spaces they leave behind?

Courth is quiet for a long time as he listens to Gwillanth’s grief, the echo of the rocking sensation on the sands almost as strong as it was during the earthquake.