2024-07-18 - [6.3] Genus

The listless times, the one that came often between the time of Nothing and true consciousness, fade more and more with every night. Courth knows he sleeps like the adults do now, as the looming Something feels more and more urgent. He is truly asleep when the strange-mind – like the one Kanyoth had thought he meant was Igith – starts talking to them. (If he’d been more awake he might have objected.)

In the quiet, weightless space, he feels…like Nothing again. It is the way it used to be, with warm-something pressing concepts and emotions into him like a balm. But this is not the Nothing, and Bisk is not Gwillanth, he has words and concepts now that are better than pure thought so why is he returning to it –

Humble, be.

Courth fizzes back to life, jolted truly awake with a squawk. Humble? Dirt? What? He throws his mind as open as he can to figure out the where, who and what of the disturbance and settles down mulishly when he encounters only infuriating calm. (A lot of things are infuriating after the quake.)

All of the sentiment the wher impresses on them are so, so…cloying. Courth bristles at the idea they (he) need(s) advice from this not-dragon. What does she know, companion of a wanderer? They will be dragons, defenders of the weyr, arbitrators of politics! The phrasing is wrong and frazzled, and he has never been a staunch defender of arrogant, Yuakajth like thinking, but he is now. Half asleep and on the back foot (that he has put himself onto, of his own volition).

At least they agree on one thing. Grumbling, grudging, Courth can admit this. People do lie.

As he falls back to sleep he clings to that, not the call for love. That he batters away, not even adding it to its own database. Gwillanth loves, and it serves her no purpose, if anything it causes her more stress. No, no…Open, yes…Heart? Heart…