2024-07-26 - [8.7] Temporal Constructs

Courth is uncomfortable.

He can’t even specify why, The world feels too small, and everyone is too loud, and there is an itching under his hide he can’t explain…in part because he doesn’t know what his hide truly feels like. There’s an awareness of himself inside the shell that he’s never had before, or maybe he’s just never cared so much about it before, and it doesn’t make him understanding when Gwillanth stretches her control over the shells to keep them caged.

’Lucky! You–’ He sparks and wriggles and wrestles inside his shell, biting his tongue only because he does respect Shayled and Gwillanth after they’ve cared so long for each shell.

Surviving wasn’t lucky! The whers had dug them out, and the greens had carried them off. People had made the weyrbowl habitable for them. They’d talked to each other and kept each other awake – lucky! It had been nothing but effort. And then lucky to be put against such terrible odds if the wings were emptier in the next few Turns? All these…maybes and possibilities! How is it useful to them! His tolerance for ‘petty nothings’ is at its lowest, and he doesn’t even make an attempt to rationalise the strength Shayled is trying to give them all.

Courth twists and sparks, only settling down later in the night when he’s too tired to keep going. ’You’re* weighing down my wings…Let us go!’* He drifts off to sleep an annoyed little storm on the edge of the mass, roiling fitfully. Held so tightly against Gwillanth’s mind, he can’t help but dream of weightless Nothing, when Warm-Mother was the most complicated thing in the Person-Egg’s world.

It misses when things were so bright and shiny and new, when every day brought new Input that Revealed rather than Confused – but Courth strikes forward at whatever tomorrow brings, unwilling to let go of a single bit of hard won knowledge.