Chapter Text
The first thing you remember when you woke up was weird tingling all over. You slowly opened your eyes and realized that you saw such a bright blue that it startled you. What were these foreign sensations? Where were the stars that you saw all the time? You had only dozed off for a while, like usual..
Why was there this unusual color surrounding you? You looked down and realized there were strange.. things attached to you. And to your horror, they began to move!
After panicking very hard, so hard you almost blacked out again, you noticed that they responded with your will. They did anything you wanted, with the exception of leaving the rest of the long, soft thing that was still inconceivably attached to you.
You shut your eyes and tried to remember what you were doing last. Was there anything out of place?
Oh, that's right.
You had seen the two lights land on a planet not far away from where you were. The two lights seemed to be leaving after a while. Then something happened, and they both fell back to the planet. And then, some time later, the two lights flew off, so far you could no longer see their trails.
The star closest to you on your right had begun dying. You watched, as silently as you always did as it burned out and left the void peacefully. You had envied the lights that could travel. You wished, with all your being, that you could experience what they had seen on the surface of that little planet.
Your new senses were battered by every little thing that happened. You felt everything through the appendages that were attached to you. It made a weird shudder when something invisible passed over it. It wouldn't stop that weird jerking. You wished it would stop.
You looked around. At least you knew how to do this. Up above, a brilliant blue almost made you pass out again. Such a bright color. You recognized the sun - there was no mistaking its aura and heat, even down here.
Something tickled under your new appendages. You looked down, admiring the green you saw. It was much better to look at than the bright blue up above. You took in your new surroundings until it began to grow dark. Your excitement grew with the waning sun, because now you could see something else painfully familiar - the dark expanse of space.
But.. it was so high above you. Try as you might, you were unable to will yourself back into space. To feel weightless again. You stared at the darkness high above, another foreign sensation gliding over a place where you could not see.
The ache you felt was not unfamiliar.
Longing.
You had not asked to be forcibly ejected from your place among your brethren.
The shuddering would not stop. You began to look for ways to alleviate how annoying it felt. Yes, you had no choice but to accept that these appendages were completely yours now. You rocked your body back and forth, spreading the littler appendages into the green below you.
And you began to move. It hurt, at first. You began to suspect that this body was not somehow designed to move in this manner, but you knew no better, so you slowly made your way down, down, down the green where you had sat.
There were some interesting shapes that caught your attention. So you moved toward them. Once you were close, the invisible thing that made your body shudder began to die down, and it completely stopped when you were surrounded by more tall shapes. What you felt under the smaller appendages was vastly different from how it was when you weren't surrounded by the tall dark shapes. There was nothing prickly and somewhat soft, but being here was dark, and you liked it dark.
You sat down and closed your eyes. Yes, it was even darker here. You relished in the darkness and felt yourself drift off.
Unfortunately, you didn't wake up to the blinding light of the sun. But it definitely was bright, muted by everything around you. You opened your eyes, unable to describe the scene you saw above your head, so you ignored it and focused on finding the limit of your limbs. Certain parts had a wide range of movement and you enjoyed wrapping the smaller appendages around objects to feel them.
For some reason, the sensitivity of the ends of these was unmatched by any other you had. You decided to dub these 'feelers'. Lower down, there were more that tapered off into the same amount of feelers at the ends of the appendages, but they weren't as long, nor could they truly feel. And you couldn't wrap them around anything.
You called them 'short feelers' regardless.
Satisfied with your progress, you slowly made your way out to where the green was pleasant against your feelers. It still felt strange to move about like this, but you ignored it for now. You scanned the area, seeing some more curious shapes not too far off. You wondered if the green things were interesting.
So you went over, sometimes having to stop because you pulled on something that restricted your movement. You had no idea what it was, but you could feel it on top of you as you moved. How annoying.
You reached the strange green-covered shapes. You knew you couldn't think to try going up, so you instead padded around, looking for a shape that wasn't so tall.
When you eventually found it, you clambered through, carefully maneuvering over the bumpy things. Some brown things flattened as you put your weight onto it, startling you. But it didn't hurt, so you continued. You noticed there was a pattern to the shapes you were passing, noting them with curiosity.
You knew what lines were. You somewhat understood what 'horizontal' was and what 'vertical' was. You passed a lot of strange vertical lines. Some you paused to touch with your feelers.
They didn't feel very pleasant. Neither did they smell any better either. Smelling was something you still needed to get used to. You didn't know how you knew that these things were 'smells', but you didn't question it.
You heard a noise and stopped.
And then you saw it.
Something beyond the vertical lines, standing out almost painfully against the greens and browns.
It had the same kind of appendages you had. But most were hidden behind muted blues and whites and golds.
You watched as it rapidly balanced its weight on two appendages, becoming much, much harder to properly look at.
You began hearing noises, and after glancing about, you realized that this thing was the one making the noises.
They seemed to lower in pitch and intensity, and you found that the sound was actually kind of nice. You sat, waiting for more.
The thing behind the vertical lines sat too, giving you ample time to stare at it.
You couldn't even truly describe what the thing looked like, other than it seemed similar to you and what you seemed to look like. You spotted something blue and round near the very top of the thing.
You shuffled closer to get a better look. It reminded you of the path planets took from your position in the sky.
Fascinating.
As you stared, taking in every detail, the thing moved closer, and through a series of movements with its feelers, revealed another round blue thing. You found that they were very pleasing to look at. Not quite as bright as the blue thing beyond the green-covered shapes that you could no longer see, but they were shining with a different kind of light.
Something moved below the pretty blue roundies and more of those pleasant sounds reached you. You focused on it, but the only way you could describe it was a small black hole had opened. But.. it wasn't as destructive as a true black hole. So, what should you call this?
After some time, you settled on 'sound maker'.
You watched as the thing that looked like you began to move more of its appendages. The blues, whites and golds suddenly separated from part of it. You shivered.
The thing approached you, slowly and cautiously. You didn't know what it was doing, but you didn't move away either.
Suddenly a foreign weight was on you and you panicked, scrambling backwards. Something came under your feelers and you froze.
The only words that came to you to describe the sensation were 'soft' and 'warm'.
Your feelers gripped whatever it was, completely ignoring the thing beyond the lines. You turned and noticed that it was the combination of blues, golds and whites that the thing had to hide its appendages.
Why did it..?
You looked up at it and it looked like it was trying to communicate with you. Not through sound this time, but movement.
Curious, you followed how it moved. After all, it seemed to know much more about this place than you did. With its instruction, you found that the foreign weight was upon you again, but this time, you knew that whatever this thing was, you wanted to keep it. You liked it.
It made you feel warm again, in a way that you had yet to experience. You wrapped yourself in it as much as you could. You stopped when you heard the thing make a different kind of sound, one that caused you to take notice. It didn't sound like anything you had heard before, but it was extremely pleasant.
You wanted to hear more, but sadly it soon stopped. You decided to focus on the thing again, wondering if you followed it some more, would you be rewarded with that sound again?
You chose to copy its movements, and suddenly realized that your sight had been impeded this entire time. Whatever it was, you had moved it out of the way.
The thing on the other side of the vertical lines made a very quiet noise in response, but for some reason, you thought it wasn't a conscious decision for it to sound like that.
You found yourself starting to feel.. weird. You were probably awake for some time now. Your appendages were starting to feel heavier than usual. So you curled up, deciding that going to sleep right here was a good idea. As you pulled the warm thing more around you, you realized it had a scent.
.. It was a very nice one too.
You closed your eyes, finding it a welcome relief.