Chapter One - Early Beginnings

From The Beginning, I remember simply existing.

My birthplace was some dark nebulae near to your North Star. I did not come into existance through a mother's womb, as the humans that I love so dear do. Instead, I believe the exact moment I became aware was the exact moment my mother died. We are like the Pheonix, giving birth to ourselves in a new form when we tire of the old. I have her memories, all inherited directly - We collect them in a way. To learn. Always learn. She used to be a dwarf star. Dying. Slowly growing cold. In her memories, it was because she had given up. She was ready.

I do not miss her. I thank her.

In that second between death and birth - and in it - I decided to become Thought. Because then I could go where my mother never did, never wanted to. I was already determined to be completely different than my previous incarnation. I never saw myself as her. She was content to sit where she was, heavy with long life and I suppose the regrets that came with it. She had been in Love, and it broke her. I wanted to be free.

The cosmos were beautiful, and yet it was the eerie Big Empty that I sought to escape. I was lonely. Using my old knowledge as a guide, I traversed into planes of existance that held Others... and become utterly lost.

That was how I meet Gris-Gris.

He was the first Other I had met.

His name was odd but his shape was even more so. Whereas I was a voluminous cloud of energy, he was solid. Strong. Like a gale wind, with actual mass. He never stopped moving ~ and soon after I had met him, neither did I.

He showed me Movement. The sheer bliss of recognizing each legnth of time and space as it came by. How it could dizzy you, exhilerate. Fast, far, fly. Frenzy.

Free.

He was also the First Love.

I suppose I hadn't seen it then; yet he was.

That soft, sweet love of olde times, racing after each other in the flower fields, shrieking laughter, hide-and-seek, Innocent Love. There was nothing ever bitter about it, even now. The memories still taste sweet to this day.

We held each other's interest and company for a long time. But I became restless for reasons that were long impossible to explain for either of us, and we parted eventually. He gave me his goodwill to go, and I was mournful for it.

But I still left. I wish I had stayed simple for far longer. Savour my time with him.

I became enamoured with lower forms soon after. The upper planes seemed too lofty, at least in this new existance. But as soon as I took notice, I was ensnared. Many Others, I soon found out, saw them as inferior. To me, they were complex. I chose well of my spacious, energy-based form of Thought; it let me travel amoung many of them unseen so I could watch.

My mother's knowledge did not prepare me.

Whatever it was that truely ruled them as denizens of lower planes, I may never find out the Truth of It. But to me, it was and still looks to be Whimsy.

They did whatever they wanted.

And came up with every excuse as to why.

My most vibrant First Memory of the lower realms was as gathering of sorts near what passed for an ocean on their planet (which wasn't all that far from yours, how did I miss It back then?).

It was not of humans, but a species I can best describe as aquatic armor-plated monkeys. They would have passed very well for mermaids, if mermaids had the shell coverings of crabs instead of fish scales. They used names like you humans. At least, they had assigned sounds for when someone else was addressing them. I suppose that is a name as any other.

My favorite one I called "Bartholomew". A masculine name, but they didn't have any gender. They did reproduce though. In this gathering, Bartholomew's clan had traveled miles to attend. Crossing the oceans, oftens using the deep currents of the planet to be carried swiftly, sleeping for miles far below where their double suns' light couldn't reached. It was never hard to track him. I was faster than anything else, after all.

They all woke on time as one and ascended at precisely the right time to be deposited onto the reefs outside the largest island' surf. Dozens, if not hundreds already gathered; different clans from all around this liquid planet.

Bartholomew's planet has oceans, but rather than continents it had island archipelagos dotted all across the globe. It was a lush, tropical planet, having two suns. That allowed sunlight to reach into the monstrous depths.

Extreme depths.

Sunlight could reach double, even triple the depth of Earth's oceans. Bartholomew's planet was far larger. Far deeper oceans.

Bartholomew's species were the dominate species of the planet.

They made a yearly migration, in the second low-tide of a quarterly three-week season throughout the year. They all gathered to the largest set of archipelagos, to the largest island of them all.

As they gathered, music was made. Already, it sang through them; the notes were played through an organ that compressed air through tubes in the abdomen only accessible once above water. That was when a single muscle could be relaxed and tightened at will to take or intake air. These tubes were controlled independently; their melody was simply superb.

I wavered near Bartholomew, observing everything that occurred with fascination. My mother had never observed anything lower then her. This was all new.

So I watched.

I saw.

Many smaller of their kind did not come out of the water. Only ones of a certain age appeared above the water.

Bartholomew did this time too.

He sang beautifully as well, as if he knew what to do this time in his yearly journey. His song was low, joyously holding his notes as if he was happily singing his heart out.

Perhaps he was.

He moved along the reefs for many turns of the sun. His notes never stopped playing, nor did any others. They didn't sleep. They didn't eat.

They only sang. And moved.

They didn't touch the water again.

Not yet.

Then it started.

On the fourteenth turn of their suns, the song changed. Before, the total song was soft and harmonious, each present creature's song blending smoothly just as well as it sang alone.

After, it became a interrupted sonnet. The sounds were stil sung perfectly in pitch, but it became jumble together as if it could no longer harmonize.

This is what shook me from my hazey enjoyment of the performance. I was still swirling alongside Bartholomew, but he jolted as well. As if he was startled. I breezily swirled around him, knowing I could not touch. But he shivered, and his posture straighted. As if he could feel me.

We both looked around, but he in a different direction than I, traveling now in a loping gait with his two largest arms and the shrimp-like smaller legs along his ribs and waist. I went along with him, still listening to the discordant soundtrack of this new song. Then I noticed his had changed too, now that he had come out of his startle.

His noted were hurried now, as I listened. Halting now and then as if respondant. He was my study, I started to pay attention.

His notes had synced somehow, I was sure of it. To some other creature's. Perhaps calling out by song to each other now. It was oddly touching, sounding jaunty still. Almost as if he skipped. Or... danced.

I had heard the noise of splashing now and then, but only then did I realize that before this change to their songs, none of the creatures had been coming up out of the water consistantly since two turns.

"Most curious..."

I hadn't realized I had made a sound until my Bartholomew had suddenly reared himself back like something had struck him. In an instant I found myself in awe of my power, that I could make my presence known in such a way.

But I also realized it had made Bartholomew halt his song for a moment.

His silence sounded oddly deafing in the cascade of gratingly out-of-sync responsive songs.

His call wobbled out again finally, as his behavior slowly calmed and he began to travel along the rocky crags of the reef.

This time his song swelled, his notes resonating low and softly plaintive. I found myself bewitched, pressing my feeble form against his impossibly mortal shell. Too difficult to touch.

But I was still pressed against him when she found him, and he found her~

I will call her Vanessa.

Of course, neither of them had gender. But if they had, she was the feminine to his masculine.

Her shell was dark against Bartholomew's, his being almost cream when I think of it in comparison. I had no comprehension of color yet then, but even in that moment I can say they blended excruciatingly well in that moment.

And in that moment also, I can remember the resonating color that came from where their bodies made contact. A clear amber belle; an amber bell would make a good sound for it as well.

I know now that it was the power of meeting your Fated One.

Their souls joined just as their melody did, a symphony I was beholden to like a drug, so pure did it feel to me. I was in the middle of them, it seemed; they had pinned me inbetween them unknowingly and I had melted into them to be blessed with just a morsel of what that Eternal Whisper is we all seek in ourselves. Denied or not.

I only noticed the new sensation that I was beholden to when their song morphed. It was heavy at first, like an anchor. I watched as Bartholomew and Vanessa began to pull and tug at each other's carapaces. For a moment, I almost assumed they were about to embraced when I realized they were peeling each other. They armor came off in chunks, pieces easily cracking now that they had been in the harsh sunlight for so long. Dried husks, they almost crumpled really.

I began to restlessly encircle these two excitingly interesting creatures, noticing how as more of their body came off, they also lost the legs on their sides, and their tails became sinewy beneath. Like eels' tails. Their main arms they kept, now embracing each other as they were bared quickly. Their faces undescribable in your words when shelled; now they were smooth, large-eyed and slit-mouthed perhaps best put it.

Like I said, mermaids.

They intertwined together, and I had watched hypnotically as Bartholomew carefully keep Vanessa within his grasp as he began to inch them towards the water. He stroked her methodically, massaging her sides and rubbing his cheeks affectionately along her throat even as his thick muscular tail encircled hers. He was larger, but only slightly.

Vanessa didn't seem to mind, her voice becoming insistant, almost coy. She wiggled her pleasure, and I felt the weight begin to shift and take shape as she did. When she turned her sights on Bartholomew, I did as well. A thrill went up my intangible body as one went up hers. I slipped in without knowing.

This is went I discovered it.

He has pulled us into the cooling waters finally, and it was eerily silent all of a sudden. But now instead of sounds, there was touch.

Bartholomew is stroking us insistently.

Vanessa pulls away, and I have succeeded in holding on, turning with her to scope out a long, steep dip leading into a shallow recess in the coral. We croon, using the same technique as dolphins now that we are out of the air. Tugging, pulling, twining our way around him until we convince him.

I win.

I was so involved now, these new feeling and sensations. Yes, I went all the way, so dazzled by what I was learning I could not tear myself asunder from it.

I believe that was my first physical experience.

When it was done, and Bartholomew and Vanessa each had received what they needed, I watched as they proceeded to pick up each of their own batch of eggs in their gills and swim away. They had been fated, yes, but now they would proudly carry the young back to their clan's home island to raise. It should be noted they really only made about ten each, too large were they to carry anymore comfortably.

When I had pondered over all this, I began to think of Gris-Gris again. I wondered if he would have enjoyed something of the sort. He had been my only real companion before the obession began, though I had many after. I think I will tell you that story next. For now, I am tired.

Go to bed. I will tell you tomorrow.