Hive Minds Give Good Hugs

"So… this is the surface, huh?" Hsthressis asks, scuttling around. "I have to admit, I imagined the home turf of the demons to be a little less… blurry."

"Yeah, your echolocation didn't really evolve to comprehend open-ended spaces," I tell her. "It makes sense for your culture to demonize the area of the world in which you are extra vulnerable to attack."

Hsthressis twists her body uncomfortably.

"…What?" she asks. "What's 'eeth-olthe' mean?"

Oh, oops. I spoke that word in English because there's no real Sthrenslian equivalent to the concept of Darwinian evolution.

"Evolve," I correct. "Don't worry about it, it's probably blasphemy."

"Well I'm like half demon now, so it's probably just important to my heritage if I learn some blasphemy. What's eeth-olthe?"

I raise my eyebrow at her, not that she's likely to understand the gesture. I accidentally picked up on how genuinely interested she is in learning what, to her culture, is basically Satanism. So either there's some significant religious rift happening in her life causing her to doubt her beliefs… or she's a teenage edgelord. Or both, I guess. That’s hardly exclusive. I’m not going to complain if it motivates her to be interested in modern science, but I don’t know if now is the time.

"It's pronounced… no, wait, you don't have lips," I realize. "You can't even make a 'V' sound, can you? Well, I'd be happy to teach you about it, but that would take a while and I'd like to return you to your home."

"Lame," Hsthressis grumbles. "Where is home compared to here, anyway?"

"A very, very long and dangerous walk for someone of your size," I tell her.

At that, I flinch a little as I feel my ten new Tinkerbell bodies enter into my consciousness. Well, I guess they aren’t technically Tinkerbell bodies since I've modified them so significantly. I guess I'll call the design Evelyn Tinkerbell Enhanced, or ETE for short. I punch my way out of all the eggshells and start slurping down the remains, tearing into my supply of meat shortly after.

"Dangerous, huh?" Hsthressis grumbles, unsuccessfully hiding a bit of fear. "I already died once, and I'd rather not make a habit of it."

I've been having this entire discussion with Hsthressis using an old Tinkerbell body, since I want her to get used to me being that general size and shape. I walk up to her with my EE body at her words, though, kneeling down so my monstrous eight-foot-tall self with a head bigger than Hsthressis's whole body can say the next line.

"I assure you, I will make sure you stay safe," I promise. "I'm ready to go now. Mind if I pick you up?"

"Um," Hsthressis answers eloquently.

Well, technically, she makes a hissing noise completely different from the word 'um,' but translating filler words is weird. Like, they're half onomatopoeia, half not? If I mentally transliterate the ‘klah’ noise she’s making in the same way I hear it, it doesn’t actually make any sense to me because it’s not a filler word in my language. The same goes for accents and word choice and all sorts of stuff that literal translations just don’t… translate. Oh, right, I should focus.

"Hey, I didn't go through all the effort of reincarnating you just so I could get you hurt. Having really, really long legs is just very handy for going fast."

Hsthressis' whiskers twitch and her body tilts ever slightly towards my Evelyn Tinkerbell self, as if looking for assistance. Which, of course, indicates to me that she still doesn't quite get how I function.

"We are the same person," I have both bodies remind her in stereo.

"Gah!" Hsthressis yelps. "Right, I know, sorry! It’s just weird, okay?"

I shrink back at that, as much as I can. I didn't mean to scare her.

"Sorry," I say, then hold my hands out for her to climb on.

Hesitantly, she climbs into my palms. Her whole body shakes a bit as I stand up to my full height and place her up on the crown of my head, tentacles on my back stretching up to be able to hold her in place or catch her at a moments notice. When I stand up, she lets out a scream as if she's on a roller coaster, which I guess to her tiny body I sort of am.

"Let me know if I go too fast, okay?" I tell her, then walk over to where my new bodies are drying off and pick them up as well.

They won't be able to fly until the egg goop on their wings is cleaned off, so I've been busying myself with doing just that, all the newborn mes sitting in a circle and wiping off the wings of another body. In the meantime, I pick them up in Evelyn Experimental's arms and make my way back towards the hill, where I promised Hsthressis' mother I would meet her. The entire journey, which thankfully turns out uneventful, is punctuated by the reality that I not only am not but functionally cannot give the safety of this young girl my full attention, because simultaneously I am tending to my Ivylyns, experimenting with pheromones, cleaning my bodies, hunting sloths, and mentally designing a new, larger aerial body that combines wings and siphon pistons to create a vertical take off and landing system. I can’t decide whether or not this lack of focus is bad or inherently justified. After all, my standards must, by necessity, alter in response to my new situation. It just feels wrong to do so.

"You probably shouldn't tell my mom that all of your yous are the same," Hsthressis mentions shortly before we reach the hill.

"Why not?" I ask, frowning.

"Because it's weird," Hsthressis answers bluntly, "and you are going to need to try and be as not weird as possible if you want to convince her you're not evil."

"I'd like to hope that she can tell the difference between 'weird' and 'evil,'" I say hesitantly.

"I mean, it's not like she can't, it's more like everything she knows about you so far is evil. You killed people, right? So you’ve got kind of an uphill battle against you."

I shudder lightly, not wanting to dislodge any of the bodies I'm carrying. ...Or Hsthressis, who is her own person and not just a body.

"Yeah, I guess I did. I don't know if I'm going to be any good at pretending to be normal, though. It's not really part of my skill set."

Plus I don't really want to lie. I've never been very good at it.

"Well, just leave only one body with me," Hsthressis suggests. "Mom probably hasn't just sat around waiting for you to come back, she has stuff to do, so I figure I should at least invite you to come with me to go see her. If you don't bring more than one of yourself, it just kind of won't come up, right?"

"Hey, good thinking Hsthressis," I agree. "Avoiding the conversation entirely is the best form of lying."

Hsthressis wiggles uncomfortably.

"Okay, don't say stuff like that either, that's definitely demon talk."

Ugh, it figures her culture hasn't developed dry humor yet. …Wait, shit, that's racist.

"Good to know," I tell her. "I'm definitely going to need your help to not piss off your mom."

"Okay, well, you're screwed then, because I am the absolute worst at that."

I snort with amusement, and then the two of us breach the clearing to my old home. The hill is just as I left it, with my cave near the top and the giant pit within it. I stop at the foot of the hill, kneeling down and removing Hsthressis from my head, back to solid earth. One of my ETE bodies flits off my shoulder and lands beside her.

"To the tunnels with us, then," I say. "Let's go talk to your… clan?"

"We are called the True People," Hsthressis informs me, which… wow, that's a self-important name if I ever heard one. A less snappy but probably more accurate translation would be 'chosen ones uniquely capable of receiving salvation,' which has all kinds of unfortunate implications.

"All right, let's go talk to the True People, then," I sigh.

We head into the tunnel, and a quick buzz from my wings is all the sound I need to get an echo-map of the winding passageways within. Most obviously, we are not alone, as a collection of about six other Sthrenslians near the pit seem to notice me the moment I notice them.

"Hey!" Hsthressis calls out. "Guess who's alive, idiots!"

I freeze, not entirely certain how to interpret this apparent start to my negotiations.

"What the fuck?" comes the response from one of the other Sthrenslians. "Hsthressis? Is that you, you brat?"

"Who are you calling a brat, Kalak?" Hsthressis snaps back.

"That's Warrior Kalak to you, brat!" Kalak shouts.

Hsthressis and the group of other Sthrenslians start moving quickly towards one another, so I follow. Well, it sounds like whoever was left behind here is a friend, so that's pretty good I guess! For once I have some luck.

"So, what's this thing you're bringing us?" Kalak asks.

'This thing.' Not 'who is that,' because fuck me I guess, but notably also not 'what is that thing,' despite the fact that Kalak and Hsthressis are shouting at each other down the tunnel. We are nowhere near each other by most standards, and in fact separated by about six random twists and bends that all break line of sight. Yet still, we are within range of immediate echolocation, and so the specific word choice used to refer to me is the one that implies we are nearby.

"This is Evelyn!" Hsthressis answers. "She almost killed me, but then she fixed me and also she's really sorry."

"That's true," I confirm. "I'm really sorry."

There's a pregnant pause as the incoming Sthrenslians digest that explanation.

"She's, uh, a little bit smaller than the other one, don't you think?"

"Yeah there are a bunch of different sizes for these weird things," Hsthressis agrees. "Don't ask me how it works, because I have no idea."

"…I'm not a weird thing," I complain, knowing full well that couldn't be more wrong.

We are finally close enough to one another that I can actually see the incoming scouts using my bioluminescence. They squirm single-file down the tunnel towards us, and sure enough they are definitely Sthrenslians. Not that such a thing was ever in question, but I'm still figuring out how the hell to tell Sthrenslians apart from each other.

"It's absolutely weird to hear something like that talk," Kalak grunts. "It's part of the same group of things that killed three of our boys, right?"

I frown, since I'm not a 'group of things' either, but being argumentative is the worst way to apologize.

"I'm sorry," I repeat. "I wish I could've saved them, or more than that I wish that I had been intelligent and observant enough to realize I was at fault before we came into conflict."

"Yeah, sure. Well, we've been instructed to bring Hsthressis back, if she actually showed up, so that's what we're going to do. I don't have any orders on what to do with you, though, but I have to admit your fellow demons left us quite the feast after they ran away."

The warriors approach me, crowding the tunnel. My tiny body is barely a quarter of their size, but all I can think about is whether or not they ate the entirety of my corpse or if parts are left behind. It's a frustrating alien instinct to not leave my own remnants, so I move another part of my body to perform some aerial reconnaissance within the cave. ...Oh, I guess there's also another problem.

"You really shouldn't eat the bodies of creatures higher on the food chain than you, whenever you can help it," I inform them helpfully. "You could get mercury poisoning."

"And what the fuck does that mean?" The leading warrior hisses, reaching forward so their relatively giant claws hover dangerously around my body.

I blink.

"Oh, sorry, I guess you guys don't have a concept for either the food chain or mercury. Basically, there's a metallic poison that collects inside the bodies of predators, so the more meat your food eats the more poison it tends to have inside it. The poison is relatively benign so your body can mostly ignore it, but because it never goes away it will eventually reach harmful levels."

The claws start to close around my body.

"Your fancy bullshit doesn't make me any less inclined to kill you, demon."

Another ETE body finally reaches the cave and hovers above the massive pit the Sthrenslians dug underneath my home while I was away. To my annoyance, I see that most of my chitin and nearly all of my bones have been left behind, which twinges in the back of my mind as a problem, like a serious bout of OCD. I will need to make a mobile acidic body sooner than expected so I can destroy all of this. I table the flying designs for now, still unhappy with them, and consider the much easier problem of a terrestrial acid-equipped digger.

I suppose I should also respond to this guy threatening to kill me, I guess.

"You cannot kill me in a way that matters," I tell the aggressive soldier, because I've always sort of wanted to.

"Um, Evelyn? You're being kind of spooky right now," Hsthressis tells me quietly.

I blink, then step back away from the claw. Right, death is bad. No matter how apparently immortal I am, I shouldn't treat it frivolously, especially after committing a multiple homicide.

"Sorry," I say again. "What I mean is, I was in the wrong. As far as I'm concerned you fought me for just reasons and you won. I would like to accompany you because I would like to surrender, and give you the reparations you deserve."

The warriors start muttering at each other. Surrender and reparations sounds like something worth taking me to the chieftain for, but because I'm a demon any surrender must obviously be a trick.

"I'm not a demon," I tell them firmly. "I am Evelyn."

I am, throughout this entire conversation, dimly aware that I'm not acting very much like me. I'm not panicking, I'm not babbling, I'm just… standing here, numb. Answering questions like a robot because just looking at all these Sthrenslians makes it impossible to feel anything but deep, painful regret. It's better to feel nothing at all. I don't mean that in the self-brain-mutilation way, at least I don't think so, but in the coping strategy way. I feel like I'm in shock. But that's okay. I complete my acidic digger design and lay the appropriate egg while the Sthrenslians bicker amongst themselves, eventually deciding to bring me along. The tunnels are long and the walk to wherever it is the True People call home takes several hours. I can tell through my inherent body sense that we are moving towards the mountains, and right at the foot of them does my echolocation finally pick up what can only be our destination.

The cavern is enormous, and clearly lived in. Despite the massive size, I can clearly sense all around the incredible room. Columns of stone made of ancient stalactite and stalagmite pairs form a stone web of percussion that bounces sound all throughout the room. Stairs are burned into the sides of them, sometimes inside the particularly thick ones, from which Sthrenslians could ascend to higher levels of the many-layered room, accessing tunnels and side chambers and countless other incredible locations that combine the natural beauty of cave formations with the careful design of sapient intelligence. Massive rope bridges crisscross along the cavern, linking columns and rooms. I find myself unable to count the number of Sthrenslians here. There are at least multiple hundreds, maybe thousands.

"Woah," I whisper.

Immediately, I'm tempted to fly forward and see it all with my eyes, dancing around the inside of the massive cavern and revealing the natural beauty with my bioluminescence. Yet such a thing would not only be a faux pas but unlikely to be anywhere near as beautiful as the full majesty of what I sense with my Sthrenslian tunnel whiskers. It is, after all, a city intended to be viewed by the blind, and careful thought has been placed into both its practicality and its beauty from that standpoint.

"This is an incredible place," I admit, breathless.

The guards ignore me, but they don't disagree with me either. I allow them to keep leading me along, up staircases and high into the city. No doubt nearly every Sthrenslian in the massive chamber can sense me, and I can smell the fear and confusion wafting all around the room. I do my best to counter it, releasing pheromones of calm and peace, but I'm like a single flower in a meadow of stress.

As much as the main city is breathtaking, however, the chieftain's hut that I am led to and forced to recognize due to Hsthressis's memories is almost even more impressive. It's the largest building in the cavern, and it's made entirely out of the inside of a massive, multi-story geode, covered in brilliant purple gemstones that sparkle in the cool light of my bioluminescent body. Even to my colorless vibration sense they are gorgeous, brilliant structures and textures the likes of which mere stone or dirt cannot compare. Living areas and side rooms have been carefully carved from the thicker patches of gems, culminating in a brilliant reception room inside which Chlrehistra, Hsthressis’ mother and the chieftain of the True People waits for us.

I really, really hope she is not the kind of religious zealot that would turn against her own daughter.