ORIGIN - We Are Alive

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Deep within the relative quiet of the Gorge of Monoceros, along the bank of a winding river that carved its path through the rock, a chrysalis sat. It was a bright blue-green--far more tropical than the dry cave's atmosphere. The stone was thin, with trembling cracks spiderwebbing their way over its surface.

Quite anticlimactically, the moment the stone shattered, what looked like a pile of dust fell forth in an unimpressive whoomph. This "dust" fell to the rock floor in an ashen pile, and for a moment remained still and silent before a quiet buzzing began to rise from it. This sound--an even murmur--continued as the dust seemed to pick itself back up, shaping and forming into something resembling a puppy or a cub of some kind--but winged and finned, a dusty brown shade. Its strange head glanced behind it, observing the remnants of the gemstone, and abruptly its colors shifted: now pocked with a glowing blue not at all unlike the chrysalis from which it'd come.

The small figure sat there, its head turning to and fro, though the dust-cloud of mites that made it up seemed at times to lag behind, so that the figure's form shifted and reshaped almost constantly.

As if practicing, the large blue-green eyes blinked.

Wilder had a lot to contemplate these last few days and when she was thinking, she preferred not to sit still. Monoceros was not far from Canis, where she had, apparently, taken up residence (it was at least better then Polaris and she had friends in Canis!) and her wandering paws had led her here. The buffeting wind nearly knocked her off her feet, but she ended up running around and giggling wildly, not caring at all for what she was thinking of, instead jumping into the air to see how far the wind would carry her.

When she got tired, she made her way to the Gorge to rest and regain her bearings. Her feet were dragging with exhaustion and her ears were ringing from the ferocious howling she had been listening to for hours. The significantly more silent atmosphere here was so gentle on her ears, she thought she had gone deaf.

Apparently not so, because the sound of a shattering chrysalis immediately caught her attention. She jumped from where she had been sitting and whirled around to face whatever had appeared. At first, she thought she was looking at nothing, but then something formed from what appeared to be thin air.

She blinked. Where had that come from? What was it anyways? She'd never seen a creature quite like that before!

Excitement reached her quickly and drove her into movement. She bounded forward, a spring in each step, until she reached the newly hatched creature. "Wow, wow! Where did you come from? What are you anyways?"

@Legion

The swarm turned its head, with a curious blur where individual component mites lagged behind. The blue eyes again seemed to blink, this time fixed on Wilder; the four ears swept forward to give her its full attention. It showed no fear, but a sort of benign curiosity. The cub buzzed briefly, thoughtfully, as if imitating this idea of sound.

"What--" and the voice was underlaid with a thick buzzing, pausing for a moment with a hum--"are you?"

The newborn swarm was likely parroting the sounds it had heard--or perhaps they grasped some semblance of meaning from them.

After a moment it slowly and hesitantly stood. It almost appeared to be testing its own movements, as a young animal might be expected to--but with the odd appearance of its body shifting from place to place in brief dusty blurs. It emitted a constant, quiet buzz as it pushed up.

It then took a single, bouncing step--half to one side, half to Wilder, as if focused more on imitating her movements, too, than on actually approaching her. This first leap (with an attempt at spring in its step) was clumsy, parts of the swarm growing confused, breaking away and reforming mid-movement.

It tried again.

Then it stopped and looked to Wilder--as if to ask, fascinated, how it was doing.

@Wilder

It answered her question with...a question. Wilder giggled, her whiskers twitching with amusement. "I'm a cat, of course! But you're not a cat! What are you?" Of course, she knew that it probably wouldn't know itself. She didn't, did she? When she'd hatched she didn't know! That was okay, some knew and some didn't! Friends, all the same.

But the way it moved and spoke had Wilder confused and staring at it a little closely. Parts of it kept braking into dust and returning to its body. Every movement was blurred and stretched and it just seemed...unnatural. It was strange and Wilder found herself getting closer to see what in the caves this creature was even made of. "Wow...are you a dust creature? Are you made of dirt?" It actually probably wouldn't be the weirdest thing she'd ever seen. After all, she had a cognizant parasite living in her stomach.

She smiled, her tail lifted high. "Wow, it must be hard keeping your body together!"

@Legion

Legion's masses listened intently. Half of its component insects were already busy preparing to multiply--to grow the creature as a whole, to ensure there were enough mites for the colony to survive. The rest were listening to Wilder, their minds and that of their 'queen' considering her sounds and words.

Laughter: that was new, and so the hive as a group decided that yes, they should try and imitate that. Not all of them, but most, and Legion was nothing if not a majority vote. The laughter came out strange--a little tinny, and a lot buzzy--but it was close enough. But Wilder's question resonated. The hive consulted--within Legion's body, behind the blank cublike stare, was a world of thought and action. Thousands of tiny minds listened, drew their own conclusions, made their own guesses. Some were distracted, and wanted to look around, to see the world; others were noting the warmth of the breeze, or the distant sound of the howling storm. But all in all the majority was considering--what did the words mean? And once they'd sort of figured that out, what was the answer..?

In a lot of ways, the thought processes--with all their distractions, multitudinous notes and so forth--weren't all that unlike a single biological entity with its many senses and constant subconscious decision-making and input.

So, after a few moments, Legion thought it understood the question, at least. But what was it, then? Or more accurately, what were they? We are... many. We are... swarm. We are multitude. We are--

"Legion. We are Legion," it decided with a buzz.

A moment later the entire form broke apart. The swarm shrank down a little, reforming. Small... four round paws, only two ears, and through Legion's bioluminescent abilities, two shining pink eyes. The creature even attempted to change its shade to match Wilder's, enhanced by magic, but the magic part failed. So though it was darker, it was still not her jet black. Still, now it looked distinctly different--in fact, it looked almost exactly like Wilder.

"I am--a cat," it replied, matter-of-factly.

@Wilder

Wilder wasn't sure what the laugh was supposed to be. It sounded kind of like a laugh but it wasn't a very good one. The buzzing noise was really confusing her at this point. If it was dust why was it buzzing? Did dust usually buzz like that? Or maybe she was wrong and it was just a creature and her eyes were playing tricks. And it normally buzzed like that.

The name wasn't quite something she expected, especially with the "we" in front of it. She opened her mouth to answer when she froze as it completely disintegrated. It wasn't made of dust. Dust did not move like that. Nothing moved like that, only bugs did and she couldn't believe that so many bugs could work together like that, nor could bugs talk. She knew for a fact that bugs didn't talk. She'd tried talking to one once and all it did was sting her.

She watched as it reformed and a moment later, as the form became distinct, her jaw dropped as she stared back at a near perfect likeness of her. It wasn't an illusion, it wasn't a trick. This creature...it was her!

Wilder didn't respond to their answer, only stared at it with her jaws open and her eyes wide. She snapped shut her jaws when she realized that it was hanging open and carefully stepped forward, not taking her eyes off of Legion. "Wow...how did you do that?" She reached forward experimentally and tried to touch the chest of the other-Wilder.

@Legion

Legion--or rather, mirror-Wilder, in a sense--sat still as the real Wilder approached it. It didn't seem afraid--or anything, really. There was an eerie blankness to it. It hadn't quite learned emotion yet, and its hive-mind was a jumble of conflicting, excited thoughts. There was just so much going on!

As Wilder touched Legion, she would find the body parting at the point of contact. The swarm of tiny brown mites had no way of pushing back, after all; it was like pushing into sand or dust, soft and unyielding. A few of the bugs even clung to the cat where she'd touched them, for a moment, startled and off-balance, before flit-buzzing back into Legion's main shape.

...At length, the fake-Wilder's eyes blinked (slightly off-kilter, too), and Legion seemed to sort of come to.

"We reformed!" it replied cheerfully. The queen at its center--and all her hivemind subjects--buzzed with happiness. So far, everything was going great! They were alive, and healthy, and communicating already!

But--Wilder's question, after a moment, brought Legion to a realization. "Can't... you do that?" it asked, and its head tilted worriedly to one side.

@Wilder

Wilder let out a tiny squeak as her paw passed right into Legion's body. Or, uh, her body? It was, in fact, like sand, but a lot more prickly. She immediately retracted the paw and saw tiny mites clinging to the fur and skin of her pad. Before she could react, they detached and buzzed back to the mirror-Wilder's body, disappearing into the black fur. Was it fur?

But that meant that Legion was just a whole bunch of bugs after all! The realization both terrified Wilder and made her smile with giddy joy at having discovered a new friend like this. Besides, Legion seemed to be pretty happy, even though she wasn't sure if they were all happy or if it was just one that was happy. It was very confusing to her and she gave up trying to understand very quickly.

And it's question confused her further. She tried to think of the many spells she had at her disposal but she couldn't remember any that just allowed her to deform. However, she still gave it an attempt, closing her eyes and willing her body to disintegrate into a number of different particles. But, of course, nothing happened.

She opened her eyes and shook her head. "No, I can't! I've never met anyone who can reform like that! We're all solid, see?" She raised the same paw and pressed it into her own chest, pretty much at the same place that she had touched on mirror-Wilder. It stopped in her fur, despite the force she put behind it.

@Legion

The swarm shifted, buzzing, as if thoughtful. The not-Wilder-form tilted its head as it did so, as its form blurred a little.

"No--form. Solid?" A hesitant pattering of the insectoid bodies pelleted Wilder softly for a moment, as if Legion--or a part of it--were, in fact, testing that Wilder was indeed solid.

So she was.

It quickly stopped, and unevenly blinked once again. "How do--how do you..." Legion paused; they--the entire swarm--were currently embroiled in an argument about language. Specifically, about the meanings of "form" and "reform." Half the swarm was quite convinced that they meant the same thing. The other half was angrily buzzing back (mentally, at least) that they wouldn't be different words if they had the same meaning.

Then what does 'reform' mean? the first group challenged, and reluctantly, the second admitted that they had no idea.

Legion spoke. "...make... shapes?" it settled for, at last.

...How did anything work, when it came to that? Part of the swarm was now buzzing for sustenance--hungry--but how were they to eat, and what did they eat?! For a moment, it tried to distract itself, the swarm milling and the overall body shuffling in place. It tried to cast itself darker, again, but it seemed the ravenousness was a little too strong to ignore.

"We are hungry," Legion blurted abruptly, and there was a sad buzz to its voice.

@Wilder

She waited as Legion struggled to figure out what words to say. She forced herself to be patient. After all, they were new and she thought that it would be very confusing to be a very large number of small creatures trying to work together. She tried to imagine herself as a tiny insect, multiplied by an innumerable amount and shook her head. That would be impossible.

"Change?" she suggested. "Shift?" Make shapes was okay, but it was a little vague. But she understood what it was trying to get across. She shrugged. "I can't. I'm just Wilder."

She was going to ask more questions about this fascinating discovery when the food question threw her off, but only for a moment. Her tail lifted. Now she knew what she could do! "I could catch you a mouse and show you how to hunt! Or if you like plants we can go look for things! Or...uh, whatever you eat! What do you eat?"

@Legion

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