Blue Core

Leyn were so interesting! One-Eye-Green almost never got the chance to see what Gossamers were like since they couldn’t Share and they were so fragile, but Miss Shayma had asked her to! She was so glad Miss Shayma was back because everything else felt more alive and of course it was sad when people died. It was sad but sort of normal so it was weird that none of her people had died since they moved to Blue’s, and only Shayma had of the people she knew! And even Shayma came back.

The Leyn weren’t dead either, but it had been very close. They were almost dead when One-Eye-Green looked at them, at least that’s what it seemed like from their minds. She had to be very very careful, but that care had gotten much easier with her evolution. Her nestmates had all evolved into Scythe Sisters or Brothers of Burden but she had become something else and she’d kept her hands. Which was good, because she liked hands, even if she still poked holes in her pockets with her claws.

One-Eye-Green kept getting distracted, since she was so excited about helping Shayma again. The Leyn mind was very odd, all partitioned out into different directions and without any real sense of forward or backward, just up and down. It was harder to find where the Skills were, and where the sense of mana and stamina was, since the Leyn thought of such things as different vibrations instead of different limbs like humans or Chiuxatli. Once she found it, though, it was easy.

Once the Leyn were awake again she was very polite and didn’t stay inside their heads, though she did Share what she could sense with her sisters. They couldn’t passively see things going on in Gossamer minds like she could, even after she’d been training them to be very delicate and careful. It was amazing how close to every other kind of Gossamer the emotions were, even though none were exactly the same.

She was also polite in staying back and letting Shayma and Nillaren talk about things. It turned out that being polite mostly involved not saying anything, but the clever thing was to also listen a lot. Not just to what was said, but what was thought, and how the two were different. Being a good ambassador meant knowing which of the two to actually respond to! Figuring that out had been the hardest part.

“Why don’t you show Nillaren around, tell him about the Fortress and Blue,” Shayma suggested. “While I see what we can do for Kallindakari.”

“I will, Miss Shayma!” One-Eye-Green couldn’t help but waggle her tail in excitement. She was being trusted to talk for Blue! Not only had he helped them so much, taking them in and protecting them and making sure they always had something to hunt or fish, but he was a Big Thing. She had better words for that now, but at the heart of the idea when she Shared about Blue, he was a Big Thing. It was always amazing to be trusted with anything Big. Shayma vanished away in a palpable surge of magic and Nillaren blinked at One-Eye-Green.

“You have never heard of Blue before?” One-Eye-Green knew that the world was big, especially since they’d walked so far through the lowways! But it seemed strange to her that there were still people who didn’t know about him, considering everything he’d done. Nillaren clicked his big claw in negation, so One-Eye-Green brought up the packet of information she’d made beforehand in her head to make sure she didn’t forget anything.

It was fun to watch Nillaren’s reactions as she told the Leyn about Blue being a Power, and a dungeon, and everything he’d done for the Scalemind and Tarnil and Leviathans and Chiuxatli and everyone. He had the appropriate amount of awe which was nice, because a lot of people didn’t! They just shrugged and decided it wasn’t their problem and went on with their life. Which she understood from Taelah was a good thing for the most part but it was a little sad. Anyone who wasn’t awed at awesome things was really missing out on one of the best part of things being awesome!

“This is the Scalemind part of the Hedron.” One-Eye-Green said, gesturing around at the cavern. “There are hundreds of caverns like this! There are human, Surface areas too. And even a Leviathan area full of water!”

“The Hedron?” Nillaren questioned, his visible eyes wide and staring at her. “Voice Shayma called it the Fortress.”

“Oh, it’s a fortress from the outside, but in here it’s too nice for that! So I called it the Hedron and now everyone else does too.” Blue’s name for it was a little too long and strange and he hadn’t objected to her shortening it for everyone else, so the Hedron it was. She was quite proud people liked the name.

“Wait, if it’s that big…” Nillaren tapped the ground with one of his feet, in a quick rattling rhythm that, from what she could sense of his mind, was just the equivalent of filler words. “How could it possibly fit into what I saw before? Is it even the same place? We were teleported here.”

“Blue can expand space,” One-Eye-Green said happily. “He can make the interior of the Hedron as large as he likes!” That wasn’t strictly true, from what she’d learned talking to Miss Taelah, but it was close enough.

“That is an astounding thing,” Nillaren said. “I do not know if I would believe it, if I had not seen the teleportation myself.”

“That is very often how it is with Blue,” One-Eye-Green said. “You get used to it when you start working with him. For many, we Scalemind are the most difficult to deal with because we are monsters.”

“Yes,” Nillaren agreed. “It is very odd. You’re Blue’s monsters?”

“Blue is making us not monsters!” Just as she had a memory packet for Blue, to explain what he was, she had one for the Scalemind, to explain who they were, what they wanted, and where they were going. She introduced her sisters, Edge-of-Frost and Sharp-of-Sight, and was absolutely thrilled by Nillaren bowing to them like they were real people. Mostly only the people from the Village did that and they were already special and Blue’s.

Hopefully once they started to be treated like real people, becoming real people wouldn’t be too far off.