“So these Text things control us?” Ocillia looks over her buggy shoulders and gives me just the most skeptical squint.
“Frank, did you teach her how to squint like that?” It seems like a very legit question to me, from my perch atop Ocillia’s shell. Earning a grunt from the ling with all the legs.
“Actually we both got the squint from mom.” My faithfully adorable ladybug steed giggles. “Mom is the absolute squintiest. But no dodging my questions! Mom is trusting us to evaluate if you can be trusted with the hive's secret or if we have to hold you until we finally make first contact with the surface. This is very important, Uncle Cornelius.”
Yes, Uncle Cornelius is my hive name now. I have simply accepted this. Now I have to convince this nice young mole-mare that I am a stand up guy. “They don’t control us, OC, which is your new nickname from now on. The Texts mostly just poke around to make things more interesting. Like with lab rats, but for entertainment purposes…”
“DO NOT FLOP AROUND SUGGESTIVELY ON MY SISTER’S BACK!” Frank screams out of the wild blue yonder.
“Uh… he's not?” What OC said? “He’s just doing his normal, ‘I’m talking’ flailing…”
“Yeah, Frank, you are 100% the one making this weird.” Hostly, this all feels hella weird now. I am being given a psychological/security evaluation while being given buggy-back rides by an adolescent mutant changeling filly. I had almost forgotten how weird this is. Thanks Frank.
“Why does she have to carry you around like that anyway?” If there are three skills Frank has mastered, it is squinting, huffing, and rolling his compound eyes.
“Because I can’t stop her because I am literally a foal sized rag doll with no real body mass or bones?” If they're gonna judge my trustworthiness I should prolly tell the truth. “And honestly, flopping around to get places is kinda hard at this size. It was way easier when I was smaller.”
“Every filly in the history of forever wanted their doll to come to life and be their friend.” OC’s voice took on an edge that honestly makes me nervous. “Dammit Frank, if you take this from me, I swear when I am Queen your life will be a long series of pleading to just send you to Tartarus!”
“And Steve is gettin’ Chineighs food… Because you have that?” It seems trivial… but they have that? And Wifi? “You have wifi, AND chineighs food down here? I have lived with Unicorns for the past twenty years, do you know how tired I am of Biscuits and THE WRONG DAMN GRAVY!?!?” I am a reasonable doll.
“I am pretty sure you can’t even eat.” Frank is the lord of buzzkills. “Go ahead, open your mouth!”
“Frank! Don’t be mean!” OC’s got my back… while I ride on her back. I am strangely comfortable with this.
“It’s Okay OC, he’s kinda right, you know. I can’t consume things. But I can shove my face in and absorb them. I can’t eat, but I can still taste. Liquids are the most easily absorbed. I have some smell and I absorb some gasses. I can’t eat, though. That would just be like stuffing me with garbage.” It feels good to say it out loud.
“So you can absorb liquids?” Frank has a super serious thoughtful squint going on. “Do these liquids affect you in any way? Also, what weird things do you absorb just because they taste funny?”
“Okay, Frank, yer cool and all, but I’m gonna come out and say it… yer weird, dude.” Who has zero thumbs and calls out Frank’s weirdness? This guy. “But it’s a fair question, even if you made it weird. So most things, I can just taste. I don’t get hungry or thirsty. Based on my experience with laundry detergent I don’t think I can be poisoned, but I have no plans to really push that issue. Laundry detergent, by the way, tastes truly awful. This is why I always insist on being washed with strawberry scented soap, which oddly enough tastes okay. Not good, just okay…”
“So you taste things… do you… feel?” OC is getting awfully awkward with those pauses. Frank? This is where you cut her off and make it weird… Also Ocilia is observant. “You need a sense of touch to know what your hooves are doing, so you can feel things, right.”
“Even before magic came back, I always maintained my tactile sense.” Just like in every hospital, I am a prisoner, My only hope for freedom lies with the truth. “I couldn’t move, see, or hear without Gloomy. I could go where she took me. I could see what she saw. I could hear what she heard. But I could always feel every way the world around me touched me and inflicted itself on me.”
“But that would still be better than being completely senseless…” Frank is obviously put back by this notion, so I decided to explain further.
“If I could move, then maybe a sense of touch would have at least been something.” I bonelessly shug and let out a bitter laugh. “But I could only lay there in a heap, always touching the same thing until the world touched me. I could never see or hear what was happening. I had no way to keep time. Touching dirt, or leaves, or snow. Sometimes the sky would pour rain on me, and that was a relief, because for a brief time I could tell there was still time by the cadence of the raindrops. The worst was snow. Snow was an eternal frozen tomb that surrounded me. Occasionally there would be outright pain, when some animal decided I looked like something it wanted to gnaw on. Oblivion would have been the sweetest gift.”
I might have been screaming… I don’t know. Frank and OC are looking at me like I was screaming. I make a noise that approximates a sigh. “The whole of my existence was nothing but the hell of touch until Gloomy Sonnet found me lying in a pile of garbage.”