Scene 3
A stocky grey alien with a panda-like build standing upright in a cavern lit by teal and amber fungus, large dark eyes ringed in darker grey, looking toward a small plain cylindrical instrument standing on pale silt where a line of bootprints ends.

The youngest (Pandoid, the deep networks)

Time
2832 UCSD, the survey's second year on the ground, some tellings after the first
Location
Fliade — the upper junction where the survey leaves its relay, the squeeze, and the line in the silt where the up-people's tracks stop

The youngest heard it from the warm, lying down, the way you hear your own name the first time. Which is to say: not at first. It went past twice before the youngest understood that the telling being told was theirs, and that the person being spoken of was them, and that the words the people were saying were not a description of anyone.

They were a name.

Carried-It-Sleeping.

The youngest lay very still and let it go by a third time, to be certain, and it was, and it did. Then the youngest turned over in the warm and slept, the way the young do when they have carried something a long way and put it down, and been told, at last, what it was.

Discussion

Show discussion

Comments are read after they are posted and anything unsuitable is removed. Posting needs a GitHub account; reading needs nothing.