Chapter 2

 

World! I found something interesting recently.

 

 One day, while I was watching a human called Gue, I saw something strange. 

 

Gue is a college student in her final year. She has been studying to become a doctor, and has been struggling through her internship. 

 

It was during her spring break that she decided to go on a small fishing trip with her friends. While she was walking past a small lake, I saw a strange and new thing. Something was hovering of the lake!

 

This was the first thing besides myself and a helicopter that I had seen float like that. I acted like I was a child looking at a bug.  I was enamored with its strange form. So I decided that I was going to follow it. 

 

The strange thing was a deep purple in color and looked like some sort of worm thing. It’s body looked as if it was woven out of a couple of threads. 

 

I watched it in fascination as it floated about a human length above the lake. It hovered there for an entire day. When the sun began to set, it began to drift north. 

 

You know, it was then that I believed this thing would eventually acknowledge my existence. Maybe it would even become my friend. We would watch the humans together!

 

I, calmly and without any anticipation, decided to follow it. The purple worm thing continued slowly drifting north until the sun rose. Then it stopped and began to hover in place. Does it also sustain itself with moonlight?

 

…

 

I've followed it for a couple of months now... and, well, I am bored. That purple worm thing just hovers all day, only to drift north until the sun sets.

 

Which brings me to today! As for contact with the worm, it hasn’t even acknowledged me. Do purple worm things have eyes? 

 

What, why are you looking at me like that?

 

I know I have not tried to interact with it yet, but I believe I must study this purple worm thing some more. I don’t want it to just ignore me like everything else.

 

If it does, then I have just left Gen for nothing. Maybe, though, it is like me when I was young… I will try to feed it a grey blob. Back then I could not see, so maybe it just can’t see me. 

 

I envelop a passing grey blob—I mean, fractured soul—and put it in front of the worm.

 

 *Smirk* It passed through it.

 

Then why am I happy? Well, when it passed through the soul, the usual grey blob became purple. This blob looks delicious… I think I will try absorbing the purple blob. 

 

…………………

 

It hurts and not just physically. To absorb the purple blob, I killed it. I was unfortunately successful…

 

The purple soul was complete and alive, not fractured and dead…

 

I feel like crying. I killed it...

 

My eyes seem to be blurring. It’s a new feeling.

 

No, wait, everything I see is blurred. I still see grass, trees, the sky, etc but it is all different. It’s as if I am seeing double, yet I know I am not. It feels like I have gained a new sense, and this one is even more shocking than when I learned to see and hear. Back then I had already absorbed memories with sight and sound, yet this… this is something almost inconceivable.

 

 I can see what I think are the souls of living things, and how the souls communicate with their bodies and the environment around them.

 

I look down and see the soul of a blade of grass sending something to its body every couple of moments, and the body sends something else randomly into its environment. As if it caught a frisbee and then threw a bunch of cards above its head, yet this something is more than just cards. Yet, instead of cards, it throws moving and expanding ripples?

 

I turn my cloud to look at a spider, and am perplexed when I see that its soul moves, and its body stays still. Wait, did the soul shrug its shoulders? Do spiders have shoulders? 

 

The soul of the spider is also sending that something to its body. I move a tendril from my cloud and I touch it. It feels like something. 

 

Do I feel warm?

 

No, I feel as if I have waded into a lake. 

 

I turn around and see myself.

 

My body is… Is it twitching?

 

‘I web making, prey go web. Eat, eat, eat. Sigh, no food. Am sad.’

 

I make web, but limbs weird, failure. No eat? Am sad…. 

 

I pull my tendril back. Sorry, I don’t know what came over me…

 

I think that if I continued, I would become that spider.

 

It began with me hearing?

 

I could feel the thoughts of the spider? 

 

Maybe it was its will?

 

I felt the spiders' will, and then its will became my own? I was scared of touching that again, but wanted to see what the thing was the body was sending out to the world. It can’t be that bad. I mean, the grass is not becoming that spider.

 

‘Green tall web homes, give prey. So not sad!’

 

Give prey, not sad, give prey, not sad, give prey…

 

Wow….

 

That was new, I was seeing the world through both my own and the spider's eyes. I felt that if I ############## tiny bit harder, grass give prey not sad…. 

 

*ahem* 

 

That the grass would give prey to my web, if I wished or forced the world around me to do so. It was confusing.

 

I wonder if I do that when I think. Would I actually be able to speak to someone? I mean, you are great and all, World, but we both know that you aren’t listening.

 

*zhunzhunzhun*

 

"Evening approaches when the cicadas humm…" A memory flashes through my mind as I look up. The sun is setting? It was midnight when I last checked...

 

Oh no! The purple worm thing! I hope that it is still moving north and didn’t decide to change its direction when I was not watching. That purple worm thing... look at all the trouble I am going through for it. It must become my friend.