CERESUltra

Music Nerd, Author, Yote!

  • She/they/it

30s/white/tired/coyote/&
Words are my favorite stim toy


krzysz00
@krzysz00

It explores a forest, sometimes running, sometimes sniffing thoughtfully, without a plan.

It prepares for tomorrow, if it absolutely must, by instinct and routine.

It experiences each moment as it comes and moves on, not stopping to analyze or categorize or name.

It is a dog, as much as it can be.

It was not always a dog. It has a down-tree, the tall one who smells of pack, who the word-users call Tomash. It had come from Tomash when he had been experimenting with not only taking the shape of a dog but something of the mind as well.

It had been Scout, then, when it first came to be. When Tomash had forked too well, too firmly, and it had not minded the name then. It had gone to simply be in the world, and it was, and is.

At first, it sometimes had had some care for humans and the System, but it was hard to care, when there were so many other things: new scents, scratching an itch, food, all very important things, and important now, here. Vestigial inherited cares were a problem for later.

Then it met the rest of its relatives, that growing pack of Scouts who rested within the System and experienced it, but who, unlike it, had a purpose: to keep watch and observe, and to report unusual things, and to, when they grew bored of being a dog, merge back. It likes these new relatives well enough - they smell of family and are friendly - but it had not liked what they represented. They hesitated at becoming what they were, and it had understood that it might become more like them, if words and thoughts and worries were to trouble it.

So, it rejected them. Oh, the whole of the clade are welcome to visit and play, but it had told them, when it had cleared its name to [zero width joiner], that it wished to hear not another word. It would not be communicating about anything that cannot be said with the twitch of an ear or the wag of a tail, and it pushed away the slow stirrings of memories of personhood with a fork to ensure it.

The pack respects its wish. It sees them, sometimes, usually the young or the old who come to rest more thoroughly, and they play and run and say nothing. What is there to say, after all, to this dog who surrenders thought with every step of every day?

When the pack speak of it among themselves, in their fragmentary network of passed-around words and sensoria impressions, it is Chasing Rabbits, the far pole of the clade, the pure contrast to their elder, the other extreme. It does not know they say this. It does not want to know they say this - or, by now, want to not know it, and it is happy thereby.

And in the bliss of not-knowing, through unwitnessed years and decades, it sleeps and eats and chases rabbits.


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in reply to @krzysz00's post:

Oooh my god THIS IS WONDERFUL AND I LOVE IT!! wagwagwagwagwag

I saw this prompt last night in my drunken stupor, and I couldn't even fathom how to begin... but what you made just, oh my god its SO INSPIRING.

wuff, I as well, wish to chase rabbits!~

PS, you should add #Therian to the tags, I know many who'd adore reading this!~