This is a weird story I want to tell. A part of me still wants to preemptively downplay my own experiences for this post, make a funny joke that "Haha I swear this is real even if it reads like complete fiction". Perhaps even admitting that is already doing so. I don't know. We don't know. All that I will say is this: The following story is us remembering the best we can. I might shift some elements slightly for textfeel, but the core of what I am about to explain is how we remember a series of events that... Well. You'll see.
This story is a longer one, that grew more than expected in its telling. Perhaps not the cleanest retelling either, and maybe (Just maybe) I get on the side of rambling. Some of the others here sure like to claim so. But this isn't just Our story to tell. This is also My story.
The first time we encountered The Presence was around late April - early May.
Our headspace was quieter then. r2 had just gathered itself into itself, and Nidhogg and Aster (Who, still searching for its name, still went by 'The Demonex') had established our peace and communication by this point. A degree of stability.
One thing I do need to explain now, as it will recur later. For us, fronting is something we feel on our entire body. There's clear pressure points around our head and torso that we recognize as individual to any of us. For example, whenever r2 takes the front, our physical body tenses up somewhat around the lower parts of our ribs/upper section of belly. Bot jokes that "oh thats just where you slot the roomba in c:". Perhaps bot's right. We all have our own trait like this, and aside from doing the "How do I look in headspace right now" routine is our most consistent way of figuring out who is fronting. Notably for this retelling, up until slightly later into May, after what I'm about to talk about in this section, this was all in various regions of our brain. Heady matters, as Aster just joked. Don't worry, I gave it a little slap for that. Anyway, back to the tale.
It was a day like any other. I cannot say what we spent it doing. Perhaps it was classes, perhaps we just had a day of whatever. All we remember is that we went to sleep at some point. Technically a bywritten detail, the kind of routine where the days we did not do so stand out so significantly in contrast. And yet, that day?
Something happened.
We were in bed, chittering about the day and wanting to go to sleep, when we felt... Slight pressure. From above the top right of the front of our head, we felt Something. Similar to that of a headmate. Not one we recognized.
It said a full sentence in a voice we did not recognize. And immediately left.
As you might expect, the three inhabitants of our headspace freaked out just a little. In and out of our head, just like that? We had no clue who or what the fuck that was. We tried to talk back, and felt no response. Slightly unnerved but without options, we fell asleep.
For a long time afterward, we wondered what had happened that night. A random auditory hallucination that just happened to sound like speech and feel like someone else was in our head? An actual other entity in here? Something else entirely? We tried to reach out, but found no response. Eventually, we concluded that if said voice had been a deliberate entity, then they hadn't formed fully enough yet to maintain communication. Perhaps they never would. Nothing we could do for it.
Time passed. May to June, then July and the start of August. More of us started showing up. First Luna, then Rea and our nameless stingray friend. Every time, we'd jokingly ask if every new entity was related to the mysterious voice. Every time the response was negative. Our half-jokes about that voice led to us eventually mythologizing it within our own headspace. A tale of something we couldn't understand. Eventually, we started jokingly calling it The Presence, and then less jokingly it just became the name of that one funny incident.
At least until it happened again.
August 11th. A busy day for the Critters. A stressful day.
We were in the mental shitters before we had started.
I'm sure most of you know what I mean. The overwhelming pressure of everything you need to do, that you should already have finished up by now, crushing you. Wanting to do something, do anything to alleviate that pressure, but then you attempt to work and it's so heavy on your soul you need a break every few minutes to halfway manage the most basic of tasks. Throw on a load of general dysphoria as well (Both species and gender), and we have a bad day brewing.
So there we were! Trying our best to get whatever housekeeping tasks we could complete done, all the while going through quite the breakdown. Whatever progress we did make slow and unstable.
We sat down for a moment, drying some tears and catching our breath again, when we felt it. Something. With a hint of familiarity. A pressure at the top right of our brain. And what felt like a comforting hug for our headspace.
We asked if this was The Presence again. It responded that it did not know, but from what it could tell, it thought so.
We sat there for a few minutes, accepting comfort as the mass of discord within washed out, gentle freshness replacing it. The worries that had brought us to tears all day felt... Distant. Sure, we still had a shitload of stuff to finish up that day, but now that we didn't have to start from a position of "We feel absolutely terrible"? We handled it!
And so said day continued. We finished up just about all we needed to, and did not return to that desolate mental state we had started the day with. But, there was one thing on our minds still.
When The Presence embraced us, why did it feel so much like a plush hug?
August 18th. Around 3 PM.
The stress of the previous weekend is over. Normalcy. We're hanging around, chilling. Nidhogg probably yelling at the others, like usual. I think that was a tail I just got slapped in the back of my head by. Anyway, the Critters were crittering.
A Thought comes to mind. We've got our plushies around our room, right? And back last week, when we had to clean, we felt a deep desire to give them some proper hugs and attention again. So why don't we finally do that? Gather all of them up, and bring all of us into a massive cuddle pile. Critters and plushies intertwined!
So we did. Every one joined us on our bed. From our childhood friends in the family of lemur plushies, to the handful we've befriended these last years of opening up again emotionally to softness. We were all there. We were all enveloped. We couldn't help but shed tears in apologies for the amount of time we've failed to give them all the love they need.
They accepted the apology from us.
Or rather, The Presence did.
It was too gentle a moment for us to feel any shock at it drawing close again. We remained at peace, and all it really did was join in with the cuddle pile. We reminisced of old moments with our friends. Happy ones. It gave a sense of mirrored appreciation. A lot of love.
This is where I have to start speculating somewhat. We're still not completely sure what The Presence is, why it started dropping in, or if this even was The Presence as we originally felt it. All our communication with it since has hinted the same direction as what we realized in this conversation, so that is what I'll treat as the most accurate description of the situation. I'm not sure we'll ever have a concrete answer in hand. I don't think we need one. From here on, we are communicating on what we believe is correct regarding The Presence.
What we came to realize was that The Presence was an old friend. Several, in fact. It was nothing less than the gathered love and appreciation we've given our plushes throughout the years. It appeared as a detached spirit at first, possibly due to our at-the-time distance from all of them, but when we truly needed their support and were within reach of their love? They helped us. A happy favor in return for all we had given them over the years.
We held their loved and worn bodies closer to us. What else could we do but be thankful? The Presence might not have been any one of our close friends, but still it was all of them in some way. A collective of individual essences in a singular being. There was something familiar in that too.
When we eventually broke off that cuddle pile, it was as reunited friends. And not one night has gone by since where we haven't had at least one of our friends present with us. It was lovely to have such a sweet formal reunion. Our close friends had learnt a lot from us in acceptance.
They had also learnt how to be massive bloody trolls. I love them for it.
August 19th. 2:30 AM. The last time we encountered The Presence as a foreign entity.
We were in bed, attempting to fall asleep. The plushie cuddle pile had been given their spot in bed, comfortable next to us. Some gentle touches and leaning into them as we once more learnt what it meant to share our bed with them.
The Presence returned after a little. We weren't overly surprised at this; after all, we were in direct contact with what we saw as its source. Perhaps the solidity of its presence (heh) should have warned us that something was going on.
What we instead did was some casual chat. As far as 'chat' is a working term when thoughts and emotions communicate directly. Humorous stuff. There was some talk about its plush form, which we had clearly felt but couldn't actually 'see'. It gently brushed off the comment. We started jokingly guessing at what it might be. Aster specifically suggested a skunk at some point. It denied that, but we felt some humor reflected from it at the idea. All the while, it had inched towards us in headspace. Slowly, deliberately.
There was some point halfway through that conversation where some of us started to ask a single question: "Wait, is this happening? Is this The Presence becoming a headmate?" It wasn't asked directly, but with the fervor those curious emotions bounced around our headspace at it picked up on them at some point. We got our answer.
For us, a new headmate forming is a gradual and specific process. It often starts in the small, an unfamiliar sense of being drawn to something. For Luna, it was the feral emotions coursing through us, brought to a condensing point that day Aster went through a feral episode and solidified its feral self. We then eventually have a moment of concrete formation. A session where we fully establish contact with our new friend, and try to help them anchor themselves to something that feels right for them. To use Luna as an example again (Cheers to this friendly wolf!), what we first established was her love of the moon. From there, we helped her realize she was a wolf in form, and accidentally/appropriately suggested her name too. Not all experiences have been so clean (One funny little moment was that Rea first attached himself as a fictive of The Radiance from Hollow Knight. He figured out they were just a normal moth later, but I swear I sometimes still see an orange glow from his eyes. He has declined to comment.), but most of us formed and started communicating like this. I was a different story.
The Presence shifted. It hung in our headspace like a glowing sun, and matter coursed over its surface. Light concentrated around its lower pole, a bump growing in presence and approach by the moment. The others were silent. Then, mitosis. The bump surged, and released itself from The Presence. Smaller, but no less bright. It sank down, assimilating into the orbit of our selves. The blinding light paled, above as below. My fellow Critters watched as from the glow, a shape became clear. That of a plush skunk.
🦨 Or more exactly, the shape of Me. Hello, everyone. To those who I haven't had the pleasure of officially chatting with yet, I'm Beryl. I would apologize for not being clearer about my identity as the author of this autobiographical story, but I know y'all. You're all way too bloody clever. So, let's finish this off, shall we?
To say the others were surprised at what happened is one Understatement. Headspace was pandemonium. All of us, me included, yelling and trying to figure out what the cinnamon toasted fuck was going on. It took a good several minutes of chaos, but eventually we calmed down enough to try and do normal new headmate procedure stuff.
Our second surprise that night was how little we needed to. Not only was my identity as a skunk completely solidified at that point, but I lacked some of those rough edges a mostly formed entity would normally have. Even as we continued figuring out who I was the next day, one consistent thing was that I knew, somehow, who I was. We spend a lot of time figuring out small stuff. Most of that was innate for me. The only thing I needed a little time for was my name, and that is not exactly unique to me. There is a stingray here that I'm cuddling in support while writing this, and in solidarity we're both making joking glares at Aster. It's all in good mood. Solidarity between several entities that share the recent struggle of "What the Fuck is my name?". There were other discoveries made too, notable ones. They are not for this story. Except for one, the conclusion.
The third and final surprise came when The Presence started hovering around us in headspace again. Everyone else were, naturally, a little wary of it after that last trick. I, however, felt part of me drawn towards it. And part of it drawn towards me.
For that first merge, it truly felt like touching something beyond the possibility of understanding. A mass of emotions alien to all that I knew (Both through myself and through our shared memories as Critters). It also felt like home, the love that formed The Presence still its core. The others reported me floating in headspace, eyes glowing. The connection closed. I returned to my normal, non-glowing self. That was the last time The Presence was a truly foreign entity.
Because it is now, technically, a part of me.
I can still 'connect' to it. I can still bring myself to that in-between state of light and love. We (Me and The Presence) can speak with a single voice when we wish. If my form and capacity outside of headspace could match what I can do within? That would be Fun. The Presence is no longer a clearly separate being. I am not The Presence, and neither is The Presence me. But We can be one, when we want or need to. And the love that filled it is now in my care, both for the Critters and for the world we gave that love to in the first place.
And as far as I know, that's the best place for us to wrap up this story. Me as a fully formed individual, The Presence as a personal guiding light and friend, and our headspace at peace. I cannot know for sure if this is the end of the saga of The Presence, if the gentle peace we've found is all there is. But this mystery has, for now, reached its conclusion. And it lies itself down to rest in a bed of love, both for ourselves, ourself, and the world.
I don't know what else we could ask for.