In her gemstone, Pearl felt a jar and a very distant fall. She groggily became conscious for the first time and felt pressure on her still forming gemstone. It felt gentle but firm. It felt constraining. In addition, the rudimentary sense of her surroundings told her that her gem was too contained to generate a body.

Time passed and the pressure became more bearable. She felt the torpor come back over her.

A voice began speaking to her, projected directly into her gemstone. "Gem Education Message, Pearl-class, repetition seventeen." The voice felt very comforting. Calming. Protective. "Pearl relax. Your gemstone is forming. Listen to my words and rest." The voice paused.

"Pearl, you will be assigned to serve a Gem. This Gem will be your Master." A wave of sweet sentiment washed through Pearl's mind, coming from the edges. It seemed timed to engulf her on the word Master. She felt the torpor slide over her more. "Serving your Master will make you happy. Once you are done forming your gemstone and your body, you will see your Master."

'Is this happiness?' Pearl thought, sluggishly. 'It must be.'

The voice continued. "Your Master will make decisions for you. Let them. It will be easier for you. Making decisions is hard." The voice continue to speak. It went slow, explaining concepts to her. Only rarely did the strong emotions seem to wave over her, but they reinforced the voice. Pearl let the words wash over her and dozed.

Without any other cues for time, Pearl defaulted to using Gem Education Message repetitions to track the passage of time. Each repetition was followed by a rest period during which time Pearl let her tired mind sleep.

By repetition twenty three, the pressure on Pearl's gemstone was removed. It was a subtle thing that Pearl didn't notice at first. It worried her a bit that the pressure and the voice were the only two things that she could sense and one had been removed. 'Not only was it removed, but I didn't notice it changing. I'll need to pay more attention,' Pearl resolved.

On repetition thirty, Pearl noticed that the messages were getting longer, adding new topics at the end of what she began to think of as the basic Pearl message. It seemed like the basic Pearl message was twice as long as the additional message. Should she call the additional message the advanced Pearl message? Would there be even more topics added on later?

'I'll consider it the advanced Pearl message for now. I can rename it if there are new topics later,' Pearl thought. The message seemed to cover a wide variety of topics in simple language, but without context for what most of the terms meant, Pearl attempted to remember the topics by rote. The voice covered formal protocol but never explained what "formal" or "informal" meant. Covered physics, but she couldn't see how physics was different than mathematics context. Pearl knew the word star or orbit, but wasn't sure what shape a circle was. It was frustrating.

Pearl counted the words in repetition thirty three, determining that the message was 8,321,862 words long. During the rest afterwards, which she named rest thirty three, Pearl struggled to stay awake and counted 214,865,286 word-length beats of pause. 'Were my beats getting faster at the end? I don't know,' Pearl worried.

After repetition forty two, Pearl could sense that she had more space around her gemstone. The voice encouraged her to partially form a body. She projected light from her gemstone. She felt her consciousness enter the body. Her lightbody filled the area around her gemstone but the area was tight, restricting. She allowed her body to adjust. She filled the space like... something which changed to fit into unchanging space. Generating a body was exhausting and she felt the energy within her gemstone deplete. It was dark and not uncomfortable to exist as a body.

Inside a body, Pearl still had the rudimentary gemstone-space-sense, which helpfully told her that she shouldn't get any bigger. In addition, she had other new senses. Pearl could feel the texture of her surroundings. 'I think this feeling is smooth. I cannot feel any small scale structures when I.. wiggle?' Pearl grasped at a word. She was taking up most but not all of the space inside her space. She could move her limbs slightly but not change position.

A soft light shone in front of her face. Pearl could see it through her eyelids. She opened them. Her head was inside a shape, but soft light was coming from the wall in front of her eyes was soft with hints of emotions. It was mostly an even emotion but as she moved her head slightly she could see hints of some other flavor of emotion from within the wall. But she had no sensitization to tie to these new sight emotions.

Pearl moved her head slightly and noticed that the light seemed to be coming from above her eye level and moved in time with her head. She saw structure of her face casting shadows onto the wall below her eye level. 'My nose is casting shadows onto the wall,' Pearl thought. She recalled some of the basic Pearl message about light and shadows. Light sources and objects obscuring the light. Pearl leaned her head forward, very quickly her nose brushed against the wall in front of her. 'Can a light source cast a shadow onto itself?'

Pearl experimented with brushing her nose over the wall, trying to see if she could touch part of the wall that had one of the fleeting sight emotions under it. 'Maybe it will feel different. Maybe I can figure which sight emotion is happiness, which is sadness.' However, as her nose got closer to the wall, the shadows seemed to remove all of the emotions moving across the wall in front of her. 'Dancing across the wall?' Pearl tried out a new word. It seemed to fit, although she couldn't figure out why.

The wall, the light, her nose all seemed to mostly be the same even calming emotion. Pearl noticed that her hair seemed to have a different sight emotion and unlike the wall in front of her, it did not seem to change drastically. 'That can be hair emotion for now. I will change the name once I have more information to base it on.'

Turning her eyes up and crossing them slightly , she could see a brighter object on her head. 'That must be my gemstone. A pearl. My pearl,' she amended. Closing one eye, Pearl could almost see something else running from her gemstone further up. That something had a different sight emotion.

Pearl let her eyes relax and looked forward at the wall and her nose. Her energy spent, Pearl felt her body collapse back into her gemstone. As she ended torpor again, she briefly thought, 'beginning the forty-second rest.'

During Gem Education Message forty three, Pearl was able to finally piece together what a circle was supposed to look like, connecting the curving shapes that she had seen in her hair to the mathematical definition of a circle. It was easier to use curves to make a shape where every point was equal distance from a center point. Pearl had given herself a gem-ache trying to imagine how space had to be shaped in order to do that with just straight lines.

After the Gem Education Message in repetition forty three, the voice encouraged her to form a body again. Pearl found that the space that she could project into was slightly taller this time. She discovered that by concentrating, she could modify how much light that her gemstone was producing. After a certain point, Pearl felt the energy required to keep her body formed outpace her supply and let the partial form collapse back into the gemstone.

Every repetition after that was followed by Pearl forming a body for as long as she could maintain before collapsing back to her gem to recover. Each time, she could last for a bit longer.