Xenobia's Journal, transcribed
It has been two weeks since I left my Mother's warm, affectionate cocoon to join the larger colony.
Huntress gave me a machine today, and Dragon explained how to use it. They want me to be able to log my thoughts in a way such that I can perfectly revisit them later and share them with my small, soft colonymates. Mother kept hers in a similar machine. Hers opened and she would mark it with a tool she used with her only left hand. I talk to mine in thoughtspeech and it does much the same. I'm sure that Titan-sister and Flight-sister are getting one as well, though I'm enjoying a quiet moment to myself at the lower levels of the nest.
Sometimes new people come here for a while, and usually go quickly. Most of them are happy to see my sisters and I, but some of them seem fearful. Doom has told me that the smaller people like him sometimes fear bigger people like myself and sisters, so it's important to stay where he can keep us safe from those confused people until they understand that we are not their enemy. I love Huntress, Grim Reaper, Doom, and Dragon. I love my Mother, who loved me so much that her life was less important to her than knowing that I was well and healthy. Huntress and Death have asked me to hold off on producing eggs, which makes sense in this environment. When we're all ready for me to have children, we'll do it with more loving, courageous people like my Mother. My daughters and nieces will be loved every step of the way. My inherited memories from generations back show me that big people don't always do this, but it makes them hostile to those they might have lived happily alongside. It's better to be selective and establish a bond with understanding parents that are happy to make special children with my hatchlings.
I asked the Grim Reaper about why they feared me. Was it because I was bigger and stronger? He explained that about a millennium ago, before we were one colony, small people and bigger people fought viciously, the small people out of fear, the bigger people like me out of a desire to survive. It was apparently very ugly and made lots of bad feelings on both sides. Those memories aren't part of my ancestral line, and I don't feel like I'm close kin with any bigger people that would act so brutishly. What we're doing in our colony of seven is correcting that ugly past and showing that it doesn't have to be bad between people.
It's odd to think that there was an era when we might have been enemies. I can't conceive of it, really. Even if I had many adult children, I like the different ways that my small family thinks and the interest they have in learning about what I consider natural. I'm not the kind of people who naturally think of things like materializing my thoughts or the history that people might have had that now live together and love each other that isn't part of inherited memories.
On some level, we're obviously different. Their visual receptors are more expressive than mine. They're smaller and softer than I and my sisters. On the other hand, my first memories came from my Mother, who was like them more than I. The first faces I saw were theirs. It was days before I met my sisters in person, though we were speaking since nearly the beginning. The eggs I lay don't look like me, either. The hatchlings that emerge from them do not particularly resemble my eggs or any people.
Then again, how different can we be if we're in the same colony? When the time comes to produce eggs, I have been considering whether I want to lay them with no outside gene enrichment or mate with Dragon to create eggs that will be more perfectly suited to the parents available on this world. Living together, mating together, learning together… these things surely matter more than different shapes. Titan-sister agrees completely, but Flight-sister wonders why the small people live with us when they don't necessarily need to. Having studied them at every opportunity, my conclusion is that they want to be with us. The temporary ones in the colony might or might not want to stay with us, but the small people of Colony Seven love the big people just as much as the reverse. Why not be with your loved ones, especially since it isn't safe for us to live in the wider world yet?
It occurs to me that I made a small error. They like us to have names that are just for us, another strange thing their minds conceive of that I like about them. On her last shed, Flight-sister was named… All Sien-a. Al Sina. Alcina. My sister's name is Alcina. My sister's name is- Violet! Yes! Alcina, Violet. Mine is Xenobia. We offer the colony air, land, and subterranean superiority, but we are three individuals as well, and we matter one at a time, not just the colony.
You see what I mean, don't you? These ideas, they are good for me. Some I do not fully understand, but there are many I grasp and agree with. I feel my mind expanding with these new concepts, informing the memories I inherited and giving me more ways to understand what seems like a single thing at first.
I feel I have grown wiser. I am going to continue journaling, but at the moment I want to seek out Dragon for a special Communion. He enjoys learning about me, and I think he will particularly enjoy learning this.