Avishraa Reloaded

As Ta'skaaru traveled, she discovered several things about her unwanted companion. She learned that its name - or at least, how it thought of itself - was Ehiphem, one-that-goes-forward, since “we are not yet content to sit in one place, in the fashion of our elders. We wish to see and do things, rather than have news brought to us from afar.”

She learned that Ehiphem was, though apparently much older than she, a child among its own kind. She learned that it had only ever heard of places beyond its home cavern before convincing a passing creature to pick it up and carry it. She learned also, from this, that the “pull” Ehiphem was exerting on her attention had more to do with educated guesswork rather than any surety of direction.

She also learned that, while water seemed to trickle down from many places and was not hard to find, it was difficult to know what was good to eat. Ehiphem proved to be of little help.

~We can advise you on some choices,~ it said uncertainly. ~We have observed that those beings that come from outside the world must often take great care in eating those things that were born of this one, and find outsider plants and animals more palatable. There is no shortage of them. But we ourselves have not familiarized ourselves with all of those, since we are not required to be choosy when we feed.~

Ta'skaaru had the benefit of some very basic, weak, but often sufficient spellwork that might remove contaminants from food.

She hadn't had much reason to use it in the past; it was one of those things any magic-wielder was taught back home, even though there were only few areas that were so devoid of population and familiarity, both, that there was reason to use it. No doubt it had been useful at some point, when the caverns were first explored, and toxins had been poorly mapped.

Still, removing contaminants did not mean the result was good to eat. For example, one could remove contaminants from a wad of petroleum jelly - depending on the details of the spell used, this would make the entire wad disappear, or leave one with a perfectly pallatable wad of petroleum jelly that nonetheless, by its nature, contained no essential nutrients.

As a rule of thumb, if it looked edible, and her magic removed contaminants, it was at least unlikely to kill her, and reasonably likely to keep her going for a while.

That said, this did not account for taste.

~How do you know these things?~ she asked, suppressing the urge to also ask if Ehiphem knew of anyone who had gone insane from eating the blind, tasteless lizards that lived in some of the furrows in the rocks, one of which she was picking at the bones of after going through the ritual of cleaning it.

She hoped it would give her at least as much energy as it cost to clean it.

~If you hadn't previously left your cavern, I mean? Do strangers pass through frequently? Or do your elders return and share their stories?~

Ehiphem was pleased enough to see Ta'skaaru's feeding habits, and to talk. This tunnel, though not one it had been in before, was not at all distinctive, and it was looking forward to more interesting sights.

~Travelers come through our caverns - on the way elsewhere, or to see us and seek us out. We speak to them and see what is in their minds, and we learn much. We are not a people prone to travel.

~Our own selves are unusual in seeking out new sights ourselves. But even this is only possible because of our youth - we are light enough to be carried. In age, our kind grow tall and heavy, until no other creature can move us. We can move ourselves, but only slowly - very, very slowly. This, we regret to say, is why we have attached ourselves to you.~

Ta'skaaru rather doubted 'regret' played a factor in Ehiphem's behaviour.

At least the initial sense of parasitism was fading, and with it her nausea - she didn't feel like Ehiphem was drawing an extreme amount of energy out of her (indeed, she felt mostly normal) and the compulsions remained clearly distinguishable from her own volition in a way that seemed like an implausible effort to maintain as a charade.

Still, up went a hand to scratch at her neck, again a few inches short of Ehiphem's location, following a gently redirected instinct.

She was currently effectively sitting on the 'portal' orb like one might on an oversized egg, pinning it between her feet and her chest - mindful not to pin it between the ground and her chest, given its ability to simply drift through stone.

Her other hand was handling what remained of her lizard meal - not much at this point, its scrawny body having been almost completely stripped by now.

~Are there minds you can't interact with?~ she asked, out of curiosity, before realising it might not be a meaningful question - it was entirely possible Ehiphem's people only considered a thing a 'mind' if they could interact with it.

Ehiphem considered this. ~Some minds are on too different a scale,~ it mused. ~Too fast, too slow, too small, too big. We can sense them, if we seek them out, but the passing of meaning or instruction is too difficult, or dangerous.~

It added, after a moment, ~Would a different position prove less uncomfortable? We had to guess a good location to be sited. Our last host had us atop its head.~

The thought of relocating Ehiphem anywhere else was met with an involuntary shiver. Her jaw clacked shut and she shot a glare at nowhere in particular. It was one thing to simply have Ehiphem attached to her spine - it was quite another to move it by some decision of her own. It felt like an endorsement she wasn't willing to give.

~'Off' would be a better location,~ she subvocalised, bluntly and curtly, but with less venom than she could have wielded, clearly simply agitated that her passenger was trying to make her complicit to her own state as a host.

Really, it was an outright dismissal of the train of thought. If Ehiphem wanted her to accept her state, the best way was not to remind her about it too often. Her culture valued autonomy and Ehiphem was violating that principle - she could evidently tolerate it as long as Ehiphem was polite, helpful, not too much of a burden on her body… and quiet about it.

As she cast the cleaned skeleton of the lizard aside, she latched onto: ~What do you mean, 'too dangerous'?~

Clearly, Ehiphem had picked up something of Ta'skaaru's unspoken preferences, because it did not pursue the matter of its parasitism further. For her part, in fact, she got the sense that it was… hurt? Embittered? Certainly baffled; it did not understand the reaction to its gesture.

Somewhat coldly, it responded, ~There are many forms of danger. Even a passive mind of too large a scale can absorb an investigating smaller one into it, like a drop of water lost in a pool. Others are strong-willed, and can cause pain or damage through all but the most casual contact. Some can even seek out other minds themselves, like we can. It is even possible to have all three traits. With such beings, it is best to avoid their attention.~