El had no concept of time passage in this strange state of being she found herself in. She only knew that nothing seemed to change. She had begun to wonder if perhaps she had died and this was a form of hell. The constant cycling of absorption and waiting was like a twisted meditation and forced patience. It was driving her slowly insane. She had no idea how one was supposed to continue an existance like this without change.

So the moment there was a change, it struck her like a lightning bolt. From the tunnel, that she had been absorbing a fairly narrow path down, the one that had something potentially interesting, but that she hadn’t yet reached, something stirred. The flicker of energy that had been out of reach was moving, it moved toward her tunnel. At first it moved just a little and stopped, as if waiting to see what would happen. The wait was not long though, then it shifted and aimed itself directly for the tunnel that El had made.

At first, El felt a rush of excitement, finally something new was happening, what was it and what did it mean? And then about 3 seconds later, as the flicker of energy started to move quicker, she felt a moment of concern, hopefully, that wasn’t dangerous. And about a second after that, it entered her cloud of perception.

It looked kind of like a cockroach and a trilobite had a baby, long face feeler things, round head with a plate helmet, with legs… lots of legs. OMG, the legs. Nope. Nope right outta here. Get me out!

El didn’t stop to consider how she could just see the spawn of devil bugness. She didn’t care. It could be the friendliest bug of the entire bug kingdom. It would not take it long to reach her down her tunnel and it was zipping side to side right toward her quite comfortable and bugfree niche. What do I do?

El's panic surged as the creature scuttled closer, its multitude of legs carrying it swiftly through the tunnel. In her frantic state, she instinctively lashed out with her cloud of perception, desperately trying to create a barrier between herself and the approaching monstrosity.

To her surprise, the cloud solidified into a translucent wall, blocking the tunnel's entrance. The creature slammed into it, its antennae twitching in confusion as it probed the sudden obstacle.

"Oh thank goodness," El breathed, relief washing over her. But her respite was short-lived. The creature began to scrape at the barrier with its sharp mandibles, slowly wearing it away.

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El's mind raced. She couldn't keep the wall up forever, and she certainly didn't want that thing in her space. Then, a thought struck her. If she could create a real stone wall, or even better, some stalagtites and drop them on the bug, she could take care of it herself.

She first tried by pulling at the stone at the base of the cloud wall, thinking instead of absorbing, maybe she could move the stone. Focusing on the idea of moving the particles or cloud or stone or any of the thoughts that came to mind didn’t seem to work. So then she tried the idea of duplicating, copying and mimicing, that didn’t work either. Then she thought on the idea of reversing what she did when she absorbed, so instead of taking the stone, she would put it back.

There was a tug from her core and she watched as her cloud wall slowly started to fill in with stone. Yes! Soon, instead of a translucent wall of just her perception holding it away, it was a wall of the stone tunnel. But the bug was still digging at it and it didn’t seem it would be deterred by the wall so she still needed to get rid of it. So now she needed to see about either filling the tunnel in a way to get rid of it or dropping something on it.

Luckily, she was able to still see the bug with her senses and was able to pass her senses through minor cracks and crevices of the rock walls. She started by forming stone above where the bug was digging into the barrier. Her idea was to build a rock or block that would then fall and crush the cockobite but as she started forming stone, it simply fell as bits and pieces, showering the tunnel below.

It appeared that she recreated the stone as she had absorbed it, which was in small bits and pieces. AAAHH. So, how does she get it to stick together or was she supposed to absorb it in bigger chunks…

El concentrated, focusing her perception on the area beneath the creature. She imagined herself absorbing not just individual particles, but an entire chunk of stone at once. To her surprise, she felt a sudden surge of energy as a large section of the tunnel floor disappeared, leaving a gaping hole.

The creature let out a high-pitched screech as it tumbled into the newly formed pit. El moved to fill in the hole above it, sealing the bug. She felt a mixture of relief and guilt as she sensed the creature's frantic movements slowly cease. The ground and the wall of stone she had place resonated to her senses. She felt them more solidly than the rest of the area and added a strange dissonance to the fading adrenaline.

"Well, that was... intense," El thought to herself, still processing what had just happened. Suddenly, El noticed something peculiar, from below a wave of energy was rushing up at her. And at the same time, the wall that she had built to block her tunnel was glowing with a soft light and pulsing like it had a heartbeat.

Just as the wave of energy filled El to near bursting and her senses were groaning with the pressure of fullness, the pulse of the wall burst out with a bright flash and a chime that surrounded El in the first sound she had heard since arriving in this new world.

Finally, she had received a message. Unfortunately, it made no sense.

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