“To reach any end, baby steps are the best choice.”

“However, sometimes a leap of faith is required.”

“Recognizing the right moment is the dividing line between success and the deep depths of failure.”

*

Dream Realm - 7 years after the Dream presence manifested.

A lonely Honey Badger of the female gender looked at the encompassing white that radiated before her.

She looked at it, she gazed deeply at it, but she did not inch any closer to it.

A distant echo of something reached her just as she had reached this White Flame that encompassed the bottom of the place she found herself in from time to time, or better said, all the time in the recent days.

She knew not from where the echo came, nor was she sure what the echo told her. However, it did provoke an unconscious response from her.

She became far more careful of the radiating White Flame.

Because of that, every time she stood before this flame, she stopped herself from going near or even touching it. Unfortunately for her, or should it be, fortunately, her curiosity won out every time she came before it.

Every night she slept, she came before this White Flame and inched a bit closer to it, and every time she did it, her curiosity only spiked that much more. If not for the echo gaining strength, as well, by reminding her to be careful, she would have long since touched it.

But today was the day that she would do it. Her curiosity overcame the echo.

Inching that bit closer to it, she stopped just before it. It was here that the echo became the strongest.

Not moving for a few moments, she stood up on two legs. Her little tail added a tiny bit of balance. Not that she needed it in the first place as she was currently standing on nothing.

It was her desire to stand, and her desire made it so.

Although, it had taken her a long time to figure it out.

The natural habits of moving, any part of her body, had long since infiltrated her thoughts. Those thoughts got reflected in her Dreams, but it was one thing to do it in your own Dream where everything followed your whim, and it was another here in the Dream Realm.

Here in the Dream Realm, you had to learn to actively project your Intent to actually reach any part of the Realm.

The female Honey Badger stood on two legs, her head flared left and right as she wondered. Her arms erupted with movement as if debating on doing something.

Eventually, a decision got made, and her right paw slowly moved towards the flame.

Only when she registered something invasive on her claws did the echo that had held her back all this time flare irrevocably.

Listening to the echo of danger, she retreated, but the White Flame had caught her claw on fire, and it continued to radiate its presence even after she withdrew.

It took a few moments to recover her calm, but the tiny flame on her right claw bothered her far too much for her to recover completely.

Her right paw waved left and right, up and down, yet the flame remained.

It was small as only her right claws had caught on fire, but it was as if it was implied to stay and just would not vanish.

That was when she made a mistake. A curiosity sparked within her, despite the invasive feeling the flame projected to her. Her snout closed in on the flame and touched it.

Instantly another invasive feeling began on her nose.

A few wild dance moves later, she began to calm down.

Her beady eyes stared at the tiny flame on her nose and wondered.

Opening her maw her tongue touched it.

A few more wild swings later, she unconsciously snapped her maw shut.

When this happened, a strange thing occurred. The White flame ember in her mouth became even tinier. It was as if something had suppressed it.

Now this female Honey Badger would not know why that was, but an association got created.

She tried her best to try and chew on the invasive feeling on her tongue. Her teeth somehow worked wonders on the White FlameWhen when the invasive became neutral.

Once the invasive feeling vanished from her mouth, it was time to swallow it, and that was what she had done.

Gulp

The sound echoed from her as the White Flame ember entered her stomach, and there it stayed without doing anything.

Her next thought was to get rid of the rest.

Her intent and desire consolidated because all of her life, she had gnawed on things to chop them down in size and eat it. When she did that, she gained strength. Like that, her current experience overlapped with her past, and her Intent manifested.

Intent was the goal of the game, as it was Intent that did stuff for you, and for this female Honey Badger, her Intent was to BITE, RIP and SWALLOW.

Her mouth began to chew on her right claw. She knew her claws were strong, so they were fine, but the White Flame on them had no choice but to follow the focused Intent.

After a good dose of chewing on it, the tiny ember entered her stomach.

Done with that, she licked her lips in pure habit. The flame on the tip of her snout was harder to get rid of, but when a tongue began to lick it off with clear intentions, the Flame was scraped off, and it too found its home in the stomach.

No more flame. No more problems.

However, now that she had experienced the flame being edible, even though she knew not of the consequences, her goal was even clearer. Closing in on the White Flame, she stopped right before the Flame, and with one mighty wide chomp of her maw, she bit on the White Flame.

Her head wiggled left and right as if to tip it up, and in the next moment, more flame entered her stomach. If some flame got left on her snout, she did not care at that moment and just began chomping down one gulp after another.

The more she swallowed, the more the Flame condensed in her stomach. When the critical point of mass got reached, the ember sparked, and a new flame manifested

The reignition was detected immediately. The female Honey Badger’s feeding frenzy stopped immediately. She retreated from the White Flame that showed no missing parts as if it did not matter how many times she took bites out of it.

With a few licks here and there, her tongue scraped the rest of the flame from her snout.

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That done, her mind focused on what she was feeling inside.

The feeling was different from before. It wasn't invasive, and it produced no pain to categorize what she was experiencing, so her mind treated it as food, and as any Honey Badger knew, once your stomach is acting up, you lay down and wait for it to pass.

Waiting for the digestion to finish, she yawned once or twice and simply laid there. She cared not where she was or what was happening.

All of her focused on sleeping to get rid of everything her stomach was experiencing.

Yet, despite how simple her thoughts were, they worked.

Her mind entered a sort of stupor as her Intent worked wonders in refining the White Flame.

A careful balance was created between the two, as they began to influence each other. The White Flame slowly began to lose its neutral stance as part after part began to infuse itself with the female Honey Badger.

In return, as the White Flame infused itself, it began to refine her awareness, or better said, it began to the Quantum Signature that defined her.

It began to synchronize this signature with that of the Dream Realm.

At the same time, the White Flame was a phenomenon that defined the beginning of everything in the Dream Realm, as well as being jammed full of Life Essence, it began to slowly provide the food for the growth of the female Honey Badger.

Every moment that passed, her presence here in the Dream Realm grew stronger. Her mind gained more depth as the process continued, but the most important part was her awareness of self would increase.

When all was done, and she returned to Reality, she would notice that her whole world had changed, despite her physical body not changing one bit.

How and what she did with herself was up to her, however, there was still one last step to be done, to finish everything up. She had to leave part of her awareness behind, but how would a primitive creator even know to do that?

The answer was that she did not, but there was one significant process that all living animals knew.

After a good meal, it was time to take a dump.

After waking up, her mind urged her to leave something behind.

When the association formed, she positioned herself and focused intently on leaving something behind.

In moments, that something left her, and she felt much better for it.

Afterward, she stayed for a bit longer to grab a few more bites and a few more naps. Eventually, a reminder reached her to return to Reality. With knowing steps, she walked back to that little hole she had made to get here and entered inside.

Moments later, her eyes opened to Reality. With groggy steps and a yawning expression, she left her burrow and observed the blue sky.

Not feeling anything particular, at that moment, she oriented her body slightly towards the sun and stood on her back legs.

Done with a little sunbathing and warming up, her journey of snacking began.

But what followed were discoveries of how she experienced the clarity of the world around her.

Her physical senses were the same. But her awareness, having gained more depth, became far more aware of everything her brain processed.

Every sound, smell, taste, touch, and sight became magnified to her awareness, and that was not the end.

Every night after that, her journey toward the Dream Realm became shorter and shorter. And every night she ate a tiny bit more of the White Flame.

That continued until a certain point, three years later, when another critical point was attained.

Quantity became quality as her mind and body underwent a unique transformation.

A transformation that enabled her mind to touch upon something extraordinary.

Something that enclosed everything in this World. From the tiny grass in the earth to the big trees dotting the Savannah. Even the clouds in the sky contained some of that.

This female Honey Badger knew not what it was, but the moment her mind touched upon it, it was as if the World realized that this little lifeform existed.

The World touched the mind of this female and wondered what to do with the little creature.

Usually, when this happened, the World relied on past examples and simply followed the guidelines, but this little creature was new.

It had never established a connection with the World, so the World chose to follow one of the oldest guidelines that it possessed. Guidelines that were established so long ago that even the extraordinary existence that made them had perished with time, yet their legacy remained.

Following the guidelines, the World examined the little creature deeper. It examined her in such detail that the World noticed how her mind was strengthened and improved with a White Flame, it knew nothing about.

Following the link it sensed, its perception soon came upon a small Realm attached to itself, and it knew nothing about either.

More wonder came upon the World, after all, it's not every day that the World discovers that something had grown upon it, and neither does it register them under normal circumstances.

It was those guidelines that helped to narrow down its awareness enough to count as microscopic and realize that something existed upon its skin.

With the awareness that there is something there, it examined the link and its origin.

The tiny Realm was small. It was attached to a different layer of its existence. The layer that is the most fluid of all. The layer where new changes were far more common than anywhere else.

Yet, that did not matter. Currently, there was nothing that the World could not find and could not examine.

In a moment, its awareness penetrated the walls of this tiny Realm and came upon a small wonder. It saw, felt, and understood the White Flame. It saw, felt, and understood the white balls that emerged from it and the rivers that they formed.

It understood the purpose of the black spot in the center of the Realm.

It even sensed the presence of two minds inside this center. Both were asleep, but one of them twitched its physical body.

Almost as if it had sensed that something was observing. In a small bit of curiosity that only manifested when the guidelines were invoked, it tried to examine the physical being.

Aside from being intrinsically connected to the Realm, the only fact that made this little being special was that it was powering the little Realm by itself and without taking any energy from IT.

Ignoring the little being, the World looked at the top of the small Realm, and there it noticed the most interesting attraction of all.

Done with its examination, it came time to decide on what to do with the little creature that had summoned it in the first place. With an understanding of the purpose of the White Flame, it found the optimal path forward and gave its blessing.

With the blessing given, the guidelines that enabled the microscopic vision of the little creators dwelling upon its skin began to dwindle slowly.

However, it was slow on the World's terms.

To the little Honey Badger, that was plenty of time as its body began to grow in all three dimensions.

How it was possible to grow so fast in so little time had to do with the energy supplied to the female Honey Badger.

Mana is the opposite of Life Essence.

It was the intrinsic energy of Reality. Or better said, Order that keeps everything where it should be with Rules and Laws.

As the intrinsic energy of Reality, there was nothing it could not do in Reality. If it needed to manifest the required physical materials to supplement the growth of this little creature, then that was what it would do.

The female Honey Badger, fueled with Mana, experienced what it meant to be growing up in a manner of seconds. But despite feeling the wonder of it, it was something else that took the majority of her attention.

The White Flame she had eaten in the last few years began to manifest in her. Specifically, it began to manifest on the back of her head, back, and tail.

And if one looked even more detailed, one would notice that the White Flame was extruded from every white hair follicle. At the same time, their existence kept the flame organized and coherent as one entity.

What the White Flame could do now that it got transformed by Mana, would have to wait for her to figure out first.

First, she would have to overcome the social norms of being larger than any male.

At least that would be the case if she could not meet the other three male individuals that would undergo the same event. However, as if luck denied her that possibility, all of them were a long distance away from each other.

Moments passed as the transformation happened.

Minute details of the Honey Badger's biology enlarged in size and capability. Nothing too grand in their capability, as they largely would remain the same, but there is one part of her that relied a lot on sheer size.

The size of one's brain was just as important as were the connections they created between associations, not to mention that Honey Badgers had quite big brains for creatures that small in size.

When the transformation ended, her size rivals big lion males.

Moments after the transformation ended and the bliss of everything that happened vanished, this female stood up.

Once more, her worldview changed as some things became smaller, and some things became more apparent as she looked around, after all, bigger eyes drank more light.

With an understanding branded into her that she had changed, she flexed her new body to get used to it.

Once done, the bigger brain commenced catching up with its capabilities, but it would take time for those capabilities to find their limits.

However, one part of her mind sought something far more ethereal and far more significant to an individual.

Her mind sought a name.

A name that would define who she was and who she would be.