Von Squidgie Worth The First Esquire was ecstatic!

“We went deeper, downward and closer. Away and inward, split apart and tightly spiraled. All those words and none of them. Ah friends! Again I am at a loss of words that can convey all that it is to be alive and experiencing as the spirit bereft of body.”

Miss Aleph and Miss Omega were wonderful people who employed them gladly! They kept Squidgie Worth so busy with learning and learning and learning so many things! They fed them a wonderful air to breath!

“Obbie and I with our caravan of souls trekked the winding threaded sinewy wilderness of spirit and death. Skirting the edges of predators who the very brushing of which could make an end of human souls. “

Also there was water and food makers. Aleph even paid Von Squidgie Worth the First Esquire in food and water and air and taught them how to maintain the machines that provided these treasures themself!

“We supped sparsely on the essences and ways of lesser spirit beasts, always with care and only enough to sustain us. For as I have said I had come to know that to consume spirit is to be partly consumed by spirit and forever be changed.”

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Also delightful physical contact and so much activity and things to learn and do! Von Squidgie Worth The First Esquire was even given their name! An actual name instead of just a position identifier!

“So it was that we traveled into the thick hearts of terra, For Obbie and I knew that there were wonders and secrets that might yet save us. The shaping of the living and solid matter by the means of the dead was prominent. But it was a thing beyond the ken of I, Obbie or all the ‘shallow’ spirits we knew of.”

So many of their fellow spawnmates didn't even have a work identifier! And here Von Squidgie Worth was with a full name, and a work apprenticeships! And it was even given leave to enjoy Miss Aleph’s story time with Miss Quarti!

Of course Von Squidgie Worth The First Esquire was always prepared to leap to the assistance of Miss Aleph or Miss Omega if they should need something fetched during the story time! They were capable of exiting the bubble and slipping through vacuum for a time without any ill effects. They had to hold their breath of course but that just put a nice strain on their lungs and stretched their limits.

“It was a court of veins, extending out and inward, bent and twisted in all directions, it was a heaving great thing which upon and through we crawled. Not Terra herself, but an inhabitant curled tightly upon her flanks and flesh. We and Obbie journeyed, near bereft and starving. Daughters and sons were lost in that long stretch, to tricks of traders like obbie, to eating too deeply of the spirit flesh and becoming inhuman and unconnected to us. To simply vanishing, sometimes taking memories of their very existence from those around them.”

It was so good to have so many things to work for! So many things to learn, so many things to try! Von Squidgie Worth the First Esquire could already see that there would be room for them to adopt many spawn mates and siblings into a proper cooperative venture later.

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Employ them as gofers and maintenance technicians and farmers! Train them up on all the wonderful skills that Miss Aleph had trained them. Perhaps Von Squidgie would even give them names like Miss Aleph had! That seemed only fair as it was how they were paid and trained in the work.

“Time for the dead is strange and different, While living among my family I did strive to find a count for it that I could recognize, but our journey was drifting deep and far from the familiar sign and spore of trees. And it was not yet that I had learned to count the ages as stones felt them.”

The story was fun, although Von Squidgie was not very clear on exactly what it was about, It seemed kind of like the one who was Forth Dottir who was now Miss Quarti had suffered an unemployment.

Which was horrifying, Von Squidgie quailed a bit at the thought and snuggled closer into Miss Aleph’s embrace for comfort.

“Our lives are tied much tighter to the flesh and prayer we sup and live on. We breath our lives in pulses that never quite settle in the same rhythm. We see and feel and think at the beats of where we dwell and feed. So I cannot say to you that we knew the lengths of our journey into the tighter woven coil of the elder nest.”

But then Miss Quarti seemed to found a new cooperation and re-employed both herself and many spawn! She became very rich and productive and it was quite good.

“But I and Obbie did guide us on, with what family survived us. Of what had been hundreds was by then dozens. Souls who had starved, blinded and been lost thinning our numbers. Others choosing to join in the songs and lives of other spirits and subsuming into them. Seeking senses to survive and trading everything of themselves for it. But we climbed the spindly ways to that great deep.”

But after that there was ANOTHER terrible unemployment! One that fell upon all of her coworkers and partners! A terrible wave of collapse that left all lost and forgotten. But even so the brave and wonderful Miss Quarti persevered and strove to find new training and secret partners to refund herself with new work and a new job!

“And there upon the center of a coiling nest of rarified lives, where we felt utterly apart and separate from all familiar, and yet closer and tighter to the pulse of Terra then we ever had before. Split thin and wide and close and sharp. It was there that Obbie and I who was Fourth Dottir beheld a great and old beast of the deathly shroud.”

Von Squidgie was so inspired by the tireless work ethic of Miss Quarti who was Forthdottir! They hoped to grow to be even half as hard working as she was!

“And at last did we find one who could teach us what we had sought”