A Quest after Requests
(Brother’s story continues)
After the first strange visual, that I only much later learned was most often referred to as window popped up. A construct with a message that I could only somewhat understand, many windows started appearing whether I liked it or not.
They appeared most often after my lessons with Sister, a common example would usually appear right after I had just gotten sleepy from the work I was doing and often lead to me getting a head ache.
Notice
recent activities has resulted in the following stat increases
Intelligence +1
Will Power +1
They were so annoying that I thought of bothering Sister outside of our ‘class time’ to see if they had anything that could help me. But since I was still a bit cautious when it came to Sister for various reasons (mostly because I still couldn’t shake off the instincts that arose from the vast differences between our strengths).
But the main reason for my caution was not the old reasons I had since the beginning but because they seemed to have some influence or control over the appearance of the windows.
For example one time Sister told me
“You remember flower right? Please show Sister that you do. Give me a picture of a flower with the word flower on it”
Suddenly there was that strange startling “ding” noise and sure enough a window appeared
Request
Sister wants you to make and give to her a picture of a flower with the word flower located on it somewhere.
Rewards:
+experience
+Difficulty increase in requests
+ increased access to information about flowers in the status database,
+intimacy with Sister
Possible failure results:
+experience
+Challenge level is maintained or possibly decreases
+flowers maybe become an unlucky object for you
+intimacy with Sister may decrease
During the times that Sister slept or somehow ‘learned’ without me, I discovered that I could turn off the windows that occasionally appeared when I attempted to practice on my own. However a bit terrifying was the fact that no matter what I tried I could never do anything to the windows caused by Sister.
After an unknown period of time, it became extremely easy to communicate with sister and I was even able to take some of what I already knew aside to look at it anew. And then eventually use it to come up with my own conclusions and thus ‘learn’ on my own.
At this point, although in general any time spent with sister was never boring, the repetitions I did to satisfy them were, and thus my old companion’s boredom and curiosity reared up again. And I started to once again think about existence outside myself and sister.
I still had the desire to interact with the other little lights, and with my experiences of sister amplifying my power to use as a comfort I knew I probably wouldn’t have to worry about struggling to reach them.
However other than our first few conversations about the others. Sister often expressed a bit of hesitancy or possibly even dislike of talking about the others or the idea of talking to the others.
So I was a bit worried about their reaction to my asking, but I was much stronger and more informed at this time so it didn’t take long for me to get over this fear.
“Sister” I said “I want to talk to the others” I sent a picture of the little lights to clarify “others”
“Do you want me to talk to them?” Sister said
“No” I immediately clarified proudly “I want to talk to them by myself, I just wanted sister to know.”
“If so then you will do all the talking Sister will just help you to ‘get there”
Status data is uploading…finished
New Quest
You plan to seek out the others to teach and learn from them.
Success Requirements:
Successfully teach the 5 nearby others
[optional] learn from them
Failure Requirements:
???
Rewards:
+Increased stats
+intimacy with others
Possible failure results:
+others may become hostile
+intimacy with Sister may increase
Ignoring the pop up as I usually did, while annoyed because I had thought I had stopped them but apparently I was wrong, I showed them a picture of the intended target. I had decided to start out with the other that had been the most open or ‘welcoming’ to me. The one that didn’t seem to get upset like I did about our inability to communicate.
I probably had an unconscious idea that, this other’s laid back inability to be shocked or concerned was a good thing.
As soon as I started to ‘move’ towards the other, I felt Sister’s power backing me up and my movement became easy and smooth and there was no pain or sense of limitation.
In fact I had the heady thought that I could pick any direction I wanted and would be able to go on forever. But I shelved this idea for later and quickly reached the other.
When my mind touch theirs I felt Sister using me to do the same. For some reason I got the sense that they found something about this other or my current situation with this other very amusing, but when I inquired what was funny.
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“The other is female and you are a male and she is the first one you go to” but when this answer was conveyed with even more contained humor. I still didn’t get it.
“What is female? And what is she?” I asked
“pft!...well eh I will explain things later, but it’s not important carry on.” Was what I got in reply.
Shrugging to myself I once again tried to communicate with this other, but this time I knew what I was doing. And to my surprise once the other realized something of what I was trying to do they got curious, themselves and my teaching went much faster.
Once I got the basics done, I tried to tell the other that I would be back and then left to try to do the same with the other lights.
With each new ‘student’ or ‘friend’ the process got faster and by the end, the fifth and last of the nearby others that I was capable of reaching learned about 2 times as fast as the first one did.
Although when I spoke of this proudly to Sister, they merely mumbled something to themselves I couldn’t understand about intelligence levels and a “good job” that didn’t exactly make me happy as it sounded kind of empty of feeling (insincere).
After we could all communicate with each other, Sister suggested to me that I think up Nick-names or titles to call them by. After I questioned them as to what they meant, they explained but then added that ‘official names’ should be given by the parents or by ourselves when we were older but it would be confusing to call everybody ‘other’.
In the end we had a meeting and to summarize, we called the first one I talked to ‘Little Light’ and the other 4 were Blinker, Shout, Hide, and Pain.
To keep things simple as suggested by Sister they called me Brother, however unlike what they suggested, instead of calling them Sister the others decided unanimously to call them ‘Huge Light’.
I was a bit annoyed at this, as Sister seemed to dislike the word huge. However Sister said to me that they didn’t care what they were called and it didn’t matter as Sister didn’t really directly talk to them anyway.
“Besides, when they get older I will come up with and give them nicknames that they really dislike in revenge” Sister said matter-of-factly
Although I didn’t understand this completely, I accepted that Sister wasn’t really angry about it and that was all that really mattered.
Sister also came up with a moniker to call the group of the whole
“We are unhatched” she said simply
During this time of us getting to know and learn from each other Sister was a mostly silent but completely necessary presence as the majority of us (especially me) did not have the length and power in our minds to reach each other easily. We especially didn’t have the mental stamina to maintain it.
However Sister easily ‘connected’ us so that even when Sister was doing something else, we could still communicate with each other. And this was especially important as Sister was now a days most often doing something else.
Because we all slept much of the time (myself included) and because I had become something of a leader to the other unhatched and thus they often wanted my attention, my time with Sister became increasingly rare and short.
As I had been in such close and near constant contact with Sister up to this point, when they left I felt lonely in a whole new way. It got to the point that whenever I felt that they were ‘available’ I would stop or ‘drop’ whatever I was doing and immediately go to talk to them.
If my fear of Sister hadn’t still lingered I probably would have selfishly begged her to be around more often. But my experiences with the other unhatched showed me how annoying that could be and I just couldn’t desire the idea of making ‘Huge Light’ upset.
So whenever I could I would ask for advice over my various small petty problems or sometimes we would just chat. Occasionally I would get to learn a new word or other bit of knowledge that I didn’t know before. Sometimes we wouldn’t speak of anything important or educational, it could even be nonsense!
But always when I needed them they would be there, and their advice to my untrained eye always seemed completely correct.
Shout and Pain getting annoying?
Using a thing called ‘the silent treatment’ worked like a charm.
Hide and Little Light being ‘too quiet’?
Sister would temporarily deepen the link they had formed between us, to the point where I could almost feel their emotions, soon using this I was able to encourage them into as Sister called it; 'participating'.
They always had a solution and unlike myself they never really seemed that uncertain or confused. They were always calm, even when something that should have been ‘world shaking happened’.
One day they said to me in a bored tone of voice
“Before I forget, I had better warn you, so you can tell the rest of the unhatched. More nearby others are coming. In other words there are going to be more unhatched”
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Kind of short I know...but I decided after I received a begging/pleading email (you know who you are) that as soon as I got at least 1,500 words I would post...
Plus I felt guilty because I haven't gotten as much done as I planned too.
Question: Was there announcement I missed? Because I just noticed that Royalroad went and added automatic page navigation making my originals redundant
Update: Hope you commenters don't mind...but I decided to reply to all the comments I was too lazy to bother with replying to before