A Dance of Minds

(A Clumsy Ashamed Brother)

Spoiler :

So I spent around three months writing this oneshot. Despite all my hard-work I am not that happy with the results..

The oneshot's title is called  Bitter Blood and those that read Behemoth Rodeo may or may not hold a major clue/giveaway especially if they remember a certain character, because that character is not unrelated to one of the characters in Bitter Blood.

Although I feel it is a bit of a failure hopefully you will still find it enjoyable to read it.

Here is some fanart by Lemyngue in two differn’t versions

version 1

 https%3a%2f%2f41.media.tumblr.com%2fbdd4d2c629d9...o1_540.jpg [https://41.media.tumblr.com/bdd4d2c629d9b9935dca2e1528cc9fbc/tumblr_nsfgbzAqDt1r8sov0o1_540.jpg]

And here is the fanart version 2 ;)

https%3a%2f%2f40.media.tumblr.com%2fad496a7e04bc...1_1280.jpg [https://40.media.tumblr.com/ad496a7e04bceac96b45793ea73779cc/tumblr_nsfgbzAqDt1r8sov0o1_r1_1280.jpg]

Also just a small warning as Lemyngue might tell you, if you send me a message don’t be surprised if I go crazy when writing back and please don’t be offended if you read something you think is insulting I sometimes have a hard time with communicating and will say things in ways that make them misconstrued and or say something one way when I meant to say something else…

At first the shock prevented me from doing anything other than existing. In the beginning if I wanted to contact anyone I would have to do so through my own power. Which always too a lot of time, effort and sometimes pain. However soon after I met Sister, she started taking care of all the pesky details and strength needed to communicate. And after we met the others she took care of them as well.

Convince became habit and soon other than in the case of some ‘secret’ passing games no one used the direct links much anymore and so everyone had relied on Sister. And as I started to panic I realized that we still did.

While I could still sense a bit of my surroundings on the physical plane through my egg and although I could still look out upon at the field of stars from a mental perspective essentially, for all intents and purposes I was blind.

If Sister had left me a short while after we had first met I bet there wouldn’t have been that much of an affect. I probably would have felt a bit pained and also even lonelier but other than taking the next opportunity to hatch I don’t think I would have been that effected. But that was if then and this was is now.

I had completely gotten used to and adapted to all the stimulation I had been receiving from Sister and later to a lesser extent from the others. It had gotten to the point where their presence and their companionship became not a desire purely from curiosity and boredom but a need that I had acquired after fulfilling it continuously on a regular basis.

I had come need those connections and stimulation in the same way that most people needed to breathe and so right now I was breathless. I was so deep into my panic that all my thoughts even my ability to use my mind at all, basically just shut down and left me in a frozen black limbo. But apparently not everyone was as helpless as I was.

At first I was so distracted by the silence that I didn’t notice but eventually I managed to feel a strange mental brush across my mind that felt somewhat familiar. After feeling it several more times I managed to gather up enough strength to comprehend what it was.

Or rather who it was. It was the presence of my other sister. The sister that I had started to neglect since my rank up along with my other siblings as well as my friends. It was Peeper.

As one of the stronger at seeing on the mental plane, though not at making connections Peeper had several difficulties to overcome. The first was the shock at seeing all the bright colorful mental strings and pathways that had connected all the ‘stars’ suddenly disappearing. The second was deciding what to do about it.

First she had to recover fortunately being a seer of a sorts (instead of the past or future she sees the present) she was better equipped to handle this. Although as Brother suspicioned she was blocked by Sister in seeing some things there was plenty left that she could see.

While watching as much as she could she soon got used to changes of all kinds and speeds. So instead of letting herself worry about the repercussions of what she saw she instead focused on pretending that what she saw on the mental plane was merely something she was viewing that was someplace else.

This was difficult to do, as without Sister much of her reach in seeing was also gone although she could still view much of the surroundings around her egg, beyond that, not very far. So she tried to pretend even further then she had been.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Not only was she 'seeing' someplace else besides realty but she was merely following an  assignment given to her. She wasn’t supposed to and couldn’t see someplace else because if she did Sister would be disappointed.

Now enabled by her self-deception she was calm and better able to make decisions. The next thing she had to tackle was harder for a different reason, it was outside her expertise. But she realized the answer for that through the reason. If taking action wasn’t what she was capable of doing then she would have to find a way to contact someone who was.  And obviously she contacted me.

Luckily we were relatively “close” and because of that she was stronger than in her ability to link, for as soon as we connected the majority of my panic vanished and I was able to start to come up with several strategies. First we had to contact as many of the others as possible.

Specifically our siblings and friends. With peeper to help me with the distance I managed to reach first Door and Hinge and then in turn, Little Light, Blinker, Shout, Hide, and Pain. Hinge and Door helped enormously with their skill of ‘enhancement’ they could make it so almost anyone had the distance and clarity of even the most skilled of any of us.

This became especially important when we started the attempt to connect to the weaker ones. It was then that I realized better the wisdom of Sister.

When Sister had first spoke to me and to us about ‘preparations’ I had thought they were redundant and pointless. But I did them anyway and encouraged my siblings and friends to do them as well for at that time I had yet to rank up and become arrogant.

Of course immediately when I started to think of myself as enlightened and great I also stopped following most of Sister’s advice, which included the exercises and assignments of the ‘preparation’.  

This training had included repeating various skills multiple times, and such as working to link together our minds as well as improving our ‘distance’ without Sister. Also large part of ‘preparation’ was ‘teamwork’ games. Where we had to work together in doing various projects and exercises.

While I had stopped doing most of the ‘preparation’ other than a few teamwork exercises when the others begged me to. The others (as I had sneered) were still in awe of Sister and so still continued to do the exercises. As such they did a lot better than me.

It got to the point that I had to ‘step aside’ and let Peeper lead until I figured out how the ‘dancing’ worked. Dancing was a more recent ‘preparation’ technique that I hadn’t even bothered to hear about. Basically it was a method of keeping a net of minds without Sister.

When dancing you continually formed and broke connections with others, in a rhythmic way. Because there was a pattern, once one got skilled, it allowed you to have consistency in your mental state while maintaining energy efficiency.

However it is a bit more complicated then I described, because while consistency was a requirement the participants of the experience were far from consistent in their strength and ability. So in order to maintain the rhythm of the dance one had to take steps to compensate for anything your partner lacked.

For example there was this one move called a ‘twirl’ it involved a weaker partner using the strength of a stronger partner to spin and thus gain enough momentum that they could use their speed as strength and temporally act as the strong one for their next partner who was equal in strength or even weaker.

Another move called a ‘leap’ involved had an unhatched of great skill and strength temporally disconnect their mind from the ‘net’, send it up forcefully and then steer themselves back into the dance at a further appropriate place.

Because it was a matter of skill, some of the ‘weaklings’ were better at dancing then their stronger compatriots. I myself had the strength but not the ‘reach’. Embarrassingly even some of the weak ones did much better then myself who continually stumbled many times in the beginning.

Eventually I managed to discover after several more stumbles, what my problem was. I  figured out that in order for me to do well in the dance that I should be ‘tossed ‘often (helped someone into a leap) as well as toss others.

It helped that Peeper and the others had been endlessly patient with me, and that the little ones had decided to think of it as a really fun game instead of the desperate matter near to being as serious as life and death that it was.

After a short amount of time, but not as fast as I would have liked for the sake of my pride, I completely figured out how to dance. Not to long later everybody was dancing.

We danced and were not lonely. We danced and it fought off our pain at Sisters appearance. We danced and we learned wisdom especially me.

We danced so much that it got to the point that we did it without thinking. Dancing became instinctual as easy as breathing was for the hatched outside.

When we were able to think of things other than dancing, we started by thinking of a plan to get Sister back.