It was a strange feeling, suddenly declaring the place I'd spent the last week cleaning up as my new home and then immediately being left to acclimate to it. I'd only joined in on the endeavor for what I thought would be a brief networking opportunity, and now it had seized center stage in life thanks to this bizarre turn of events. Thomas had left in a hurry to gather his own belongings, and Coraline had finally relented to her body's needs and gone upstairs to sleep. That just left Virtue and I in the house together. I didn't mind having the creature for company, though. It felt like we understood each other on some level. It was the first time we were truly safely alone together in private, but I had no idea what we were supposed to do now that we were taking over on guard duty. I seriously doubted that the vice were going to batter down the door if they hadn't done so yet, but I couldn't think of a reason not to stay vigilant.

Virtue stared up at me expectantly, occasionally turning its 'head' and making quiet trilling noises like a curious, untrained puppy. I nodded down at it. "I need to teach you. The normal way, not just through... osmosis." I wasn't sure what to else to call its ability to absorb information on touch. "You can understand me now, correct?" Virtue nodded enthusiastically, making excited yapping noises at me. I nodded back. "Okay. So you understand English then. And you can change your shape. Do you think you can develop a way to speak English for yourself?"

Virtue stopped moving for a second, then melted itself down into a wholly shapeless blob of black again. I knelt down to observe, but I couldn't make out the details. I could tell that it was moving, roiling within, but it was such a uniform texture and color that it was impossible to tell where one part of it ended and another began. Then it slowly rose from the puddle of itself. A human head. I slowly got to my feet and in just a moment, I was face to face with a mirror of pitch black. It was mimicking my shape again, the only difference being the bright yellow pair of eyes in place of my own.

I observed it for a few moments while it looked over its own form, inspecting its work and comparing it to me now that it had reformed its vision. "That's very impressive." I mumbled. "Will this help you form vocal cords?"

It tilted its head at me again, parted its lips, and then let out a coarse yap. Its eyes blinked a few times, then it tried again, letting out a slightly different pitch. It looked confused.

"Not quite there yet, huh?" I asked. This wasn't going to be easy. I didn't know how I was supposed to teach it to speak if neither of us understood each other's methods of speech. "Do I need to find an anatomy professor for you to touch?"

Virtue stared at me with a concentrated intensity while I spoke. I watched as it moved the lips of its form to try to copy me, but it just ended up distorting its face and making more squeaking noises. It furrowed its brow in a way that made it look angry. I think it was trying to show irritation, but it didn't understand my facial structure or the nature of human body language enough to make it look convincing.

"Okay, stop stop stop." I waved my hands at it. "I don't know how you made your voice, but it's too inhuman to speak the way we do. You're going to have to form vocal cords, which is... complicated. We'll work up to that. For now, as flattering as it is that you decided to look exactly like me, it's... a little disturbing. If you're going to mimic the human form, maybe you should come up with your own shape."

It stared at me again, like I'd just kicked it. It certainly had the pitiable puppy-dog look down. That is, it would, if its eyes weren't so inherently terrifying if you looked at them too closely. They each looked like they were formed of raised and colored indentations directly imprinted on skin rather than separate eyeballs. There were no whites behind them, and a disturbing texture that compared to no other creature I knew. And yet they were still somehow so expressive.

I stared a little too long into the subtle strangeness behind its eyes. "Hey, don't look at me like that. I'm not saying you won't be able to talk, you'll just have to... figure out how to do it. In the meantime, what if you started to figure out a little bit more about who you are?"

It perked right up at my words. It must have liked something I said, becoming visibly cheerful again. "Your facial expressions need work too, but that's not something I'd expect you to pick up without practice. That took me a long time too. Body language is important for humans, but there's almost no empirical logic to it." I watched it nod along for a moment while I figured out how I was going to help it choose a fitting human shape. I began to wonder if I could actually train it well enough to pass as a human. That would necessitate teaching it to reshape into another color before anything, but the fact that its eyes were lit up in yellow made me think that it had to be possible. And if it could pass for human, I didn't want to explain why I had an identical twin walking around. "You have to figure out how to look like a human, but a unique one. Not a copy."

I needed to give it a reference. It had been leeching off of plenty of people's... minds? Thoughts? Souls? Who knows? But it hadn't been observing the physical variety of human forms for itself while we were out, mostly confined to my sweater. I pulled my phone from my pocket and flipped through to the web browser while Virtue slowly moved on uncertain legs to shuffle up beside me and look over my shoulder. "Here." I said, browsing through photos of people from the college's website. Like most schools, Brightcrest University liked to showcase a diverse cast of different people in their promotional material, so it was an ideal way to give Virtue ideas. "See? Human beings probably all look like we have a vaguely similar shape to you, but we have a wide variety of physical traits that make each of us distinct. You need to come up with some combination of those traits that's unique to you. Do you understand?"

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I flipped through the images blindly for it while I observed its reaction to my explanation. It was staring blankly at the screen, its eyes focused on the images, and I briefly wondered if maybe there was some aspect of its vision that wouldn't allow it to see the meaning behind the rapidly refreshing screen at all. What if this was just a fascinating flashing object to it, like it would be for some animals? It tilted its head at the screen, and I glanced back to see that I'd come to the end of the gallery and had been swiping at nothing for a moment, the screen stuck on an image of a younger child leaning over a desk with a pencil in hand while the text next to it described the school's education program. I started scrolling back the other way to give it another look at the variety of humans. "Do you understand?" I repeated, to which it nodded and gave an affirmative chirping noise.

I lowered the phone again and its eyes returned to meet mine. "You have to find a shape that's yours. You can't just look exactly like me, okay? Maybe just pick out some aspects of those people, or even the three of us between Coraline, Thomas, and I. Just take your favorite bits and put them together and I'll see if I can help you look convincing."

It nodded slowly. I wasn't sure if it understood why I was instructing it to do this, but it definitely understood what I wanted it to do. It seemed to ponder this for a moment, looking down at the floor in deep concentration. It let out quiet little rasping noises as it pondered what shape it should take. Before long, it had closed its eyes. And then it dissolved the mirror away, returning once more to a puddle of primordial shadow. I shrugged and gave it space to work. This time, however, it seemed to be taking its time much more carefully.

I hoped that it was taking this seriously. It was obvious that it was intelligent. Sapient. Not just an animal acting on instinct, like Thomas seemed to think. So it should have the capacity and probably even a desire to form its own identity. I hoped that it could piece something it could be proud of together rather than just borrowing from one of us directly like it had the last couple of times it assumed a human shape. I knew it had that in it, and that it would help it find further connections with humans. That was critical. I had to be sure that it could tell right from wrong, and I needed it to be able to maintain bonds with humans. It already seemed to have some grasp on what it should do. Like I'd guessed before, it had probably adopted some cryptic imitation of my own moral compass. I wasn't sure if it understood the point of it, though. I'd have to try to make it see the world from our point of view.

Wait. I frowned. Was I doing something wrong? I closed my eyes and spent a few moments in consideration. I had to stop and present the scenario to myself. Was it right to be pushing this thing to be something it's not? I mean, it's certainly to our advantage. But was it right? I was trying to imprint my... culture, for lack of a better term, onto an outside creature so that it could fit in. So that it was more like me. Did it even have a culture of its own? I groaned quietly. Was this one of those nuanced problems best left for scholars to figure out? Maybe I was overthinking this. Virtue seemed to be intrigued and happy to engage in making itself more human. It seemed like it was enriching, but was there some kind of insensitivity I was missing here? Perhaps I was trying to apply too much logic to this. This was something entirely alien to the concepts of ethics and culture.

I glanced back to the roiling pool of darkness. I suppose, in the end, I would just have to trust that Virtue knew what it wanted. I resolved not to judge. As long as whatever it came up with came out looking like a human being, I would accept it, even if it looked peculiar.

I drew in a breath and held it as the black puddle shifted dramatically. Then, just as before, a form began to rise up from it, and it was different this time. It took on different proportions. A more rounded face than my own, while a solid facsimile of long, wavy hair, not too dissimilar from my own, ran down from the top of its form, framing its face in messy bangs. But as its head rose up from the darkness, I couldn't help but note that the proportions felt... off. The rest of the body rose up quickly, a lean build with a flat chest coming up out of the primordial pool. I couldn't help but note that it didn't yet seem to be mimicking clothing, but I was relieved when its legs began to form. The space between its legs was completely neuter, which made sense in hindsight. I hadn't shown it any reference to human sexual characteristics, after all. By now, I was beginning to get a sense of why it seemed to have odd physical proportions.

Virtue had only snippets of human knowledge to draw from, but it had clearly absorbed something about human growth. It knew that it was an infantile creature. It knew it had much to learn and that it would be some time before it could truly understand what it means to be human. And so as its feet formed beneath it and its single pair of eyes formed where they should on its face, I felt surprised to find myself looking down at a black void in the approximate shape of an androgynous human child.

We stared at each other in silence for a few moments before it opened its mouth and let out a sharp chirp. Its mouth curled into a cherubic smile.

"Well..." I crossed my arms, inspecting the creature's work on its new form, "That's adorable. Are you sure that's what you want to look like, though? Obviously, you can change yourself whenever you feel like it, but is this something you feel you can identify with?" I asked. I wanted it to understand that I was asking it to make at least a semi-permanent, recognizable form that it could return to when it was at ease. I had told myself that I would accept whatever form it took, but I knew that if it could ever pass as a human being, that this would make my cover story for it... challenging.

It enthusiastically nodded its head, giving an excited rumbling noise as it leaned forward and wrapped its arms around my waist. I wasn't expecting it and had to take a step back to brace myself. And that's when the truth of Virtue's relationship with me became clear. I relaxed my arms to my side and let out a quiet, "Huh..." I couldn't help but feel a nervous smile crawl over my face at the absurdity of it.

Virtue saw me as a guide. It saw me as security, safety, and surety. It saw me as a bastion of what was right and wrong. I gave it patience, affection, and guidance. And it must have felt a powerful, trusting connection to me. Insane as it felt to admit it to myself, there was no mistaking it...

I was Virtue's mother.