Umemag's Exploration

A ripple spread out across the astral carrying a pleasant flavor and I turned to toward its origin. A material shown there with bright light and I crawled to it alongside several of my kin. We gathered around the shining material and we pushed our fingers though its skin and we began to eat its pleasant flesh.

Within the material several nodules shone more strongly than their surroundings. I left them to my larger kin and I ate the surrounding flesh that shone brightly enough for me. Several of my smaller kin pulled their fingers back in pain and I noticed several pieces of gristle gathered around the shining nodules.

The gristle bit into the fingers of my kin that drew close but the gristle drew away from the fingers of my larger kin before they could be bitten back. The gristle cast light into the shining nodules and they shone so brightly the material shook and its skin hardened.

The material's skin tightened around my fingers and made it difficult for me to move them. I tried to pull my fingers out of the material but I could not and the gristle gathered around them and bit them until they could not move or eat at all. I tried to bite the skin away from my fingers but I could not find purchase. Even my larger kin could not free themselves.

My larger kin gathered their strength and I nibbled slowly on what scraps of flesh my fingers could touch. I broke the flesh apart slowly and carefully and ate each piece individually. This material did not taste very different from other materials I had eaten from and I could not tell how this material had caught me or my kin.

I could not stretch out to other materials so I continued to fruitlessly nibble. My fingers were not caught near one of the shining nodules and I could not feel any gristle around me so there was little I could focus on. Like other materials the material I was caught on had fluid tissues and solid tissues and motile tissues and I wished my fingers were closer to less familiar things.

My larger kin let out their gathered strength and tore into the material's thick skin. Their fingers and my fingers and the fingers of my smaller kin were shook lose and we returned to eating. I moved my fingers over to one of the shining nodules and began to break it apart piece by piece.

The gristle rose around the shining nodules again and they grew hot and burned my fingers and they seared the holes my larger kin had torn in the material's skin closed again. Once again I was caught in the material and I could not leave it. This time, however, I was caught near one of the shining nodules so even though I could not move my fingers and even though I could barely eat anything, I had something I had not eaten before to nibble on.

It was even harder to nibble on the shining nodule than it had been to nibble on the surrounding flesh but I was able to break small pieces of it off and eat them. It took a long time but I was able to learn a small amount about the shining nodules and I was amazed. The light from the shining nodules thickened the material's skin and repaired it when we struggled. Though it was a very pleasant and tasty light, it held us here trapped in this material.

I had never tasted a similar light so I indulged myself as much as I could in the flesh of this material that produced it. I broke down the surrounding flesh carefully and was surprised to find that it did not taste like the shining nodules at all. The flesh I had eaten before and the flesh around the shining nodules tasted similar, but the shining nodules did not taste at all like the rest of this material's flesh.

I nibbled even more carefully and found a trace of the nodule's light in a motile lump of the material. I could not nibble the motile material when it moved away from the nodule but when it drew closer I broke pieces off of it as carefully as I could and ate them. Occasionally the motile material shared some of its light with the shining nodule and when it did the shining nodule pulsed weakly with its own light.

I remembered the gristle that had made the nodules shine before and wondered if that gristle had also been motile material like this little lump. Before I had not thought to examine motile material any more closely than fluid material or solid material, so I did not know that it could create things like these shining nodules. I decided to examine any motile material I could reach as closely as I could.