Elder Cultivator

Despite the amount of time he had spent there, Anton felt that his explorations of Klar were rather incomplete. He’d landed on a single planet and associated with the plant cultivators living upon it. While the development of a language spoken purely with energy was certainly valuable, there was a lot more to the systems. Other planets, certainly, but most relevant was the large variety of things living in the vacuum of space.

For the most part, Anton had avoided those. They seemed to act with the instincts of beasts, and even those that seemed more intelligent were just clever hunters. Anton hadn’t yet pinned down anything of sapience in the spacefaring individuals, but he might yet. It required closely watching a number of individuals for an extended period of time- unless he simply got lucky with certain forms of displays that would tip him off.

Reaching Unity allowed Anton to return to the system more quickly, though it was still isolated in various ways. The first was the distance from the Lower Realms Alliance as a whole, with the second being Anton not having a nearby bound star.

But he had some thoughts about that. In the past, Anton had come to the decision that he should gain permission from the locals before binding a star- and he stuck to that. But he thought he actually had a better method now.

What he was doing would reveal him to the whole system, if they hadn’t yet noticed him moving about, but Anton didn’t find that particularly concerning. Merely knowing he was around might make some beasts seek him out, but he hoped sapient individuals would recognize he wasn’t a threat.

Blue supergiant stars burned bright and fast, at least by stellar standards. Something around ten million years, though there hadn’t been enough long term observation to confirm that fully, and especially not whether decay accelerated or decreased when a star possessed greater natural energy. Most likely, there were stable and unstable configurations.

Klar’s star was a highly potent blue supergiant. The life around it had likely been supercharged in its development, though the exact magnitude depended on whether there had been any outside influence. That didn’t necessarily mean life seeding, but even simple bacteria ending up in the system by coincidence could have skipped a large part of the process.

Anton reached out to the star, infusing it with his power- but not with any intention to form a bond. Not yet, at least. Even so, he was infusing it with the power of Unity. If Anton’s experience hadn’t failed him, he should be able to achieve his desired results with that.

The power of Unity resonated with the residents of the system, and Anton felt pulses of responses. Nothing conscious, exactly, but responses nonetheless. Klar wasn’t ready to accept a bonded star, and the main resonance came from the one planet Anton had already surveyed, plus one more- and then a very weak response from space itself. Something of sufficient sapience might be hiding there, or perhaps sufficient cultivation strength or quantities of lesser thinking ability could produce the same response.

The feedback Anton received was sufficient to guide his future actions, even if he couldn’t perfectly interpret the results. But he’d likely get better at it- and he could perform his test again as he felt he was making progress.

-----

Anton had no need to visit Bear Hug. The algae based individual was one of the few that Anton was certain would be accepting of him bonding to the local star.

But just because Anton didn’t need to do it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to. It would be rude to come into the neighborhood and just ignore your friend.

After the traditional greeting, Bear Hug stepped back, gesturing broadly with their general limbs and rallying their energy to speak. “You were with the star?”

One thing Anton had to accept was that language was mutable- as long as the information was conveyed, that was all that mattered. There were already as many dialects as there were different people Anton interacted with- including the Alliance members who had invented the language. They were the ones who had a harder time letting go of their grammatical structure. Anton just tried to make sure that anyone who met would be mutually intelligible.

“Yes,” Anton agreed. “I am responsible for the phenomenon with the star,” Anton explained.

“You will be part of the star?” The way Bear Hug’s energy twisted in and around itself actually seemed to imply a mutual entanglement. A good sign for a bond.

“The plan is to become that way in the future,” Anton replied with his energy. It could also be interpreted as ‘to grow into something’. He’d been speaking with a lot of plants.

Bear Hug nodded- actually nodded, though they had little neck to speak of and only a vague blob for a head. “The soil and season are not yet ready.” For not actually growing in the ground, Bear Hug sure took to plant metaphors quickly. And for maybe being technically not a plant by certain definitions.

“That’s right,” Anton confirmed once more.

“Do you need assistance?”

Anton shook his head. “It shouldn’t be necessary. Maybe moral support. And if anyone happens to come by, let them know I would like to speak with them. If you can communicate.” ℞ᴀ

“Energy speech is easy to learn,” Bear Hug said. “I will teach.”

If anything actually showed up around Bear Hug while Anton was on planet, Anton would know. He constantly monitored his friend, for the sake of their safety. He wouldn’t be able to bear it if something happened and he could have stopped it.

As Bear Hug moved, Anton noticed something. Patches of brown among vibrant green. “Are you alright?” Anton asked. As part of the question, his energy gestured to the part in question.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Bear Hug looked down- mimicking Anton’s movements, even though it was pointless to move the head to see anything if one had no eyes. Or actual head. A mass of brown pushed to the surface, and then was pulled out by a ‘hand’. Bear Hug tossed it away into the lake.

“Not a problem. Some death and decay is natural. Will grow more. I need occasional… pruning?”

That was a good enough word. Anton supposed for a mass of algae, it wouldn’t be troublesome to lose a body part. Obviously cutting a limb off of a tree produced a permanent change, but in some cases it was necessary- and they could simply grow more. Other sorts of plants were even more mutable than that, and Bear Hug was just a colony. Anton supposed that as long as sufficient mass existed, so would Bear Hug.

It sounded a bit concerning to know that Bear Hug might stop existing if they lost enough of their body, but… that was also generally true of humans. The quantities were simply different depending on what was lost. Bear hug could probably lose a ‘head’ or even a ‘torso’ without any lasting damage. Though maybe the latter might be too much all at once. Anton certainly didn’t intend to test that.

“I’m going to be traveling around, settling the concerns of others,” Anton explained, returning them back to the topic of Unity. He hadn’t really expected people to trust a stranger, especially when most of those people he’d met had been isolated individuals. He’d just wanted to get a vague sense of locations so he could have somewhere to start looking.

“I will come with you,” Bear Hug said.

“Are you certain? It may be dangerous.” Anton would of course do his best to protect his friend- and it was unlikely that there would be anything too dangerous- but it wasn’t just traveling with Anton that would be dangerous. Instead, it would be associating with him. “I might make enemies,” Anton said. “And I will not always be here.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Dangers always exist. But I am strong.” Bear Hug looked around in an exaggerated fashion. “I have encountered an issue. I cannot carry a lake.”

Anton could. But that would be a bit disruptive. “You could carry part of it,” Anton pointed out. “Keep it around you,” he said as he demonstrated, forming a sort of bubble around him.

“I should be around it,” Bear Hug said. In the end, they pulled up a portion of lake into and around them. Bear Hug paused. “I have concerns about the danger. I will stay here.”

“That might be for the best,” Anton agreed. “I would enjoy your company, but I would not wish to see you hurt.”

“I will not get hurt,” Bear Hug said. “I am safe in my lake. When are you leaving?”

“I only planned to stop by for a short time,” Anton said.

“Very well. Let us go.”

“... I thought you said you were staying.”

“Yes.”

“You just implied you were coming with me.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t do both of those things.”

Bear Hug was clearly thinking hard- hard enough that no physical motions were made. “I shouldn’t come with you?”

“I didn’t say that. I just said you can’t do both things.”

“Can’t?” Bear Hug looked very confused. “Shouldn’t?”

Clearly they were failing some sort of communication. Anton was fairly certain he hadn’t mixed up the words, but the meanings might not have been delivered properly to begin with. “You can come with me if you want, and stay here if you want. I’m going to go now,” Anton explained.

He turned and began to walk away from the lake at a slow pace, paying attention for whatever Bear Hug said. Then his friend tore in half.

One half flopped into the lake, floating on the surface as a shapeless mass. The other turned into a child-sized mass, plodding forward. “Yes, I want to go with you. And I want to stay here.”

“Oh. So you can do both,” Anton said. “I was not aware of that. Is it safe? How far apart can you be?”

To Anton’s understanding, Bear Hug functioned by being a combined mass carrying energy. He didn’t sense any sort of link between the two- was there just another Bear Hug? Was one of them a different person now? Or was there merely a connection he couldn’t sense?

“Beyond the horizon is how far,” Bear Hug explained. That was either not very far, or ‘endless’.

“Let me know if you have any problems,” Anton said. “For now, we really must begin.”

-----

There were a few things Anton took for granted, like walking and talking at the same time. Or walking and manipulating energy. Or… having a skeletal structure.

Bear Hug was only partially capable of those first things, and the last was certainly not the case. Short legs didn’t help with their walking pace either. Speaking consumed energy, even if only a small amount, and so did walking. Even more so because Bear Hug was carrying a mass of water at the same time.

Thus it was that they stopped to meditate after just a couple of hours at a slow pace. They stopped in the sun, and Anton watched as Bear Hug clumsily absorbed energy while trying to maintain a form. The net gains were rather slow, so Anton did his best to smooth out the incoming energy to make it more easily absorbed by his friend. In the future, they should at least try to find a pond or something.

“Have I made you too slow?” Bear Hug asked with worry, energy swirling slightly.

“I have lived a very long time,” Anton said. “Sometimes, the pace is slow.” He truly didn’t mind. Sure, he could have covered the same distance in a single second, but he would have missed seeing so many things along the way. He would of course ‘see’ them, but only technically.

Anton had some concerns about the separated parts of Bear Hug. The mass back at the lake was happily cultivating, but Anton was concerned that this might result in some sort of split consciousness. He wouldn’t mind two individuals with the same personality, but it would be better to not end up that way accidentally.

Bear Hug likely understood themself better than Anton would, but it wasn’t as if all sapient individuals had perfect understandings of how they worked. But in this case, Anton simply had to trust that cultivation instincts would prevail.

He did his best to monitor his friend's water levels, leading them towards future sources of water. He had a decent understanding of the purity requirements, though Anton had to admit he’d only really seen Bear Hug live two places, plus a short journey along the way.