Let There Be Light: Sc.03


                                            ”You know something,”

                                            >you say around a mouthful of apple, then pause to chew and swallow.

                                            >Noire looks at you with a blank and distant half-smile, as you do.

                                            >You wave the half-eaten apple at her.

                                            “Apples are nice and all, but I can’t just tell you about the food. We gotta make it accessible to the creatures to come.”

                                            >”How would that be?”

                                            >You look out a kitchen window.

                                            >Outside, the landscape has turned into a vast field of wheat, atop the cliffs that define what you had yesterday made an island, after the fjord-gale incident.

                                            “The bread you’ve made for me the last couple days – well, that you spontaneously created – isn’t just from raw wheat, there’s a process. But there’s a ton of food that just comes from nature. We’re gonna need a lot of it for everything to live on.”

                                            >Her attention snaps to the here-and-now.”This makes sense. Food cannot simply appear for life to be nourished, lest they grow fat and lazy.”

                                            “Yeah. Well, for the ones that don’t eat each other.”

                                            >”Oh?”

                                            “Yeah. Predation. Carnivores and herbivores. I’m a carnivore, at least partially; some things are both. Keeps populations in check and stuff, enables different developments I guess. I’m not a biologist. Carnivores are like… think of a black hole swallowing a star. Some things can only sustain themselves by feeding on others somewhat like them.

                                            >”Again, this makes sense. It sounds like the world from which you came is one tightly regulated by mutual feedback loops on scales beyond easy interference.”

                                            “Yeah, you could put it that way.”

                                            >You lean back and regard her after another bite of apple.

                                            “You have a way of picking up on things just beyond my attempts to explain. Bread’s a kinda complicated thing that I don’t really understand fully, but you’re able to recreate it as I remember. Same with this.”

                                            >You shake the almost-finished apple for emphasis.

                                            >”Your speech is a simple - yet elegant - form of conceptual transmission. I am not limited by your processes of indirectly extracting meaning from it.”

                                            “What is that, mind-reading lite?”

                                            >She shakes her head. “You have to attempt to communicate a concept for me to receive it, and if you do a bad enough job, it gets… jumbled. I do not know why; language is a mechanism I do not have an intuitive grasp of, born as it is from your limitations.”

                                            “You handle it well enough, even if a bit stiff.”

                                            >She inclines her head and smiles, putting her horn front and center in your view. “Thank you.”

                                            “Is there any way I can help the process?”

                                            >You notice that when you speak, the spiral inlaid up the length of her curved horn glows slightly with an orange light.

                                            >Some indication of her powers?

                                            >She extends her neck forward, indicating the twin bowls of apple varieties and Portuguese rolls with her nose. “When you imagine what you describe, how it looks and feels and tastes, what goes into it, how it’s made, that helps.”

                                            >She looks back to you now, her nose still extended, staring at your arm still holding the apple core. “When you described carnivory, you indicated to me that you are made of meat, but also that you would never describe yourself as such outside specific context.”

                                            >Her breath on your skin is just as reminiscent of a campfire ‘s heat as her mane and tail is of its smoke, coming in rippling waves as she speaks rather than gusts as breath should.

                                            >You wonder if a spark might leap from her nostrils at you, even as she pulls her head back to continue speaking. “The mechanisms of your physical form establish characteristics from which I can infer the rest. The rest I may, perhaps at some point in my greater nonlinear existence, intervene to repair at the moment of creation.”

                                            “How much about my, uh, physical form do you know?”

                                            >”Unlike your… essence, your form is a manifestation entirely amenable to existence in this realm, partially by my design.”

                                            “Right. Because you knew I would be coming, even if you didn’t know what I was.”

                                            >”Correct. It is how I was able to tailor this world to your requirements. The form I have adopted is also based on your physiology, indirectly, via the creatures you design, which I will have to… ‘make work’ based on your biology.”

                                            “Yeah, most mammals back home are pretty much the same junk rearranged.”

                                            >”Good. I was hoping that would be the case.”

                                            “Ah, right. The Forgetting.”

                                            >“An educated guess, based on similarities in arrangement of your body and my own.”

                                            >You look down at the bread and apples in shock.

                                            “Oh, damn. I’ve been rude, then. You need to eat, don’t you?”

                                            >“I do not need to, but I am capable.”

                                            “Well here, try one.”

                                            >You offer her an apple from the bowl, a yellow one rather than the red you’d been preferring.  It hardly mattered, really; each apple was so perfectly-formed that the reds had the perfect waxy sheen, and the yellow ones almost shone like gold.

                                            >She takes it within a bubble of orange light, then levitates it towards her mouth.

                                            >The spiral of her horn lights orange to match; it’s definitely indicating her powers, then.

                                            >The bubble doesn’t seem to impede, or perhaps opens for, her bite.

                                            >Her face lights up.

                                            >”It is delicious!”

                                            “I assumed you’d already know how it tasted, since you had to make it that way.”

                                            >”Knowing, Anon, is different than experiencing.”

                                            “Well some day we’ll have to outfit this kitchen, so I can cook for you. There’s a lot of food you should experience, and as nice as manifesting the Platonic ideal of a dish may be, there’s something special about home cooking.”

                                            >”What might that be?”

                                            >You shrug.

                                            “Life’s imperfections heighten it.”

                                            >”I will keep that in mind.”

                                            >You look back, expecting one of her warm – perhaps literally so, remembering the sensation of her breath – smiles, but instead she looks contemplative.

                                            >Hope she’s not getting any bad ideas.

                                            “Well, lets secure us a supply of more. If we want to be genuine, we should really make some trees for these to grow on. The more natural, the more chances for those imperfections.”

                                            >”A reasonable assumption. Let us go.”

                                            >You take a roll as you stand and head for the door.

                                            >Noire starts to follow behind, but stops, prompting you to as well.

                                            >She looks at the bowl of apples for a few moments, before selecting a red one and levitating it behind her, resuming her stride in your wake.

                                            >Outside, a path opens up in the seemingly-endless expanse of wheat, leading towards the center of the island.

                                            >You start down the path, regarding the roll in your hand.

                                            “You know, I have no idea what they’ll call these. There won’t be a Portugal or a Hawaii here.”

                                            >”There will not?”

                                            “Nah, I don’t want this place to become a copy of Earth. Uh, that’s where I came from. In fact, I don’t want any of me running around at all. I want to make something different; if we put a bunch of humans here they’ll probably just take over this place like we took over back home.”

                                            >”Perhaps they will name them after whatever area creates them in this world, instead. We could establish conditions for the same names to emerge, if you’d like.”

                                            “I’d rather not, but I’ve already told you I’m not very creative. There’ll probably be similarities.”

                                            >You shake your head.

                                            “I don’t know if other humans will ever end up here like I did, but man, I hope they understand if that’s the case. ‘Sorry dudes, the Empress’ muse was just retarded’.”

                                            >A giggle from behind you. “Please, Anon. I can appreciate the humor – those concepts transmit too – but I would prefer if you did not insult yourself in my presence.”

                                            “That’s gonna be a tough habit to break.”

                                            >”At least make an attempt. For my sake.”

                                            “Fine, I could try. For your sake.”

                                            >”I will also remember that you do not wish human proliferation on this world. I shall arrange things so you and others that may share your circumstances remain unique.”

                                            “Probably for the best.”

                                            >”It sounds like there was quite a variety though, if you have two different names even for a single type of bread. Can you tell me of some?”

                                            “I’ll, uh, do my best.”

                                            >You spend much of the hours-long trek to the center of the island in dialogue, regaling Noire with superficial overviews of different human cultures. You can tell the ‘concept transmission’ does a lot of work you wouldn’t be able to; she asks a lot of deeper questions on topics you didn’t address. You do your best to answer, but wonder how much gets fouled up, as she said may happen if you do a poor enough job explaining.

                                            >It didn’t feel like hours, by the time the path she made ends.

                                            >”This is approximately the center. How do you wish to proceed?”

                                            >You stand, hands on your hips, surveying the area.

                                            >Besides Noire’s path stopping, and a roughly circular interruption in the gentle hills you allowed remain across much of the island’s expanse, it isn’t much different than the rest of the sea of grains.

                                            “Well, to start,”

                                            >You wave your hand over the flatter circle.

                                            “Lets clear this out.”

                                            >As soon as you say it, the grain disappears, replaced with the same soft grass that first welcomed you to this world.

                                            “Nice. Alright. A lot of this stuff grows on trees, but trees take up a lot of space, and I don’t know how well they live together.”

                                            >”We have plenty of space. You made this island quite large enough for the purposes of limited-scale experimentation.”

                                            “Yeah, but I don’t know how much space we’ll need elsewhere. There’s a potential solution though.”

                                            >”What would that be?”

                                            ”Back home, you could stick pieces of one tree onto a different tree and it’d still grow normally. Grafting, we called it. I don’t know what trees will work with which for grafts, but if we’re experimenting we can simplify it, leave the nitty-gritty for, uh, ‘production’ I guess. How about we just make one big tree, and work with it like it’s had all the other kinds of trees grafted to it?”

                                            >”I could make a biological exception for just this case, yes. I will remember the concept of grafting for future, wider creation.”

                                            “Cool. I told you about apples mostly because they were the first that came to mind. First letter of the alphabet and all. There’s a ton of different ones, but for our base, apples will do fine. Lets get a big ol’ apple tree. Huge. Right there.”

                                            >You point to the middle of the circle.

                                            >As soon as you do, a little sprout shoots up.

                                            >Then continues to shoot up.

                                            >You watch decades of growth happen in the span of a few minutes, a massive tree unfolding from the little sapling.

                                            >The groaning of rapidly-growing wood fills your ears, even as the earth below your feet ripples with the expansion of thousands of roots.

                                            >Leaves expand from branches in all directions, growing, greening, then browning and falling away in instants, a cycle happening so fast they seem to be a blur, each discarded one disintegrating before it falls any appreciable distance.

                                            >Apples behave much the same, ripening in seconds only to drop from the tree into nothingness, vanishing as soon as they depart their stems.

                                            >The constantly-forming blossoms leave their scent, however, filling the space with an aroma as wonderful as it is powerful, flooding your sinuses.

                                            >Fortunately, the pollen does not similarly clog your nostrils.

                                            >You walk backwards to Noire’s side as it grows.

                                            >When you can finally pry your eyes from the sight, you look over to her.

                                            >Her spread stance stabilizes her, though even with the roots writhing underfoot you have little trouble keeping your balance.

                                            >Her eyes are closed, and she wears that same smile you’re coming to associate with her, while her sides heaving as she breathes deep the scents of the blooms and foliage and bark.

                                            >That stance means her expansive wings are lifted slightly from her body, for once revealing her plain sides and back, a flat dark grey only marked by the gloss of her coat.

                                            >The apple she took with her, no longer nestled between her wings, now balanced on her back, quivering with the gentle motions of the ground she’s standing on.

                                            >Contrasted against her plain hide are those wings, the near-black color of the larger feathers differentiated from the lesser ones that match her smoky coat.

                                            >Subtle waves of orange move down the length of those longer black feathers, matching gentle fires at the base of her mane and tail, and add to her appearance as impressive as the other sight unfolding before you, though much more subtle.

                                            >You remember back to that moment of revelation, seeing her true form.

                                            >More subtle is perhaps for the best.

                                            >But impressive appearance aside, if her body’s based on biology you later describe, or that she copies from your own, the bulk of her form must be like any other animal.

                                            >Right?

                                            >You reach out, slow, uncertain, to touch her exposed shoulder.

                                            >A twitch of very real muscle greets your contact.

                                            >Not enough to upset her stance, but it does disturb the apple, which falls towards you.

                                            >You lift your hand off her side just in time to catch it, then sheepishly try to place it back on her spine.

                                            >You can’t quite get the balance right, but it becomes enveloped in that orange glow, as does the tips of your fingers, as she guides them to put the apple back as it was before.

                                            >You look to her face, with a weak expression of apology.

                                            >One eye’s opened to look at you, but her smile has not changed, even as the tree grows huge enough for its shadow to sweep across her face, and then your own eyes.

                                            “Ah, sorry.”

                                            >She looks down at her shoulder. “It was… important. Knowledge against experience.”

                                            “Yeah. Sure. Wasn’t my intent. Was just wondering, honestly.”

                                            >She looks back to you, her smile still holding. “Your curiosity was not unwelcome, and perhaps was inevitable.”

                                            “Well there was probably no way we weren’t going to touch at some point, in the time we spend together, so no reason I shouldn’t, you know, to get it out of the way.”

                                            >”Your rationalizations may make this more awkward than it need be.”

                                            “Er, yeah. Probably.”

                                            >The groaning of wood dies down, and the tree’s shadow ceases expanding somewhere behind the two of you.

                                            >You look back, and step back in awe at its monumental proportions.

                                            >Its final size dwarfs some buildings you’ve worked in before, or may have worked in, considering who you might have been back home. While not unnaturally large for a tree in general, it’s certainly the biggest you’ve seen.

                                            >You don’t really know apples, but you get the feeling this is far larger than apple trees could be expected to get.

                                            >Perfectly ripe red fruit, matching the apple Noire took with her, fill its branches.

                                            “Wow. Alright. First, lets diversify those apples. Every variety.”

                                            >A wave of color races through the branches, changing the uniform red apples into many different kinds.

                                            “Neat. Nice. Okay. We can change some branches to be other fruits entirely as we get to them.”

                                            >”This tree need not match any possible biological construct.”

                                            “Right. We can make it a freak of nature. Or, un-nature. A divine tree.”

                                            >“What do we burden it with next?”

                                            “I guess we can start by going through the alphabet, then fill in the rest as I think of them. We’ve already got an A. So, B. Uh, bananas or berries are obvious. Hrm.”

                                            >She looks between you and the tree after you fall silent. “What is wrong?”

                                            “Well, banana trees are really different. I guess they’re not really trees, if I remember right. And most berries grow on bushes.”

                                            >”Perhaps it was wise to create a single large tree for the experiment, then. We still have plenty of space in this flatter area for smaller plants.”

                                            “Yeah, true. Alright, lets scatter some banana plants around it.”

                                            >Smaller shoots, very different than the first, sprout up, then grown into banana trees. You watch the leaves stitch themselves together around the stalk to protect the trunk, flowers branching off, fruiting into banana pods.

                                            >Lesser plants of many varieties sprout up between, filling themselves with several types of berries.

                                            >Something about them…

                                            >You squint.

                                            >Blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries-

                                            >Oh, hah!

                                            >They’re all berries whose names start with ‘B’.

                                            “Cheeky girl.”

                                            >You look back to Noire.

                                            >She’s giving you a silly grin.

                                            >”If your conceptual leakage can help inform it, why deviate from your alphabetical method?”

                                            >You reach out again, and pat her on her shoulder, her wing moving away from your arm to give you the space.

                                            “Hah. Yeah, why.”

                                            >You walk into the not-so-cleared clearing.

                                            “Alright, so, C. Uh, cantaloupe? Oh boy, how to find some room for melons. Maybe we should do cherries…”