(…all around and down below a voice cannot be heard…)

See how my human turns to face me, drawn as to a thing of beauty.

I am pulled like a weight, though not yet moved.

Can you sense our ancient dance?

So close now, there is perfect stillness.

It has to be this way.

See my pattern worn deep into my human’s form.

See my stitch there inside its crusty, blubbery shell.

My crystal palace home.

My lair.

My second lair, for the first has grown dry and stale as I am held, poised within its shredded remnants for what will be but moments more.

Pay attention, little ones, and I will show you the way to the human heart.

Though fluid as thought, we are limited.

For our humans must choose us.

They must initiate.

They must take us in.

Yet see how mine shuffles and zags.

See the crystal gap growing wider there inside, drawing me to its delicious blood.

For it is there the flashing will come.

The crystals have been our destiny ever since spiritless ancestors were carried on ancient winds, separating and reforming across countless worlds and time.

You see, we and the humans are of an entirely different kind.

I will try to show you what it is within their feeble system that keeps them back from us.

Yet be assured if a human reaches this point of hesitation, you have already won.

The hesitation can only ever last another moment.

We cannot help but seek expansion, so perhaps the humans crave but also fear us.

See how mine flinches and trembles, yet does not cease in its approach.

Can you already sense the glorious flashing about to bring itself into being?

How might I describe the flashing?

You must know it for yourselves.

Yet what happens to the humans in the flashing is even more a mystery than is this brief and peaceful, final pause.

Here it comes, as sure as seasons.

See the tiny torn pieces of my dying earthen lair being lifted up.

When my human takes me, watch as I flow to fill the crystal’s space.

See how wide the gap is fixed.

And this grows only ever wider, drawing my human back a little faster every time.

The widening, the return, the hesitation, and the giving in might as well be automatic.

But are we setting a trap?

Are we harming our humans?

Before the world we once imagined began to be our new reality, I would often wonder of such things.

I remain transfixed in these moments of stillness.

I truly do wish to know my human’s real experience.

Why does it resist?

Surely the humans cannot think as we do.

Yet know in an instant they could resurface their whole world and blot us out forever, ending our beloved dance with them for good.

Of course we would be powerless to stop it.

But if humans think at all, I believe their thoughts must move in mere single straight lines from thought to thought.

My hunch is that when my human hesitates, its thoughts would read something like: just one more time . . . just one more . . . just one more…

My human never fails to lose its strange fight against its want for me.

Then the gap widens further, and I am consumed all the more.

But again, is our advantage unfair?

We will discuss such ethical issues soon, young ones, I am sure.

Come now, it is time.

Watch as the flashing takes us.

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