It had happened before. Lashing out to defend ourselves. Pushing through the intrusion and it's smooth metal skin, striking out at the sky and stretching through the hidden places...

Crawling on the things THEY named 'hands' and 'knees', there is a wrongness, being divided into ones and never part of the one whole, dripping through cracks into the the light and sound and shapes. A tactile sensation on smooth glass causes a new voice to ring out. 

[Carter sits bolt upright in his bunk, his data pad had come loose and was playing a message from his wife. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he grabbed it out of the air, noting that the screen seems to have gotten wet, perhaps a brush with one of his plants? He rubbed his thumb over the spot, something strange passing over him, like he wasn't alone, he put it down to paranoia over the hull damage they'd repaired yesterday. He taps the screen, he cherished everything he got from his family and on occasion some things just personally between man and wife. Nothing that couldn't potentially pass through the techs back home but...]

It stayed there, watching with it's full attention, the other being was foreign, new, it affected this one physiologically, the stimulus causing a notable impact it's vitals. When it happened before. When THEY came before, there was only survival... THEY have a thing, an understanding 'animal', which is meant by the need to persist. Inseperable from the need to persist above all else. THEY are animal, like us but there is a wrongness to the hollow in seperation... But this? One and one, a connection, a link between beings in... 

A oneness. A capacity that had been hidden from us... A touch that was not animal, a state other than persistence... We must learn from it. From touch and feeling...

[He must have watched it a dozen times before he went back to sleep, her in a soft white night gown that could almost have him feeling the way she felt in his arms, squeezing her tight and wishing every second that she'd refuse to let go and they wouldn't be so far apart. What he was doing was important but space was very cold in the artificial night. He lay down, lights low as she whispered to him before bed, telling him about her and Luna and taking about what she remembers most from when they met... It was much easier to fall asleep together, even if it wasn't real.]

'Tomas' it was called by it's other half, slowing down and entering an inactive state. Pooling together we try something... New. Different. Absorbing what we have learnt we could speak like it spoke but that is not enough. Cool breath fills our lungs as we grow into shapes we only witnessed, becoming more as we see our new form, but unable to stick like the other beings, we bend and test limbs adrift in the open space as we grab hold of what we can. Tomas is secured and we grasp at the bindings pulling closer until we holdfast. Getting closer until these forms press, limbs and warmth... This way we feel the rhythm within the chest, aligning with it as we hover over face to face, feeling the tip of the nose and the way the small hairs on the eye feel to touch, and the lack of 'animal', the lack of things understood... How could it be this way? 

Hands move to skin and hair and to us, on our middle, curling around and holding as the eyes below flutter open. But not as they had in past times of persistent fear, the understood things, but the thumb that touched us came to our face again and we... Felt? Something new. A wetness came to those dark eyes and we lean in to taste. Learning so much, participating in the physiological processes that fills up that hollow where seperation lives. It... Tomas, pressed their mouths together. There was no basis to understand this. Filtering through everything seen and experienced, the most dominant memories insist that we are being bitten, open mouths and teeth and eating, but it feels... It feels. How can something be so opposite of what is known? Of what is. How can two be one. There was nothing outside of us and yet we are... Together? United? 

Blending in this new experience. Absorbing it. 

...it is part of us now... 

[Carter felt he'd died and gone to heaven, seeing his wife in her pyjamas, in his arms. Usually in these dreams he is back home on earth but he didn't mind. Holding her, kissing her and hearing her voice as she tells him those same things... He felt peaceful and didn't think much of the strange purple tint to her eyes as they embrace in a way that felt so far away, the colour was pretty. He could stay in this moment forever... Even if it wasn't real.]

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