Starblight. LOG-003.

Starblight.

LOG-003.

The fashion that came about from what was effectively a small civilisation of scavengers was…interesting.

My daughters had all naturally started out with nothing, even if that hadn’t seemed to bother them all that much initially, but as they’d explored the various settlements left behind from the minor apocalypse my own birth had seemingly wrought, they started to experiment with clothing.

The early days of some of my more daring spawn crashing what I could only assume were hotwired vehicles through the fronts of clothing stores and looting everything inside were over now, though. Mostly because some of the clever ones had apparently figured out how to unlock the doors to said stores.

They found weapons, too. Which had worried me initially, but my descendants were apparently far more productive about their use than just about any human could be.

Namely because they used them for opening things up rather than anything resembling warfare. Thus, where locks refused to open to electronic means, firepower was applied.

The sight of a trio of daughters setting up some kind of energy blaster emplacement in front of what I could only assume was a bunker while a crowd of spectators excitedly watched had been amusing, and all of them rushing inside the building after it’s entrance had been blown open and cooled down was even more so.

Right up until they’d found the corpses, anyway.

That had been…mildly sobering. The shapes had all been slightly desiccated upon being exposed to the thin but open air, and the sheer variety among them had further reinforced the idea that multiple species had lived here.

The reaction to dead people by my children was…interesting. There was some level of what seemed to be pity there, but they hadn’t hesitated in stripping the corpses of their clothing and valuables, before seemingly hosting a small assembly.

All while they left the dozen or so dead people close to one of my lingering tendrils.

It felt…right. Which made it feel wrong. Instinct evidently surging against morality, even as one of my countless gaping maws slowly inched closer to the makeshift funeral.

In the end, I’d eaten the slightly decayed biomass amidst murmuring from my daughters, even if I’d felt horrible about it throughout the process.

One slightly larger daughter wearing what I was fairly certain was a refashioned bathrobe had moved and embraced the overgrown tendril after the act, murmuring something about rebirth, but whether she was being literal or whether my kids were on the verge of figuring out religion was something I couldn’t be sure of just yet.

—

“This assembly is formed by attendance of the explorator hosts of the thirty five lost cities, to further decide how we shall further progress and adapt as not just a Zynhost, but as a society! Are all attending leaders in agreement with this?!”

Elunarieth resisted the urge to poke at her scavenged datapad, doing her level best to focus on the figure of Zynatrixvelyn shouting out to the countless Zynari around them, what she was pretty sure had once been some kind of stadium for something serving as an adequate assembly area for the abnormally large gathering.

“Why did we have to attend here!? Why couldn’t it have been in another city!?”

Zynari, the name they had all eventually chosen to be used in the referral of their species.

“Because this one is the biggest! And it has what the science sisters are calling a major communication tower! Which means what we decide here can be sent to the other cities too!”

Or well, the females of their species. Father had been dubbed a Zynarch to, if nothing else, distinguish him. The fact that the Zynhost only had one male and millions of females didn’t matter, distinction was still an important matter when it came to biology.

“Okay that’s fair!”

Just where they’d come up with the terms was as similar a mystery as to where they’d pulled their various names from just a little after their mass birth. Her own personal theory was some kind of inherent genetic memory, or maybe something to do with psionics, though she hadn’t managed to prove the existence of the latter beyond theory just yet.

“First thing on the agenda, have any of your gathered science sisters figured out how we can reach the stars yet!?

After all, language wasn’t something you were supposed to spawn with. And yet everyone here was fluent in Zynish the very day they were born-

“Hey, Elu. You’re science caste, right? Maybe you can figure out how to get us up there!”

Turning to blink slowly at the excited figure (a scout belonging to the visiting delegation from the nearby city to the East) sat next to her, Elunarieth pondered the thought, before giving her honest feelings on the matter.

“I…kind of want to do that. It’d be nice to know what’s up there. But I have a project I also want to get done first.”

The scout blinked back at her, before tilting her head, tentacles swaying with the motion.

“And what’s that?”

Ignoring the continued ranting of the gathered leader caste near the center of the stadium the scientist hesitantly turned her datapad around, showing off her latest findings.

“I’ve gotten together with a few other science caste, and we think there might be a way for father to talk to us without bursting all of our eardrums.”

The scout (she really needed to get her name at some point) glanced down at the text scrolling across the screen, before looking back up at her with a confused expression.

“I don’t know what that means.”

Elunarieth blinked again.

“You haven’t learned how to read yet?”

Her fellow Zynari shrugged defensively.

“I was busy exploring! These clothes don’t find themselves, you know?”

Rolling her eyes and ignoring the scout’s stretching of the jacket adorning her frame, Elunarieth lowered her datapad and waved a hand.

“Psionics. Me and a few others decrypted some of the old people’s databanks, and some of them, depending on species and capability, could supposedly tap into an art called psionics, which included speaking to someone with your mind.”

The explanation earned her a stare that made her feel tired.

“What’s a databank?”

Ugh. Scouts.