One-Eye-Green knew that Blue was a Big Thing but trying to understand the knowledge that he’d given them made her think that he was even bigger a Big Thing than she thought. The ideas were so big that she couldn’t keep them all in her head which was strange because normally it took lots and lots of different ideas before that happened. But Blue seemed to have many and many of the really big ideas, and just kept giving them more.

Secretly One-Eye-Green had been wondering if Blue was actually going to help them since while Big Brother and Big Sister liked the cavern that Blue had given them, and it had water and food, and everyone could go hunt in the tunnels, nobody had Status yet. Even though she was doing things with Shayma and Keri and Annit and learning a lot it wasn’t the same as Status. Now that Blue had decided to bestow— that was Blue’s word. She liked the way it sounded in her head. Bestow. Now that Blue had bestowed the knowledge upon them, she was sure they could get it.

Even if it was still confusing.

Big Brother and Big Sister called everyone into a single Sharing, which hadn’t happened in a while. Even though all the Brothers of Burden were doing the heavy lifting of keeping everyone connected it was still so very loud. Partly because people kept asking her about it! She wasn’t Big Brother or Big Sister but since she had been there and she was the one who spoke to Shayma she was actually kind of important which was strange.

Big Brother started putting ideas in order in the Sharing. Other Brothers helped, building a long fuzzy chain of concepts that everyone could look at, held in the Brothers’ heads. The Scythe Sisters were there to ruthlessly cut away frivolous ideas at Big Sister’s direction, keeping the architecture of what Blue had told them free of confusion. They didn’t have anything to fill it yet but Big Brother showed them the shape of what the entire future could look like, if they could start filling out the first steps.

“Blue has given us knowledge as someone who has raised civilizations,” Big Brother told the Sharing. “He believes, with good reason, that we must embark on that process in order to receive Status and stop being monsters. There are benefits beyond that. One-Eye-Green has gone out among the civilized and seen what they can create,” he continued, and she obliged by Sharing some of her memories of Wildwood and the Village.

“We can take inspiration from what she has seen, and Cuts-Like-Cold and I have done, but he was very clear that we must make our own path. To follow someone else’s path is to become them. To let someone else plan our path, even Blue, would be to become their pet.” One-Eye-Green bobbed in place. Big Brother was so smart! She understood what Big Brother was saying before but she wouldn’t have been able to put it well herself.

“One thing that is clear is that we can no longer simply subsist as we are. Hunting alone is not enough for Status,” Big Sister said, to the shock of most of the Scythe Sisters in the Sharing. “It will be necessary for some time yet, but we will have to learn to do other things.” The other Scythe Sisters sent out blank thoughts in reply, which mirrored the blank building blocks that Big Brother had put at the front of the Sharing, of being unable to imagine what would go there.

“You see how difficult it is,” said Big Brother. “We do have some places to start. Blue has let us have contact with his people, so we can trade with them. But we need to find things they will want, harvest them, and then bring them in quantity.”

“The Brothers of Burden have many, many memories stored from long ago. When we are not hunting food, we should hunt those memories for anything we may want.” Cuts-Like-Cold added, which generated some amusement at the way she had altered the concept of hunt.

“What do we do?” One-Eye-Green asked, because none of the other young ones were really paying attention. The Sharing was too big for most of them to really understand.

“You, specifically, should continue working with Shayma,” Big Brother said. “We need adventuring Status just as much as anything else and you’re our closest connection to Blue.” One-Eye-Green nodded at that. She was important so she had to do important things.

“I’m a diplomat!” She said, taking the word from something that Miss Taelah had said. Big Brother took the word from where it was in her head and put it into the big chain of concepts and One-Eye-Green felt special because she was the first one to have something on the ideas of the future. “We’re going to need more words,” she said, looking at all the blank spaces. There were a lot of words that the Brothers of Burden had, but she didn’t know how many of them would be useful.

“Then you should go ask Shayma or Taelah about where to get more words,” Big Sister told her.

“I will!” One-Eye-Green said, then asked Big Brother to Share how to keep questions organized because she thought she would have a lot of questions to ask once they were done. When Big Brother showed her that he just remembered, she wondered if there might not be a Sharing way to make a list because Miss Iniri constantly was thinking about lists and that was how she remembered stuff.

Big Brother put lists on his chain of things for Brothers of Burden because making Sharing things was their job and if they needed new Sharing things they should work on that. It sounded complicated and One-Eye-Green had never learned any of the complicated Sharing stuff so she was glad someone else had to figure it out.

She was already starting to see what Blue had meant when he said that trying to do anything meant doing a thousand other things. Hunting was easy but making new things was complicated! Young ones like her knew how to do things with pelts and wood and such, but none of that took more than claws so it was really simple. But maybe it wasn’t actually simple and it just seemed simple because it had already been figured out.

One-Eye-Green decided she was going to have a lot of questions to ask.