What could stand before you?

Who could walk in your presence?

Your presence was mighty,

A powerful weight upon the world.

-Anonymous

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Miro carefully examined the brown ball in front of it. The ball was small, made out of leather and stuffed with some sort of hard material to keep its shape. Stitches were carefully sewn into a line around the ball, ensuring that its surface remained taut.

Flattening its body, Miro tried to slide underneath the ball and scoop it up, but the ball rolled off. Quickly rolling around to halt its momentum, Miro tried to grab it in its mouth, but the slime didn’t have enough surface strength to hold the object, and Miro nearly ate the ball as a result. Rapidly spitting it out, Miro gave it a glare.

It’d been trying to figure out a way to safely pick objects up, using Olivai’s room as an impromptu testing area of sorts. Thus far, it’d attempted scooping them up with a flattened edge, which had failed because Miro couldn’t harden itself nearly enough. After that it’d tried putting them in its mouth and holding them there, but that hadn’t worked either due to Miro’s mouth being in the same place as its stomach.

The reasoning behind Miro’s attempts came from a simple desire; it wanted to figure out how to make food. If it had hands, it could cast magic, which would let it make summoning circles, which would let it summon food.

Miro ceased its efforts and glared at the tart. After a brief moment, Miro’s self-control gave out and it ate the snack.

Miro, it realized, was not made for picking things up. It was made for being squishy and bouncing, and most importantly, for eating other things. Unfortunately, none of those features seemed particularly helpful to Olivai.

And Miro wanted nothing more than to be helpful to Olivai. It could still very clearly recall when she said it was a failed experiment.

What did that even mean? Miro wasn’t an experiment! It’d seen other slimes, and Olivai hadn’t called them failures.

Of course… it’d only seen just the one fire slime, and Olivai hadn’t even noticed when Miro had freed it.

What could it do? Olivai was certainly capable of taking care of herself. She was fast, she could whack things with her staff, and she could even purify. Miro couldn’t do any of that.

Miro couldn’t even pick up a tart.

Its thoughts were disrupted as the door to Olivai’s room opened, and she stepped through, locking it behind her. She gave Miro a smile as she entered, disrobing down to her pajamas. “Good evening, Miro. Are you doing well?”

Miro gave her a disconsolate burble, which she phenomenally misinterpreted. Patting Miro’s surface, she sat on her bed and gently bounced up and down. “So, what have you been doing? Anything interesting?”

Miro looked towards the very empty basket that had previously contained the tarts. Olivai glanced at it and chuckled. “You’ve got quite the appetite. Not as large as I’d thought you’d have, though.” She frowned, leaning closer. “Maybe something is wrong with you?”

That was literally the last thing Miro wanted to hear. It deflated miserably, releasing a slow whistle of displaced air, and Olivai’s eyes widened. “Oh, no!” She hastily corrected herself. “I didn’t mean to imply that you were doing something wrong. I just meant there might be an issue in your body.”

There was something wrong that Miro couldn’t even try to fix!? How was it supposed to do anything about that?

Olivai leaned down and picked Miro up with a grunt of effort, setting it on her lap. “You know, I was thinking about when I first encountered you. Originally, I only intended to keep you here for a short while so I could examine you more closely. But, if you’d like to stay here for a while, I wouldn’t mind it too much.”

She stared down at Miro, her face looking rather owlish from Miro’s perspective. “How does that sound?”

Miro burbled quietly, still disheartened, and she patted its surface. “I don’t know if that’s a yes or a no. I’ll assume it’s a yes for now. Is - is that wrong?”

Bobbling sideways slowly, Miro shook its body, and Olivai smiled. “Oh, that’s a relief. I don’t know what I would have done if you’d told me no.”

Putting Miro back on the floor, she pulled the covers of her bed back and extinguished the candles with a muttered “Quench.” Scooting into the cool depths of the bed, she poked one hand out from beneath the heavy blankets and placed it on Miro’s surface. “Good night, Miro. We’ll work something tomorrow together, and then we can figure out just what to do with you.”

Miro patiently waited for Olivai’s hand to fall limp, then rolled over to the chair. Hopping up onto the cushion, Miro stared out the sole window at the star-filled black of the night sky. Thousands of glittering sparks gazed down at Miro, making the slime feel small.

Miro’s consciousness slowly faded as it fell asleep.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Miro was a giant.

It imperiously looked down at the minute forests beneath it, tiny trees waving in the wind. Every slight inhale sent waves of power rippling through Miro’s gel, and it instinctively knew that nothing could punch through the now-thick surface.

Taking a deep breath, Miro released a sound. It was no small burble, no polite chirp of inquisitive curiosity. This was the rumble of millions of gallons of water crashing through a river, obliterating everything before it. It was a good feeling.

Miro looked upward. It could still see the stars, but they were much closer. Close enough that Miro felt it could bounce upward and take a bite from them. It appeared that something else had beaten Miro to the moon, however - its girth had been reduced to a thin curve.

What could Miro do?

It was no longer a valid question.

What couldn’t Miro do?

With an almighty thundering of crushed trees and compressing dirt, Miro began to roll forward. The mountains next to it were still taller than Miro, but not by much. The slime could see the snow-capped peaks from up close, miniscule specks darting up and bleating in panic as Miro loomed over them.

The slime realized it was hungry.

Gradually turning, the slime observed the forest underneath itself and opened its mouth wide. With a simple thought, Miro called the carpet of succulent greenery to the air, and the ground was torn from its roots. In a matter of minutes, the forest was scooped into the slime’s cavernous mouth, and it closed its mouth with a powerful and yet muted thud of displaced air.

The forest tasted good, but…

Miro blinked. What exactly had it been doing? Why… why was it so large?

A speck rose in Miro’s vision, a dark point in space that hurtled towards Miro with too much speed for the slime to follow.

Fear enveloped Miro, an irrational and overwhelming terror that threatened to dwarf its clouded mind. Summoning all of its undeserved power, Miro shaped it into a blunt hammer of pure force and sought to crush the speck.

Twisting, the speck did something, and all of Miro’s power fell away. Without warning, Miro found itself falling, no longer the gluttonous giant that it had been only a moment before, and it fell further and further into darkness, the gaping maw where the forest had been swallowing Miro as easily and as casually as Miro had done unto it…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Miro woke up violently, tumbling from the chair and landing on the floor. Vibrating briefly, Miro tried to recenter itself, concentrating on where it was.

Olivai’s tower. A dark window - the sky hadn’t even begun to mellow. Pitch black surroundings, although Miro saw more with its mouth than it did with its eyes. The smell and taste of dry pages, of thick wool, of dense wood, of dusty stone, and underneath it all, the distinct sense of Olivai.

Miro calmed down, its surface gradually slowing until the slime was still once more. Briefly cutting its senses off, Miro concentrated inward. It focused on not thinking about the disturbing dream it’d just had.

Its first ever dream, and it just had to be a nightmare.

With a burbling sigh, Miro checked on Olivai. She was drooling onto her pillow, gently snoring. It made Miro happy for some reason.

Rolling back to the chair, Miro paused. The dream was already fading, but Miro could recall a certain detail from it.

Intently staring at the chair, Miro tried to make it float, and for a moment, it felt an old swirl, a twinge of recollection. Miro seized on it, desperately pulling the half-memory to the forefront of its mind.

Absolutely nothing happened.

Miro berated itself for feeling disappointed. Dreams were not reality, thankfully. Not being able to lift things was… frustrating in the extreme, if Miro was honest, but at least the speck didn’t exist either.

Miro jumped back into the chair, thinking about what would happen if whatever the speck was supposed to be had been in real life.

...Perhaps sleep could wait for another night.