Pylo was becoming very tired of being overwhelmed.

The proper not-her was so much more vast than she ever could have imagined. It did not align to her expectations even more than the internal shock of her own cortices. It was torrents, it was impossible overwhelming sensory and even with her letting her inner anatomies work their indeterminable magic it was far too much.

There was no SENSE to any of it. She could divide it any way she wanted.

And assign any contextual concept in any form or manner that suited her. How was she supposed to make sense of this? How was she supposed to even begin to have an impression when there was indeterminable seeming infinitude even when filtered and parceled for her.

She drew back into the envelope of herself to try and regroup, find some theory to anchor the overwhelming mass that was the other.

How did outerself even begin to handle this? Pylo could see that she was, seemingly effortlessly processing and guiding and handling the torrent in so many ways. Taking up and then discarding models and arcane parameters for the cortices.

Her seclusion and distress seemed to have taken up its own form and outerself’s deft and incomprehensible dance with it became as it was for the unfathomable other.

And suddenly there was a simple focus. A way to anchor a single thing. Attention defining a way to see a single mote amongst a sea.

It was adjacent, associated, close to her. Pylo sought a metaphor. A framework to define this thing that Outerself had deigned to guide her too.

Teasing at her own inner workings such as she could and as the cortices within could unfold and extrapolate where her own capacity to sense and comprehend faltered.

It was after some reflection very small. The amount of potential things which its membranes and borders defined were incredibly minute compared to her.

The way that outerself had filtered it off from every other thing included filtering it off from all the inner structures of herself she had used to even begin to engage with it.

Why?

There was so much similar to this shape as to the structures her cortices said were hers. Within her membrane, within Outerself’s membrane.

Within the category of outerself that nested ever inward until finally being lost in a fuzzy foam of indeterminacy that the cortices refused to define or offer explanation of.

Well outer self had set a border here, But not a very comprehensible one Pylo could determine.

Was it something categorical?

Pylo leaned into her cortices to try and suss out in painstaking detail everything they could say about the speck, the mote, the single thing.

It was not unique. There was an associative hum within it that hinted at echoes of similarity many fold. There were other motes that were very similar to it.

It also was similar inside her as well. But this one had been singled out somehow. How had Outerself done that?

The expanse of what was and was not similar to her own inner forms and knowledge were vast on both accounts. It was overwhelming again. Frustratingly so. Pylo marshalled herself and fortified her resolve.

What was it?

Well it had a membrane that was without a doubt. She had a membrane. Many hierarchically nested ones in fact.

But this one did not have anywhere near that layering associative nature.

There was a membrane of inside and outside around it but Outerself had not included that as part of this particular focus.

So that extra membranous border of properties was not important to its identity.

Well she could see plenty of things that tasted like the same sort of fatty inside out yes-no kind of bordering nature between inside it and outside it.

With some thought and work with her cortices she could start to follow those structures and the ones similar to it within her own body. Divided little elements bordering and isolating. Defining wall-borders from others.

Isolating walls separating insides and outsides.

Cells.

She had lots of those in her most hierarchically large membrane. This thing had only one and no definitional hierarchical membrane.

But there were structures almost like it within her own interior.

Almost but not quite.

She compared the interior to the exterior, the balance of flavors and sensations of how it was caustic, salty, bitter, sweet, saphoric, promelading.

She had different flavors to her own cells then it did. There were distinct nuances and bouquet.

Things of hinted time.

Ah yes so there was something uniquely hers and not this. A proper and readily legible distinctness that was its own compared to her.

She followed those flavors in and out of each other, comparing hers to its and its to hers. And she found that there were many rhymes within her. But also many curious voids.

Not all of her cells could speak as well as it could.

Ah!

It had words within it!

In the sparkling tingle of sudden realization and contact she embraced the words of the point and drank and swallowed up the details. Buzzing in a tingle through her cortices.

But it left her stuttering to a halt.

That was it?

It was less than a word, less than an instant of communication with outerself.

It was so sparse and empty compared to most of her, compared to even the most inactive of her cortices.

It was utterances brief as to be almost indiscernible. But this was clearly and truly language.

Pylo settled into contemplation then stilled her musings as she finally read and heard and listened to the not quite barely speech.

She had parts of herself who did not speak at all, others that spoke very softly, some that had words only if you could hear the shapes where words were not.

This was in approximation hardly anything.

But she had examples in herself to consider and finally she realized the confusion.

It was never meant to speak.

Or rather it never would speak more than the simplest, briefest and most internally curled in and out quins of a word.

It was foreign and other from her in a way nothing that she spoke, made, breathed or was ever could be.

And at last it started to make sense.

She had discovered life other than herself. Other than her family!

Other self provided a categorical.

Siren.

Pylo was a Siren.

And this tiny little mote and the echoes of it were not Siren.

Not family.

It was so exciting, finally something to watch, to comprehend, to recognize and consider with the fresh perspective she existed to provide.

And nothing happened.

The exterior, the other, the foreign alien cell simply was still. Utterly still. But written in and out and spoken in rhyme and reason and song was so much it was supposed to do. Pylo read deeper and deeper with mounting frustration and a growing kind of pain.

Where was the vital metabolism? There were so many things that this cell was supposed to be doing but it was not.

It also her cortices told her was not dead, everything was fine, she should be seeing it working forward, becoming so many things, eventually even becoming more than one!

Things were supposed to be passing carefully and in a controlled manner in and out of those membranes.

Wait...

Pylo considered her own cells, she counted them, passed her attention over them and then in mounting realization concluded what was now frustratingly obvious.

None of her cells were iterating on themselves the same way either. Nothing was strictly speaking within her ability to contain and resolve along one of her borders was iterating.

She queried into herself and tried to understand why she did not see the changes flipping over each other like she herself should have been. Wait, was she?

-e queried into herself and tried-

Oh she could think before like she did now so then?

-uickly Pylo was lost in trying to-

No that was wrong- wait? Oh, oh no!

Time had a limit! She could feel it, an impenetrable wall of happenings upon which she would inevitably be dashed and everything and all the universe would end, she had to warn outerself! She had to-

Outerself’s amusement was demeaning and frustrating! Why was outerself not concerned with the end of all occurrences?! With the very cut off of all time!

There was a finite amount of happening that would occur and it would diminish to less and less and less until there was-

Outerself provided a slightest of pushes and suddenly everything in the universe whirled into utter and absolute chaos.

What?!

What had that been?!

More so the impending border on all time had been pushed back.

...

Pylo was an idiot.

The cell that had been held unchanging and unhappening had... changed and happened. But not how she had expected it to!

How had it occurred? Things had whirled in a way only vaguely fathomable along the lines of her own reading of it. The change had been-

Pylo considered and tried to press backwards from how Outerself had shown her and found she could not! All she could do was ask for her cortices or go off the way herself had changed to determine that previous state.

She had surely lost something! There was no way she had everything, so much was different! Everything was subtly skewed, associations she had assumed foundational to all things were different!

Her surface area had warped! Her volume was distorted! Associations that had been close were now less so! Others had drawn in closer than before!

All things were irrevocably changed and Pylo could not undo it, could even now feel she was unsure how to restore from it.

She buzzed in agitation. This was not fair!

This was too much! The universe was not supposed to change! She changed! Not the universe!

She fumed and in many ways it was made worse by the bemused exasperation from Outerself.

But then again.

This way did mean that everything did not end, but the price?! That she would always be losing things?

Changing things? Irrevocably?

Pylo trembled in fear again but even more so in her own frustration with it. She was so tired of how overwhelming everything was.

Literally everything.

Apparently even the occurrence and time were not what she thought!

She could feel how Outerself had pushed her, she could do it herself. She would have too. If she did not eventually the precipice of un-happening would strike her and she would cease. But was this transmutative process worth that?

It would change everything irrevocably forever!

But was that worse than hitting the precipice and never occurring again?

She pushed where Outerself had and the universe unfolded again. This overwhelming sensation was slowly shifting from wonder to exhaustion.

The single cell was her anchor, she cleaved to it like her very memory depended on it. Memories she was finding were fraying already, distressingly so. She was having to simply re-become her memories instead of them staying put like they had!

So she clung to the cell and to her own sense of what had happened before, retreading, recrafting them. The precipice of it was terrifying but.

Slowly she let go of one way of occurrence for another, from one time to another and. Oh.

Oh my!

That was beautiful.

She had never happened before, never finished happening that is.

It had all been, not an instant, but a state.

She had never been occurring until Outerself had pushed herstate to evolve and become. All experience and thought before had been her as a whole cloth.

All of outerself’s back and forth had been so distressingly pale and static and empty before.

She had never BEEN before now.

And such a now it was!

Pylo was burning ever further in her ability to apprehend, to connect, to extrapolate. The freedom of possible reciprocal accumulated change?!

The single cell in her focus was changing in a way she had not even considered. It changed its own associative relevance in other things!

It became more similarly associated with the border of the membrane that was not part of it!

To her own much vaster and yet fuzzier and less defined macro borders.

And also internally, associations changed, formed, broke, it was humbling. This thing which Pylo had considered so sparse and simple was performing miracles of directed conceptual transformation she had not even considered possible.

The Locus of it changed from its own occurrences derived from within it!

This process, this concept deserved clear and concise words for it.

Locusinationing?

Localution?

Location?

Yes Location and translocationing!

Even further though it was so much smoother then she had realized things could happen. It was not happening or unhappened or not happening or always happening or never happening.

It was a smooth fluidsim of happen-some.

There were even different flavors and shapes and hierarchies of happen-some.

Pylo almost forgot to keep pushing herself along to watch what happen-some would unfold next.

It was.

It was so much richer than her life had ever been before.

And now that she could look back upon herself she could feel the slightest fuzzy tingle of her cortices as they happen-sumed her.

She had always been happen-sumeding. Happening.

She had been happening but not seeing it that way before?

And this translocation? This shifting round vouving thing the cell was doing?

Transrouving?

Her things that were in her own membranes did them too.

In fact.

She was doing them!

Outerself was Transrouving?!

But differently than the single cell, differently shaped, no differently sized? Yes there was more rouveritity positionalizatizing across many many many association locations. But less happening more with trickle flows.

Tlow?

Thlow.

Outerself was thlow compared to the relative location roving of this single cell. She trickle flowed. Sthlowed.

Pylo was Slow!

Hum that word tasted a bit odd and why was it making outerself laugh?

Well she would something-ing more of it later after she finished marveling at this cell that was doing so many things in her focus.

As she pressed she saw, it formovitated about becoming closer and closer associated with things again and again until some things became so close and similar that they crossed its barrier!

Outside had become inside! That could happen?! Why would that happen?!

And then it took the things that had been outside and were now inside and were-

They were becoming more of it?!

The capacities she had felt and assumed before were strained. Her concept of them were so much farther and wider and open now!

She watched it and the single cell formoved the parts it took it, it pushed other parts from outside to inside.

The barrier was permeable!

Just like how things from the inside became part of Pylo!

Reading and Writing into and out of the self!

Reating!

She was very proud of these new complex concepts she was making and assembling out of her available parts.

Pylo reated up the details delightedly.

Working over them, devouring the details of the single little cell trundling about in locumutations.

And then its words began to jumble, and say themselves over again and then they spoke to their membranes and the membranes moved and then other spindly associative long forms drug and wriggleoutivated!

And then unary became binary! It was like reating! But two-making!

Breating!

It became two things! And they were the same but now different and. Oh wow! That’s why there were so many of the things like they were and...

That’s what a Mother was!

What Pylo was?

What Outerself was?

Were they going to become even more two-things? Was there going to be breating where Outerself and Pylo would break apart like that?

Excitedly she dove into reading her own self again and the details flowed over her. No, not quite, that’s not how Sirens did things. They talked to things, they Breateded? They twined together and apart so maybe Treated? No something else.

This was frustrating, Pylo was not allowed to touch outside herself and pull in or push things out!

Outerself was doing all of that!

She was just inside bits that dealt with inside bits.

She wanted to touch it! Actually touch and poke and take in because she poked!

Outerself is quiet, the thrumming pulsing overflowing churn of time shifted and the little single cell that was now two cells found itself starting to become four cells.

It was locationinated very close to Pylo, it was nestled upon her own membrane inside the not-itself membrane without fatty layering and only a sharp kind of fizzy almost layer.

And then at last Outerself releases the tight focus that was keeping Pylo locked onto just that one cell, letting her feel how that focus had been made, and how to reach out and very gently even touch that quartet of cells and nudge at them.

Speak words to them, and taste the words back.

But more than that Outerself let her properly apprehend the focus of all the many many many cells beyond.

And so much more.

At last Pylo could start to understand the world!