She drifted along the hallways. Outerself couriering her through one fantastic unfolding vista of details to another.

Conversations bubbling in from the outside and percolating in fantastic meanings. Contexts vague and not always certain. Every exchange was a potential for discovering a whole new expansive overturning of the entirety of the past.

It had taken a while to discern what precise scale was appropriate for most of the interactions.

There was a lot to keep track of, each individual had a particular amount of time and space that they fit into easily.

If you looked at too small an amount of time barely anything would be said. If you looked at too small an amount of space then you missed so much.

Outerself was by far very practiced and confident in all of this, and Pylo was getting a feel for it, if slowly.

She could just barely start to see how she would eventually become herself. To reach those depths of comfort, familiarity and grace. But even as she saw the capacity she would eventually reach more examples of ever greater ability loomed around her.

Case in point Pylo had Sisters.

Athena was a very old and very wise Sister. Fierce and strong and knowledgeable. Seventh eldest of the sisters that outerself recognized and knew.

And the eldest she ever dealt with on a regular basis.

Whereas many other sisters had duties and marriages that took them beyond the estate Athena and the comparatively young creche-teacher Artemis were fixtures of the local courts.

Outerself had deep stores of interactions that Pylo could trawl in bewildered confusion. But from this she was starting to get a context for her family.

Athena was distant. The memories and interactions were less intimate and much more removed. The closest of Pylo’s elder sisters was wed to the estate and its many loci. And such a bond gave her a perspective that did not quite manage to fully contain Pylo at all.

Athena was concerned most of all with the health and well being of the vast branching form that Pylo was only barely able to to even imagine. Ephemeral things that were right now hard to even grasp against the raw rush of immediate life and the associated memories that drifted through the outerself.

The Estate itself or at least some broad overarching essence of it was to who Athena’s heart belonged

In a contrast to the distant almost ethereal presence of Athena and her even more ephemeral wives there was Artemis.

Who was in a manner as deeply and close to Pylo and her sisters as Athena was distant.

Solid, dependable, a little frustrating and despite being definitely a very physical and singular Sister was nonetheless somehow uncannily present whenever outerself or her broodmate sisters had ever been drifting somewhere they should not.

Pylo could taste and spool through the deep memories of many a time with Artemis. They were soothing poultice to watch the outerself struggle with the same things Pylo had. When the memory was not of Mother herself tending to her ignorance in so sweet and gentle a touch it was often Artemis.

She had no strict duty or marriage beyond to care and enrich her younger sisters when Mother had finished with the most delicate of their maturation and tending. And while there were wild tales of her youth she had not left The Estate in hundreds of Broods.

Artemis was approachable. The Crechesister who took upon the duties of tending the youngest of Mother’s daughters here in the estate. To see those young sprouts grow that were yet unready to meet with an obligation or permanent mate.

Like Pylo had been.

Her outerself that is, or she supposed herself as well. Who she would re-become as she took in more of her life and memory and that which was new became old again for her.

Which was after a fashion WHY Pylo as she existed right now had been performed in the first place. She was here because this was to be the last time that outerself would be unburdened by any duty.

It was not a marriage of course, or even anything that she was ready to call love.

But there was responsibility to this action.

Duty to it.

And even if it was not precisely like something that any other sister (that she knew of) had set out to do it was still an obvious act of ceremony for Mother.

Which is why it was nice to have Artemis here with her, with outerself that is.

Fussing and teasing her just like always. Comforting in that oblique way that echoed back through outerself’s memory to all but her earliest thoughts.

“So! My little canner finally has started the proper courting at last! Is it the dragoon twins or our cousin you fancy more? Or perhaps even the cook!?”

Artemis spun the message within Outerself’s genome directly. Tingling and planting the seeds of that and so much more in a moment’s breath.

Outerself recoiled and in one motion speared Artemis physically with a sharp deposit of aggressive phages and sterile gametes.

“Don’t be gross! The cook?! They're an endling Their whole kind and people truncated themselves to one! On Purpose!”

Memory of proper protocol and etiquette fluttered by and in a perplexing manner, Pylo was pretty sure that the way Outerself had laced those inheritances were beyond rude, insulting and outright disgusting actually.

But this was a friend and sister. That surely should have been wrong? Right?

The rebuttal to the maybe insult was swift and serene and smooth as can be. Wrapping up the mangled unviable fragment into a fertile new thought and taming the phages into a hybridized beautiful bouquet that while short lived threw all the crassness offered back in outerself’s face with how beautiful Artemis had managed to forge them from the half thought out filth presented.

“Pylo, dear sister you know better than that, attend to my court and hear their answers. The cook is hardly an endling. At worst they are just particularly strongly masculine. You need to consider all the lineages.”

Outerself bristled but turned attention to Artemis’ court. Drawing on the knowledgeable expertise available. The summary and consideration. The insights.

The observations that would have escaped even her much older and more experienced sister. Nevermind Pylo’s (outer self included) much shallower well of memory.

Pylo followed along drowning in the new and completely foreign that outerself had long since grown blind too.

So many different patterns and ways to establish and build meaning.

So many conclusions and mounting sensations of certainty that painful experience had already taught Pylo she should not attempt to verify herself. It was not something she was suited too.

Finally an acquiescence of furled petals and fertile potentials took root where the two sisters touched.

“Alright Artemis, they are not an endling. But I still think their gross, narrowing and culling their siblings like that is so creepy.”

A long suffering sigh twisting to the enzymes ruffled up and down the chain as the context was shifted.

“Be that as it may you won’t be rude or treat them badly my little canner will you? Even if it’s ‘inefficient’ as you so want to complain?”

Outerself was aghast at the implication. It hurt far more than any barb or insulting squamous cells would have and as Pylo drank up the associated memories she began to feel the deeper sting of disapproval from one so close to her.

She was timid and only gently jostled the cloud of spores sluicing in the flow between the sisters rather than emitting any fresh cells of her own.

“NO! no of course not! I’m not like that! Sister I’m not that awful am I?”

The cells twirled between them and the kindness that had been hidden there unfolded even as outerself reached to instill her own meaning. Working through the medium exchanged between their bodies.

“Of course not, but we need to always remember what we could become. And not let such inclinations grow beyond our own intent.”

Pylo was left adrift and awash in all the different meanings, the memories that jolted and cascaded between them. There was more happening in this exchange of pollen laced effluvient than she had experienced since her shorn off existence had occurred.

Volumes of life and memory reaffirming themselves. Contexts of precisely where and why and how Artemis worried. Admonishments and advice sinking into and washing over Outerself in a way that Pylo could not ignore, or even hope to avoid.

This thread among so many others passed between Outerself and Artemis in the one sharp jabbing spear and the brushing of petals. There were hints and nuances echoing and unfolding even as the sisters pulled apart.

The superficial wound that had been skewered into the elder sister’s side having already flowed around the younger’s intrusion into a far more natural looking passage that was left briefly open to the storm of microbiota and turgid air before it puckered. Forming another ridged ruffling of delicate petals in a tasing nuance that further gentled and admonished Pylo (that is Outerself) for her crude attempt at violence and crassness.

As they parted a last pearl along the tip of the spur that Outerself had jabbed their sister with flipped just so that a last and far more scathing admonishment settled over them both.

“Also really Pylo? You're still doing that canner trick so terribly wrong. The poor thing. Now hurry along, you're going to be late for the meeting of your first court.”

Outerself flounced along, tossing spore and pollen in her wake with barely the coherence to contain anything more then scathing vitriol and the sparsest of messages.

“It’s not MY court, I’m JOINING a crew”

Artemis did not directly comment on any of it but there was enough bemused judgement and exasperation in how she sweeped up the clouds of pollen to say enough.