what was i made for?

"Mmm.... mm. Mmm-mmo... moth..."

"Mother."

"Mmm... moth... mother." All words felt odd in Dom's newly constructed mouth, but this word in particular he could not commit to muscle memory. The letters, odd and not at all like the hieroglyphs he'd known in his thousands of years of existence, kept floating off the page and rearranging themselves. He couldn't commit their order to memory.

"That one’s not sticking," Rigel commented. She looked at him with something like pity. He wasn't sure how to receive it, having never been thought to deserve it.

It's useless, he told her through their mind link. That word does nothing for me. I have no context for it. Perhaps this explanation would suffice for now. How could someone like her explain the concept of a parent to someone like him? A glorified, sentient piece of colored rock?

She made a sound of affirmation and looked away. Dom didn't have to catch her expression to know which she'd donned.

A wave spread through him and his entire meatsuit shook with a slight chill. It was unfamiliar and he didn't think he liked it. It reminded him of something he knew about her, something about which he was absolutely certain:

She didn’t believe that he could feel.

It wasn’t something she ever implied, but he knew that she believed it. And he could allege that it wasn’t entirely her fault. There was a time long long ago that he had relieved himself of the idea of personhood. So long had he been possessing others and acting vicariously through them that he ceased to consider them beings worthy of consideration and respect. And in letting his sentience be shaped and warped this way, he too ceased considering himself a being at all. 

It helped that others referred to him as an item. “The Dominion Jewel!” they would exclaim in fear and hope and awe. And he would let himself play along into the fancy that he wasn’t just as real as them. The more they treated him as an enigmatic entity, the easier it became to feast on their greed and use them for his own ends.

That was, until a young mage calling herself Rigel invited him into her mind.

His extraocular muscles moved to allow him to glance at her. He was still quite sluggish with his newly implemented body mechanisms, but his dexterity was improving by the day. He often had to rest to allow his new body to recover–which was more than minutely irksome–but there were so many more systems to explore that he didn’t mind all too much. Yesterday, he’d discovered his central circulatory organ that beat without his explicit direction. It was an engaging, delightful experience. It made him feel vulnerable, yes, to know that he didn’t have full and total control over his faculties. Simultaneously, it made him feel less small, less out of tune with the world.

He had grown closer to Rigel than any other being in existence. And as terrifying as it was to be torn from her mind, it was also a most liberating experience. He'd been merging with her so seamlessly that he'd begun to think that perhaps he was losing himself to her. That his cold, hard prison of a former form would fade into a story in his mind instead of his history, that the comfort of a fleshy tomb would cause him to forget the life and times of the Dominion Jewel.

He was glad for it, just as it made him endlessly anxious. He'd been alone before, of course. But absence of a host had left him derelict for eons. Could he really be blamed for a little separation anxiety? 

If he weren't a sentience that had seen the worst humanity could offer, he might've held some hope.

But he knew that it would be easy for her to leave him. He didn't know how to move, didn't have possession of himself in order to follow her. It left him resentful for the briefest of moments, the first time she'd left him in her flat alone. The hour that passed between when she'd left and when she returned the first time had churned the contents of his stomach with anxiety. And he would deny the flood of relief he felt at her return until the hour of expiry of his new carbon-based form.

Rigel flipped to a different page in the colorful children's book across her lap. She returned with it day after day in an attempt to practice his speech, but ended up cheating with the core link nearly every time. She remained steadfast in teaching him for a few few hours every day. He would not admit it, but he was quite amazed at her tenacity. And all for him, at that. 

“Try this one,” she said. She said the word aloud.

The letters settled, one after another. He left himself process them one at a time. He knew how to think the word, but not how to sound it. When she repeated it again, he focused on the shape of her mouth and its associated movement. A sort of cheat, yes, but it was an easier way to learn to speak than to read foreign squiggles and make sense of them organically.

“F…” he tried pathetically. “F-fa…”

She said the word again. So patient, so focused.

He tried again and again. And then he finally got it. “Family.”

She made an expression that was closer to a smile than anything else. 

This one. I have context for this one.

Her brows furrowed. “How could you have context for this one?”

He hesitated. He could see her core still connected to him, and he'd know he'd feel an incomparable loss when she chose to sever it. And yet… he knew she would not abandon him. It wasn't in her nature. And after all he'd seen, he knew her nature. It made him want to be honest with her. 

Because you are my family.

He felt the connection sever in her surprise. He recoiled, casting himself back into the the deep recesses of his new central nervous organ, letting the flesh prison go limp. It would not be the first time he'd been disappointed, and it certainly would not be the last.

Now that he could pass as human, it was probably for the best that he learnt that now.