STAGE 2
I grow taller. Slowly, I see more.
My body becomes stiff. It does not bend easily anymore.
The others like me grow tall too. Our bodies darkening.
Many times, the strange object returns. It shakes the softness.
As I grow, I see it better. I see it is not one, but two objects. Sometimes they are together. Sometimes one leaves as the other returns. I wonder why?
I learn that the warmth has cycles. It is warm, then it is cold, then it is warm again. Sometimes it dims. Other times, softness comes from it. But it isn’t the same softness I am in. It is clear.
I reach further into the softness, away from the warmth. It provides more food as I reach further.
The softness that comes from the warmth provides food too. As I reach, I feel it better. I learn it is wet. It comes from the same direction that is hard to reach for. Does the warmth push things away from it?
As I grow taller, I had to feed more. I reach for more warmth. I grow more arms. I start to see more. I learn my arms let me see.
I see the others like me more clearly. I saw there were even more others like me. I notice we form a pattern in the softness.
I see the objects more clearly. I learn they were one object after all, attached where I could not see before. It was pushed in the same direction by the warmth. That direction is up.
I see that the warmth was not uniform. It has warmer spots and colder spots. One spot is very warm. I learn it is also brighter than everything else.
That spot moved. It was warmest when above. It got colder as it dropped toward the softness. It was coldest once it fell into the softness. Then it would return, but on the other side of the softness. I wonder why?
As I grow taller, my body grows too stiff to bend. It was easier to reach my arms. So I grow more arms.
I confirm my arms let me see more. So I grow arms faster. I want to see more. What else is beyond where I cannot see?
I see the object better. I learn how strange it is. It has arms too. Two arms shook the softness. The other two moved the same way. But sometimes it moved different ways than the arms that shook the softness. I could not understand why.
The object had a body too. Its arms attached to it, but moved freely. I learn the object was similar to us. But it did not reach far into the softness. But this let it move freely on the softness.
I start to envy the object. No, the creature. It came from where I cannot see, then returns to somewhere else I cannot see.
I wonder how much it can see. If it moves so freely, it must see more than I.
I envy it more.
I must grow to be like it.