Cotton... or was it foam? For a moment I failed to recognise what these words meant. The concept behind them, however insignificant.
It took time to come to a conclusion. Foam or cotton, it didn't matter. All that did was me feeling swarmed by an intangible mass that felt disgusting at times.
Yet the state I was in remained incomplete, for some reason. I tried to think, but the speed of the birth of my thoughts could probably be overtaken by any turtle.
Even though the concept of a turtle wasn't engraved on my mind. In the furthest recess of my consciousness, there was something not at all content with the current situation I found myself in.
But the rebuke was so distant, it hardly mattered. Still, there was no denying that I lacked something precious?
I tried to understand this. Since when the special state I was in became such, why and for what purpose. It took incalculably long hours, but I persisted tenaciously.
My endurance bore fruits. I eventually grasped that the missing element was something especially precious.
A certain shape came to my mind. Illusory and dwindling at first, hardly graspable. But clearer with time. Time was a cure for pretty much everything.
Time was something no Eternal lacked. Which made me realise the dark surroundings I found myself in, the occasionally broken shapes I sneaked a peek at, were my inner world.
The home of my essence, protected by the soul. And the path I stood on, the contract that had conquered most of the available space.
The contract that existed since time immemorial. It had always been there, just hidden away behind the fog I could never hope to pierce.
Once I stumbled upon such thoughts, the indistinctive shape I could hardly grasp became clearer. It was just born into this world. Two furry ears peaked out of the silhouette.
A tail swung left and right. Two pupils of different colours, one golden and one violet, shone brightly. Then the bubbly thingy began giggling happily.
Swirling around me, up and down, left and right. It seemed that time could not erase the bubble, for it was, I found, what an Eternal cherished. Therefore, it persisted.
I spent who-knows-how-many decades, centuries or millennia even staring at the content, energy-laden bubble, taking in its slightly changing nature as I waited for it to hatch, to grow.
To become an Eternal too. Much more time would need to pass for the path to see completion. Civilisations will come and go, distinct orders whizz past my consciousness, and tyrants will be born and die.
Nothing out of the extraordinary. Not for someone with that much trouble thinking, for a creature that had all the time in all of creation.
Yet it had to happen what always did. Change, the driving force of life, put me to the test? I only realised much later that the happy, energy-laden bubble was no more.
And much, much later again that I wasn't comfortable with its absence. So... it stood to reason I had to look, no?
The darkness receded upon thought, it formed shapes, lives, truth and order. I found some pointy-eared caterpillars crawling all over the place.
They were fast, terribly busy at that. Yet no details concerning their short-lived nature remained hidden from my eyes.
It was strange being troubled to follow their actions yet knowing everything about the simplicity that was their individual lives at the same time. At any given time!
Yet the energy-laden bubble was not there. The reason for my search not found with the pointy-eared caterpillars, it seemed.
I wasn't bothered by their occasional attention or pats or what that was. This was information I did not regard as important, thus it was simply erased from reality.
It's as if it never happened. A correction had been made and nobody was none the wiser. I found each tuft or grass, each cell, supporter of life, expressing intentions to help.
While it wasn't exactly needed, the offer was inconsequential, silly yet warm and welcome all the same.
I soon gleaned a greater understanding. The energy-laden bubble should be found beyond that chasm.
So I approached, intent on making me whole again, on returning to the good old days. Yet rejection was all I found.
The chasm didn't desire to interact with the likes of me. I respected its wishes and returned to my essence. Now... all that was required to be done was to understand why.
Aeons passed, I presumed. Then I eventually got my answer. The only reason the chasm didn't let me through was that there remained no knowledge of even a sliver of my existence.
Of what I was. So I returned to that place, finding the pointy-eared caterpillars just like I'd left them. Uncoordinated, dim-witted, selfish and on the clock.
When I thought about the latter impression, I felt hurt for some reason. Truly strange. As was the chasm's reaction in refusing me entry even after I fed it information.
A bit more of that, and the information would mutate it, thus ending its cognitive existence. But even my warning fell on deaf ears.
Therefore, the stupid chasm was no more soon after, and the sublimated information available to me plentiful yet not at all welcome.
The energy-laden bubble was in danger and very much fearful. Terribly so. Which was a state of existence I recalled from the deepest recess of my mind.
And my answer to that was the same from countless ages ago. I roused more of me in a quest to interact with such lowly beings.
It was always I who had to adjust myself for they could never hope to understand me. Bit by bit, I approached completion, which had never been the goal all along.
It was then that I realised that all this hassle was essentially for nought if I could simply change things to my preference unilaterally.
So I simply shattered what held me back and followed my heart. Indeed, a reunion would not be far. Not at all. For nothing goes counter to an Eternal's wishes.