The Hatchling: Day 2

There are five of us now. Not that I can count.

We are in the same box, our universe. I can make out the blurry figures of Giants outside the universe, peering in. We sense Mama and yearn for her.

It is warm and cozy, although we know nothing else. It is a happiness we do not as yet know we have. But we long for touch. We long to snuggle under Mama.

We sleep a lot. One moment I will be bumping into the remaining ovals and then plop down asleep on the hard surface below. Then I will wake up and bump into more ovals.

About half of the ovals are now fragments, the mother-ships from which the five of us emerged. I wonder what is in the other ovals. Are there others like me in them? Why have they not come out? I have not yet asked where we all came from.

I want to ask questions of the others, but we cannot communicate. We all make these chirping sounds, but I don't know what they mean. I assume we are expressing the same things--"Where is Mama?" "Why can't we get out of this box to see Mama?" "What is all this?" 

I have desires for other things, but I don't know what they are.

Suddenly the box lifted. The universe expanded beyond my comprehension. For the first time, I sensed cold. I had been warm but had not known it until I felt intermittent blasts of cold.

I see the Giants more clearly than I did before, the gods. I am jolted by their hold. I am accelerated beyond my imagination. My head hurts. Still, I cannot deny how good touch feels. I feel my head stroked and feel a strange mixture of ecstasy and fear.

Then I am in another universe with walls again. I cannot see through the walls of this universe, but the sky goes up forever. I look to the heavens, from whence comes my help.

I discovered water. This is something for which I have longed, but I didn't know what to call it. I drink. I drink. 

There is also something harder. I call it food. It is so wonderful!! I can't get enough of it. Sometimes the hand of the gods will descend to earth, and I eat and eat. I stand on their warm, heavenly earth and eat. The heavenly ground is warmer than my other earth.

There is a sun that gives us warmth. There is a house that gives us warmth. It is the gods that have given us all this. How I long for the touch of Mama. Sometimes I cry out for Her. Would that She were with me at all times.

Still, I have so much delight. Sometimes I cry out for joy. When I am hungry I am fed. When I am thirsty I drink. I have the fellowship of my sisters. And I return to the earth some portion of that which has filled me.