This is...kind of strange.
Witness me attempting to be deep.

It's a dialogue from a Yeerk talking about love and hosts and how the two can mix together until they become addictive. The host is asking the questions. Has a sad ending.



"Do you know why I didn't turn you in?" Yesin 485 of the Kian Sichar pool asked aloud.

"No," Jordan replied grumpily, regaining control of her vocal apparatus. "I thought at first it was to reassure the others...but that wasn't it, was it? You weren't...I don't know." Her voice faded away.

"It was because..." Yesin trailed off. She shook her --their --head and started again. "Do you know what a Yeerk feels?"

Jordan shrugged, gazing at the golden sun on the horizon. "Fear, anger, pain. Ambition, I think. Uh, loyalty...I'm not sure of. Friendship? Respect?"

"Yes. We are...trained to feel hatred, fear, and anger. Ambition and respect -admiration -tend to show up as part of the process. Loyalty and friendship are not hard currency in the Yeerk pool though, I'm afraid. But there's one thing we really don't feel."

"And what's that?"

Yesin was silent for a moment.

"Jordan, when I entered your brain...you don't know what it was like, it was...when we are first given hosts, in training, we experience a great deal of sensory input, almost an overload. There is so much to experience. Sight, sound, touch, taste...all of it, it is overwhelming! It's wonderful and terrifying in equal measures.

"When I entered your brain...it was almost like that. It was emotional overload. To go your whole life with such a limited range of emotions, things I didn't even really feel, and then to be bombarded with everything you felt...your mind was so alive, so vivid. It knocked me over. And yet I wanted more of it."

Yesin laughed sadly. "Maybe not at first, maybe not then...but even in the pool, tying into your brain was like tapping into a firework display. All the anger, all the accusation was a dozen times stronger than I'd ever felt it. Your mind was alive, screaming at me, fighting me."

"Yeah, I do /know/ that."

"It wasn't until afterwards, when we were out of the pool, with the others --that was what made me want to stay. All the feelings you felt right then."

Yesin was laughing and crying, tears trickling down grimy cheeks. "Everything you felt was stronger than I could feel. The exultation you experienced when you were flying. The love when you looked at your sister. Your grief and joy. I didn't even know what love was, and I...I wanted more of it. I wanted to feel it, again and again. That burst when I, when /we/ realised that someone loved you. The way Tom looked at you when you weren't arguing and he was just happy to have you there. The way you loved."

The geese were flying, honking, and the rising sun had stitched the land with threads of gold where the rivers ran. The leaves brushed her arms like the ghost of a promise for a better life, more whole, and she knew that she had accepted it.

"It was addictive. You were more than me, so much more than me, in the way you thought and felt and lived. You were bright and vibrant and I was tired and so, so hungry. I lived for those moments --for the thrill of flying, the laughter on a friend's face..."

"And then?"

Yesin shook her head. "And then," she said in a low voice, "I realised I couldn't."

There was something cold at her back and the day stretched out before her, bright and perfect. If only she could have enjoyed it.

"I couldn't hold onto you. I couldn't damp you down. And I wouldn't go back to the pool, to live out my life with only the memories."

She felt the suspicion growing in Jordan's mind. "It's been almost three days."

"Yes. And in a few minutes...a few minutes...I shall die with this memory."