WIP. Trying something new this week, aka not rushing myself to some state of completion that lacks polish.
"The body that was mine for all these years is no longer, but I carry its history and experiences inside. "
“Here is a story to believe,” she said. “Once we were blobs in the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats, and then monkeys, and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand once had claws! In my human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and the chisel teeth of a rabbit and the grinding teeth of a cow! Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to live in! When we’re frightened, the hair on our skins stands up, just like when we had fur. We are history! Everything we’ve ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are…I’m made up of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my ancestors. They’re in the way I look, in the color of my hair. And I’m made up of everyone I’ve ever met who’s chanced the way I think. So who is ‘me’?”
“The piece that just told us that story,” said the hiver. “The piece that’s truly you.”
“Well…yes. But you must have that too. You know you say you’re ‘us’—who is saying that? Who is saying you’re not you? You’re not different from us, we’re just much better at forgetting. And we know when not to listen to the monkey.”
“You just puzzled us,” said the hiver.
“The old bit of our brains that wants to be head monkey, and attacks when its surprised,” said Tiffany. “It reacts. It doesn’t think. Being human is know when not to be the monkey or the lizard or any of those other old echoes. But when you take people over, you silence the human part. You listen to the monkey. The monkey doesn’t know what it needs, only what it wants.”
-Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky, p. 240-241
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