The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 14

Part 4

“Good day! Please, make yourselves comfortable, and serve up if you’re hungry.” Talia told them as she indicated the available chairs and the open mossy ground beside the table.

Mark and Alilia continued eating with their eyes closed, which was a little uncanny, and their faces were aglow with loving smiles.

“We’ve invited you by to share and discuss the latest development,” Talia continued, “Which is this; for most of the last ten hours, all three of us have been Linked with our unborn twins. They contacted me first, which they were capable of doing because they were already deeply Linked with each other before that, and were able to combine their meager psionic strength to reach me. I brought Mark and Alilia in shortly after that. Right now Mark’s trying to teach them to understand Trade Common. I think it’s too early for his efforts to be productive in the short term, but I think he’ll succeed before they’re born.”

“By all the missing gods!” Yzell gasped.

“I began casting the diagnostics you use right after we began.” Alilia told her with a smile, then closed her eyes again. “And we’ve all saved a Reading of the experience, which is wonderful beyond words. I’ll pass them to you now.”

“May we share in that? The Readings and diagnostics that is?” Yazadril asked, his eager curiosity plain in his voice. “I don’t know if it’s wise to allow any more to have psionic contact with the babes at this stage of their development, but other than that I want to know all I can of this! You do realize how incredibly unprecedented this is, I’m sure!”

“We do.” Talia assured him. “And of course, we share your trepidations. There’s no way to know how this will affect them, and perhaps it wasn’t that wise for all three of us to share in the Link with the children. But they contacted me first, and it was so beautiful that I couldn’t exclude Mark and Alilia, so here we are.”

She gave the visitors a few minutes to digest the Readings and diagnostics up to that point, then brought them up to the moment in her ongoing Reading. For over an hour they all silently shared in the experience; the visitors getting it second-hand from Talia via the ongoing Reading, so that the babes were kept unaware of them.

Finally Yzell broke the silence. “You’re right about Mark’s teaching efforts.” she told Talia. “The babies’ brains are still changing and growing so fast, and are still so unformed, that they’re incapable of retaining any long term memories. Anything they learn is almost completely lost a few moments later.”

“Almost completely lost, but not quite.” Mark quietly rumbled. “Besides, it’s fun, so I don’t mind repeating the lessons as many times as it takes.”

“There is no doubt that they will be persons of unique capability.” Quewanak stated. “If they retain their sanity, that is. Their minds will never be normal by any standard. We can only hope that they will at least be functional.”

“They’re an empty vessel, and we’re filling it a little early.” Mark nodded. “But so long as the thoughts we’re sharing with them are loving and healthy, I can’t see any harm in it.”

“There’s the danger that they will be unable to form their own individuality, Linked so closely with each other as they are.” Quewanak pointed out. “Being unable to get someone else out of one’s mind has often led to serious mental problems, including insanity. And there’s the risk that they won’t form their own personalities, they’ll just absorb yours so completely that their minds may become no more than copies of yours.”

“Mm. That’s truth.” Mark nodded.

“I can’t break contact with them without actually Shielding against them, and I refuse to do that, since I think that being forcibly cut off from me would be more harmful than continuing the contact." Talia mused. "But perhaps it would be best if Mark and Alilia took a break from it once in a while.”