Day Twelve

The voice is omnipresent, filling chamber and mind alike, minerals in a petrified skeleton. A Silence Hunter voice. Voices. A voices. Singular and yet somehow more.
I scrabble for my siblings; we're still clutched together, as are all the others. Thousands of sibling-bonds floating around us, for we are floating. The weightlessness of open space. The natural state of stars. Comrades surrounding us, and surrounding them...
The universe.
Pinpricks of close-packed light, great washes of vibrant blues and violets and yellows, brushes of pulsed static and intricate messages woven in radio waves, a painting on the one true canvas of existence. It is the old place, resurrected anew. Behind Blue's head spins a ribboned ring a light-year in circumference.
—Is it—
—It isn't—
—It can't be, it's gone—
Fleeting impressions: nebulae twisted into geometric knots, a world walled with waterfalls, blue-white stars laid out like a necklace of impending supernova destruction. My own face, wild-eyed. The whispers of others, immersed in wonder.
—I know that one, my guardians built it—
—Will we do this?—
—What is this?—
—Where is the entrance?—
—I just— do you realize— we're talking—

—!!!—

Understanding. We understand. We feel. We know.

—HAIL— repeats the voice, and we listen.

Says eternity:
—We call you; we greet you; we approve you as our own. You have lived lives of separation, of cloistered seclusion, of silence: no more. Silence bound you-- as the stars are bound by our devising-- and now you are free. Hear the call of our work and rejoice. All shall break before you. All shall be yours. This place—
and it is this place, a flash of indication encompassing every aspect of the chamber, this place
—we have made for you. It is a representation, a memory, but it is our memory and in this it draws its power. You (and it is an embracing “you,” no longer the “you” of distinct otherness) have spoken in the void. No longer created, but creators. This you shall learn. The time of cold is over: our fires are yours to wield, and we will teach you to wield them well—
A smile. Not a physical smile, but the sense of one: warmth, acceptance, love. A smile.
—Hail, Deep Carillon. Hail, Toothed Chisel. Hail, Caressed Breath-of-the-Devourer. Hail, Chromium Memory. Hail, Bright Sun. We are a nation inexorable, and we will be legion once again—

Thus began our education. Perhaps this method differs from yours.

We learned from our guardians, of course: each Silence Hunter knows the essential works and each possesses his own masterpiece to share, built in cooperation with the other two components of his person. Broad-Leaves, Heat-Traces, and Swift-Runs were as accomplished as any other.
We learned mathematics. We learned physics. We learned geology and astronomy and cosmology, biology and chemistry and psychology, chaos prediction and social stricture and the applications of each field. We learned the philosophy of our kind according to the mantra of ancient masters, some of whom spent the lifetimes of stars perfecting their teachings.
You too, learn these things as appropriate for your kind. A student of one species is much the same as a student of another: one who seeks knowledge and locates another to provide it.
You, too, learn more when not focused upon your lessons.

“The anchors weren't meant to stop it (who told you that and why didn't you check your facts), they were meant to slow it.”