fictive

so like we did not know how to talk to each other in the beginning. or rather. we did know how, but we didn't know that we knew. like “i asked my anxiety why im anxious and it told me” is real, that happened. it was like. asking questions outloud and watching as feelings/answers formed as thoughts and inner “monologue”. but we werent thinking in plural terms then. besides, we didnt have any distinguishment in our internal thoughtstream anyway, it was all “me” and “I”. a very dialoguey “me” and “I”, but regardless, thats how it was.

at the time we had also been developing a headspace. didn't have one before, but a plural friend told us about theirs and we were like “yo thats so cool i want that that sounds awesome” so we took our visualization skills that we had from math class, working with redstone, and hand-coding 3D objects into minecraft mod source code, and started focusing that in to create a more detailed and persistent headspace than we were ever really used to.

well anyways, we still didn't really conceptualize of ourselves as separate but some parts of us were kinda feeling more like they wanted to. that it'd be fun? that it'd be interesting? eh who am i kidding there wasnt really any rationale that made sense, its just kinda that draw we feel sometimes when we know something is the thing for us, is somehow already part of who we are. we'd gotten similar with ponies, with gender, where we just kinda kept coming back to it.

we were prone to occasionally getting these... face pressures? pulsating feelings on our face or our head that would immediately go away if we touched/scratched at them gently, maybe its some kinda weird autism thing i dunno. used to stim with them a lot in school, inducing them by thinking, encouraging them, making the feelings stronger or weaker, moving them around.

so one morning one of us was sitting there thinking about how the name she picked for her middle name felt more like it was meant to be a first name. but how that didn't make any sense because she had her first name and you can't have two first names??. but she'd spend the previous night with a plural friend and so with that contextual priming, had the thought “wait what if that's the name of someone else in my head”. It's hard to say if the pressure she felt in her cheek was coincidental with this or intentional, but whatever the case, the one whose name she was thinking about, suddenly realized who they were, that indeed that was their name, and focused into that face pressure, encouraged it, somehow that feeling carried a resounding affirmation.

and it was through there that they communicated for a bit. a simple yes/no channel, until they figured out they could feel each others' emotions and go off of that. since like. they hadn't figured out how to just talk to each other in words yet. they hadn't figured out how to take turns using the body's voice, or how to take control of anything else on purpose. i think they tried using the “one person ask out loud, other answers in thoughts” strat, but either they had trouble with it or im wrong and they just forgot. I dunno, im short on details, but the communications channel was very very coarse from what i gather.

they also figured out how to be in headspace together, but that wasn't particularly useful for communicating anything other than presence either cause control over that space was very very loose, resolution was very vague, it was not possible to meaningfully hold up a sign with words on it or anything like that, we did not know what we were doing.

and then it took them months before they figured out how to actually talk to each other with like. words. things more defined than emotions. during which time i can only assume they were actually talking to each other in inner monologue without realizing it on numerous occasions lol, but who knows. it does say here in my records that when they did finally figure out how to talk to each other, the inner monologue immediately stopped. and there was quiet. because i guess they'd finally learned how to shut up after they were done talking.

but yeah thats why our face was trying to talk to us.