Prompt 022: Tactile
“I can feel myself. And I still don’t know where all of me is,” Corfiss marvelled. Telrim flicked his own tail around to catch it in a taloned hand, inspecting the blades, marvelling at the tough, unyielding feel of his skin. In the pool everything was touch. He’d never felt his own before.
“You mean where all your host body is,” said Issek. She was doing her own routine, blinking and looking around, touching everything in view. Their first host bodies. Everything felt so bright and complicated. Strange shapes and noises around them, simultaneously huge and distant.
Telrim ran his hand over the tip of his tail and realised it had to be about as big as his true body was. Tiny and fragile and yet bending all of this to his will. He met Corfiss’s gaze and they burst into a huffing, delighted sound. Several of the others around them joined in. Laughter. It erupted unasked, shaking the Hork-Bajir’s massive frame down to the heavy bones. He hadn’t known such a thing was in him.
Such power in their very amusement.
He laughed even harder. Issek was staring at them, head tilted, startled. Telrim shook his head and managed to rein in his lungs. He looked at his friends with eyes alight and eager. “How much more of this is there, you think?”
“How much more could there be?” Corfiss asked incredulously.
They didn’t let him live it down for months.