First the sphere went up, high into the sky. Below spread the coast running north into Norfolk, the rivers, running inland, with brown sprinkles that were towns and villages, the greens and yellows of fields and woodland and the vastness of the North Sea. It could feel Eostre, like a line clearly marking the route back to her. Then it dived back down to the mouth of the one of the rivers, the Deben and explored its length, past jetties, bridges, yachts. So much to see, all new.
Then people, at the river mouth, kite surfing, sailing, swimming from the sea beach, playing games walking on the shingle banks thrown up by the sea at the river, walking along the path on the sea wall that led back into town.
The sphere, like Eostre, could sense life forms, but a little better than she could, it could sense mood, happy, sad, excited, bored, at the moment, it didn’t yet know what they all meant exactly, but it could differentiate between good moods and bad moods, not as colours, but like the difference between the colours, a spectrum of moods. It spotted a mouse, permanently scared, but scared and hungry, then scared and full. Little children, who sparkled with changing moods, adults, watching them, solidly bored, or solidly happy. It went down low on the beach and enjoyed the twinkling children, happy, sad, angry, happy, excited, leaping from state to state responding to every little change with a changed emotion. Then the teenagers, burning bright and intense.
It started to build a pattern, an order, a structure for all it was seeing, woven, like tapestry, interlocking thread and strands, fear – a thread linking mice and children, water – a thread flowing through river, sea, plants and animals, a glorious textured world. A child screamed – a new addition to the weave, it’s mother’s anxious response, another loop to the thread.
Then, on the sea wall, alone, sat on a bench it noticed an individual with a different colour, like a steady grey in the human spectrum. It went to explore, it was an older man, grey hair, wrinkled face, well dressed, just watching all the happy people down on the shore, hands clasped on his lap. It sensed again something it had seen a flash of when it passed close to Ella on first leaving Eostre, the grief she felt always for her mother. But in this person it burned, strong, steady and grim, overwhelming, enduring sadness and loneliness.
It thought “I can’t fix this, maybe I shouldn’t even want to try, She may not approve if I intervene, she only sent me to explore. But, maybe, maybe I can add a light brightness to this one’s pattern. But how?”
Then it thought of the dogs, people like dogs, they bond with them, they don’t care that they are noisy or smelly and refuse to do as they are told, but love them anyway. Well, maybe that is what I should be, just a warm friendly other, to lighten the moment for him. It studied the dogs, their form, their texture how they interracted with humans.
In the scrub, behind the sea wall, out of sight, a swirling ball of energy formed itself into a large (the bigger the better, it thought), black (people seem to like them black) dog. It panted, as dogs do, it smelt as dogs do, it was a dog, just one made out of pure energy, coat and all, saliva, strokable. It walked out onto the sea wall, padded up to the bench where the old man sat, and sat down on the ground beside him.
The old man saw the dog arrive and looked round expecting to see its owner, but there were no obvious candidates along the path. He said “Hello boy, where have you come from?”
The dog looked round at him, then gently nuzzled his knee. He was rewarded with a pat on the head and a stroke. More to the point there was a shift in the old man’s “dull grey” temper, a warming. It was working.