A/N: It's been a crazy week, and I need a few more days to get the proper update in acceptable shape. Here's a quick interlude in the meantime.

Interlude

Her name was Aftran 927, and she finally, finally understood love.

She had known about it for weeks, of course. Her host was a nine-year-old girl named Karen, and Karen loved many things. The feel of her stuffed unicorn, the sound of her father's voice, the smell of the morning breeze off of the ocean and the slurp of the last, sugary gulp of milk after she finished her cereal. Love was the first thing Aftran had seen, when she opened Karen's memories—love so omnipresent, so overflowing that it would have faded into the background, were it not so vibrant and alive.

But she had not understood it—had not felt it, shared in it, reveled in it the way she had reveled in the sheer ecstasy of human sensation. Before Karen, Aftran had been small, so very small—had spent year after year as nothing more than a few strands of thought, a fragile web of memory. Her pool had lain in the barren northern reaches of the smallest continent, with no native Gedds and only the dull, rocklike ground-eaters for hosts. Their skulls had hardly any room for a Yeerk, and so Aftran had been little more than a whisper of personality, a ghost in the organic machine.

But humans! Their heads were so large, their bodies so complex. Aftran had swollen, in the taking, growing larger than she had ever been, larger than she had ever imagined being—feeling her self expand as more and more of her siblings joined her, became her, released their names and took the name of Aftran for their own. She had grown so enormous that she almost did not mind the cut, the gap, the aching empty loneliness that was temporary independence—especially not when she first touched Karen's brain and was rewarded with an experience brilliant beyond imagining.

The colors.

The sounds.

The effervescent tingle of sensation on skin—her skin.

For the first time, Aftran was large enough to think, to know, to be on her own, and for three whole days, she was drunk with the glory of living inside the paradise of Karen's head. She gathered thousands of memories—what wonder, to be able to hold so many!—and carried them back to the pool in triumph, a feast of recollections for the coalescion's joy.

On her second journey, she had been more sober.

But still—it was her purpose to consume, and so she soaked up Karen's experiences like a sponge, sharing them every third day with her family, her larger self. Sometimes there were greater needs, and she suspended the fête for this or that as the coalescion reached ever outward through the web of humanity. But she was closer to satisfaction than most of her brethren—closer to the true joy, the true purpose of life.

There was only one false note in the symphony, and that was Karen.

Karen did not like Aftran. Karen was small, and afraid—did not understand that this was her purpose, her reason—that she existed to be filled, that she was a vessel that had become a part of something larger, something beautiful. She cried within her head—sublime despair, exquisite sadness, and Aftran exulted in the sensation, but nevertheless, she wondered.

Bit by bit, she probed into the tiny human's soul, seeking to understand. At first, she took a Yeerkish tack—were there sensations the child was missing? She spoke to her comrades, to the Controllers of Karen's father and mother, and each agreed to greater contact—to more hugs, and kisses, and physical closeness. It pacified the parents, and the feelings were pleasant to all.

But still Karen wept. And so Aftran explored new avenues—new sensations and pleasures that Karen had never experienced. She tugged on every nerve—combined hormones and neurotransmitters in subtle, sensuous mixtures—orchestrated mad, fantastical dreams—fed her delicious, novel foods.

Nothing.

She began experimenting with giving Karen control, letting her move an arm, a leg—letting her say sweet dreams with her own voice when she parted from her parents at night. It helped, a little, and yet still the little girl wept.

Curious, Aftran dug deeper, taking more and more of Karen's memories into herself, delivering more and more of the human to her siblings in the pool. In the wild orgy of dissolution, she held the memories alongside those of a thousand other humans, but no great insight emerged. She returned to Karen each time different, each time wiser, and yet each time no less baffled.

Finally, she could bear the sadness no longer, and so she clamped down on her host, squeezing Karen into the smallest, darkest corner of their shared experience, seizing full and total control. For a time, the world was bright again, and Aftran danced through it, blissful and free, happy merely to live—to have arms which could move the universe, and eyes which could see for miles.

And then a day came when her impatience waned, when her curiosity swelled to the forefront again, and she drew the little girl out from the dark place to which she'd been banished. Sitting quietly in their room, she gave the reins to Karen, stepped back to see what the human child would do—

—and suddenly, without any particular revelation, she understood.

For Aftran, there was no boundary between possession and experience. To see a thing was to be a thing—in the ecstasy of the pool, all was immediate, all was present, all was one. She moved in and out of the coalescion in a heartbeat rhythm, gathering fragments of the universe and bringing them back to her family, her siblings, her larger self. She was them, and they were her, and only together could they see the broader picture—the synthesis of ten thousand pairs of eyes, the control of ten thousand moving bodies. She walked the world on ten thousand pairs of feet, shaped it with twenty thousand hands, and when she was with Karen, she was but the tiniest sliver of herself, and she hungered always—more—more—more.

But Karen was not hungry. Karen wanted, but she did not take; she longed, but she could not consume. Her hunger was for a fullness she would never, ever taste, herself—the smiles of her parents, the laughter of her friends, even the contentment of the lump of fluff and fabric she'd named after her grandmother's cat. She saw the trees dancing in the wind, and she loved them, and thus their imagined happiness gave her joy.

It was a strange thing, to Aftran—an alien thing. She stretched to feel it fully—to imagine an experience she could not devour, a memory she could not live, a sensation she could not tap into, no matter where she dwelt. What would it even mean, for such a thing to exist? How would one ever know it was real?

She dwelt on it for days—brought the question back to the coalescion, felt it echo through her siblings, watched it bounce off of their indifference. What concern had anyone, for experiences belonging to no one? It was a meaningless fallacy—not even valid enough to be counted as wrong.

Yet Aftran continued to wonder, and one day, she decided to try it.

It was not an easy experiment. She had to hide it from her comrades, waiting for an hour when they were busy, and would not notice odd behavior. When the moment came, she drove Karen deep into the dark, cutting the little girl off even from the sensations of sight and sound and touch. Working quickly, she assembled the ingredients in the kitchen, using the primitive human hotbox to heat her creation.

When it was finished, she pulled it out—allowed it to cool—covered it with sweet, sticky icing and decorated it with bright, edible sparkles. Cleaning up the mess, she placed the small cake on a plate, grabbed a knife and fork and napkin, and snuck back to their room, freezing the door in place with a tool she knew the little girl could not manipulate.

For Karen, she wrote, on a small, folded index card.

And then she vanished. Released her hold on the tiny human, and pulled back, away from her senses, away from control—shrinking down into the lonely darkness, blind and deaf and mute. She waited there for a timeless hour, wondering what the little girl would do, feeling the twisty pulse of love emerging for the first time from her own soul. Karen would be happy, she decided—she would be happy, and Aftran wouldn't look, ever—would let that hour belong to Karen, and Karen alone. It would be a private moment, an un-memory, the sort of thing that couldn't properly be stolen, and that was how they would both know it had been real.

Or so she thought, until she groped slowly back into control, only to find that the little girl had taken the knife, and put out both of her own eyes. Weak, blind, and gasping with pain, it took Aftran three tries to undo the lock on the door, and call for help from her comrades.

They took Karen to the hospital, and Aftran to the pool. Entering the warm embrace of the coalescion, she let herself disappear, dissolving fully into the togetherness, becoming one with her siblings, carrying with her the memory of love. Together with her larger self, she lived it, drank of it, ate it and breathed it.

This love, she asked herself, in a chorus of ten thousand voices. What good is it?

It was not the only question she asked that night, in the grand roil of thought and memory. After all, there were so many lives to live, so many experiences to absorb. She spent longer than usual in the pool, while the doctors struggled to save Karen's eyes—struggled, and failed, and eventually made the decision to terminate the host. There were more than enough humans to go around, these days, with more joining them every day as the inevitable expansion continued.

Eventually, a moment came when no other was called, and a head was thrust beneath the surface, and she reached out with the tiniest part of herself to brush against an ear. Slowly, agonizingly, she ceased to be we and became once more she, shivering with loss and delight as she traded the mosaic cacophony for the brilliant clarity of a single, solitary perspective. She reached for the mind, and it unfolded before her, its memories lit with wonder and light.

Her name was Aftran 928, and she knew absolutely nothing of love.