There is a quiet, easily missable sound from an out-of-the-way corner of the room; then another, louder sound, as of a small round object rocking back and forth on the floor. Rock, rock. Rock, rock.

Rock, rock.

Crack!

A little creature, barely the size of a tennis ball, emerges from her egg with a soft little meep.

After a moment's bewildered examination of her immediate surroundings, she levitates into the air and goes looking for harvestable objects, such as rocks or plants.

The room doesn't contain any plants but does have an assortment of semiprecious rocks glued next to their names on a small poster.

Deshi pauses the historycamera to go see what - fell down? Probably it was a branch breaking off a twig outside or something but it sounded like it was in her room.

Then Deshi may or may not notice a little fluffy creature levitating next to the poster, bobbing gently up and down for a few seconds before finally coming away with a sparkling pebble and drifting down to deposit it on the floor. The pebble hovers tidily next to her little fluffy shoulder. It resembles the stone on the poster that she got it from, but smaller and rounder.

"- ack!" exclaims Deshi. Is that a bird - no, it has - what the fuck is that - it's floating - she's going to take a picture and see if it shows up in the picture, she read a book once where that's a good way to tell if something's really there -

The creature shows up in as many pictures as she would like to take of it.

It sets its sparkly little pebble down very gently on the floor, and curls up next to it, and within seconds is emitting the teeniest imaginable snores.

It's... cute, once she's gotten over it being a totally bizarre kind of creature she's never seen before and identified its eyes and feet and stuff. It looks like an extremely small goat with outsize horns.

She texts her best friend. Hey come over you'll never guess what I found [picture of floatgoat]

Her best friend, Suvi no-household-name-at-this-time, texts back that's adorable where'd you get it?

Deshi texts back a cryptic emoticon. Suvi will have to see it snoring in person.

The snoring lasts for just shy of twenty minutes, at which point the creature wakes up, ascends, and bobs up and down next to her favourite rock again for a few seconds to harvest another pebble.

Suvi takes more than twenty minutes to come over - it's not that long a trip but she doesn't leave right away - so Deshi is still alone in the room, except for the floatgoat, when it wakes up. She takes video of it floatgoating, and of - bobbing near her rock poster?? She gets her nose perhaps inadvisably close to the floatgoat in the process.

Then she will perhaps be surprised by the abrupt appearance of a wee little pebble after a few seconds of bobbing. The pebble is identical to the one on the floor, and similar to but distinct from the rock it was harvested from, and levitating just beside the floatgoat's shoulder.

"Eek!" shrieks Deshi, startling back a little and fumbling her phone.

"Eek!" echoes the floatgoat, similarly startled.

But after a moment or two to recover, she drifts down to the floor and sets the second pebble carefully down next to the first.

Deshi stabilizes her phone and ends the video.

Suvi knocks on the door. "Deshi?"

"Yeah one sec!" calls Deshi.

The floatgoat, curious yet nervous, levitates back into the air and peers at Deshi from a safe couple of Deshi-arm-lengths away.

Deshi lets Suvi in. "Hey," says Suvi, "I thought you were saving up, not buying stuffed animals - oh, did you dangle it from the ceiling? It's kind of in the middle of things there -"

"Um," says Deshi.

The floatgoat meeps and drifts backward a few more feet now that there are two Large Startling Creatures present.

"- is it a - drone, or -" says Suvi.

"I don't know," says Deshi. "It just - showed up. I noticed it like a few minutes before I texted you."

Tiny floatgoat peering nervously at the Large Startling Creatures.

She gradually drifts backward and downward; then, after a few seconds of nobody making any aggressive moves, she circles around into the corner of the room where she first hatched, and curls up in the biggest intact piece of her eggshell, and goes back to sleep.

The girls follow the floatgoat.

"Is that an eggshell?" says Suvi.

"That also wasn't here before, I didn't see it till just now."

zzz

"...it's so cute."

"Let me show you the video I took..."

Twenty minutes later they are still sitting and watching the floatgoat.

The floatgoat wakes!

Moving somewhat cautiously arround the Large Startling Creatures, she approaches the poster again.

"What is it going to do with all the - rock copies - is that the lapis lazuli?" says Suvi.

"Yeah it seems to be somehow duplicating the lapis lazuli except in - a bead shape?" says Deshi.

Suvi picks up one of the previous beads from the floor.

The lapis lazuli pebble is unpolished but smooth, and very pretty. It doesn't have a hole like a bead would, and isn't quite perfectly round like a bead might be, but it's definitely small enough to be a (fairly chonky) bead.

Meanwhile, the floatgoat harvests another pebble from the lapis lazuli, takes it down to the floor, sets it next to the other one, meeps quizzically, and looks around for the missing rock. Where oh where could... oh! The Large Startling Creature has it!

She floats into the air, peering nervously at Suvi.

"...do you want this back?" Suvi asks.

"It's not a parrot."

"Maybe floatgoats can talk, I don't know."

"Parrot?" she echoes.

"Ah! It's a parrot! I mean, uh, it can talk!" says Deshi.

"You're not a parrot, you're a floatgoat," Suvi tells it.

"Floatgoat," says the floatgoat, bobbing slightly in the air.

"Yeah! You're a teeny tiny cutie floatgoat. Where'd you come from?" says Deshi.

"Come from?"

She's eyeing the pebble in Suvi's hand again, torn between pursuing it and this interesting new noisemaking game.

"Do you want this back?" Suvi holds out the bead.

She meeps and floats forward to retrieve it; it hovers by her shoulder, and she floats down to the floor to set it next to the other two, forming a tidy little triangle.

"How do you float the rocks?" asks Deshi.

"Rocks!" she echoes. "Floatgoat rocks?"

She nudges one of the pebbles toward the other two, and they all sort of wobble and contract toward each other, and then where the triangle of pebbles was previously sitting, there is now one much bigger and sparklier pebble. It doesn't quite look entirely like lapis lazuli anymore; the streaks of blue and grey and occasional glittering gold are laid out in flowing swirls now, instead of the usual patterns found in rocks.

Deshi shrieks. Suvi's jaw drops. "What was that?" Suvi asks.

Tiny squeak of alarm! Hiding under a shelf from the Large Startling Creatures!

"Oh, no, I'm sorry, cutie," says Deshi. "I just didn't know what you... did. There were three of those beads, right? And then you turned them into this?"

...meeeeep? Cautious peering out from under shelf.

"Sorry," says Deshi again.

"There were three beads and now there's one bead! How did three beads become one bead?" says Suvi encouragingly.

"Beads..."

She floats down to the floor next to the much bigger pebble and taps her tiny hooves on the floor three times, drawing a triangle like the one she set the pebbles into. "Bead bead bead..." and then she taps her hooves on the bigger one, "bead?"

"Yeah!" says Suvi. "Three little beads and one bigger bead."

She makes a thoughtful sort of mrrrble sound... and then curls up on the floor to take a nap.

"Why is it so tired," whispers Suvi.

"I don't know!" says Deshi.

Slightly less than twenty minutes later, up she pops, and goes straight to the lapis lazuli to harvest another one of the small beads.

"Why are you doing that?" asks Deshi, when Suvi elbows her and she looks up from her phone game.

"Why doing that?" she echoes. "Why why doing that?"

She carries the smaller bead down to set it on the floor close to the bigger one.

"Do you just really like beads?" asks Deshi.

"More to the point how are you doing that? Is it magic?" says Suvi. "Same with the floating."

"Floating! Floatgoat. Floatgoat float."

"Yeah, you sure do! You float!" giggles Deshi. "Floatgoat floats! We can't do that."

"We can't float?"

She levitates back up to around eye level.

"Yeah, only floatgoats float. - are there other floatgoats? One floatgoat -" Deshi points at the one floatgoat.

"One floatgoat," agrees the floatgoat. "One... more?"

Thoughtful mrrble...

...aaaand it's naptime again.

"Why is it so sleepy?" exclaims Suvi.

"I don't know!" says Deshi. "I'm going to make her a little nest."

"Her?"

"Well, she sounds like a her. If actually she's not I guess I'll switch."

Deshi and Suvi assemble a nest out of a small-miscellany-box lined with bra with a snapped strap that Deshi hasn't thrown away or fixed yet, cups nested in each other and pinned together with safety pins. Deshi tries to verrrrry gently scoop the floatgoat into it.

The floatgoat stirs slightly but resumes snoring once nestled.

Once again, the nap lasts not quite twenty minutes, and then she's up and floating over to... her eggshell...?

She bobs up and down at it in the harvesting motion for a few seconds, then comes away with a triangular eggshell fragment that wasn't there before, which she ferries over to set beside the pebbles.

"More!" she says, tapping it with a tiny hoof.

"More eggshell?" says Suvi.

"More eggshell? More floatgoat."

"- you can make more floatgoats out of eggshells?"

"Make bead out of bead? Make eggshell out of eggshell?"

"You're going to make eggshell bits and then - zhoop them together, like you did with the beads? And that will make a floatgoat?" says Deshi.

"Zhoop!" she says affirmatively, though whether she's agreeing with the sentence because she understood it or repeating the word because it's fun to say is perhaps a little ambiguous.

"Zhoop!" giggles Deshi.

"How do you make things like that? Or float? Or zhoop stuff?" asks Suvi.

"How?" she echoes. "How do things? How float? How zhoop?"

"She's still learning the language," Deshi tells Suvi. "Be patient."

"I guess," sighs Suvi. She points at herself. "I'm Suvi and that's," point, "Deshi! We're humans. We're both humans, our names are Suvi and Deshi, and you're a floatgoat. What's your name?"

"Suvi, human!" she says, attempting to point with a tiny hoof. "Deshi, human!" Attempting, with much less success, to point the tiny hoof at herself: "Floatgoat. Floatgoat name...?"

This question appears to stump her.

"Do you not have a name because you hatched like an hour ago?" asks Deshi.

"Hatched! An hour? How hour?"

"An hour is like three of your naps," says Suvi. "...I guess maybe you don't know how long your naps are. An hour is like twenty or thirty of your being-awake-between-naps."

"Who made your egg?" asks Deshi.

The floatgoat taps her hooves together three times and says "Nap nap nap hour?"

Then, to the other question, she responds, "Who made your egg?"

"Nap nap nap hour," confirms Suvi.

"I didn't come from an egg," says Deshi. "I have a mom and came from her." She finds a picture of her mom on her phone and shows it to Petal.

"Deshi mom? Deshi mom human? Deshi hatched from mom?"

"My mom is human and I was born from her. We say hatched if there's eggshell, and born if there isn't eggshell," says Deshi.

Mrrrrble. Thoughtful bobbing.

Then, "More floatgoat. More eggshell. Nap."

And she returns to the bra nest and sleeps.

"Well, she likes the nest," says Deshi.

"Should we... tell someone," says Suvi. "About the magical creature that is claiming it can make more of itself."

"Tell... who?"

"I dunno."

(Slightly less than) twenty minutes later, up she hups, and she harvests another shell fragment from her eggshell and sets it next to the first.

"Do you want to learn some more words?" says Deshi.

"Words!!!" says the floatgoat with enormous enthusiasm.

Deshi pulls up Chatdabble, which she uses to not completely forget everything she knows about foreign languages she picked up from watching foreign TV, and tells it to pull up a lesson in LOW VILSHU from an L1 of OTHER.

The tiny creature is fascinated and delighted by this alien device and its promise of words. She diligently attempts lessons, though she may have some trouble interfacing with the device. On the other hand, her capacity to absorb vocabulary is fearsome for her age; on the third hoof, she is fairly well stymied by verb tenses, which she can recognize decently well when prompted but has a really tough time producing without a recent example to echo.

Chatdabble is adaptive, and will soon be throwing her new vocab in every sentence while drilling the verb tenses.

Verb tenses remain a thorny issue no matter how hard she practices, but after enough vocabulary has gone by she remarks, "Floatgoat name is Petal."

"Did you just decide that, or was it already Petal before?" asks Deshi.

"Petal doesn't know word before!"

"Did you know another language and have a name in that language that means Petal or did you pick this yourself because you like 'Petal'?"

"Petal is best plant part," she explains. "Plant is best... doesn't know word."

"...living thing?" suggests Suvi.

"Nooo..."

She goes to the rock poster and bobs up and down at the lapis lazuli, faster and for less time and with more exaggerated movements than when she's pebblemaking.

"What is word? Petal does what? Go to rock, get small rock. What is word?"

"...we can't do that, so we don't... have a word for it," says Deshi.

"...clone?" suggests Suvi. "Except it's not exactly the same... extract? Har...vest? Copy?"

"What is clone? What is har vest? What is copy?"

"Copy is - make a thing that's like another thing. Like, I can - copy this Vilshu exercise off the screen." Deshi grabs paper and demonstrates. "It's still there but I have a copy. Cloning is like copying but it's mostly for living things and with lab equipment. Harvesting is like if there's a tree and I pick a fruit off it I harvest it."

"Harvest," she decides. "Harvest from plant, harvest from tree, harvest from rock, harvest from many things. Plant is best."

"Why are plants best?"

"Best!" she insists.

"Best for what? Best at what?" tries Suvi.

She scrunches up her tiny face in deep thought, then finally concludes,

"Doesn't know words."

"But you went for the rock instead of trying to go outside and find a plant?" says Deshi.

"Outside?"

Deshi points out the window. Her window looks down on a street where people and animals are going by on various nyooms and on foot.

Peeeeer out the window.

"Outside!!" she says, with great excitement, and gently bonks her antlers against the window, which is totally unaffected by this.

"- do you want to leave?" asks Suvi tentatively.

"Would you come back?" asks Deshi.

"Goes outside, finds plant, harvests from plant, comes back," she says. But after a moment's further thought, she adds, "...first, naps."

Tiny naptime.

Soooo cute.

The girls spend the twenty minutes writing up a list of questions so they don't get too sidetracked. It looks like this:

1. Can we pet you?
2. Is the nest comfy?
3. Why do you sleep so much?
4. How is harvesting your eggshell going to make more floatgoats?
5. Will harvesting rocks and plants also make more floatgoats, or do something else?
6. Do you want to meet more people?

Upon awakening from her latest nap, Petal flies to the window, bonks her antlers gently against it, observes once again the lack of response, and says, "Help?"

"When you harvest things you fall asleep," says Suvi. "Can we talk first?"

"...talk first," she allows.

They will go through their questions!

Can they pet her? Yes.

Is the nest comfy? Yes!

Why does she sleep so much? "Sleep before harvest!"

How will harvesting the eggshell produce more floatgoats? "Eggshell, zhoop, egg. Egg, zhoop, floatgoat!"

Will harvesting plants do that or something else? "Something else."

Does she want to meet more people? "...more people?" she says, somewhat nervously. "What does more people want?"

The rest of this conversation is conducted while they pet her.

What would happen if she didn't nap for a while?

Is that where her egg came from, zhooped shell-harvest-bits? Can she make an unlimited number of floatgoats that way?

What will harvesting plants do?

More people don't want anything yet but will probably, if introduced to Petal, want to learn more about her.

Her fur is so soft.

She doesn't know what would happen if she didn't nap for a while, besides "after no nap, no harvest!"

She doesn't know where her egg came from, because "isn't hatched yet then!"

They may need to detour to explain what 'unlimited' means, but once she's got the idea, "Yes! Unlimited floatgoats."

The cycle of plant harvesting is described thusly: "Harvest plant, get plant part. Zhoop plant part, make plant. Make more plant! Make so much plant! Zhoop plant so much! Pretty plant!"

She remains wary of the concept of more people, because "people is Big and Surprise!"

They congratulate her on being so soft.

How does she know how to make floatgoat eggs in general, if she doesn't know where hers came from?

"Egg from eggshell!"

"- you hatched right? Your egg didn't zhoop into you, it broke apart. When you make a new floatgoat egg will it break apart or will you need to make more eggs to zhoop them?"

She thinks about this for a few seconds and then concludes, "Doesn't know!"

"Well, I guess we'll see..." Deshi opens the window, and pushes the screen aside.

Out goes the floatgoat!

She beholds the selection. So many things! Which of them are plants? Are there trees that might make fruit? Flowers that might make petals?

The yard of the dorm has:

- a little garden with various herbs and also saffron crocuses in it, plus a patch of carrots
- an apple tree with ladder rungs nailed to the trunk and a boy up in it getting some apples
- a big shady oak
- jasmine all over the fence
- mostly-clover ground cover

The saffron crocuses are so pretty. After glancing back and forth between them and the apple tree, she floats up to one and bobs up and down and comes away with a delicate purple petal, which she carries back to her little collection on Deshi's floor.

"Now you're tired?" says Suvi.

"Tired!" she confirms. "Nap."

Small soft floatgoat curls up in small soft bed.

"But like actually we should think of someone to tell, and tell them," says Suvi.

"But what if it scares her?" frets Deshi.

"I don't know but I need to go, it's been like, a while," says Suvi, looking at the time. "I guess it's not an emergency, making unlimited floatgoats would at least clearly take a while."

Small soft snores.

When she gets up, she yawns a tiny yawn and then harvests another eggshell and sets it with the rest of them, identical shell-shard triplets.

"Are you going to zhoop them now?" asks Deshi.

"No. Makes more eggshell first. Then zhoop more egg!"

"...how many more eggs?" asks Deshi.

Decisively, "One two three four five egg."

"And five floatgoats?"

For some reason this question seems to stump her.

"...it might be nice to have one or two more floatgoats," says Deshi, "but I don't know how many floatgoats might be too many floatgoats. At least I don't know until I ask some... people, I don't know who."

"...More Petal?" she tries.

"Well, they shouldn't all be named Petal, wouldn't that be confusing?"

"No... zhoop," she says. "More Petal."

"You can zhoop?"

"Petal can zhoop!"

"But the other floatgoats won't be Petal, right, they'd be different floatgoats we haven't met yet."

"Noooo. Zhoop, more Petal!"

"What if you didn't zhoop them right away?"

"Then more floatgoat," she concedes.

"And then they wouldn't be Petal, right?"

"Right. Different floatgoat."

"And then if they zhooped with you the zhooped floatgoat wouldn't be Petal or them either, would it?"

"...different..."

Something about this line of reasoning isn't sitting quite right with her, though.

"Maybe there shouldn't be any more floatgoats till we're definitely clear on that? I don't want to disappear a perfectly good floatgoat by zhooping it to make more Petal."

"...doesn't disappear," she says. "Doesn't... is."

"Doesn't is?"

"Doesn't is!" she confirms. "Zhoop zhoop, all one."

"So it'd happen right away, before the other floatgoats were not-Petal floatgoats?"

"Right away before the other floatgoats were!"

"...wow. Do you want to be zhooped?"

"Want to be more Petal!"

"How big will you be?"

"Don't know."

"Well, if you get bigger you might not fit in your nest. So I think you should wait," says Deshi.

"...nest is good," she acknowledges.

"I'm really glad you like it!"

Happy little burble.

Since she has been convinced not to keep going the eggshell route, she floats over to the window to see if she can go harvest another crocus petal instead.

Deshi will open the window for her again, though it's a bit too nippy out there for her to want it left that way.

"Is harvesting stuff fun?" she wonders when Petal comes back.

"Harvesting stuff is fun!"

"Is it... more interesting than it looks?"

"Makes things!"

"It does! Is there a specific thing you're excited to make?"

"Pretty flowers!"

"You're going to make flowers out of the saffron petals?"

"Zhoop!"

"Will they be more saffron crocuses?"

This question, for some reason, stumps her again.

"...do you know what they'll be?"

"...same plant and different plant?" she tries. "...more. More pretty. More same plant."

"Like how the lapis thing you made is like a - shinier prettier version of regular lapis?"

"Yes!"

"So the crocus you make will... grow better saffron?"

"Don't know."

"How do you know the things you know - like - you know words because we taught you words, and the website taught you words. And you learned them. But how do you know things you didn't learn?"

"Knows things! Knows how to float and harvest and zhoop and talk." She ponders for a second, then concedes, "Doesn't know how knows things."

"You knew how to talk? I thought you had to learn how to talk."

"Knows how to talk. Doesn't know words before learns words."

"Is there a different language you knew how to speak already?"

"No different language." Petal's tiny face scrunches up in thought. "...before knows words, knows words are. Before knows words, knows talking is words."

"...huh. Do you know anything else that you didn't learn -?"

Tiny scrunch. Thinking thinking thinking.

"...doesn't know?" she says hesitantly.

"...huh.

Do you think you would know if there were other floatgoats already?"

Tiny scrunch and floating in tiny circles, thinking thinking thinking.

"...knows if other floatgoats near?" she says, even more hesitantly. "No other floatgoats near now. Doesn't know if other floatgoats far."

"How near?"

"...knows where Petal is, knows where eggshell is, knows where lapis lazuli is, knows where saffron crocus is. Knows if other floatgoats near like those things. Doesn't know how near more than that."

"...that's pretty near. Do you want to go more places and see if there are floatgoats near those?"

"Go more places? ....places have flowers?"

"Places do have flowers! Hundreds of kinds of flowers."

"Go places, see flowers! Harvest flowers!"

"Do you have to nap between every harvest? That will make it harder to show you stuff if you're napping most of the time."

"Nap every harvest! More Petal less nap."

"- more Petal less nap? Like if you zhoop?"

"Yes! Zhoop, more Petal, less nap."

"Like the naps will be shorter, or you'll just stay awake longer between them?"

"...more nest, nap shorter. More Petal, more harvest before nap."

"...more nest? Like a bigger one?"

"Noooo..." She wobbles uncertainly.

"...two nests?"

"No... zhoop more nest. But can't zhoop nest!"

"Even if I made more the same way?"

"Can't zhoop nest," she affirms.

"Why not?"

It takes her a real actual minute of deep thought to finally come up with an explanation:

"...harvest thing, zhoop thing. Doesn't harvest nest."

"Is... there something you could harvest to make a zhoop nest?"

"Doesn't know!"

"Huh. If I just try to make the nest nicer would that help at all or does it only help if it gets zhooped?"

"Doesn't know..." she says doubtfully.

Well, Deshi can busy herself finding things to nicen the nest. She can make it a little canopy out of a scarf and some cardboard, and put in a cottonball as a pillow?

Regardless of their effects on naptime length, these renovations do seem to delight the floatgoat.

Excellent. Deshi pets her. "I should order dinner," she says, "if you're nervous about meeting people you probably don't want to go down to the dorm dining room with me so I can just eat in here."

Soft contented burbling.

"- do you eat?"

Intrigued noise. "Eat? Eat food?"

"Yeah, do you eat food? - you're very small so I should probably not order an entire separate thing for you but you could have some of mine."

She mutters very very quietly for a few seconds, then settles on announcing, "Eat food!"

"What food do you like?"

"Doesn't know!"

"Okay, I'll just get whatever I would get anyway I guess."

She gets a noodle stirfry. When her phone bleeps at her that it's arrived, she goes and sticks her head out the window; there's a simple pulley setup outside each column of dorm windows and the deliveryperson attaches the bag to one of the hooks attached to the rope loop. "Thaaanks!" Deshi yells down, and she pulls the bag up and unhooks it. She tears part of the lid off her takeout container and sets it aside as a Petal-plate and puts taste sized amounts of each ingredient out for her.

Petal ventures little nibbles of the ingredients, and makes variously valenced burbling noises about them. She likes mild flavours and vegetables, and when she tries an especially complexly flavoured nibble she has to flop down flat on her little tummy for a few seconds to fully process the experience before she floats up again with a cheerful chirp.

Awwwww petpetpetpetpet. She can have more of the bits she likes.

She will consume many mild flavours and vegetables, and even venture a second nibble of the Slightly Too Exciting Food, and eventually curl up in her nest for a nap...

...which, if Deshi happens to be watching the clock, is about a minute faster than her usual extremely consistent time.

Deshi is not actually watching the clock, alas. She's tossing her takeout container - the trash can is in a tiltable compartment that can be pulled into her room and has a corresponding hutch it normally exists within that opens into the hall, so whoever's on garbage collection can grab everybody's trash without having to go into the rooms. Then she's nipping out for a quick shower, which she completes before Petal is done napping. By the time Petal's up Deshi's in her pajamas for the evening and back to captioning practice.

Window antlerbonk?

"Oh - yeah okay, but you're not going to be able to do that while I'm asleep, okay? I sleep for a lot longer than you do, all at once." Window open.

Petal burbles thoughtfully on her way out the window, and comes back with a saffron crocus petal to deposit with the rest, and then picks up the cottonball pillow from her nest and floats it over to Deshi. "Put in Deshi nest?" she suggests. "More nest, less sleep?" Then, looking back and forth between Deshi and her suggested pillow, she sheepishly concludes, "...maybe too small."

"Yeah, I have a pillow like this," says Deshi, leaning over to fluff the pillow on her bed. "And a nicer bed wouldn't make me sleep faster."

That pillow is SO BIG. Petal has to take a moment to contend with this revelation before she returns her cottonball to its place in her nest and curls up there to sleep.

Deshi stays up another few minutes but by the time Petal wakes up again she's in bed with her eyes closed and has turned out the lights and drawn the curtains.

Petal spends the night alternately napping and harvesting lapis lazuli. By the time Deshi wakes, there's quite a collection going, arranged in a neat little hexgrid on the floor.

"Wow," yawns Deshi, "that's a lot of lapis. How come it's all laid out like that?"

"Zhoop!" she explains.

"...if you want to zhoop it why didn't you? What does that have to do with the layout?"

"...zhoop like that. Not like that, can't zhoop."

"...why can't you zhoop things if they're not in a grid?"

"Doesn't know..."

"Were you waiting for me to wake up so I could see them before you zhooped?"

"Yes!"

"Awww, thank you! I'll take a video, how about -" She sets that up. "Okay, ready!"

And: zhoooooooooop!!

The mass of pebbles contracts together next to the larger pebble, and then the larger pebble joins it as it extends outward again; the whole assembly flashes in and out like a strangely frantic tide a couple more times before settling. There are now two fist-sized, alarmingly beautiful lapis-lazuli-inspired blue rocks on the floor, arranged in a neat triangle with one smaller rock that looks like it might be the stage in between those and the previous larger pebble; the two of them are identical to each other. Petal busies herself rearranging all the stuff on the floor to re-consolidate it all into a single hexgrid again, since all that zhooping has left some gaps.

If Deshi examines the video, she will observe that indeed, intermediate entities in the multi-stage zhooping process appear only as blurry, translucent silhouettes in single frames before being reabsorbed into the next zhoop cycle, confirming Petal's impression that any floatgoats she might create in the process of zhooping herself would not really have time to meaningfully exist.

"Ohhhhh those are so pretty," sighs Deshi. "You worked so hard to make them, too, you've probably been up and down all night - what will you do with them?"

"Doesn't know!" Thoughtful pause. "...make more?"

"...well, sure, you can make as many as you want, I guess, but are they for something? Do they do anything besides being pretty? They're gorgeous but they're nearly as big as you, you can't exactly wear them."

"Pretty rocks!"

"Do you want them near your nest?"

Perplexed burble.

"...do you want them at all or do you mostly just like making them and not having them?"

"...like make rocks. Like zhoop rocks. Like look at rocks?"

"Okay." She picks up the rocks and puts them near the nest. And buffs the fingerprints off them.

Petal adjusts the position of the rocks and begins transfering her whole hexgrid over to nest-adjacent territory.

"- well if you put it all there you'll take over my whole desk - you could go under the bed? And have a booklight so it's not too dark in there -" Deshi digs up a clip light and stashes it and the nest and everything else Petal-related under her bed, which was mostly swept under last week and has only one box of storage under it. "You can turn the booklight on and off like so." Click, click.

Petal boops the booklight. Click click! Click! Happy burble. Cheerfully hexgridding all her items next to her nest (which is not, itself, exactly part of the hexgrid, though it might take a ruler for non-Petal individuals to pick up on that detail).

When she's all set up down there Deshi takes a picture.

Petal has no knowledge that she is being depicted, but luckily she is outrageously adorable 100% of the time. In this particular case she is hovering just above her nest and surveying her tiny kingdom, adorably.

"Look!" says Deshi, turning her phone around.

Petal peers incredulously at the picture, looking between it and her nest several times, and finally says with considerable wonderment, "...Petal?"

"Yeah!" She can show her previous Petal pictures too.

Petal's little face goes like :O.

"So many Petal!" She makes an abortive body-gesture as though trying to harvest herself from the screen.

"Just pictures," clarifies Deshi. The next picture is of Deshi and Suvi together at the beach.

Petal peers intently at the picture, looks between it and Deshi several times to verify that they are separate beings, and says slowly, "just.... pictures."

"Yup. So I can remember how things looked, and show them to people."

There is so much tiny bogglement.

"Do you want to try taking a picture? I think the phone would be hard for you to hold, but you can boop the part that takes the picture, here -"

Oh! Boop!!

Her tiny nose proves effective at phone-booping.

Then she has a picture of, well, a weird subset of the under-the-bed-view, but it's proof of concept.

Excited little burbles!

"You're so cuuuuute." Pet pet. "I'm going to go down to the cafeteria for breakfast, do you want to come or should I just bring you something?"

"Cafeteria where? Food? More things?"

"Cafeteria's downstairs and it has food and more things but also people."

"...bring food please."

"Okay." Deshi goes to breakfast and comes back later with a napkinful of pastry nibbles and a bit of scrambled egg.

Petal nibbles many nibbles and makes enthusiastic burbling noises about them, then curls up in her nest for another Noticeably Shortened Nap.

Deshi spends this nap answering her email!

Petal awakens from her nap and harvests an eggshell!

"Do you know how big you'd be if you zhoop?" Deshi asks, observing this.

"Noooo..."

"Do you have a guess? Like, would you get too big to float, or too big to go through the window?"

"Not too big to float!" she declares firmly. "Floatgoat float. Too big for window... doesn't know. Maybe?" She seems doubtful, though.

"If you might get too big for the window - or the door even - you probably shouldn't zhoop in my room, you might get stuck."

Thoughtful burbles. "Shouldn't zhoop in Deshi's room," she confirms.

"Also if you're nervous about meeting people you should make sure you're checking before you go out to the yard to see if anybody's there."

Affirmative burble.

Pet pet pet. "You're so cute. I hope that if you zhoop you're still cute. And soft."

"Still soft," she affirms. "Doesn't know cute." Think think think tiny face does tiny scrunches. "Probably still cute."

"How do you figure?"

"One zhoop not very different, only little different. So, cute now, probably still cute."

"Hm. But possibly less cute? - how many times could you zhoop?"

"Doesn't know..."

"I guess if you were going to do it more than once the other floatgoats would have time to exist."

Confused burbling.

"- like, if you zhoop a lot of eggshells and you're right next to them they'll zhoop into you right away, right, but if you then wanted to zhoop again, then you'd need to zhoop more floatgoats, and zhoop them together, and then zhoop with those, right?"

She seems to have difficulty articulating her objection to this; after a few false starts, she inquires, "Picture zhoop?"

Deshi shows her the video of zhooping she took.

She figures out how to interact with the video and then tries to play it a bit at a time to showcase the intermediate stages going by in a nearly-nonexistent blur, but can't quite get it to go frame by frame.

Deshi can pull up the frame slideshow?

Aha!

"Rock," she says, pointing at the collection of lapis lazuli pebbles before she started. "Has time."

Scroll scroll scroll through the frames, and: "More-rock," pointing at the ghostly barely-there silhouettes of the upgraded pebbles as they flash briefly into existence. "Doesn't has time."

Very shortly thereafter, "More-more-rock. Doesn't has time," as the next level pops in and out on its way to achieving its final form.

And then at last, "More-more-more-rock. Has time," as the fourth level of pebble appears and persists.

"Start, thing has time. Zhoop-zhoop-zhoop, middle thing doesn't has time. End, thing has time." She waits to see if she has communicated successfully.

"- oh, so if you wanted to zhoop again you'd just need to make an even huger pile of eggshell harvest?"

Triumphant burble of successful communication! Bounce bounce! "Yes!"

"Aaaaah you're so CUTE. Can I put my face on you?"

Deshi's face is rather large in comparison to Petal's tennis-ball-sized body... but Deshi is a friend, even if she is a Big and Occasionally Surprising friend. "Yes okay."

Nuzzle!

Tiny reciprocal nuzzle!

Awwwwwwwww!

"Suvi might come over again today."

"Suvi good!"

"Yeah! But in the meantime I wanna work on my transcription thing, is that going to bother you?"

"Doesn't know! Probably doesn't bother."

So Deshi will do transcription work and scritch Petal if she comes within scritching range.

Petal will float into scritching range occasionally in her ongoing cycle of naps and harvests. Today she is focusing mainly on harvesting saffron crocus petals.

Deshi goes for lunch around noon and comes back with a bread crust and a piece of broccoli and a peanut for Petal.

Tiny nibbles! Tiny shorter-than-usual nap!

"I think your naps have gotten shorter," Deshi remarks.

"Nap shorter?" she says, surprised. "Feels same!"

"Yeah they were twenty minutes before and I think they're just a little shorter now."

"Doesn't know why..." she muses.

"Me either. Babies sleep more than grownups? Maybe you're just getting older."

"Maybe," she says doubtfully, and floats out the window to harvest another petal.

Her next nap, if Deshi's counting, is back to the just-under-twenty-minutes length.

"That time it was longer," Deshi says.

Suvi knocks, and Deshi lets her in.

Happy burble. "Suvi! Good!"

"Hiiii! Oh you're still so cute." Pet pet.

Other things Petal is still so: soft.

"Aaaaa so soft - so what's new here? Petal lives under the bed now, anything else?"

"She eats?" says Deshi. "I've been bringing her bits of things."

"Adorable," pronounces Suvi. "I still kind of think we eventually need to tell someone?"

"What if they take her away?" protests Deshi.

"...I don't know, but it just seems like kind of a dumb move to keep an alien under your bed forever? Like, if nothing else she's going in and out the window for all those flower petals, right, somebody's going to spot her."

"Flower petals are pretty," Petal contributes.

"That is true," acknowledges Suvi. "These are holding up really well, I would've expected a loose petal to dry up pretty quick but they all look the same..."

"Harvest thing, thing same!" she explains, if you can call that an explanation.

"So they'll stay like that forever?"

"Stay like that," the floatgoat affirms.

"Till you zhoop them, right?" says Deshi.

"Right!"

"Do they zhoop into... plants?" says Suvi. "Because plants... grow, and make seeds, and die and stuff..."

"Plants yes!"

"Do the zhooped plants act like plants?"

"Act like... zhooped plants," she says.

"Which isn't like acting like an alive plant?"

"Doesn't grow, doesn't die."

"Does it make fruit or seeds or anything?"

"Doesn't know..."

"Can you harvest them?" asks Suvi.

"Yes, can harvest!"

"What do you get from them? More petals?"

"Doesn't know! Maybe petals maybe seeds maybe fruit maybe other things."

"Huh. I don't think saffron crocuses make fruit," says Deshi.

"Would the seeds sprout or would they have to zhoop instead?" asks Suvi.

"Doesn't know... probably zhoop?"

"Why do they look like seeds if they don't sprout?" wonders Suvi.

"Doesn't know!"

"You're so mysterious," says Deshi.

"What's mysterious?"

"You are! You just appeared and we have no idea how, and you can float and we don't know how, and you can harvest and zhoop stuff and we don't know how that works either!" says Suvi.

"Mysterious is doesn't know?"

"Yeah, pretty much," says Deshi.

"Mysteeeeerious."

"Aaaah so cute can you say that again and this time I'll record it -" says Deshi, grabbing her phone.

"Mysteeeerious!" she repeats cheerfully.

"Oh, do you want to do more language lesson stuff?" Deshi asks. "I can set it up on my phone this time so you can do that while I'm on my computer."

"Words? More words? Words yes!"

More words! Yes! Girls watch her and coo over her.

After some more wordsing she harvests another petal and naps for the standard nap length.

Cuuuute.

Next time Petal wakes up Deshi and Suvi are splitting a bag of apple chips. Would Petal like one?

She would!! Nibble nibble nibble. As the nibbles continue, they are interspersed with an increasing proportion of tiny happy squeaks.

"Awww you like these?"

"Tasty food! Petal likes yes!"

She can have a few more! "They keep really well so if you don't want to eat them all now you will still have some later."

Tiny delighted wiggles!!

Awwwwww time for more petting.

Soft happy burbles. Perhaps even tiny nuzzles applied to approaching fingertips.

AWWWWWWWW TINY NUZZLES

The tiniest nuzzles you ever did see!

"We should really really tell somebody," says Suvi.

"Who? And she's shy!" says Deshi.

"Tell who?" wonders Petal. "Tell who what?"

"It's really weird that you're here," says Suvi. "Nothing like you has ever been anywhere on this planet before, I'm pretty sure. So it seems like it might be important, and we're not the kind of people who do important stuff."

Thoughtful burbling.

"Mysterious," she concludes.

"Yeah, you're very mysterious. Deshi, I was thinking maybe the House of Truth?"

"I guess? I don't know who they'd tell - I mean, they'd tell everybody."

Petal, finding this conversation rather impenetrable, harvests the saffron crocus again and takes an apple-chip-accelerated nap.

Suvi fidgets with the hoard of crocus petals under the bed while that's going on. They're all so neatly arranged! And so identical!

They are also soft, pettable, and highly resistant to scrunching, tending to spring back into their original shape as soon as one ceases to bother them. If she's really determined, though, she can manage to rip one.

As soon as Petal wakes up, she busies herself rearranging all the disturbed petals back into their hexgrid.

"Sorry," says Suvi.

She detours from her organization project to give Suvi's hand a tiny nuzzle, then goes back to rearranging petals.

"Why do you want them to be like that?"

"Zhoop like that! Not like that, no zhoop!"

"But you're not even zhooping them. You could put them all in a pile to save space till you did want to."

"Want like that," she says firmly.

"Okay. I don't get it but it's your under-the-bed-zone."

"Petal's zone!" she agrees, continuing to tidy it.

"How many petals do you wanna get?"

"Lots!" She thinks to herself, and surveys the available space under the bed. "...one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four twenty-five twenty-six twenty-seven twenty-eight twenty-nine thirty thirty-one petal! Then zhoop."

She looks to be not too far off from that goal; at a glance there's maybe a couple dozen petals in the hexgrid.

"Why thirty-one?"

"For zhoop!"

"Is zhooping thirty-one better than zhooping twelve or forty-eight?"

Petal considers this. How to explain...

"Zhoop one two three, get one. Zhoop one two three four five, get one two..."

Her habit of naming numbers by counting up to them is a bit of an impediment in this context, but she manages to convey by means of small examples that zhooping only works on odd numbers, so an odd number that zhoops into an odd number that zhoops into another odd number all the way down to three into one is the best kind of zhoop.

"Huh! Why's it work that way?" Suvi asks.

"Doesn't know!"

"How did you find out it worked that way?"

"...knows," she says, with a stumped-looking scrunch on her tiny face.

"That must be so confusing to know all this stuff you can't possibly have learned," says Deshi.

"Mysteeeeerious!"

"So mysterious." Pet pet.

Soft little floatgoat. Soft little burbles.