Pip Discovery
In which our protagonist meets the world's first friendly familiar, and has feelings about it.
The caravan moved slowly, and Kenji moved with it. Orven, after some negotiation, had agreed to let him travel along as a junior hand in exchange for food, water, and the promise that he would not eat anything without explicit permission.
Kenji agreed so fast that Orven laughed at him.
The third night out, sitting by the fire while the guards took turns on watch, Kenji noticed the dragonfly.
It was glowing. A faint blue light, hovering near his left shoulder, pulsing gently. It was small, the size of his thumb, with delicate wings that moved too fast to see. It was also, on his internal mana display, the brightest thing in the camp.
[detect_mana: unique signature detected. Classification: familiar-class entity. Bond status: unbound.]
Kenji stared at it. The dragonfly stared back. Or rather, two of its multifaceted eyes turned in his direction, and he felt, somehow, that it was considering him.
"You're not from around here," he said, very quietly.
The dragonfly tilted its head.
"No, really. Where are you from? Are you a local? What are you?"
A pulse. Not sound. Not quite a thought. More like the feeling of someone tapping on the inside of your skull, gentle, polite, asking permission to enter.
Kenji, against his better judgment, said: "Yes?"
The pulse expanded. Suddenly, there was a presence in his mind, small and curious and bright. It felt like a spark of static, but warm. It felt, weirdly, like a puppy.
[Contact established]
[Name: unclassified]
[Type: mana-dragonfly]
[Sentience: limited, but present]
[Status: seeking bond]
[Bond requirement: consent of both parties]
"Consent," Kenji repeated, out loud this time. "I have to consent."
The presence pulsed, confused. The idea of a familiar bond without consent seemed genuinely foreign to it.
"Right. Okay. Let's, uh, let's talk first. What's your name?"
A feeling of vagueness. The dragonfly had not named itself. It had been alive for, it seemed, a long time, and no one had ever thought to ask.
"How long?"
The dragonfly sent impressions. A forest. Other dragonflies. A feeling of being part of a swarm, of being one of many. Then, slowly, the swarm thinning, the others fading, the long cold of being alone. Years of it. Maybe decades. The dragonfly had been alone for a very long time.
"Oh," Kenji said softly. "You're lonely."
A pulse. Yes. The loneliness was heavy. The dragonfly had been looking for someone. For years, it had been looking.
Kenji thought about his own loneliness. The salaryman in Tokyo, the small apartment, the coworkers he had never quite connected with, the way he had died alone, on a backstreet, in the rain, with no one to notice for hours.
He had not known, until this moment, how much that had hurt.
"Okay," he said. "I consent. If you consent."
The pulse was so bright that Kenji flinched. The dragonfly, in the space of a heartbeat, was no longer beside him. It was inside his mental landscape, a small bright light orbiting his consciousness, and the bond was warm, and it felt like coming home after a long trip.
[Bond established]
[Name: unclassified]
[Bonded with: Kenji]
[Skills transferred: variable_cache, process_monitor]
[Variable cache] let him store a small amount of information in the dragonfly, like a tiny external hard drive. Spells he had cast, observations he had made, anything he had committed to memory. The dragonfly could hold up to about twenty items at once.
[Process monitor] was subtler. The dragonfly could watch his mana levels, alert him to incoming dangers on the mana spectrum, and generally act as a passive alarm system.
"Useful," Kenji said. "But I need to call you something. Pick a name. Or I'll pick one. Fair warning: I'm a programmer. I'll name you something like cache_v1 if you let me."
The dragonfly pulsed, alarmed. It sent a feeling, a strong one, of a small soft thing. Of a name it had heard once, a long time ago. The name was a sound, a feeling, a small bright spark.
"Pip," Kenji said. "Your name is Pip."
A pulse. Yes. That was right. That was the name. The dragonfly, who had been alone for decades, now had a name and a person, and it was happy.
Kenji sat by the fire with a small glowing dragonfly orbiting his head, and for the first time since he had died, he felt like maybe things were going to be okay.
The fire crackled. The guards talked quietly about pay and weather. The oxen chewed. The dragonfly, now named Pip, sat on his shoulder, and sent him a series of small warm impressions: a sense of the forest, of stars, of a small bright thing that had finally found its person.
Kenji sent back: "Hello, Pip. Welcome to the team. Try not to be offended if I have to debug you sometimes."
Pip pulsed, amused. The pulse felt exactly like a programmer's first successful test.
The night went on. Kenji sat by the fire, a small glowing dragonfly on his shoulder, and for the first time in this world, he did not feel alone.
He was, however, a little worried about one thing. Pip had been alone for decades. A mana-dragonfly should not live that long. Either Pip was very special, or very wrong, or both.
He made a note in his mental WORLD.md.
# WORLD.md (updated)
## Companions
- Pip: mana-dragonfly, familiar, bonded
- Skills: variable_cache, process_monitor
- Personality: bright, curious, lonely no more
- Likes: being named, having a person
- Dislikes: cache_v1 as a name
- Concern: lifespan anomaly. Investigate later.
He would, eventually, investigate later. What he would find would change everything.
But that was a problem for several seasons from now.