Thain did not understand the melodious sing-song chirp of mammalian communication, but he watched the pretty patterns form around their heads as the old male and the young female spoke together. Some patterns lived but briefly, others lingered and grew, creating future paths for these strange and alien creatures.

The astral impinged upon both the dense physical plane and his own lighter etheric realm where life was as easily influenced by thought and emotion. In either world, the forms and shapes and pretty colors escaped direct observation. If he truly entered this densest sphere, the physical, the pastel thought designs would disappear and these creatures would become plain and mundane, mostly ugly and clumsy to his eye. If he transitioned to his own realm, he again lost the astral pictures and perception of this world, too.

It was the hues and structure of these astral prototypes that informed him most clearly what their communication was about, although some of the imagery was easier to read than others. The traveling group he had accompanied for half a year thought a lot about eating and a lot about mating. It was not offensive, the members being young people full of life and hunger. Some of them thought about mating nearly all the time.

All thoughts presented pictures. Some thoughts were light and brought laughter. Other thoughts were dark and brought menace.

With the endless patience of his kind, Thain observed the emotions in this room as they sparked and drifted in colorful array, pumping out great swathes of tints and form as the two talked, beautiful eddies breaking away into swirls and ribbons, active for a time in their own right before dissipating. The constants stayed. Renewed thought grew stronger, thicker, denser, building up the colors of the aura into often magnificent rainbows of intent and function.

[Continue reading…]