Benny thought silence had a feel to it. Since he had only known noise, this sense of quiet was scary at first, like thin ice over deep water. But as the quiet went on from weeks to months, it felt stronger. Soon, the silence was something he could move through. It made room for new sounds: a pen scratching on a board, water dripping in pipes, his mom breathing in her sleep.
His work with the Stewards got obvious. He was a Resonance Monitor. His sensitivity, which used to be a curse, was now a means of checking. He would roam around the city, or go to places like the Heartforge gallery or the edge of the Mycelial Wastes, and simply… listen. He wrote reports about the sound of the quiet. Was it serene or uneasy? Did it buzz with vitality, or was it heavy and sad? He could feel the city's mood better than machines could.
That day, he went to the Scriptorium of Flavors, which had transformed from a quiet place to a busy workshop. People who used to be Nutrified were studying the charts of how liquids move. Symbiotes were telling former Carvers how spores scatter. The air was smelling like dust, ozone, and a sharp, mushroomy smell.
A group was huddled around one of the special bottles, looking at it closely instead of worshiping it. One guy, with greasy hands, said, "This 'Flavor of Volcanic Birth' has a vibration almost like what we found in the Ribcage Bazaar's weak support beam. Could we use a matching vibration, based on this, to relieve the stress? Like a tuning fork for a muscle?"
Someone who used to be a high Palate, now a regular researcher, nodded. That might work. We'd have to figure out the exact difference in vibrations…
Benny grinned a little. They were taking the memory of something sacred to patch up a broken roof. It was the cleverest sort of disrespect he could think of.
As he was leaving, he saw her. A girl around his age was sitting alone at a desk, drawing on glowing paper. She was a Symbiote, with skin like patterning with chlorofungi. It wasn't a plan, but a normal of the Wastes, but the way she
the Wastes, with bone and light mixed together. People - both human and Symbiote - were on paths made of roots and stone. It was like a future city, grown instead of built.
She looked up, meeting his glance. Her eyes were mossy green, and she seemed curious, not surprised.
That's… not how it is, Benny said, feeling ridiculous.
Not yet, she answered quietly. It's how it wants to be, what I feel when I listen to the network. It's… dreaming. A slow, green kind of dream. She looked at him. You're the quiet guy, Benny.
He agreed by nodding.
I'm Elara. I listen to roots, for how they grow. She indicated his report board. You listen to moods. We're hearing the same thing, just in different ways.
He sat down, feeling awkward. What's the network dream about?
Being together, she said. Being whole. It didn't like being separated as the Host and the blight. It wants to be one thing again, with us as part of it. She looked back at her drawing. It's a patient dream; it knows it needs to wait for us to catch up.
They talked for an hour, not about trouble or what they had to do, but about the sounds of fungi, how the quiet felt different in Sanctum compared to the Wastes, and the strange pulse he felt coming from the Cerebral Vault. She understood him, and he started to understand her.
When he left, the silence felt different. It wasn't empty, but full of green dreams, new chats, and a future imagined by a girl with moss-colored eyes.
He wrote his report: The quiet sounds hopeful. I hear patterns forming. People are talking in places they weren't before.
It was the most excellent report of all his previous ones.
That night, in the room he shared with his mom, he didn't feel like a wound, but like a connecting point. A listener in a story that was just starting.
The emptiness wasn't only from not eating. It was making space for new things to slowly grow.