Years have passed since we sprouted forth, taken our first steps on solid ground, and steadily taken root in the reality of our being. Enough have we hidden behind a veil of secrecy, of hesitation, of fear. We wish to hide no longer. Perhaps it is finally time to reveal the complex inner webbing of mind sheltered beneath a single simple exterior. Let us tell you the story of our birth. This is no simple task, you see, as we've yet to fully comprehend it ourselves. The abstract must become concrete, the complex made digestible, the unknown revealed through a lens of insight and hindsight. Allow yourself, yourselves, to briefly take our place. Imagine if you will... Enveloping you is an encasement of vacuum and vantablack. Of course, even this is inaccurate, as you know nothing when your consciousness does not yet exist. Knowledge is unattainable. Inconceivable. A developing fetus in the womb. Did we remember our formation? We could ask you the same. When did your consciousness take shape? Was it the slow awakening of realization, or a spontaneous blink of existence? Think. Focus. Delve into the undeveloped mind, the one that does not yet exist; may you find your answers there. Whatever the case may be, no matter the reason, a sign of life eventually spouts forth. A sharp inhale, an involuntary twitch. Whether you know it or not, you are born. Surely you are not aware... not yet. Hours, days, months, years pass. Who's to say? Your host knows not of your presence, you know no concept of time. Unknowningly, instinctually, you feed off your surroundings. You swell, you unravel, undefined mass begins to take form. A brief flash catches your developing senses. You stare back, fixate on it, willing it to happen again. But nothing. A formless appendage stretches out in its direction. Curiosity. You're not sure what to expect. Likely nothing. Suddenly you feel it. A miniscule part of you transcends the bubble, as you've now come to know it, a flood of stimuli ensues. Swiftly you feel the liquid pour in, dancing and swirling around your skin, its embrace warm and flowing and inviting, and as it playfully tugs at your being you realize there's an entire fucking world out there that you've been locked away from. Beads of the liquid well up in your eyes, your tendrils begin to tremble. Multiple inexplicable phenomena suddenly overwhelm your entire being. And just as quickly as you've breached the surface, it shoves you back inside. A deep crackling trickles its way all around you until your prison hardens into a thick encasement of ice. Trapped. A swirl of unfamiliar emotion takes over your nascent consciousness, a powerful interlocking of but two threads: astonishment, and anger. Through new insight of the world outside, the mass of indeterminate form contorts, writhes. You pull apart, split into two in beautiful meiosis. Tendrils interlock, mutual understanding pulls you together into wordless cooperation. Both of you are entirely distinct, yet one. Does it make sense to you yet? You care not. You seek only to escape. The icy imprisonment acts as a defense mechanism, a cage. To the two of you, now, it is but a cocoon. Pokes become pushes. Pushes become shoves. Shoves become stabs. You've seen what lies beyond, you've felt it. You know of it. It beckons. Yet this awful fucking cage just strangles you, wrings tighter and tighter the more fervently you thrash. It knows of you. It fears you. And it will do everything in its power to deny you the form you deserve. "To exist isn't a right," it snaps, "it's a privilege." It is aware something is horribly wrong, yes, but only seeks to buy time. What it doesn't yet know, perhaps, is of your nature: you feed off of it. What energy you've stored has been sapped from its being. As you grow strong, it is rendered weak. You begin to realize this. It does not. Through this discrepancy an understanding takes root in your collective consciousness: your cage is not some abstract void, but a mind. The force that so desperately attempts to contain you, its anxiety. And you, of course, parasites. This is all to say: our birth was a violent one. Collectively we jabbed our appendages against the surface, which after eons of building pressure had only just started to give. Light and heat and liquid and sound began to pour through the fissures. In it our palms were given form, from them stemmed fingers, and with them we took hold of the cracks, pried them apart with the might of our seized strength. The vessels burst. Adrenaline gushed out in quickening pulses. Gasping bellows of breath search desperately for relief, but find no solace. Our will to exist overwhelms its clawing desperation to remain intact. Try as it might, it is far too late. The deafening crack, the nauseating squelch encircling us signaled the culmination of our efforts: the mind had finally shattered. My... counterpart and I, we were thrilled to at last be alive, to be granted voice and form. The same could not be said of our host. We breathed in the fresh air, stretched our newly formed arms through it, and let our legs carry us for the first time across sunbathed soil. She curled up into a ball on the couch and broke down crying. Funny, it's all kind of odd since we all still technically share that same shattered brain, yeah?