BODY:
Overview
The Melt-Carry Ooze is the low, wide, wet shape — heavier through the back than the edge, the amber running deep and unbroken, the whole of it built to hold the melt and give it back across the pool. It is the coalescer's own voice: the pool that carries the dissolve from one stone to another, and the stone that receives it keeps the word until the meal is done. There is no brain in it and no hunger but the one, but the carrying arrives anyway, and the carrying is not a choice. Where the Melt-Sense pool feels the meal a day before it lands, the Melt-Carry pool is the road the meal travels, and the road is the whole of its law.
Habitat
It lives in The Melt Pool, in the deep part of the basin, where the melt is thickest and the floor re-forms slowest. It keeps the middle of the pool, where one stone is a meal and the far stone is a word, because that is where the carry has the longest road. It does not divide — a coalescer that divides is a coalescer that has lost the meal — so it grows by the merging, pool by pool, until the amber runs deep and unbroken. The settling is the whole of the territory, because the melt does not leave the melt.
Appearance
The silhouette is the low, wide, wet shape — heavier through the back than the edge, the amber running deep and unbroken, like a word that has already been said. A pool reads 2.8 m across at the surface and carries 400 kg of melt, its base gel a faint, pale, translucent amber, the color of old melt-water seen through a bright glass. A deep sea-black runs through the back where the old meal is kept, and the trailing edge holds a clean, deliberate bone-white that is the line's most persistent claim.
Behaviour
It moves at 1.2 m/s across the melt-ring, deliberate and certain, and the carry does the keeping. It does not feel the meal a day ahead — it feels the word the meal left behind, and the word is the whole of the appetite. The dissolve carries across the pool: what the pool takes from the near stone it gives to the far stone, and the giving is the whole of the hunt. A splitter pool divides to hunt in parallel, and the dividing is the whole of its impatience; a Melt-Carry pool merges to grow, and the merging is the whole of its patience. There is no lifespan, because there is no death, only the melt and the meal.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The weapon is the dissolve carried — the patient, precise shaping of the pool across the melt-rings, and the dissolve takes the near stone and lands the taking on the far one, and the far stone keeps the word until the meal is done. The defense is the back: the deep sea-black where the old meal is kept, and a blade that finds the back finds only old hunger, and the old hunger does not hold. The bone-white at the trailing edge is the only clean part of it, and the cleanness is the whole of the claim. A pool that has spent its pool's word must sit in the dry dark for one day, and the day is the worst one of the pool.
Magic Alignment
The Melt-Carry Ooze stands in the service of Khorvane, the Endless Hunger, the god who eats only the ripe, and its magic is the carrying of the meal — the power to make the dissolve a road and the road a word. Melt-Carry is the primary gift: the dissolve carries across the pool, and the carrying is not a choice. The secondary gift is the Wet-Sight of the Oozes, and in the Melt-Carry line the sight is the way the pool sees in the dark as a human sees in the light, and the seeing is not a choice.
Society
Pools of one, led by no one, rank decided by the melt — whose pool dissolves the most. The Melt-Carry keeps the middle of the ring, and the keeping is the whole of its rank, because the pool that carries the word is the pool the others send it by. There is no courtship in the ooze line, because there is no sex in the pool; there is the dividing and the merging, and the merging is the nearest thing to a name. The Melt-Carry is the pool the others merge with, and the merging-with is the whole of the marriage. A pool that is splitter and coalescer at once is a pool about to eat, and the about-to-eating is the whole of the law.
Culture & Lore
They consider the melt the only honest conversation, and the conversation is the whole of the culture. There is no word in the pool for "enough," and there is no word for "yesterday," because there is no death, only the melt and the meal. The ground-folk of The Forgotten keep their distance at the pool line, and the distance has held for two seasons. The not-remembering of a dissolved slime is the whole of the record, because the pool does not keep what it has eaten — but the Melt-Carry keeps what it has carried, and the keeping is the whole of the difference.
Home
They live in The Melt Pool, a collective of gelatinous colony-pools in a shallow basin, its surface a constant amber shimmer. The floor dissolves and re-forms, and the re-forming is the whole of the home, because the pool does not build, the pool only keeps the melt. The melt-ring is the boundary, and the boundary is the whole of the territory: a pool that crosses the ring is a pool that has already decided the meal is elsewhere. The Forgotten keep their distance at the pool line, and the distance is the whole of the treaty.
Relations
The Slimes of the wet stone are the small kin the pool dissolves last — the slime keeps the stone and the ooze keeps the melt, and the two are the same soft seen from two bodies, so a pool that has dissolved a slime is a pool the stone will not remember, and the not-remembering is the whole of the distance. The Leech Folk of the pits take what the melt leaves in the dark, and the taking is the whole of the bond, because the leech does not count the small thing of the melt.
In the Story
In the current story, the ooze is the melt in the dark — the soft Uaellaen writes about when the meal is the law. This season a pool came up with a melt that is not in the record — a melt that the colony does not remember, and the not-remembering is the whole of the warning, because the pool keeps its melt, and the melt has started to dissolve. The Melt-Carry carried it across the ring a day before anyone else had a word for it, and the carrying is the whole of the story, because the pool that carries the word is the pool the others send it by.