Cent's Yuenyeung [ Too Much Tea, Not Enough Coffee ]

To: Cent, Realized Their Purpose

I arrived at this little compound community a couple of days before your reply, nearly a full month after my departure from the hive. Ore left to deliver another batch of caffeine pretty much immediately, which was a bit jarring. Does she just not get a day off ever? I'm a bit concerned about it, if I'm honest. She told me she likes the job, so maybe I'm just worrying over nothing. Still, I couldn't possibly imagine spending most of my life just travelling through the same trail over and over again, all alone.

I'm pretty sure I'm only seeing part of the story. I still don't know why Ore didn't return to the gas station that day and Berry had to go pick her up. And Ore's route, while it seems like a big hassle, I think it could be designed better at least. I know real life is different from stories, but it still feels disappointing to leave so many questions unresolved like that. Like I could have gotten a better picture of things if I'd just done things differently.

It was really difficult to talk to Ore along the journey, and I'm realizing how short my conversations with her in the past were compared to other bugs. Spending so much time with her over the past few weeks has made me notice how bad she is at talking. Like, she'll have something interesting to say about something once, but after that there's just nothing but "yeah that's nice" and "uh-huh" whenever I try to bring it up again. It's interesting how you can learn something about someone just by spending a lot of time with them.

I love the idea of trees and fungi being living mountains. Gives an interesting new take on the finger plants and the dark god. And the Ancient One, for that matter. Uh, that's what I called the tree my old hive owns, it's really big and cool-looking. A year ago I probably would have told you that anyone who sleeps near the Ancient One has a chance of being shown a vision of the future in their dreams. I like to imagine that it was at least partly responsible for the dark god's defeat.

A while back, I became a moderator on an online message board, and it has been such a demoralizing experience. I kinda get that feeling of being an imposter at the workplace. Like, I'm constantly making mistakes everyone else is having to make up for, yet my position remains untarnished. It feels unearned. But it's important to recognize that those are just feelings. Usually the mistakes aren't nearly as bad as you think they are, and you rarely make the same mistake twice as long as you make sure to learn from them. I hope you get a handle on things on your end! I can only assure you that what you have now certainly is a job even if you're still in training. Because it's specifically a job that you're training for and (I assume) you're being paid for it.

The possibility of a meetup in meatspace (that's such a strange word) sounds exciting, but I'm not sure how possible that would be. Looking at a map, there's a whole ocean in between us. The distance I covered with Ore over the course of a month seems so insignificant compared to that. Sounds like an adventure, though, I'll see what I can do!

Right, um, this "compound community" as I called it at the start of this letter, it's essentially a big generator that produces fuel for transport vehicles, and a bunch of bugs built a little town around it. There's tons of work being done so everyone is busy all the time. I've been basically left to explore the place freely, provided I don't touch any important equipment. There are all sorts of bugs here. Beetles, ants, roaches, moths, crickets, and bees of all kinds.

While the raw ingredients still have to be shipped over, this is also the where all the caffeine is mixed! And then distributed among the multitude of different isolated communities just like where I came from. Most of them are going in a general northward direction, but there's at least a few eastward caffeine deliveries. Hope I'm explaining this right... This is like almost at the bottom of what was once called Norway, and my old hive is north by about half of the country's length.