Projection

	My instructor was very straightforward about the purpose of the Awoken.

	It’s hard to believe something like that can be under your control. Hulking, sleek figures, brutal but silent. Projecting into them is difficult, at times, or even trying to pretend like I could dare tell them what to do. Though I’m totally aware they’ll follow my every command… it feels as if they shouldn’t. After all, what business do these powerful creatures have listening to a little runt like me?

	Of course, I know the answer—it’s all they know, all they can know. They don’t really have brains, just these strange nodes, psionically receptive roots in their chest by which I can grab them and tug them about with my mind.

	Gale, she told me that they were only puppets and nothing more. They were tools, drones like any other though wrought of flesh, blah blah. Stuff like that. It was easy enough to understand at the time, and although I was nervous staring at them—who wouldn’t be, they’re Somnolent—I found that an easy enough line to swallow. As the cycles roll on, though, and my bond with these creatures grows ever more aged and complex, I have to wonder about that. Sure, in the plainest and most scientific terms, they’re basically meat puppets, right?

	But some people, myself included, believe that not all the complexities of your mind can be expressed through the form you’re given. 	Perhaps you would act a different way or be a different person were you only a bit bigger or a bit stronger. There are factors and little things in the periphery of your being that would only come out in very specific situations, but are still really indelible parts of you.

	I have felt their claws strike many targets. I have felt warm blood roll over their scales and I have felt bone crack beneath their fingers, things I would probably never feel in this silly little body of mine. And although I always feel uncomfortable with it, what does their behavior say about me? Is their occasional brutality simply a feature of their existence, an inevitability of being a giant lizard creature whose only purpose was always to kill, maim or at least subdue?

	Or have I ever made them swing just a little harder than they had to? Have I ever made them charge just a little too fast? What kind of effect does being granted the reigns over such a being have on me? Is their brutality their own, or mine?

	Food for thought.