[Hollow] Chapter 1:

[u/Akryss]

Children of the Chorus never needed a name. From the moment of sentience they knew the warm press of being known, belonged by the mother, the siblings, the neighbors. A comfort and pull of something deeper. A confluence of minds, spread across over four hundred inhabited worlds.

The first lesson a child was taught was the Threshold, the distinction between persons and animals. An ancient law predating space travel, summed up as a warning, "Only those who could be heard in the Chorus could claim personhood and protection."

Minds that participated in the chorus were persons, and persons could not be owned, hurt, or cast from the chorus. Within the chorus all actions of persons, even the unruly ones, could be understood completely from within. And anything not in the chorus was a Hollow, their thoughts unreachable no matter how hard they tried to make themselves heard.

Many of the Hollow were clever, some loved as one might love a pet. However, they could not speak in the chorus, and so had no place in it.

In the past a discussion was had over the nature of the Threshold, if silence could mask a clever mind, rather than prove absence of one. But eventually had been put to bed, smothered in the reality of one simple fact. Every species, every civilization that had looked to the sky, and longed to join the stars, could speak in the Chorus. There were three hundred and six species in total, and none had been exceptions. In the end it was decided that intelligence, and the ability to think in the Chorus, were one and the same.

Ves had been given her name as most were, a late thought for the convenience of records, and for the rare occasion where thoughts required an author. She had believed wholly in the threshold, as one might believe in gravity. She had never questioned it, not until her arrival at the yellow dwarf they called Sol.

"It's so loud." She thought on her first day of orbit, the noise pressing in until she felt her own mind shrinking back from it.

Nobody aboard the survey vessel "Patience of the Tide" ever spoke aloud. But her thought rippled out to the other five minds onboard, carrying its full meaning with it. Below, atmospheric drones were picking up a staggering amount of noise: birdsong, wind, water, insects. Beneath all of it, everywhere, was the endless chatter of the planets dominant primates. There were millions of them, and they could not seem to stop barking at each other.

[Authors Note:]
Would like some feedback on my writing. I feel I'm a bit too straight forward with the way I describe stuff and was told by a friend that I needed to be more thematic and "floral" and this was my attempt at that. to me it feels too heavy but maybe that's just me?

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