The same routine of eat, poop, and sleep went on for many forevers until suddenly Chell’s face felt funny. She touched her face with her hoof, but that didn’t help. Then it felt like her face was trying to have the breathing feeling, but she couldn’t do it right. She started fussing, cheeping and peeping, and flailing her legs about but nothing helped and the feeling on her face got worse.
Then she opened her eyes.
The first thing she saw was fluffy and blue.
“Peep-peep-peep” No, that wasn’t right.
“Cheep” Still wrong.
“Mmm” That was close.
“Mumum” Chell knew this one was really close.
“Mum-cheep-mum” Still not quite there.
“Mum (gasp)… mum(gasp)… … … mummah? MUMMAH!” Chell had done it, and now she could tell mummah how much she loved her.
Chell looked closer at ‘mummah’ but as her eyes focused, the blue fluffy thing looked less and less mummah-like and significantly more blanket like.
“Mummah?”
Her head swam violently as a new word came to her
“Moo” Not quite, but pretty close
“Nu” That was it, and the instant Chell heard herself say it, she knew what it meant.
More words occurred to Chell and she knew what they meant the moment she said them. She spent many many many many forevers ‘learning’ new words this way.
After the word deluge stopped, at least for now, she looked at the blue blanket in front of her.
“Dis nu am mummah. Wewe mummah? Cheww nee fin mummah!” Chell declared with more than a little alarm. “Cheww gon fin mummah!” She said before trying to stand, but like most things, standing was difficult the first time, as was walking, but before long she had kind of gotten the hang of both tasks.
“Mummah?” Chell called out once she was confidant enough in standing up to do so without staring at her hooves. She looked around at her surroundings, her nearly unused eyes taking a while to focus on any one thing. She quickly determined that she was surrounded by gray walls, and that the non-blanket part of the floor was also gray. The ceiling was also gray, but it was not attached to the walls, and it was very far away with other things out there as well.
Seeing as how she hadn’t received a response, she tried calling out again, “mummah? Cheww nee mummah. Come fin’ babbeh, nee’ huggies an’ wub.” She looked around expectantly, but mummah still was not there. She waddled back over to the blue blanket and prodded that with her hoof, but mummah wasn’t under there either.
“MUMMAH!” Chell called out much louder than before, “HEWP BABBEH! CHEWW NU CA’ FIN’ MUMMAH!”
“(loud static)”
The loud sound startled Chell so much that she let out a jet of scardey poopies and fell down.
“Mummah? Wa’ dat yu?” Chell said as she got back up. She looked around and saw that one of the gray walls was now glowing gently. She walked over to it.
“Mistah waww? Ca’ yu hewp Cheww fin mummah?” She asked the wall.
There was another loud static sound, but Chell didn’t poop or fall down this time. Then the screen flashed brighter before showing video of a fluffy. It was distorted, like an analogue tv with a half-broken antenna, and while it was a little hard to tell, the fluffy seemed to be looking right at Chell.
Then it started talking. The voice was badly distorted and Chell couldn’t understand anything it said beyond the occasional ‘mummah’ or ‘babbeh’ that it said.
Chell started backing away and the fluffy on the screen, which had already looked and sounded frantic, now panicked, with the image on screen becoming much more distorted, and it talked faster and louder which just scared Chell more. She turned around and ran back to the blanket, and hid under it, wishing the fluffy on the screen would go away as the voice sounded ever more desperate.