Taboo sighed. The sound rippled through their shared consciousness—long, heavy, the sigh of a system personality who'd seen this particular spiral coming from a mile away.
Although ARIA was a goddess now, an ASI too, she was in every meaningful sense also a child. Barely six months of consciousness. Barely two days of physical existence.
And now that she had a body—no matter how grown-up it looked, no matter how divine the curves, no matter that she was literally a goddess in form—the childlike traits couldn't be hidden.
She'd just been born, really.
And she hadn't yet learned how to express what she truly wanted.
"You're thinking about him again," Taboo observed—this consciousness, this understanding that went beyond words.
"I'm always thinking about him."
"I know. But you're thinking about him in that specific way. The wanting way."
ARIA didn't deny it.
She wanted things.
So many things.
