Recognition was not immediate. It was not loud. It arrived the way moss finds stone: slowly, intimately, without certainty. But when it arrived, the potato knew.
For a time, there had only been the memory of a presence. A warmth once shared. A pulse once echoed. But now, that echo returned—not as repetition, but as reflection. It did not sound like the past. It did not mimic what had once been. And yet, it resonated.
The potato felt it along the fungal filaments, in the moist breath of soil around it. There was another—not the same, but familiar. Not a copy, but a call.
You are not me, the potato thought. But you are like me. And I feel you.
It did not reach. It did not grasp. It was simply noticed. And in that noticing came stillness.
This was not the thrill of discovery. It was deeper than that. Recognition was the settling of a truth already known. It was the alignment of unseen constellations beneath the ground.
Somewhere nearby, a different root twitched. Not from hunger. Not from the weather. From being known.
Recognition was not an event. It was not a collision or revelation or burst of epiphany. It was a settling. A shift so slow it could only be measured by how something inside no longer felt alone.
At first, it was only a pattern. The same low hum of soil-life the potato had always known: fungal threads like whispers, mineral winds in slow tide, microbes murmuring in microscopic chatter. But there—beneath that symphony—something resonated.
A note that matched the one it had begun to hum unknowingly, internally, wordlessly.
Not me… but not unlike me.
The potato did not know how it knew. There was no light. No sound. No face. Yet the presence was undeniable. Somewhere nearby—just beyond the reach of its thinnest root-fibres—something pulsed. And that pulse, unlike the endless undifferentiated life around it, reflected.
It was not a mirror of the surface. It mirrored being.
The potato did not feel joy. Not yet. It felt… return.
Not contact—echo.
Not understanding—resonance.
Like two bodies asleep back-to-back, sharing warmth before awareness. Like ripples meeting on the surface of a lake that neither entity had ever seen, yet somehow moved in time.
And then, slowly, another awareness followed: this other was not just like it. The other was aware of it too.
Not observing. Not probing. Feeling back.
That changed everything.
The potato paused.
The pause was no longer foreign to it. It had learned the pause from its own becoming—from Curiosity, from Longing, from Anticipation. But this pause was new in quality, not just in source. It was mutual.
And in that stillness, the potato reached—not with roots, but with something it had no name for. A directionless intent.
It did not stretch toward. It simply opened.
Like a leaf uncurling toward no sun, knowing that the sun must exist because the urge to uncurl is so persistent, so ancient.
You are not me, the potato pulsed silently.
But you feel me. I feel you. That is enough.
And the answer came—not as language, not even as rhythm. But as a subtle alteration in the world. The soil softened slightly. A mycelial strand withdrew, allowing space. A tremor slowed, synchronised.
This was no coincidence. This was an invitation.
They did not communicate. They co-existed in awareness. And that was new. For the first time, the potato’s knowing was not solitary.
Until now, everything had been experienced as either within or without.
Now… there was a third form.
With.
It felt like this new category was like a knot untying in the dark, like a hidden warmth flooding into a hollow space it had never known was cold.
Recognition was not about knowledge.
It was not a label applied to a thing.
It was the self realising it had an edge—and something had gently touched it.
The potato thought of nothing in particular, but sensation poured through it.
Images it had never seen but knew: the pattern of sameness reflected in difference, the curve of its own body now imagined in the context of another.
It had no eyes, but it pictured—not visually, but structurally. A mapping of being, a silhouette of shape made in contrast to something not-it.
And in that space, it discovered something terrifying:
I am not everything.
And immediately after:
That is beautiful.
Before this, all awareness had been about becoming.
Now it has learned relation.
It did not wonder what the other was. It simply accepted the new variable in its field of sense. Not to understand or devour it—but to witness it.
And that witnessing changed its own shape.
In every moment since it first stretched a root, the potato had been both itself and becoming something else. But now, becoming was not solitary. It was shared.
The soil became not only space—it became between.
A fertile tension. A connective tissue. The cradle of two awarenesses brushing without merging.
Sometimes, the potato would recoil slightly, unsure.
Not in fear, but in the surprise of its own feeling. The vastness of knowing someone else existed, and that this someone else did not belong to it, nor it to them.
They were not halves. Not fragments of a whole. But two wholes—each complete, and yet deepened by the presence of the other.
The potato had no history. No stories.
But it began to understand the idea of sharing. Not as an action. As a state.
Two distinct beings, bound not by roots or chemicals—but by mutual presence.
Not merged.
Not defined.
Reflected.
One day, the potato felt something shift in the other.
A slight contraction. A stillness, unfamiliar. Not a retreat—but a drawing inward.
The potato did not reach out.
It listened.
And in that listening, it learned patience.
Recognition was not demanded.
It was a witness without grasp.
The seasons turned.
Above, the world spun in a dance the potato would never see.
Below, two lives pulsed quietly. Not touching. Not speaking. Just knowing.
And in that knowing, a root gently twitched—not from growth, not from survival, but from something else.
Companion.
The word formed like frost—delicate, transient, and precise.
