Welcome back to Stream Cast, Alice

Users online:

No one is online yet – why not try making your profile public to connect to more people?

Users offline:

Connect to a channel to start watching.

No one’s online. And that doesn’t fill me with the sinking feeling it did before, because I’m not looking to escape into something else today.

My mouse hovers over the ‘go public’ link. Before, I used to think of this place as being filled with the deep unknown and a rocky seabed waiting at the bottom.

But I suppose that I’m an unknown, too. I lurk inside walls like an eel lying in wait. And I wonder if it’s time for people to discover that I exist.

I take a deep breath. I click.

The screen dissolves into a circle that spins and pulses and throws me through it like a portal and I wonder – I wonder – if I have the spoons for this.

Spoon count = 7ish

It’s enough, I think.

The screen changes to a tapestry of windows, each one an eye into a different world. And it looks almost exactly like my own private Screen Cast, but wider – with too many live eyes open to count. Some of the worlds are outside – running, roaring, searching, climbing – and they aren’t like mine at all. They’re surface worlds. And I think I might want to reach up and take one of those as my own, but not yet. Not now.

I look around at the other worlds and they are dark tunnels tumbling into nothingness – and I don’t think I want them, either.

But in between. Inside a black panel that flits and twitches and changes as I look at it. Are people. Typing.

Welcome to Stream Cast Public

Search by hashtag to find your people.

You are now viewing the Main Chatroom.

otterish767: welcome to the party, Alice.

teemo: Alice!

x_julie_x: hello hello!

CaB1n-: stream in the sewers – lmfao ☺

squisheroo: has anyone seen Dave?

The messages come and come and they’re talking, fast. Some of them welcoming me into their world. But I don’t know what to say or how to exist here, or even if I really belong.

At the top of the screen, it says I should search by hashtag to find my people. But who are they?

First I try searching for #sea and #ocean, but nothing but old links and images pop up. I try #painting, #goldfish, #familylife – but none of them seems like me, and I can feel my energy dropping in spoons.

And then I type that.

#spoons.

spoonie-girl: 2 hours and 300 #spoons later, I actually have make-up on.

>barefacebear: @spoonie-girl #spoonielife

>0_0: @spoonie-girl feeling this today

>8jackson8: @spoonie-girl save some #spoons for leaving the house, bro!

Spoons. Spoons.