gongning

@@@@@ ?We were always that way,? I answered slowly, still unwilling?As far back as we were intelligent enough to know ourselves, at leastWe were discovered by another species?the Vultures, we call them here, though more for their personalities than for their looksThen we discovered that we could bond with them just as we had with our original hostsOnce we controlled them, we made use of their technologyWe took their planet first, and then followed them to the Dragon Planet and the Summer World?lovely places where the Vultures had also not been kindWe started colonizing; our hosts reproduced so much slower than we did, and their life spans were shortWe began exploring farther into the universe? I trailed off, conscious of the many eyes on my faceOnly Sharon continued to look away ?You speak of it almost as if you were there,? Ian noted quietly?How long ago did this happen?? ?After dinosaurs lived here but before you didI was not there, but I remember some of what my mother's mother's mother remembered of it ?How old areyou? ? Ian asked, leaning toward me, his brilliant blue eyes penetrating ?I don't know in Earth years ?An estimate?? he pressed ?Thousands of years, maybe?I lose track of the years spent in hibernation Ian leaned back, stunned ?Wow, that's old,? Jamie breathed ?But in a very real sense, I'm younger than you,? I murmured to himI feel like a child all the time Jamie's lips pulled up slightly at the cornersHe liked the idea of being more mature than I was ?What's the aging process for your kind?? Doc as