Headcanon: Thorians are not solitary. They’re just… very, very slow.
People keep assuming the Thorian on Feros was the only one.
Counterpoint:
What if they aren’t rare because there are so few of them.
What if they’re rare because it takes them three thousand years to visit each other.
⸻
🌱 Young Thorian (1,500 years old):
“I met sapient life today!”
🌿 Adult Thorian (19,000 years old):
“Did you assimilate them?”
🌱
“…I asked first.”
🌿
“…You asked?”
🌱
“The little mammal looked frightened.”
🌳 Elder Thorian (87,000 years old), slowly waking from a several-century nap:
“…Good.”
⸻
The oldest Thorians don’t tell stories.
They remember coastlines that no longer exist.
They remember stars before they changed color.
They remember civilizations that nobody else has names for anymore.
⸻
Humans think Thorians can’t move.
Thorians disagree.
They simply define “moving” as “growing in a different direction for the next thousand years.”
⸻
Every ten thousand years or so, two neighboring Thorians finally grow close enough for their root systems to touch.
To everyone else, it looks like two enormous alien plants becoming tangled together.
To the Thorians, it’s just catching up.
“How have you been?”
“The last ice age was pleasant.”
“I finally met the species that invented mass accelerators.”
“Interesting.”
They spend the next century exchanging memories.
To humans, a century is history.
To Thorians…
That was a nice afternoon.
⸻
Then comes the Reapers.
Then comes Shepard.
Then silence.
Somewhere else in the galaxy, another Thorian pauses.
The western voice has gone quiet.
It slowly redirects its growth toward the empty place in the network.
Estimated arrival time:
4,812 years.
