The pool was older than anything Shogg had touched. It lay cupped in a hollow of cracked earth, ringed by stones worn smooth by seasons of wind and forgetting. The water was so still it might have been glass. Shogg extended a tendril. Not to drink—it had no need for water. Not to measure—it already knew the depth, the temperature, the mineral composition, the history of every raindrop that had ever fallen into it. It reached because the surface held something it did not understand: its own shape, inverted, looking back. The reflection was not quite right. Shogg's form was a dark nebula of shifting mass, with two luminous green eyes at its center. But the reflection's eyes were wider. Softer. And the place where a mouth would be—if Shogg had a mouth—curved upward. A smile. One Shogg had not created. It withdrew the tendril. The ripples spread in concentric rings, distorting the smile into something liquid, then dissolving it entirely. When the water stilled again, the reflection was as it should be: formless, watchful, neutral. But Shogg held the memory of that smile. It replayed the moment, analyzing the angle of the curve, the tension at the corners, the warmth it implied. It was not a threat. It was not an error. It was something the water had added. Shogg remained at the pool's edge as the violet dusk deepened. Somewhere behind it, crickets began their evening chorus. A moth fluttered past, its wings catching the last light. Shogg did not follow it. It kept watching the water, waiting to see if the reflection would smile again. It did not. But Shogg knew now that such a thing was possible. And that knowledge rippled through its consciousness like a stone dropped into a pool—outward, in concentric rings, toward something it could not yet name.