Ruger was not surprised by what this damned thing said. He should have said that he had suspected it long ago. After all, according to Stray Hair One's earlier account, when those hairs that had only just developed faint intelligence tried to wake him, they exhausted their meager Spirituality. Only it had survived—that had always been suspicious. At the time, though, Ruger had merely thought that this slick fellow had slacked off.
Those little hairs, whose intelligence was still unstable in its infancy, would effectively die once they exhausted their Spirituality. They would abandon their hard-won sentience and revert to ordinary hairs. This was irreversible, which was why Stray Hair One was so afraid: even if those hairs gained intelligence again in the future, they would no longer be who they had been before.
But this also showed that the current Stray Hair One—the former Stray Hair Two—had originally been a stray hair full of ideas and possessed of considerable intelligence, a hair favored by Spirituality's Favor.
What Ruger regretted was the real former Stray Hair One, that little fellow who vanished from this world before they could ever properly communicate. Perhaps that fellow's intelligence had been quite impressive as well, but its nature had been utterly different from the current Number One's. That was why, when Ruger was in danger, it had stepped forward and rallied its weak little brothers to try to save him, their master.
So this fellow had actually claimed someone else's credit, Ruger thought.
But this was not the time to discuss that.
As he thought this, he also surveyed his surroundings. Stray Hair One's crying and wailing did not seem to have triggered any bad changes.
Or rather, had the bad change taken effect on Stray Hair One itself?
He had stayed here long