"You don't have like creation myths and gods and stuff?"

"...No?"

"Then how did you think the world started before you had science? Didn't anyone ever start guessing weird stuff?"

"I think insofar as we have records of what people believed before science they tended to think that things had been how they were forever."

"Huh. That sounds like a weird thing to think. Stuff's gotta have a beginning and middle and end."

"Maybe some people just didn't have an opinion of how things began. But outright making something up is hardly going to help."

"I don't think stuff was outright made up, and it was true that there was stuff before humans that basically made the world? And you could look at stuff and conclude it even if you didn't remember, and then to remember you concluded that you gotta have a full story to tell each generation, but then humans lived all over the place so their stories got different over time. And the stories teach social stuff, too - you can tell a kid they have to be nice to their neighbors but that's different than telling them a story about someone who's nice?"

"We do have didactic stories, what does that have to do with the rest of it?"

"Lots of the religious stories are didactic stories, or are metaphorical about how the world works in a way that's easy to remember. Kids remember 'the Devil was a snake and the Devil is evil' more than they remember 'stop playing with the venomous danger rope.'"

"I think if we met humans we'd sure have a lot to talk about."

"I like listening to the human stories, but yeah shoggoths don't have religions like humans do either but I think that's mostly 'cause we've always known stuff? Religions are cool, though."

"What's cool about them?"

"They have lots and lots of stories, and you can figure out a lot about who was telling the stories because the religions are mostly really old and history people had different lives, and the stories influence each other. Greek stories aren't like Hindu stories, but there's some similarities because of some trade a long time ago? And I like learning how people see the world."

"Our stories do that too! Maybe you'll like to visit an Amentan library. Did you pick up reading already?"

"Reading's hard no matter how stuff's written. Hearing stories recited can also be hard but having conversations about them's fun."

"Is that a shoggoth thing or just you?"

"Kinda both? We don't write much down, just stuff that's super important other shoggoths know even if everyone who knew it died. But mom's good at reading and listening - I just pay attention different from average."

"Writing's one of our most important technologies, so I'm curious what shoggoths do that makes it less useful for everyday purposes for you."

"We live underwater where a lot of writing surfaces don't work. Stone's a pain to write stuff into, but stone's the only thing that'd definitely survive to be like instructions on how to turn off the generators. Also we don't lose our memories easily. And we have a lot of time to learn stuff, and we really like telling stories."

"And you probably don't have as many use cases for one-to-many communication?"

"Not to the point we can't just have someone tell a whole big group a thing and then each of them tell more people the thing."

"And your memories are good enough that the messages don't get distorted?"

"Yeah, they're good enough."

"That sounds very handy. Do shoggoths do much art or is that uncommon for the same reasons as writing?"

"We do sculpture and singing and dance and theater! And turning into stuff as art, and growing plants into art shapes. Someone has a coral sculpture garden they've been growing forever."