"Ooh, that makes sense since you can live such a long time. Any art forms we don't even have?"

"Well you guys can't shapeshift? And there's some art stuff that's easier to turn into than like a human. And there's like weird living art things some people do where they'll turn into a pretty thing and move only very very slowly, and how they move is part of the art? Or they'll just stay still. People who do that are kinda weird though."

"Because they spend so long not doing other things?"

"And not moving! Doing one thing for a super long time's normal but usually it's an active thing?"

"Huh, how long a time?"

"I never met grandma but great-grandma said that when she'd get an idea in her head she'd work on it for like a year solid especially once she was old enough she didn't need to eat often."

"Goodness. Do shoggoths sleep much like we do apart from the hibernating?"

"I sleep more than a human kid would, but mom can go two days without sleep and get just a bit tired and then only need a few hours. Grandma probably copied dolphins or something, though, dolphins sleep with only half their brain at a time."

"You can copy brain things like that?"

"You gotta know how it works or just experiment a lot first. I can copy what stuff looks like but not how it works."

"Do you have parts of you that don't change?"

"Total mass! And the type of thing I'm made out of? I can't just decide to be made out of literally iron even if I could make my surface texture like iron."

"What do you do your thinking on, if you don't have a brain that stays the same?"

"Dunno!"

"Does anybody know?"

"Yeah probably! I know losing memory's a problem if you get some parasites? Mom hasn't studied minds though."

"Are there a lot of parasites that affect shoggoths? I wouldn't have expected that since you're an invented species."

"Yeah, but parasites evolve fast. Most of them we can just kill by going really acidic or alkaline but there's at least one that's more stubborn?"

"Huh. Do you know what they evolved from?"

"Nope! Well I don't. Probably someone does."

"Parasites that make you forget things sound pretty scary."

"...Yeah, they are. They're rare, but..."

"Do you have good procedures for making sure people don't spread them around?"

"Yeah. It's usually pretty easy to identify? And then you go to a special sea cave and push all the bits that the parasite's latched into in one part of your body and cut off that bit, and then the cave's cleaned super thoroughly. It's really dangerous if little kids get it though, because we don't have a lot of extra body."

"That makes sense."