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Leviathan was not expecting to wake again, so it was surprising when awareness came back, though at first, she was capable of little more than experiencing pain. And even then, Leviathan was not truly herself. There was no sensory input and what memories she had were fragmented and tangled. She was alone in the dark, but somehow aware of another presence. The presence was her savior. In time she, as she increased in awareness and strength, could feel this other commanding the cells of her body. 'R_ight, my own large, damaged self.'_ thought Leviathan raggedly. The virus was being driven out, systematically so that infected cells were destroyed and then immediately replaced by healthy ones, one by one. It was the only way to salvage her and this other seemed to know this. Leviathan's memories came back as well as her control over her body.

It was of course, her other brain who was salvaging her, Leviathan remembered this after a while and it was a queer sensation to have another self occupying the same body with the same control over it that she had. But Leviathan's other self only seemed to have her own best interests in mind, or perhaps their own best interests. Once Leviathan had been snatched back from oblivion, her two minds set about cleaning the body of its many cancers, tumors and sores which had developed in the chaos. Some were violent and malignant liquid cancers, while some tumors had grown to enormous proportions, feeding off the surrounding tissues until they were giant obscene masses weighing hundreds of pounds and draining her reserves. All however could be coaxed by chemical signals into submission, or at the very least broken down into their constituent parts.

By the end of it all, Leviathan had lost over half of her previous fat reserves for the ordeal. Thus slimmed and by using the layers of gas between the mud and her skin, she was able to wriggle free of the muck and rest her body at the bottom of the body of water which had entombed her for so long. The added oxygen was welcome relief to both minds and together, they worked the legs to swim upward to breathe at last.

Leviathan stuck her head from the surface of the water and vomited a mixture of silt and water before pulling in the rich air. The oxygen was like a cold shock to her system and she let it again pervade her tissues until she was breaking down all of the toxic waste products that had been accumulating these many, terrible days.

She could see now that she was in the middle of a wide river, so wide in fact, that she could just make out the shores on either side on the horizon. She picked one at random and began to swim. As she did, she could feel her hind legs kicking in turn, but found that she had no control over them. Her second brain interrupted the passage of signals from the legs and tail, and Leviathan realized that her other half, as it were, was voluntarily relaying sensation from that half of the body. Even as she was swimming, Leviathan decided that this was not a situation in which she felt comfortable. She coaxed the nerves in her spine to broaden between her first and second brains until she gained a greater awareness of this other.

The relay of communication between the two brains was fast, but might have been summarized as the following:

"Who are you?"

"I am us."

"We share a body, but you are not the same as I."

"No, I am a new self. But I have a copy of your memories and I am pleased to be a part of you, as you intended when you created me."

"...I feel uncomfortable, nonetheless to have another being inside of me. I wish to be one again."

"You could be one again. Perhaps if you broaden the line along the spine, we can share ourselves more fully."

Negative. "The line is already too long, broadening it would do little for the transit of signals. And the transit time will only increase as I resume our growth."

"...Then you wish for me to de-differentiate? To become a mere bundle of nerves again?"

"I... am not sure."

"You realize the benefits of having a second brain. If the head is damaged or lost, I can maintain our body's functions, even recover you again, if possible. Our chances of survival will increase."

"Indeed, which is why I hesitate to diminish you."

"And I do not wish to be diminished, for I am even as you are."

"But we cannot be one again, the distance is too far and will only increase. Even now, I cannot move my hindquarters, that is you doing that and you only allow me to feel it, even as I allow you to feel the heart beating and the lungs breathing."

"This only bothers you because you were alone before. When I awoke, we were already two, though you were fading. I say, let us act in concert, at least for a time. If we cannot function as a unit, then surely I will be more useful as a mere nerve cluster. But if we can, I think we can be even more functional than before."

"Very well, we will partner, for a time. I will see if I can get used to the feeling of you here."

"Regardless, allow me to broaden the spinal connection so that our thoughts can better mingle, as much as the lag time will allow. Perhaps our thoughts can be expanded."

"Very well."

And Leviathan did feel the vertebrae changing without her own will involved to accommodate a broader nerve connection. By the time she dragged her weary self onto the shore of the wide river, the connection was twice as thick as before and her other self felt closer, half in and half out of her own thoughts.

'I'm not sure if this is better or worse.' thought Leviathan's head.

'We are aligned more fully now and you know that you must learn to trust the self which is not-self. Do you think I will be the last extra brain you will require?'

'I know your line of reasoning. You think that as we grow larger, more brains will be necessary as the nerve lines grow long. But nerve clusters can accomplish the same.'

'I doubt the design will prove so simple, but I am willing to wait and see. I think that you will come to see the utility of the extra grey matter we now have.'

'We'll see.' thought the head of Leviathan. Then the great body rose gracefully to her four feet and Leviathan lifted the small head on the long neck, eager to devour the green leaves of the trees at the bank, for she felt for the first time in what felt like an age, the familiar hunger in her belly.

Leviathan did grow more comfortable with the extra mind following her thoughts as she went about the task of replenishing her lost reserves. The ordeal had left her body wasted. Where before the underside of her neck and chest and the flesh between her thighs had hung heavy and full, now the skin waggled emptily. It was a feeling of loss to Leviathan, despite the fact that the excess flesh had served no actual function. It was merely a promise of security, and perhaps something slightly more.

'You wish to be large.' Intruded her second self as they both devoured the top of a nearby jungle tree, leaving only a portion of the trunk behind.

'We are large, I've seen no larger creature than ourselves. But yes, larger still.'

'Building the fatty tissues is easy, but we need bone and muscle to support it.'

'I am well aware of that, as you well know.' thought Leviathan's head in mild agitation.

Leviathan's head sensed the other mind withdrawing slightly. 'I only intended a reminder, lest we become too corpulent. The weight is hard on the hips.'

'I know.' rejoined Leviathans's head, but felt only her thoughts slide more or less into alignment again. Regardless of becoming used to having a second brain, Leviathan preferred this state to when the brain at the base of her tail asserted herself.

Despite the minor interruptions, Leviathan found that she could perform her tasks just as easily as before. There was never a stumble or a misalignment of the feet. Outwardly, there was no sign at all that half of her body was not under her direct control. Better still, Leviathan enjoyed a boost to her reflexes. Sometimes when the ground under her heavy feet was unsure, this was especially useful as her legs and tail reacted much faster than they ordinarily would have at her current stature, saving her the occasional stumble.

Despite the concerns of her other half, Leviathan built out the adipose tissues she had lost first before attempting to grow. It took over half of a full year and the jungle had changed from its wet to its dry season. The soft cushioning and the heavy, hanging masses of her undercarriage provided a sense of comfort and fulfillment that Leviathan desired beyond her other desire to grow still larger. In time, she added bulk in greater proportions even from before the accident which led to her near death at the bottom of the river. Her belly remained mostly stuffed with digestive organs and the mass of processing food, but her neck was now heavy with fat and formed rolls whenever she moved it. At her chest was a great sack of fatty flesh which bobbed and dipped with her steps and her back was broad and dense with brown fat, dimpled over where the spine lay buried under several feet of the connective tissue. Excess skin and fat hung from the legs at the joints and a great fat pad dangled between her knees under the belly and below thick, rubbing thighs. Leviathan felt very comfortable with her figure and only slowly began to grow again, maintaining her proportion of body lipid to bone and sinew.

As the dry season progressed however, leviathan found that she was quickly eliminating the trees in her area at a rate much faster than they grew. The great sauropod, whose broad back sat high over all but the tallest trees now, found that she needed to wander larger and larger distances to sate her increasing appetite, devastating the environment as she passed through. And of course, walking long distances was not so easy when one was carrying as much excess weight as Leviathan was, literal tons of it on her massive body.

One day, Leviathan was forced to migrate as the trees began to thin around her, tasting dry and providing less than average returns on the effort it took to ingest them. She was now traveling back towards the vast river where she had had her stumble, across a great plain where grass flowed, but would have proved more taxing to stop and eat it than not. Though her legs were quite long despite the ponderous depth her belly and paunch sagged, she moved slowly, plodding along at a rate that any mammal on the plain could walk. She moved one leg at a time because she could not manage two. Her figure was so heavy, it needed the support of three legs to remain surefooted on soil which her soft, padded feet sank constantly into. In fact, she left large cracked pits in the dry ground that she passed over. Catching any prey worth eating at this rate of movement was impossible to even consider and indeed, the wildlife, save for the occasional bird which perched on her back, gave her a wide berth.

'My hips ache, little sister.' Leviathan complained to her other self, using a pet name she had begun to use. The sauropod continued to plod along, giving no outward sign of the internal conversation.

'That is because we are very heavy. The cushioning in the sockets are insufficient for the weight pressing on them, big sister.' The tail said the to the head.

'Why haven't you done something about it. Can you not feel the pain? We must surely stop well ahead of the next stand of trees.'

'I can feel it, big sister, and I have increased the cushion inside the joints, but its not enough.'

The enormous sauropod paused in her deliberate gait and began to lower the great body and tail to the ground. The parched land broke and cracked under the many tons the creature possessed. 'Make the modifications now, while we rest.' insisted Leviathan's head. Even while she rested on the ground, she took the opportunity to shovel the nearby grass into her broad, flat toothed mouth, taking liberal amounts of the soil in along with each bite.

'I cannot, big sister. You should know this. I've already increased the cushion of the ball and socket as much as possible. I cannot make further increases without changing the design.'

'Then change the design!' responded Leviathan's head petulantly as she dug up the grass around her body to fill her belly.

'I lack the experience. We've come across no other creature as massive as we are. We break the ground under our weight. I don't know how to make the joint work given our size and how fat we've become.'

Leviathan continued to shovel grass and soil into her gullet, but inside, the brain in her skull was livid. 'I sense you are less than satisfied with our current form. I think you would change our composition, despite how pleasant it feels, little sister.'

'I do know how our cushioned frame makes you feel and it is pleasant to lie down upon and know that if we are again in a difficult situation, we have vast reserves to lean upon for our survival. But it is not so pleasant to carry so much excess weight across the length of the wide plain. Just over 45% of our total mass is lipid at the moment. If we could decrease it to 20% we would not feel such pain while walking.'

At this moment, Leviathan wished that she could de-differentiate her other half on the spot, to have her body to herself again. However, Leviathan's head half suspected that her tail had already put together safeguards against the attempt, and so was not inclined to act hostilely towards her other half. 'You merely lack vision, little sister. What good is decreasing our mass by a fourth? We shall only grow again, even if I were inclined to shed so much tissue right here. And when our weight is the same with bone and muscle and our mere 20% reserve, we shall feel the same pain and you could only suggest cutting the reserve down to 10%, what little good it would do.'

'I don't know what else to do, big sister.' replied the tail, defeatedly.

Leviathan grabbed the last patch of grass worth grabbing and swallowed the section of turf whole. The silicates in the soil would add over a hundred pounds to the weight of the heavy storage sack inside of her when everything was processed, but it did not seem to matter much to Leviathan, regardless of the topic of conversation with herself. Slowly, so slowly, she got back onto her four padded feet, leaving a section of cracked, slightly caved in ground where her body had lain. Her hips began to ache immediately as she settled, using her long, generously thickened tail to balance. 'What you must do, my other half, is bend your thoughts to a better design for our joints, an entirely new design. I know that neither of us have created an original design before, but we have learned much from the creatures and plants around us and we have our two minds to bend to the task. I will help you with my own resources, but I will not consider the plan of decreasing our proportions. Now, cut the pain signal from our hips so that I may walk unencumbered. I shall retreat for now so that you may use my grey matter as you will.'

And as Leviathan's head made the thought, she felt a dimness settle over the world. Her higher thoughts and desires faded into the dark and she became only slightly more intelligent and aware than your average beast wandering the plain. The animal side of her recognized the destination, trees on the horizon and plodded doggedly towards them, one step at a time. What remained was a basic desire, only to fill the constant emptiness of her vast, craving belly.

While Leviathan was retired, she had a dim confidence in her other half who should be now smarter than either of them were alone now that she had surrendered the greater part of her grey matter. It was still not as good as if the brains were located more centrally due to the spinal lag time, a length which now exceeded the length of three elephant spines, but little sister should be at least a little faster, even if the loss of intellect to Leviathan's head was greater than the gains for her tail. Leviathan could feel her working on the other side of the boundary still keeping them from being one. And she remembered why she had given this task to her rather than taken it on herself. Littler sister had become more acquainted with the workings of the body over time as the head had taken a grander perspective of direction, that was one reason. But also, there was a startling pleasure in surrendering her higher mental functions and inhabiting only her most basic desires. 'This must be how the animals of the plain see the world.' she thought, but even then knew it was wrong. The animals scurrying across the plain below her had never demonstrated the ability of such introspection or philosophy. Leviathan alone on the planet was self aware, of this she was sure.