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Little sister did indeed formulate a new design for a joint, or rather plan for modifying the existing one. 'I think the problem lies more in the materials of our body than in the mechanical design, big sister.' said the tail one afternoon as a dimwitted Leviathan was chewing her way through the stand of trees she had finally reached. Her body was so massive and broad now that in order to make progress through the terrain, she literally had to eat through a path through the trees. At the same time as Leviathan received the thought, however, she felt her mental faculties idling and then expanded back into her full personality. It felt like a cold shower after being in a warm comfortable place for a long time. The tail continued, 'I am testing a number of new tissues in our body that I hope will improve our joint cushioning. Each night I want to try replacing the cushion with a new one to see if it will perform better.'

'It sounds as though you have not come up with an answer despite the many days that have past.' said Leviathan's head.

'No, not for sure, but I know now how to find the answer. Each day we will increase our knowledge.' said the tail. 'Redesigning the ball and socket is not the answer. It is too simple. Any changes to increase its ability to bear weight would limit our leg's range of motion, which we need to get up and lie down. We need better, stronger materials.'

'I will leave you do it then. I feel more concerned with devouring the trees ahead and planning our path to more productive areas.'

'Then let us divide our tasks, for I have not paid attention to the passage of the lands around us or the behavior of the creatures on the plain. I have no map of the land in my mind and can not assist in steering us.'

'Have some of my resources then. I shall need to be more than a beast to guide us, but not much more. Plan your experiments carefully.' Leviathan said and then sank down into a comfortable warm dimness as she ripped the tops of the trees and even the trunks into her eager, hard working maw.

So Leviathan operated for a long while, though there were occasional interruptions. The very next day, when Leviathan attempted to rise, a searing pain stabbed at her from her hips and she was forced down again with a painful blow which smote the ground under her and raised a massive cloud of dust that drifted away for over a mile before dissipating. Leviathan's head scolded her tail for the change even as little sister hurriedly replaced the faulty cushion in the hip joints. There were days that followed with similar experiences, but none as painful as that first day.

Leviathan ate her way south, slowly and clearing an area of forest much wider than her girth for the great sauropod took a winding path through the woods. The breadth of the brown streak she made in the green landscape was carefully measured to maximize yield in biomass with a minimum of effort. The rains and the weather came and went overhead, delivering boons, hunger or danger wantonly and Leviathan was left to adjust for she was too slow moving to avoid the changes. But she was beyond threat from other animals now. Two great elephants standing on the other's shoulders would barely have come to the tops of her great wide withers and the contents of her abdomen could have supported an entire ecosystem if she'd been so inclined.

Leviathan's intellect matched the complexity of her daily tasks, so she did not find the act of continuous eating or navigation tedious as she once had. Occasionally she made an error, such as one time when she followed lush, tasty vegetation down near a steep gully whose rim was not suited to bearing her tremendous weight. She'd fallen and her great weight had broken all but two ribs on one side of her. Little sister that day had scolding for her and Leviathan's head had to accept the chastisement as the tail repaired their wounds.

More and more their tasks diverged and little sister began to feel more like a distinct personality, which was useful and troublesome at the same time. 'Big sister. The thunderstorm is loud and distracting, please stop sending me the sounds from the ears.' she said late one evening and later she asked for sight and smell also to be removed from her input. Leviathan's head, in turn lost interest in the details of her multifold stomachs and the management of the blood sugar and oxygen levels. Eventually, Leviathan's head lost the sense for these things in her body and suspected that little sister had diverted the flow of information entirely without asking. But the head let the matter go, specialization was good and if little sister wanted to be the engineer of their body, then she could be the pilot for the world around them. But there was one aspect of their body that the head retained tight control over, for it was dear to her and that was the management of their stores of adipose, both how much went in or out and how much circulated in their blood stream.

As the months past and little sister made progress in the problem of supporting their weight, the pain in the hips alternately faded and flared, but mostly faded until it was only an occasional nuisance. With the lack of feedback in pain, Leviathan felt comfortable not just expanding her frame, in a much more general way now than before, her orders now filtered through little sister, but slowly increasing the percentage of fat on her body also. 46% and then 47%, then 48%, each digit representing thousands of pounds of extra flesh, countless calories, and a visible and tactile change to her appearance which continued to broaden and soften.

When the weight of fat equaled the amount of all other tissues in Leviathan's body, she walked even more slowly than before, often setting all four feet on the ground and shifting her weight before taking a single additional step. Excess flesh had accumulated in waves under the spherical warehouse of her belly to form a great leathery paunch which dangled between and below her knees. She was bowlegged and the skin rubbed between her thighs and in vast folds of skin against her belly. Excess flesh dangled behind both the knees of her hind legs and the elbows of her forelegs. There was a deep, broad valley in the thickened fat of her back over her spine and her tail was likewise burdened, rounded out at the sides. The tail hung closer to the ground than it had in the past and when she swished it side to side, rolls formed at the tail head and near the base of the tail at either side. Rolls creased permanently at the great sarupod's shoulders where the girth of her torso greatly outmatched the width of the underlying frame. And great rolling sacks of flesh dangled hugely from the underside of Leviathan's thick neck. She reveled in the sensation of their heavy, full swaying and even desired even greater bounty there where she could feel it easily. And despite her increasing proportions the pain remained absent for the most part. Little sister was proficient at the tasks she had set for herself, allowing the head to bask in comfort and the pleasure of eating.

One evening, though after a particularly heavy day of eating in which she had stumbled across a stand of fruit bearing trees in season, Leviathan meditated on a belly filled with an excellent amount of Calories. Leviathan lay upon the ground in the clearing she had created with her appetite, the enormous weight of her body alone enough to make a concave impression in the dry soil. Though lying prone, the swell of her girth still rose over the ground to match the canopy of the trees around her. She breathed long, slow breaths through a cavernous rib cage and gently swayed the hanging flesh below her neck so she could feel her excess all the more. Into this contentment, little sister intruded and forced Leviathan's head to retake her share of her cognitive powers, ripping contentment and ease away like a scab from a wound.

'We've been doing very well lately.' said little sister.

'Thanks to my navigation.' replied the head sharply for she could sense that the tail had come to a decision that she would not like.

'Yes,' the tail acceded, 'And you are able to navigate comfortably at our size thanks to my specialized tissues supporting our great bulk.'

'We've benefitted both greatly from the division of tasks.' little sister's thoughts were already leading the head's mind to the topic which she wanted to discuss.

'Perhaps too greatly, or simply not in the correct way.' said the tail before getting to her point, 'Why have you increased our fat reserves so much? It was already excessive before, but now it is getting to the point where the flesh is hindering our movement. You are unaware of the difficulties I've had in adapting to our soaring weight.'

'I am aware of the many sites in our body where you perform your experiments.' said the head, thinking of the little nodules and knots of muscle interspersed between the organs in her vast abdomen, 'So do not presume my ignorance simply because I lend you my faculties during our regular affairs. As for why I am pushing our reserves, I was simply confident in your ability to keep up with the demands of our body. You think of nothing else on the outside and utilize nearly three quarters of our grey matter for the task. If you are reaching the limits of your ability, I'll maintain our proportions for a while, though we must continue to grow overall.' said the head, feeling that she was being generous with the tail's complaints.

'You misunderstand, big sister.' replied the tail with a flare of emotion which was uncharacteristic for the normally quiet, logic focused mind. 'I am not having trouble keeping up. I've mastered our bodily functions and continue to increase our vitality, stamina, strength and efficiency.'

'Then why do you question me?' asked the head.

'I question the sense in continuing to increase the percentage of lipid in our body. Even keeping the same percentage we have now, we shall become more corpulent as our frame increases by the way our mass increases with our stature. Do not deny that you wish to increase our mass percentage by even more digits, perhaps even at the cost of total growth.'

'I would not cease our growth.' rebutted the head, but weakly. She knew that tail already knew of her thoughts.

'No, but that does not mean you would not hamper our growth to suit your desires. Why do you insist that we be such? What is this attraction to such volumes of fatty masses? We have more than enough cushioning for our needs. Our fatty bulk is little more than a hindrance to us at this point.'

'You only say that because you do not know how good it feels to be enmeshed so. You are too immersed in the minute details of our body to take in the larger pleasures. I would not do so if I did not believe that I was doing our body good and enriching our shared experience.' said the head to her tail. 'Perhaps you should take a day to rest and to view the larger picture as I do. I remember how to manage our small functions.'

'No, I do not desire to dim myself in that way." said the tail, and the head knew that she did not mean to say that she belittled the head for doing so on a regular basis.

'Then what is it you desire? If you were to navigate us, what direction would you choose?' prodded the head and achieved the desired response. The tail hesitated, indecisive.

'I don't desire to navigate us, not as I once might have. I have asked that sight and sound and smell and taste be blocked from my perception so that I may concentrate on the small things which matter to me. However, I wanted to ask if you would but relinquish to me the last bodily maintenance you still manage.'

Now the head had to consider for a moment, which was a long pause in the time scale that the brains communicated at. The head kept her most secret thoughts sequestered from where the tail could feel them. 'I know what you ask. You want to manage our fatty reservoirs as well, even though we disagree on what our proportions should be.'

'I don't want a war between us, big sister. I know that is what you fear above all else. I know that is why you wanted to diminish me the moment we were out of danger now many years since my inception. But I fear that I am enabling you to descend deeper and deeper into your desires. I will eventually reach the limits of my ability to sustain this sort of growth. The lack of negative feedback has allowed you to keep pushing our body.'

The head had to contemplate the comment and she was not sure anymore that she had the skill of self introspection enough to discern the root causes of her motivation. She was out of practice, having spent so much time acting on instinct and emotion and desire.

The tail went on, 'I will not bring our fat content down to 20% as I first proposed, though you will sense that I think that is a more reasonable proportion. I want primarily only to keep our percentage from increasing further. If you allow me to control the fat content of our blood and tissues, I would only bring our fat content back to 49% so that we can move a little more easily, and I would use the saved energy to fuel a nice boost to our stature, allowing even greater ease of movement.'

'If I were to do this, though, I would not control any of the internal processes of our body any longer, only our skeletal muscles for our body's motion. I fear that you might then isolate me somehow and I would be unable to have the body I desire. How can I trust you to be true?'

'You trusted me the moment you decided to allow me to exist, big sister.' replied the tail and the head could detect no attempt at deception, nor even a real concept of deception inside the other mind. Leviathan herself had only learned deception by observing the predators on the plain long ago. 'We are two halves of the same creature now despite how we have diverged. You can trust in me as you can trust in your leg to stand upon the ground, on your mouth to eat and on your stomachs to digest. Just as we have split tasks, you the eyes, the ears, our animal navigator and I the tinkerer of tissues and manager of our manifold processes, I yield to you to contain our desires and to experience the pleasure which we are capable of experiencing. This is our division of tasks.'

The head experienced heartfelt relief at the conviction of the tail as she expressed herself. There was no other consciousness which would have been able to convince her, but it was to be expected. Little sister, after all, had once been a copy of herself. 'Very well, You shall be master of our internal world. I shall master the external and direct our path in life. You know my deep desires already.'

'You desire growth and largeness, not just of stature, but surrounded by folds of soft, comforting flesh.' replied the tail, 'I can take pleasure in your pleasure and I know how much our body pleases you now.'

'Then take what is yours, and I shall take what is mine.' replied the head of Leviathan before again lowering herself gently down, becoming more aware of her weight and surroundings again even as the perception of the processes in her body faded into a general mass on the order of what ordinary mammals perceived of their own innards. The tail became quiet and did not speak again to the head in such terms for quite a long time.

Leviathan found that she did not dwell on the loss a little more than 1% of her body's mass worth of fatty flesh for very long. She did not lose much mass, rather transformed the fat into muscle, bone and sinew, an infinitesimal amount spread over her entire vast body, though the energy tax of transformation was exhaled on her breath and lost; it was so small, however, that it went largely unnoticed with the daily influx of Calories. Her paunch shrank and lifted just enough to be noticeable and her flanks became less wide, allowing a greater range of motion for her hind legs. The skin tightened into the slack of its own accord so she remained brimming and full as she liked. In only a few rotations, Leviathan found an ease of motion she had lost, but now recovered found that she had missed. She actually had a gait once more, walking with three legs on the ground and moving much more swiftly than previously. That last 1% had indeed cost much more than all the previous digits had in her implacable growth. Leviathan even felt lighter now, though she knew that was an illusion. She simply had more muscle mass and less of a burden by percentage than before.

Leviathan continued to devour the vegetation in the area to her heart's content. Filling her belly was a simple pleasure and she downed trees at a rate of three or four an hour. It mattered little now how large they were. Her withers towered even over the largest ones now. She walked among the growing trees much as she had among the stalks of grass when she first emerged on this world. Her feet sent tremors through the ground that animals felt for miles around and they had each gotten quite wide. Each paw was supported by three toes which were solid, inflexible pillars and a thick heel. Heavy callused skin coated the pads and sides of each foot because Leviathan was now used to sinking more than a couple feet into most terrain she tread upon.

The trees on which she dined were like leafy cylinders of food which sprouted from the ground. Her habit was to bite heavily into the canopy, usually striping the top half of the tree, or several trees in the process and then proceed to place the trunk into her cavernous mouth, gripping it by the base and pulling upward until it was uprooted. Her strength was titanic now in her thick, heavy neck and only the tallest, oldest trees provided any real resistance anymore. Leviathan swallowed the truck, barely chewing anymore. Her innards were so vast she could easily accommodate a day's feeding in her upper chambers. Little sister certainly never complained about her dietary habits.

The forest, of course, could not sustain such aggressive feeding. Leviathan did more damage to the dense jungle than any herd of elephants ever could. This of course, necessitated constant movement. And leviathan found that with her increased speed, she had regained Calories in her daily intake that she had not noticed she had lost before. Leviathan continued to add mass to her impressive bulk from the forest, but whenever she looked behind her, she saw the wide swatch of destruction she left behind. As her head lifted higher and higher from the ground, the resources of the land did not seem as vast and infinite as they had previously.

Eventually, as Leviathan had been traveling in the same general direction as the river in which little sister had been conceived, the titanic sauropod reached the end of the land.

'What has captivated you so, big sister?' asked the tail. It was the first time they had shared more than base level thoughts in more than two wet seasons.

'It is the water. I must show you for you to understand.' said the head and for the first time in a very long time indeed, the tail saw what the eyes saw.

'I'm not certain I understand still, and you can shut off the feed from the eyes now. What is that terrain ahead, shimmering so?'

'It is water, my other half. An endless field of water and I cannot see the far shore, no matter how I raise our head.'

'Do we need to traverse it?' asked the tail.

'No. There is more vegetation to sustain us growing along the land to our side. But I feel drawn to this expanse. There may be food in it and I think it should be easier to move in the water now with our weight than supporting it on land.'

'I feel that we should be cautious. If there is food on land, let us take that since we already know how. Please don't concern yourself with our weight either. I have it well in hand. Even if legs may not work for us forever, I have been studying the designs and memories of creatures who went about on their bellies.'

'That sounds tedious, little sister, but I will not question you.' The lumbering hulk of the giant clad in dark green skin turned from the surf to the jungle on the coast. 'I might as well add the biomass here to ourselves, since it is here.' thought the head, her mouth again watering and her innards feeling inadequately stuffed.

Leviathan moved then along the coast, devouring a wide swath of rich land. The trees were now mostly below her withers and the merest brushing of her swollen flanks against the trunks was enough to bend and break even thick trunks. Now, the coming of Leviathan initiated a cascading wave of evacuating creatures ahead and around her as she passed through the lands. So Leviathan seldom saw large creatures anymore and hardly bothered to collect the stray carcass here and there, unless it was large enough to interest her. However, occasionally there were animals mixed in with the branches and leaves she greedily devoured. They were like tasty rich fruit mixed in with the roughage. Leviathan left little sister to manage the digestion now, though.

The coast proved to be a profitable place for several more seasons and during that time Leviathan grew taller and broader and far, far heavier. To Leviathan's pleasant surprise, her labors at eating brought an increased fleshiness to her already sagging neck and tail which she enjoyed. Leviathan did not consult or thank little sister for the small gains, but felt gratitude for the efforts regardless. In time, her neck felt as full and heavy with fat as it ever had and her tail was thicker than ever, forming pleasant rolls further along its length and a spider's nest of deep creases at the tail head. The environment, however, could not keep up with her increasing demands forever.

'Big sister...' the tail contacted Leviathan and the head came awake again. She felt strangely bitter about it. Little sister never contacted her with good news it seemed. 'We must consider a change in our routine.'

'What brings this about?' asked the head lazily. She had been experimenting with sleep, the way the mammals did as a new addition to her animalistic routine.

'We are no longer profitable on our diet. I am sure of it now. In the last fourteen days, we spent more energy than we gained in feeding.' said the tail. The head felt something like alarm from the inward focused personality.

'How can that be?' asked the head in disbelief. 'We've been passing through a rich area, dense with leaves and a low percentage of hard woods.'

'I know. I've been monitoring the contents of our stomachs and our consumption has been optimum, above average even. I would not have contacted you if we were merely passing through a less rich region.'

'But surely our photosynthesis can make up the difference in the energy we use?' But the head was unsure. She had lost even the ability to monitor such things within herself.

'I've factored that in as well. We can no longer grow on our diet. Our body is so heavy that the muscles we require burn all of the good you have been able to collect through feeding. We must either increase our Caloric intake, or find a means of gathering which is less energy intensive. Right now, we are slowly diminishing, despite how you eat.'

'This is awful news and I don't have an immediate solution.' thought the head. In fact, she often prided herself on how full of plant material she was able to stuff herself on a daily basis. She devoured literal tons of biomass per day, and it seemed almost unimaginable that it would be insufficient. And yet, her body was now so massive, it dwarfed even small features of the landscape. Her back rose like a small hill and she weighed not a dissimilar amount. Small creatures, in fact were using the creases and crevasses of her body for housing, birds especially, but also small, furry mammals who had learned how to cling to her leathery hide. So far, it had been impossible to dislodge them, though they seemed to do no harm, so Leviathan had so far ignored their existence. Dust and dirt even accumulated in some tight areas of exposed flesh, eventually turning to soil with supported several tufts of grass and even a small sapling which thrived on the surface of her body. Every time she rose each day, a hundred birds would scatter from her expanse where they had been roosting. Already there were full grown birds alive who had been laid as an egg somewhere among the folds of her leathery skin. To lift and move such a mass as herself must require enormous energy indeed.

Several minutes passed in silence, which was a very long time between the two brains, so that the head thought the tail had left her to mull over their situation. But the head struggled for a solution. This was a problem with numbers, not something the head's animal instincts or her desires could help with. Slowly, she lifted her head, minuscule compared to the rest of her, but as large as the torso of a bull elephant. The heavy flesh draped comfortable from below the long neck and soil fell from the folds where the flesh had pressed into and collapsed the ground underneath before. Leviathan felt the thick muscles in her neck slide and contract, supporting not only their own weight, but the heavy mass of bone and even more of excess flesh blanketing and dangling from it. Such strength was sufficient not just to move her incredible mass, but also to uproot any tree no matter how deep its roots. High over the trees Leviathan lifted her head and birds flew level with her eyes as they rose. Leviathan looked over the landscape around her, futilely searching for richer land, but knowing that she had never seen such plenty which would justify carrying so many thousands of tons of flesh over the ground. When she saw it, though, she knew that it was the only possible solution. The head found that her tail was waiting for her when she reached for the connection. 'We must go to the large water, little sister.'

'Lead the way, big sister.' said the tail and with that, Leviathan began to rise laboriously to her four padded feet.

Each foot sank into the turf, compacting the ground under it until it was able to bear the terrible weight of the sauropod. Even as Leviathan shifted her body to get her legs under her, the heavy flesh of her belly and flanks tore the topsoil away from the area under her body, piling it into a mound near her back that would take years to erode and lose its shape. The great lungs were bellows that shook the nearby vegetation in a warm breeze. Her footprints from the previous day were still visible though now filled with water. They were a track of shallow pools leading back the way she had come, the ground stripped of trees and the earth disturbed, though quick growing grass and shrubs grew further back along her path. Such an impact she had on the environment, Leviathan had not really noticed before, but now, it seemed that she would not do so any longer. The sea beckoned.

It was not a long walk down to the endless waters. The sand of the beach made for poor footing and Leviathan stumbled more than once as the sand sank to cover her toes completely. The lowest reach of her fatty paunch, in fact, was in danger of dragging on the turf by the time she began to wade into the water. Despite the fact that she was leaving the land, probably permanently and into an uncertain future, Leviathan reveled in the scent and taste of the strange waters. She dipped her head and began to sample the taste of her new environment.

Little sister however broke into that excitement. 'Stop, big sister!'

'What is the matter?' asked the head and the titan paused in her stride with some effort, the sheer momentum of her great bulk continuing to carry her forward and bury her front feet deeper into the wet sand. She stumbled slightly and repositioned her right fore-claw as the sand under it collapsed.

'This water is too salty. I need time to make changes our chemistry so that we will not dehydrate.'

'Is that all?' asked the head, amused, 'Then let me know when we might drink, for I already feel a deep thirst.' and with that thought, Leviathan took more steps into the surf, and soon the water was building around her body, lifting her and making her feel light for the first time since shedding her cat-like form. Then she was floating on the water, kicking with her feet while her back floated dry, well over the crests of the waves she produced. 'What is out here, I wonder...' thought Leviathan more to herself than anyone else.