Field note. The colony has gathered to celebrate a creature that has not yet arrived.
The subject organism is not present. It remains sealed inside a host, unhatched, incapable of perceiving any of what follows. Nevertheless the surrounding adults assemble in a decorated enclosure, drape it in pale fabrics and inflated membranes, and perform a sequence of behaviors ostensibly for its benefit. The subject cannot benefit. This does not deter them.
The central specimen, the host, sits in a designated chair while others bring wrapped objects. The host opens each wrapping, displays the contents, and emits a sustained high vocalization. The objects are miniature: tiny coverings for feet that cannot yet grip, tiny thermal shells, tiny devices to capture waste. The gathered adults respond to each miniature item with the same escalating pitch, a chorus of appreciation for the small, as though smallness itself were an achievement rather than a temporary condition the organism will urgently outgrow.
They then consume a large sweetened structure. Some attempt to predict the arrival date and the organism's mass by writing numbers on paper. This is guessing dressed as ceremony. They also play a game in which a sugared confection shaped like an infant is hidden in a cold drink, and the first to notice announces it and claims the melting infant. I have logged this three times and cannot locate its function.
Correction to earlier entry. I had recorded the host as exhibiting fluid discharge from the ocular region, a probable malfunction. Further observation confirms the discharge occurs specifically while holding the smallest foot-covering, item of no measurable use.
The malfunction spread. By the end, four adults were leaking.
They are preparing, at great expense, for something they cannot yet love. And loving it anyway.