Talking? I awaken sometime later, at first it feels dark and lonesome, but then I focus enough and am able to twitch a finger. Then I realise that Te’s hand is still holding my fingers, and I just smile before shedding a happy tear, falling asleep again.

I think this continued for several more days. During that time, I came clean about my trauma of Day One to Te, of course freezing up and having a panic attack while talking about it. Those few days passed with brief periods of being sat up, and wiggling my legs or arms, until today, when I’m ready to start walking again. In fact, I can tell I’m in positive energy. I almost don’t wait for Te to assist me. I think she’d beat me silly however if I didn’t. Te helps lift me to my feet, and I feel fairly steady, until I take my first step, falling into her. Her muscular lithe limbs easily catch me and set me right. I don’t know if I envy her, or if I’m just so grateful and happy to know her. I was hoping that my vision would recover while my physical health did, but it doesn’t seem to be making a lot of progress. I’m able to take a few shaky steps, stumbling each time into Te, before I think to ask for some food.

Embarassedly, I ask, “Te, could we maybe sit down and eat together for a second before I try again?”

“Sure Punk.” Te manages to make punk sound like an affectionate term of endearment, it’s something she continues to do with random terms like dork, dingus, jerk, punk, potato, petunia, I have no idea how I’m supposed to feel about any of that. Well, mostly I feel happy to hear her refer to me at all.

Regardless, we sit down together, to eat some of the sashimi I had duplicated with my limit break, apparently even though normally my radiant duplicates disappear almost immediately, the limit break materialized everything I copied into realistic seeming duplicates. Real enough to eat at least. The meal only lasts a few moments, with the automatic eating process, I’m really craving any sort of food other than these particular platters at this point, even though there’s a few different flavors and styles.

I mumble in gratitude, “Te, I can’t thank you enough, you saved me, without you I couldn’t have done anything, and now, after all that, you’re fixing me up, helping me all the time. You’re so wonderful.”

“Duh, dork.” She replies in a teasing tone, before her voice softens. “Besides, we’ve been over this, I had to, and then you saved as many of us as you could, I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to be even, because I can’t even guess just how much you did for us, or what you gave up for us.”

“Thank you Te, still, I’m sorry, for things, and stuff.” I tear up, not being able to talk about how five members of her family are gone, that I can’t do anything about it, that if I had acted faster, I might have been able to save three of them. Or maybe I wouldn’t have been able to save anyone, if we were still under too much pressure in the wave and if the shell collapsed right away. It’s too hard to think about. Te leans over. Despite being unable to see her activity, I can feel her staring into my eyes, captivating me, then she hauls back and slugs me hard in the shoulder, bowling me over. I jokingly shout, “Ow!”

Heat has been rising in the air between Teuila's face and mine. I could sense it until I was knocked over, though I bet she's still blushing as she quietly orders, “Stop being sappy, let’s get you better.”

“Holy carp, okay, fine, ow, how am I supposed to get better if you keep beating me up all the time?” I joke, because even though she playfully hit me, it was mostly the surprise that knocked me over, she’s never once intentionally hurt me with one of her punches or bonks or boops or knuckle raps. She looks a tad sad, I think, just from the proprioceptive response I get from the hairs on my arms, I think she furrowed her brow and pouted. “I’m okay, I’m okay, you’re not really beating me up, you’re right, let’s get me better.”

At that, Te hoists me up and gives me a quick hug, before gently booting my rear. I stumble forward, to my hands and knees, but I feel strong enough to stand back up on my own, and begin walking around. I exhale a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding, sighing in relief. Now that I’m mostly physically capable again, it’s time to earn back a lot of energy, and maybe about four hundred carry capacity. Lil and the rest said they hadn’t seen any bags popping out in the tidal wave, so it may have just been the inventory shenanigans somehow using the bags.

I actually have a feeling that I somehow converted inventory space into like, a nebulous special space, and that’s why I was able to store the fire after the fact. Lil still won’t forgive me for making them breathe on me like that, whenever we’re in our shared thinkspace. I think we both just cry thinking about it. No sense dwelling on it, we love each other and we lived through an ordeal, and we’re moving forward.

Speaking of moving forward, I don’t seem to even be having trouble walking. It feels like second by second, my strength is returning at a more rapid pace than it had in the previous weeks, almost dormant in bed. Curious, yet cautiously, I start to jog, and then to run.

“Seems like you’re better, but watch out for that, oo, tree.” Te begins to call out as I crash, bang, headlong into a tree just as my sensory awareness kicked in, warning me of it a moment too late. I swear there are little stars and birds tweeting circles around my head for a moment as I stand up, a little disoriented.

I can feel Teuila grinning slyly from nearby as she teases, “Alright, hold still, come here you big dork. Are you going to make a habit of tripping over yourself and falling or smacking into things?”

“Not if I can help it. The beach wasn’t my fault, I told you about Day… One.” I freeze up momentarily as Te rushes forward to lift me up in an embrace that slowly grounds me, keeping me from falling into a triggered memory. She whispers “You’re here, right now, you’re here, I’m here, it’s okay, what about today?” She squeezes me gently, holding me as I ride out the panic, without it devolving into heartpounding terror. We both know that she can't necessarily stop or prevent all of my attacks, but the grounding still helps shorten this one.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Today? Today? Hm, oh no, today was your fault, why would you let a blind person run around all higgledy piggledy?” I tease, jokingly laying blame on Te, which earns me getting socked in the shoulder.

“Ow, haha, okay, okay, no, I was being dumb. I’ll need to be careful, and stick with Lil or Luni if I want to do anything that might require sight from now on.” I explain, pleading my case for her to stop her light jabs at my arm. I can feel the warmth of her smile as she has satisfactorily gained victory I suppose.

“Just don’t go getting hurt, okay, Jerk?” She almost pleads, there’s a tenderness to her textual tone that melts my heart. My eyes are wet with happy tears, though none fall.

My smile hurts with how far across my face it has spread. It's difficult to respond, but I make my best effort, “Yeah, yeah I’ll be good. No more getting hurt from me. I promise to try my best at least.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Teuila grumps at me, a mild annoyance underlying her tone that's mostly laced with a saddened worry.

I nod in answer, “You’re right, you’re right, but I will try my best, I swear.”

“Okay, good enough for me, Dingleberry.” I swear she has a million insults that all sound like loving nicknames as she calls me dingleberry again.

Frustrated that I can't see her beautiful eyes and myriad facial expressions, I rhetorically ask, “Te, do you think my sight will ever come back?”

Teuila tries to guide me to an answer anyway, “Well, you said you can almost see shapes again, right?”

“Almost, but basically there’s no depth perception, so if you face me towards a dark area, everything’s dark and nothing stands out. Things basically have to be backlit for me to kind of be able to know there’s a shape in a certain direction ahead of me, though I can’t tell you how close really.” I try to puzzle out the best description of my current limited sight.

“We’ll get there, Dippy.” I give a half smile as she tosses another backhanded insult my way. “I’m going to go on a walk with Lao, did you want me to take you back to bed or do you think you can handle finding it on your own?”

“Oh, I’m not quite ready to sleep yet, I don’t think I can get into too much trouble if I just sort of wander around til I find it on my own.” Te hems and haws at my response, I can virtually feel her train of thought imagining just what sort of trouble I can get myself into, and whether or not she should usher me back to bed. Eventually she seems to shrug.

“Fine fine, just don’t get hurt, Derpy.” She gives me a peck on the cheek and a warm embrace before I hear her scamper away.

Alone with my thoughts, I first practice sitting and standing, then, realizing I’m next to the tree I crashed into, I begin trying to shimmy up and down its trunk just a short ways. At most a dozen feet. I feel far more skilled at climbing than I remember myself being, but I don’t want to risk taking a long fall right now, so I don’t press my luck. Wandering around our temporary camp, I look for Ag to ask a fairly serious question. Well, look is a strong word, I stumble blindly around listening for a larger being, trying to feel, hear, and smell the nearness of any of my Shellcracker family. Oh, hm, did I ever have a sense of smell? I don’t seem to anymore. Anosmia or apnosmia, something like that, I think I smelled the burning hair during the tidal wave ride, but before that, and after, I can’t recall.

After about the third time of bumping into a tree, then asking it if it’s Agwai, I get a tad dispirited, but manage to bump into them on the fourth try.

Agwai startles aloud, well, a-text, “Hm, oh Reggie you’re up and about, how did you manage to sneak up on me?”

“I think it’s just because I had to start walking more and more carefully, to stop bumping into trees. I basically have to tiptoe now.” I explain, somewhat unknowingly, as it’s mostly a guess.

“Well it’s good to see you moving, you had us worried for a bit in the beginning, then the waiting game has been quite hard on some of us. I’m sure you’ve noticed.” Ag insinuates, assuming I have more awareness than I think that I do.

I half-answer, half-chide, “I can’t notice much of anything with my eyes anymore, unless you meant something else.”

Agwai is somewhat pensive in response, their insinuation from earlier left unclear, “Ah, right right, no, nevermind. Is there something I can do for you?”

I put my best foot forward, trying to explain my proposal, “I would like the Shellcrackers to come back to my home, it’s past the swamp, all the way north up the river to the cliffs that lead to the volcano, there’s a pond there. I guess it’s not really mine, or a home, but it’s a place that I wanted to settle with Lil if we ever found anyone else to share it with. It’s a really abundant spawning ground.”

I can sense Agwai's lips beginning to form words, and stopping several times, before they respond, “Hm, we had been working on settling here, I’m not certain it’s worth such a long trek, to abandon all we’ve done down here.”

“Oh,” I say, disappointed and deflated. I can’t see myself abandoning the Shellcrackers, but I still have that longing feeling for the familiarity and relative safety of my little pond.

Agwai tries to lift my spirits, though they actually dishearten me in a different way, “That’s not to say we won’t consider it, but perhaps you should rest up first, maybe if your sight comes back, judge what we’ve done here. We still want to look for Iakopo and Taito.”

I gulp, saddened as I ask, “Wait, you didn’t see?”

“Didn’t see what?” Agwai begs clarification.

I shake my head, barely able to process the memory. It seemed like a nightmare conjured from my imagination more than reality, “Iakopo, Taito, the serpent, it, it took them, they were so far away, but they were grey against the darkness of its open mouth, and then it closed its mouth.”

Ag’s brow furrowing is nearly audible, their displeasure is tactile, thick in the air. “That would explain there being no sign of them since the night they checked the tidal height.”

“I’m so sorry Agwai, I’m so sorry, I thought someone else must have seen it, it was horrible, I would have tried to tell someone sooner, I’m so sorry.” I keep stammering apologies, and Agwai cuffs me ever-so-softly on the cheek.

“Save it child. I’ve much to think about, Lao has been in mourning, but she has decisions to make. I'll break the news to her. I’m not used to doing as much of the leading as I have been, whilst she has been grieving.” Agwai explains, though I can scarcely believe that Laomati, the calm, cool, collected, Laomati, has spent weeks grieving, without doing a fair share of leadership. Obviously I trust that Agwai isn’t lying, I’m just astonished.