“Is this? It is! What? How? Forget that, hold still!” I hear Te take a few steps away, I furrow my brow in confusion. Immediately though I hear Te’s pawpads rapidly approaching, and have no time to react. Te leaps through the air, bounding off of my shoulder, leaping higher yet, trying to catch a breeze to glide, yet I hear a soft thunk as she lands, with no success. “Awe, I thought maybe they were magical.”
I chuckle as I chastise her, “If you’d waited a second I could have told you they weren’t.”
I can virtually feel Teuila sticking out her tongue before she responds, “But that’s not as fun as finding out firsthand.”
I stifle a laugh in response, “I, well, I guess that’s true? Anyway, it might work to glide if you’re falling from a high place, possibly, I have no idea. I don’t really know anything about, uh, aeronautics? Aerodynamics? I’m not even sure what the right word is.”
Te's countenance shifts several times across a mixture of emotions as she replies, “I didn't know what either of those meant til just now, but if they have air in them, could you learn about them somehow?”
It's my turn to have my face drift between several emotions, “Maybe if we find other people some day. Didn't know what they meant? Like Lil and me when new words crop up?”
“Awe, poop. But yeah, didn't know, then bam, definition.” Te responds, sounding slightly dejected, but more playful and exuberant than anything else, I can feel her skipping around me, swishing the wings. I hear their flutters and swooshes as she cuts the air with them. As Te enjoys her winged cloak, I set about crafting a smaller version for Lil, with more of a rigid frame, as a sort of glider.
I find myself sitting in a meditative position that I think they call lotus. My legs are crossed, interlocking somewhat. I try to breathe deeply while focusing on my inventory manipulation. I think having crafted these two things is helping break the lock on my energy. I feel like the key to breaking the lock, no pun intended, is possibly creating something new and unique, or something I haven’t done with my inventory management before. The effort of crafting actually wears me out, silly as that might sound. The two of us eventually retire to rest.
Over the next few days I’m well enough to start rejoining the family, sleeping in the cuddle pile, rather than being watched over alone in a bed by Te. After I still haven’t made progress breaking my energy lock, I decide to approach Te with an idea that might help. It's frustrating to know I was so much more powerful, and ruined the power I had by asking too much of it.
I try not to let desperation leak into my textual tone and voice as I ask, “Te? Can we start exploring the swamp for herbs? I think I can get better, faster, if I try new things with new materials.”
Teuila seems fairly chipper as she acquiesces, “Sure, I think Lil and Luni wanted to hang out today anyway. We can get some swamp hunting done.”
I nearly sigh in relief, as I hadn't even thought about how I was going to identify useful herbs, “That’s great, that way I can see, even if it’s a little disorienting, having to watch where I walk from outside my own body. If we see any signs of the serpent though, we run, right?”
“That eight headed thing you call Octorochi? Definitely, I have to get stronger before I can protect your scrawniness.” Te has actually been advancing rapidly, getting much stronger, at a faster pace than I have been recovering, yet she seems incredibly driven towards her goal of being the fastest and strongest among us. I admire her dedication and drive, as I still feel slightly aimless.
We meet up with Lil and Luni, who just seem to be blankly staring at each other for a moment, before they bound towards each other, smacking into one another. As they bounce off of one another they roll around on their backs laughing.
Teuila asks the pair for me, “Glad to see you two in good spirits. Want to go gather materials in the swamp?”
Lil jokes in a faux code, one that probably shouldn't exist on our world, “Ixnay on the eesay inay ontfray ofay eggieray.”
“Lil, I don’t care if people use the words see, seeing, sight, or anything like that. Te asked what I wanted to ask, would you two like to join us, please?” I half chastise Lil, though mostly just tease Lil for acting overly concerned for my feelings. Or maybe Lil was the one teasing, speaking in fake code. I let my senses float outwards, drifting to Lil and Luni. From their sight, I can see myself. The burn scars are all spirals and twists and hooks and spins about my left arm, though the rest of my body is mostly recovered already, it’s almost miraculous. As, on the night of the tidal wave, I swear everything other than my face was crispy, scarred, and blistered. Looking through their eyes is, again, weird, seeing myself look cuter than I imagine myself being, as well as more talented, fashionable, and stronger as well.
I notice, while looking through Lil’s eyes, the ominous shadow of the large flying dinosaurs, pterodactyls or pteranodons, I’m still not sure. Apparently those winged beasts have been making a journey southward once a month, then returning northward a month later, or something around that sort of timeframe.
Lil, Luni, Te, and myself all wend our way northward, and slightly westward away from the river. Apparently it’s rare that there are spawning pools or locations where things appear, right along the edge of running water. Taking that to heart, and with Te’s experience hunting and gathering in the swamps, we mostly just try to keep pace with Te as she dashes to and fro, scouting about the swamp ahead of us, scampering and loping in turn. Occasionally Te will run back towards us to let us catch up, and purposely skid in the muck, showering us all with mud.
Lil, Luni, can you two hear me? “Yep” Comes Lil’s reply. “Aye Sir!” Comes Luni’s joking reply. I’m definitely not a sir, though I don’t think I’m a ma’am either. Lu abashedly responds, “I’m not sure where I heard the phrase, but it was a joke.” No worries Luni, sorry, I guess I just don’t know what gender I am, or uh, other stuff. Anyway, what do you two say we give Te a taste of her own medicine next time she showers us with mud? You two fling some mud blobs with your tails, and I’ll toss a couple her way.
“Do you think you have any chance of hitting her, Reggie? You are still kind of blind you know, and she’s really fast.” Lil makes a good point, but I feel like all I really need to do is put a mudball where she’s going to be the next time she’s headed back our way, the element of surprise will work to our advantage.
Lil and Luni agree to the plan, Lil and I scoop some mud into our inventories to form into soft little blobs of mud to fling, then we set them out nearby so all three of us have access to them. A few moments later, Te comes rushing back, and purposely slides, skidding through the mud, sending a spray in our direction. Just as Te’s about to come to a halt, I toss a glob lightly her way, at the point she’ll come to rest. I can see and hear the squelch as it hits her hip, splatting against her fur, and a wicked gleam enters Te’s eyes, as Lil and Luni start their own barrage.
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“Oh really, ganging up on me, three on one? You’re in for it now!” Te calls out, and wow, Te is ridiculously fast, bounding from tree trunk to tree trunk. Lil, Luni, and I, miss her with nearly every toss as Te works her way high into the air. She spreads her winged cloak for a moment, then divebombs the muck in front of us, sending a massive wave of mud careening over us.
“Pbffft, eugh, blugh, pleh. Okay, okay, you win. Hah.” The three of us are laughing and congratulating Te on a victory well earned. Te takes a bow, and strikes a victory pose, which makes us laugh even more. Eventually we all end up just rolling around in the mud smearing each other with it. After we’ve had our fun, I pull out the soap stone.
I immediately clean myself with the magical pumice, Luni and Lil clean themselves as well, but as Te reaches for it, I playfully flick my arm around behind my back, just for an instant, before grinning at her and handing her the stone. Te sticks her tongue out at me and blows a raspberry at my teasing. She then uses the stone to remove all the muck from her fur as well. The magic of the stone is wondrous to behold honestly. I wonder if a town that had access to one of these would ever get sick. It really cleans up everything, though I have no idea where any of the grime goes, or what happens to the germs.
Being with my best friends, two of whom I share an emotional bond with, and one whom I’m apparently twtitterpated for, almost makes me forget the feelings of loss that we’re all dealing with. I guess our bonds of friendship formed probably faster than they might have otherwise, due to shared trauma. I doubt instant friendship is normally common, but in a world with so few friendly people, maybe alliances and friendship all form this quickly? I mean, chosen family is a concept that I vaguely recall, but is it really a chosen family if we fall together because there’s no one else in a vast empty land? Also I guess in our case, we’ve had a long time to deepen our bonds already, some of which was spent unconscious, sure, but weeks upon weeks of either trekking the jungle and swamp with Lil, or floating downriver with Lil. Or weeks of attending my wounded body by Te.
Lil and Luni being able to spend compressed time talking together and thinking at one another is another example of a longer period of bonding. For Te and myself, I’m mostly just honored that she decided I was worth her time while I was a crispy fried version of myself, and perhaps her own honor or sense of duty deepened her care for me while I was infirm. On the first night we’d met, Te was probably just excited to have someone new to show off her home to, and happy to have had food. I suppose I could just ask her why she chose me. Then again, do chosen families really need to address why they chose each other? Or maybe she just saw my twitterpated aura like Lil and Luni, and decided to roll with it. I think I don’t actually want the answer, now that I think about it, I’d virtually die of embarrassment. My face is so flush right now, and I just caught Lil looking into my thoughts, so this whole line of thought is on display. Now I want to crawl into the mud and blush so hard that I burn a hole in the ground.
All the while that I’m pondering these thoughts, we’re walking through the swamp. Te is taking pity on us by staying close rather than running to scout and sliding back towards us in the mud. The swamp is finally giving way to a muddier, slightly more solid landscape, dotted with vegetation more than just the swamp trees. Actually, I’m not certain if I’ve been walking through a bog, a swamp, a marsh, or some other landscape feature, since I don’t know the differences offhand. I think some contain standing water, while others are mostly mud, others possibly covered in moss or peat or something like that.
I wonder if the reason I can’t see is something like asphyxiation, or hypoxia, from having had to hold my breath under the tidal wave, or if it has something to do with the way the world works, with energy and inventory magic. Or maybe both, maybe hypoxia cost me my vision, while energy debt is keeping it from returning. Oh right, situational awareness, I should probably pay attention to where I’m going, I think, as I tumble into the mud, and slide down a slope. The slope surprises me, because other than cliffs, most of the regions, or biomes, seem almost entirely flat, with the mildest decline, or gradient, or something like that, heading southward. My tumbling is halted by Te, as she is apparently faster than gravity, well, sort of, it’s not like I was in freefall at terminal velocity, I was sliding down a slippery slope on my face.
“Klutz!” Te chides me playfully, and lightly socks my shoulder. I wonder if she’ll try out every insult in all known languages, because I’m pretty sure klutz isn’t a word in this language, though it has been adopted as slang. Why do I have these preconceptions? Heck if I know.
Luni and Lil have been having some luck hunting frogs, getting these weird dishes that seem a bit like small fried chicken legs. Having Lil, or myself, around, means that the Shellcrackers don’t have to hunt nearly as often, and when they do hunt, they don’t have to pass up any opportunities. We’re not yet hurting for fish even the slightest, but it also doesn’t hurt to keep up with hunting and gaining food in case of some future emergency.
I’m fairly certain I’ve been staring at Te without responding, and I flush with embarrassment at that thought. “Oh, yeah, I wasn’t watching where I was going. Or anything really.” I try to laugh it off, treating my blindness humorously, since it was really just me being oblivious. I also could be perceiving through Lil or Luni’s senses, but I was just preoccupied with thought. I guess that’s one of my major flaws, lacking situational awareness when I get caught up in thought, as well as the trauma, certain fears, awkwardness, lack of physical strength or aptitude, well, quite a few things actually, come to think about it. I wonder if treating an inability or disability of my own humorously is also a flaw, I hope not, I wouldn’t make fun of someone else who had been blinded.
Te tousles my hair, then grabs my hand and drags me the rest of the way down the slope, I think I can hear her subvocalizing a gleeful squee, or squeal, or something along those lines. “Look at all of them! They’re so pretty!” She exclaims. With Lil and Luni somewhere back up atop the mudslide, I can’t exactly oblige her at the moment, as I see them playfully hopping after one another, as they chase frogs that are hopping away.
“No can do, right now, but I’ll take your word for it, you could paint me a word picture though.” I chuckle as I tease Teuila.
“Ugh, I’m not the storyteller of the family, I don’t know, there’s pretty flowers! Things that look like lilies or orchids or something maybe, I don’t know plants, they just look neat.” Te grumbles a bit at my request. I forget on occasion that we’re both essentially new to most of our world, and as much as I imagine her to be perfect, I guess no one truly is. Plus it’s rude to hold high expectations of someone in every possible skill.
I stifle my chuckling and fight my smile, “Sorry, thank you for telling me, I’m glad that you get to enjoy how they look here. Are we in some kind of bowl in the swamp?”
Teuila returns to her excitement in short order, “Yeah, it’s weird, like, I dunno, a big footprint, or scoop, and it’s absolutely filled with flowers!”
This sounds like a plentiful harvest, so I ask, “I’m going to try to gather some of them, maybe all of them. Can you point out the ones you find the prettiest, first?”
“Are you seriously going to just rip up the ones I like the most, first?” Te asks, incredulously, possibly a bit astounded that I’d be so mean.
“No, no no, that’s not why, I want to try something.” I reassure her, feeling a bit abashed.
“Hmph,” she utters, and I think I can feel her squinting at me suspiciously. I bet her facial expression is adorable, even if I don’t want to be on the receiving end of her suspicion, or to hurt her feelings. “These ones over here, this one especially, there are a few like it over there, and over there.” Te leads me to one of the larger flowers, and I can tell she’s pointing to various spots in the flower patch, but all I need for now is this one.
I reach out with my mind to claim the flower that Te finds the prettiest, and inspect it when it arrives in my inventory. Sure enough it’s a lovely flower. Over the course of the trek, I think I got back just enough energy capacity to attempt what I’m about to try. I weave the flower through vines into a circlet, but instead of taking it out of my inventory, I try to create a radiant duplicate with my inventory space magic. I feel a painful pressure above my eyes, as if I’m squinting too hard, or clenching various muscles, but after a few moments, I can feel its presence outside of my mind’s eye, in my hands.