“Lil! Oh no I didn’t even think the serpent might get you when it was trying for me while I ran away, Lil are you okay?” I cry out. However much of my concern translates to the textboxes shared between Lil and I, I’m unsure. But they’re mostly just sputtering and trying to stick near me using their tail to tread water slightly or steer their downstream drifting.
Lil hooks onto me with their tail as they respond, “I’m okay, I’m okay, we ran away? What about the monkey man? You didn’t beat the snake?”
“No, no I didn’t beat the snake Lil, I. I couldn’t save them. I thought I did, I thought I did for a second.” I start to tear up, as we float downstream, occasionally bumping lightly into rocks. I try to keep deep breaths to help us stay afloat as I recount the battle to Lil, intentionally staying in the water and letting the river carry us onward, further and further from the serpent and the bullies.
Lil’s textual tone is tinged with regret, “That sounds awful Reggie, I’m sorry I couldn’t stay awake and help.”
I attempt to flash my pal half of a smile, despite my sadness, “It was awful, it’s not your fault, we’ll need to take some time, find a safe place, and practice the evolution thingy, I want to make sure I never put you in a position where you think you’ve finished a fight, and pass out, and end up in worse danger.”
Lil resolutely states, “I don’t want to leave you in danger either if I have to fall asleep.”
They’re so protective and loyal. I’m beyond lucky that they chose to track me down utilizing their analysis skill on my soul trail. Gratefully I’m about to speak, “Thanks Lil, I just. Pfft, plbblpbbpl, ugh, is the water starting to taste saltier, or sort of like garlic to you?”
Lil makes some slurping sounds, then spits water into my face like a squirt gun. “Pfbbft, yep!” I cough, sputter, and laugh a bit, the levity and silliness of the situation taking my mind off of losing a potential friend ever so recently. Also, the saltiness of the river could mean that maybe we’re nearing the ocean. Or I’m not sure, maybe there’s a sulfurous bog or something nearby. Does sulfur taste salty? I’m not even sure if that’s a real thing.
I just think the words go together somehow. Sulfur bog, peat bog, methane bog, something like that, some sorts of natural things, either the mosses or molds or decay, or pockets of gasses beneath swamps create a type of swamp. Do they taste salty? As far as I’m aware, nothing else decays or erodes in our world, so how or why would peats become gasses? I’m not sure if I’m asking myself, or if I think someone someday will be able to read my mind journal, and tell me the answer. I really do hope it means getting closer to the ocean though. I can’t imagine that big swamp serpent following us to a sandy beach.
Speaking of, it seems like every biome has its own weird lighting situation, like any sort of sun that might be seen at any given time, isn’t really a sun, or the sun, but like each small region has its own lighting. Lighting body? Lighting apparatus? Celestial cosmological sky based something or other? Trying to stay afloat however leaves little energy to think about such things, well, energy in the broad sense, not in the inventory and skills magical energy sense.
I feel extremely drained, sleepier and sleepier as we drift onward. Even occasionally smacking into a river rock is barely enough to keep me awake. I don’t want to bed down in the swamp due to the serpent’s presence. I’m uncertain if it can get down the cliff, or if it would be able to track us or travel swiftly along the river, or swim downriver, but I’d rather get as much distance as possible before trying to set up camp. I honestly hope it thinks we died from our explosive fall down the falls.
Getting somewhat hungry, I’m tempted to eat some of the many, many, many sashimis I’ve got packed away in my inventory, but I think better of it. Heh. Well, remember the last time I ate fish while in water? Yeah, not going through that again, especially since I’m pretty certain I have a couple of wounds from spears or serpent fangs, which could mean another Vampguppy situation, or something. So I mentally grumble in frustration while my stomach grumbles in hunger. I even hear a cutesy low rumble of hunger from Lil as their belly basically vibrates against the back of my head.
Lil’s permanent exuberance is dampened, and not just from being wet as I ask, “Lil, you doing okay?”
“I’m alright, but I’m kinda sad, you said you had to run, right? And that our new friend is gone? Jeez, that sucks, monkey man seemed pretty cool.” Lil sulks slightly as they reply.
“I was calling them Staff Ninja, I didn’t know if they were a man or not.” I mutter, trying not to be a pest about gender since we never got a chance to ascertain it.
Lil is rather sensitive, and sweet about things like pronouns though. They swap immediately. “Oh, good point, Staff Ninja seemed pretty cool, and really strong. I thought for sure you two were okay, or I would have tried harder to stay awake.”
The roar of the river dies down slightly as it begins to slow once again. I sigh heavily as my eyes droop with sadness and weariness. I basically blubber, “We’ve never, I’ve never really lost before. Even with Vampguppy, even though it was scary, and I was sure I was going to die, we still came out on top. But someone we didn’t even know, we’d just met, or were just about to meet, they, they died, they completely and totally died. They derezzed. What do I even do with that information? Somebody existed, and now they don’t. It’s not like a random hostile creature that spawned out of nowhere. They seemed to be someone, someone with a goal or feelings. It’s like they were guarding that rock formation. What if we did a bad thing by not staying to guard that rock formation? I mean, I guess, what if I did a bad thing by running?”
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Lil answers my questions with one of their own, “I guess you can’t dwell on it, do you want to go back to the rock right now?”
My eyes widen with terror in response, “No, absolutely not, I threw everything I had at the snake thingy, Octorochi, and it didn’t even seem fazed.”
Lil prods further, “Then I guess we just keep going, yeah?”
Lil’s right, but how does one go about that? I admit, “Yeah, I guess so, but I don’t know how to process this. Psychological things are, well they’re outside of whatever knowledge I have, wherever that knowledge is from.”
Lil’s voice gets a bit more jovial, I think they think they’re starting to successfully distract me. They’re right. They prod, “So basically, you don’t know what you don’t know?”
I raise my index finger as I try to form words, my index finger curls, and raises, several times in succession while my mouth hangs agape, “I… guess that’s one way to put it.”
“And since you don’t know it, if you just keep thinking about it, you probably won’t get anywhere with it, will you?” Lil is fairly astute when they want to be.
“Well no, but” I start.
Lil however, interrupts, “But you’re going to dwell on it anyway, because it bothers you, yeah?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Sorry Lil, I hope I’m not being a pain.” Even as I say it, I can tell how Lil will respond.
As expected, Lil responds consolingly, “It’s okay buddy, you’re not. I’m not really used to this either. I mean, everything I met before you I ate, so we’re kinda new to this all together.”
“Hah, good point, but without either of us having any experience, and nowhere to learn from, how are we supposed to figure out how to be good?” I can’t help but chuckle at the fact that Lil is absolutely right. Every single thing they met before me, they ate. I know for a fact, it’s in their memory logs. They mostly just met insects like kabuto beetles, giant ants and the like.
Lil does their best to pose an answer to my query, “Just trying our best I suppose. What else is there?”
“Like, schools, or philosophy, or stuff, or schools of philosophy or schools of thought.” I ramble in a way that probably comes off incoherently.
Lil, similarly to me, basically knows the definition of any word or phrase that they’re introduced to, yet they still jokingly ask, “Is that a school made out of thought?”
“No, no it’s, uh, like a group way of thinking, I think? Like people that agree on how to think about something in a productive way, or something like that.” Now that I’m thinking about it, do I know the names of any schools of thought? Or their like, in-depth tenets?
Lil responds with mild confusion, “I don’t think I get it.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t either anymore, after trying to explain it.” I mirror Lil as I get lost in a train of thought.
Surprisingly, Lil keeps the train going, asking, “So are you going to make one?”
“One what?” I probably didn’t even need to ask.
“A school of thought?” Lil responds, confirming that I need not even have asked. We’re pretty in sync.
I chuckle, shaking my head, “I uh, I don’t think so, at least not intentionally, no.”
“Could you unintentionally make one?” Lil keeps rapidly asking questions as soon as I’ve answered one, keeping me distracted.
Lil’s question is kind of a nice thought experiment, so I do my best to answer it. “Yeah, yeah I think so, like coming up with some rules about how to think about a thing that I just subconsciously hang on to.”
“Would that help with Staff Ninja and the weird rock?” Lil circles the train back around, helping me confront my grief.
I mumble, muttering, “No, no, probably not.”
“Then what should you focus on right now?” Lil basically nails home like some sort of professional therapist.
I have to think on it a bit to be able to respond, “Now? Well, probably the best way to survive, since this swamp is way more dangerous than I first thought a trip down the river might be.”
“Go on, what’s the best way to survive?” Lil presses for further elucidation.
That’s a really good question right about now. How would be the best way to survive? What sort of skills or strategies can we employ? I hazard, “Uh, well, I guess we could do something weird where we take some mud, you bake it real hot til it dries with fire. So that we could make like, a sort of cylinder or platter, like a hole cover. We could dig in somewhere that’s a bit drier, then we could dry out a little cave, and heat the cover into place, especially if there’s like, a hollow tree above it for air to come in through. We could maybe make air-holes through the soil itself anyway.”
“So we sleep in a muddy hole with fire baked walls?” Finally, Lil’s tone resumes their usual upbeat giddiness, that permanent underlying good humor.
My buddy is a buoyant personality to be certain, always popping back up. Persistently positive. It leaves me feeling more joy by the moment. I answer, “Kinda, yeah, yeah that’s probably the safest thing to do for now, we can disguise one side of the platter with regular swamp muck, so that nothing seems out of place.”
“Hehe, just like a real dragon cave. Does that mean we’re done bobbing along down the river for now?” Lil asks in a rather exasperated fashion, though there’s laughter underlying the question.
“Oh, yeah, I guess it does, we should scoop some mud from the riverbank, the mud’s probably purest around there, maybe? Like water moves sediment, I think that’s the word, it should also move stuff that isn’t the same, um, density I guess, further down, so any mud should be mostly just mud. I think we actually have to find clay, but I don’t know how clay differs from any other soil that someone would call mud.” I scratch my head as I try to puzzle out how much I know, how much I fake-know, and how much I’m guessing.
“So we’re looking for special, clean mud?” Lil lets out something akin to a giggle at the apparent oxymoron.