Momo
Warning: Total Mana Depletion
Mana usage has exceeded amount available. Health will deplete at a rate of 1 point per minute until a long rest is achieved.
Regeneration of all vitals will proceed at a rate of 50% for 24 hours ending 32:1026:44
Momo presses her eyes closed tight and focuses as hard as she can on making the windows go away. Blood pounds in her ears, beating in harmony with the pounding in her head. I haven’t felt hungover like this since my 21st birthday, she thinks, forcing her mental words through the fog that fills every wrinkle in her brain. She takes a deep breath to steady herself, and immediately begins coughing, turning onto her side and rubbing her nose into the pillow beneath her head to block the horrendous smell surrounding her.
“I think she’s awake,” a young voice whispers loudly enough to send the words bouncing around Momo’s aching head.
“We aren’t allowed to poke her to see, Rolen. Mama said.”
“I KNOW Raylin,” the first voice responds with the exaggerated sigh that only a put-upon child can muster. “I wasn’t going to.”
Momo does not doubt that a little finger is being withdrawn as the words are said, possibly only an inch or so from the poking that he said he wasn’t going to do. She starts to roll back over, but the thought of the awful smell and the flare of pain that would come from her head with the movement keeps her still.
“You two go back to your mother,” a familiar voice whispers to them, much quieter than their stage whispers. A scraping shuffle moves away, and something settles onto the edge of the mattress, causing her legs to shift backward. Allard sits for a minute, then gently places his hand on Momo’s shoulder. “Momo, are you awake now?”
“No. Leave me alone. I’m dead.”
“I don’t think you’re dead,” he answers with a chuckle, squeezing her shoulder once. “I want to let you sleep more, but if you’re awake I want to see how you’re doing.”
Before she can change her mind, Momo braces herself and rolls onto her back again. “Something smells awful,” she mutters, lifting her right arm and placing it across her nose. “How long was I out?”
“That’s probably because there are a lot of us in my house right now. I didn’t think it was safe to let anyone go to their homes until you woke up. In case I missed some of the biters that were still moving. Even if I empty the chamber pot right away the smell still-” He cuts himself off with a polite clearing of his throat. “It’s morning. Still pretty early, the sun hasn’t risen over the houses yet.”
“Morning?” Momo sits up abruptly, throwing her legs over the side of the bed and dropping her head into her hands with a groan. “I slept for over half a day? No, wait, you mean nobody here has had water for over half a day?”
She stands up but wobbles and Allard catches her arm to help support her. “It’s alright, Momo. Everyone here has gone longer than that before. Don’t try to push yourself too hard.”
Step by step, they make their way to the front door. Momo pulls herself free and reaches for the board that is always sitting next to the door of any house she goes into. Coming up empty, she turns toward him in the dark.
“Oh, your board. I, uhm, broke it.” His voice drops so low she can barely make out his words. Momo sighs and reaches lower, grabbing the water bucket that sits empty in its regular spot.
“It’s alright, Allard. You did good keeping everyone safe while I was dreaming. The board broke, and stuff happened. I’ll get another one.” The door opens just enough to let her slide out, Allard following and closing it again.
Nothing moves, not even the air. A sizeable lump lays next to the well, one she vaguely recalls coming at her as she called Allard for assistance. She frowns at it but spares it only one glance before looking around.
Each house sits where it always has. Doors are closed, windows shuttered. Momo closes her eyes and listens to the world around her, but besides the pounding in her head and the slow breaths of the man next to her, she hears nothing. Even with the dead body, an orc she guesses by its size, the smell is far better than it was inside the house. She cringes at her thoughts. It isn’t their fault they smell. But it doesn’t change the fact that the aroma was ripe. She walks toward the side of the house and begins the trek toward her greatest achievement since arriving in her new world.
“It was the only thing I could think of,” she says casually, bucket tapping against her leg with each step. “The tree. You were talking about apples, and I remembered climbing into big ones when I was a kid to get at the ripening fruit. But an apple tree wasn’t going to be big enough. They always looked big when I was little, but then as an adult, I drove through Central California, and I realized how tiny they really are. Compared to a giant sequoia almost everything living is tiny. There was one, called General Sherman, that was something like 270 feet tall and almost half that going around. I thought to myself, this is what ants see when they look around. Giants in every direction.”
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They crunch across the dry earth, Momo checking the corpses they come across to make sure they are fully dead. “So I thought I needed a tree that was going to be big, something big enough that I could catch the whole group as it shot out of the ground. So I pushed everything I had at making one, and I did! It’s not very big though.”
“It looks plenty big to me,” Allard assures her, and she shoots him a tired smile.
“I messed up, Allard. I had some time, I could have come up with something else. But my hubris drove me to prove that an old lady could beat a bunch of walking corpses. Alarms were blaring and I could barely see over the flashing red lights, but at least I caught them all. And then they started to fall. One at a time at first, then more, some hitting the ground with a splat,” she waves ahead at the mess on the ground at the base of the tree only a dozen feet away, “and then some started to land on the ones that already plopped and there was enough cushion that they could move around after. So I ran. Or tried to, if I must be honest. Turns out your mana can go past zero, it just eats away at your energy and health. So that was a fun way to learn.”
They stop short of the corpse explosion and look up at the behemoth in front of them. Allard crosses his arms over his chest, looks around to make sure nothing is moving, and then tilts his head back to see the leafy branches overhead. “I grew up in the Silver Wood. It’s a small enclave, but one of the oldest forests in the world. I’ve never seen a tree get quite this big before. It has to be at least sixty, or seventy feet tall. I can’t imagine something that is even taller.”
“That’s one of the fun things about the world,” she says, frowning at the wigging arms high overhead. “There is so much we can’t imagine, but it is all out there.”
She sighs and begins to walk a circuit around the trunk. “I can’t ungrow this, you know. We’ll have to cut it down.”
“What? Momo, no! It’s so beautiful!”
“There are biters still up there. We can’t just leave them and wait for them to fall on someone. And it can be seen for miles I bet.”
Allard rushes around her, blocking her path with his body. “No, Momo, this might be one of the only trees left in the world, we can’t cut it down! And if it can be seen for miles then people have already seen it. We have to leave it here!”
“I’ll grow you another tree, Allard. An apple one next time.”
“No!” He crosses his arms, pulling himself to his full height and putting on a stern face that looks very out of place with his features. “Leave it here, Momo. We can shoot the biters up there. I can scale it, and drop a rope ladder down the side. We can make a platform up there to see everything around us and watch for danger. You’ve given me so many amazing things, I know I shouldn’t be greedy, but we all need this. Every living thing needs to see this amazing tree and know there is hope.”
Momo looks up at the swaying branches overhead and scratches at the dried sweat on her scalp. “This could be more trouble than you think it is.”
“Life is trouble, Momo.” His body relaxes and a smile peaks out like the sun reaching out between the clouds. “But sometimes it’s worth it.”
“You’re trouble, Allard, you know that? Making me all soft and stuff.” He just smiles and links his arm through hers as they finish their trip around the base. Momo shakes her head and points back toward the village. “Let’s head back. I’ll have to get out here and shoot those things before whatever idiot is going to make the climb up does so. But your friends need water so let’s do that first.”
He tries to argue, but Momo tunes him out and pulls up her stat window to check how her numbers are doing.
“It’s fine,” she interjects when he takes a break finally. They pass the fence around his backyard. “I’ve regenerated enough mana that I can take care of a few things like water. We won’t be doing any work on our wall today, but it can wait until tomorrow. Now shush, no reason for everyone to hear you trying to mother hen me.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/js4cqrN.png]
Momo watches as the last pair of villages walk into their house. Each of them left in a daze, hugging a pot of water to their chest as though it were precious gems. Allard hands her both of their buckets to fill and purify, then walks with her to her home.
“Thanks for being so nice to Lif and Tal. They were having a worse time than any of the others when I left to come here for supplies. I wouldn’t have thought anything about using the same cleaning spell on them as with everyone else.”
“Lif and Tal?” Momo tries to remember if anyone introduced themselves, but she can’t remember anyone speaking at all. Parsing through the rest of his sentence she figures it out and sighs. “Those poor girls. They were just skin and bone. Let me guess, people were blaming them because the goblins had the most biters?”
He nods, refusing to meet her eyes. Momo slows down so he can open the door for her. “People can be idiots, especially when they’re scared. From what you told me, the only thing the goblins are guilty of is being the first victims. Folks are always quick to blame victims. Would you mind starting a fire for me? I’ll be right back.”
Momo picks up a bowl and ducks out the back into her thriving garden. She fills the bowl with dirt and sets it just inside the door, then fills her arms with sweet potatoes that she deposits next to Allard and the tiny flames in the hearth. A quick clean and they are ready to roast. “We’re going to make them all a thin sweet potato mash. It will give them some needed vitamins and nutrients and shouldn’t be too hard on their stomachs.”
He nods, looking much more comfortable doing a familiar task. “What’s that bowl of dirt for?”
Cool, clean water pours from the bucket into a pot which she places on a grill above the burgeoning flames. “I am going to grow some peppermint to make some tea. I can’t grow it outside, all it takes is one little clipping being dropped and within weeks everything in the garden would be overrun.”
The water begins to boil long before the sweet potatoes are ready, and Allard watches as she clips some leaves from her new plant and sets them in the water to steep once off the heat. “It smells nice. I don’t recognize it.”
Momo sits down at her table and leans her head against the back of the chair. The still air has finally begun to stir with a soft wind from the north that tickles her skin through the open window. “Even before I got here I didn’t get to rest too often. When I did it was always with a cup of peppermint tea nearby. Soothes the nerves and helps wonderfully with headaches, of which I have a doozy right now. We can’t exactly relax, but just for now maybe we can pretend and drink some good tea.”