The seemingly endless asphalt soaked up just enough heat during the day to be sweaty and uncomfortable. Because of that, both of us agreed to camp out in one of the cars and run the air conditioning during the day, and then walk at night when it was only nice and warm from heat escaping the road. Yes, surprisingly, all of these non-brand vehicles had full gas, full battery, heck even good tire pressure. All of them were in pristine condition. The only problem was that they were too shoddily “built” to actually run, and if they did, there was the obvious issue that the road was completely packed, including the shoulder lanes. Once we’d found a huge industrial looking truck and managed to push our way through some of them, but the cars built up fast, and Amanda was worried I’d get hurt.

That was another thing; some time over the past few weeks, my boredom overcame my fear of asking, and the redhead told me that she was almost entirely Amanda at this point, or at least my mental image of her. I could make her Faith if I wanted to, but a part of me was too afraid to do so, for some reason I couldn’t parse. So for now, I was content to let Faith take on that fairy godmother role I’d ended up giving her, arriving when my subconscious decided I needed her. Was it bad to just use her like this for my mental health? Granted she’s just a magical construct of my brain, but still…

Well, morals aside, I think I was really starting to miss a good bed. We could either lean a seat all the way back, or camp out in the back seat, but the latter wasn’t good for my back, and the first made it difficult to roll around or sleep on my side. Sleeping with blankets in the backs of van-like vehicles was the best we got, but we weren’t always near one when we stopped to turn in for the day. I could deal with it, but it gave me extra motivation to put the pedal to the medal and get the fuck out of this hell hole.

The food was… interesting. A much better variety in taste than the hotel or the ship, but the nutritional value was the most lacking of all the “areas” I’d been to, making us have to scavenge for halfway decent meals. Most of the stuff we found were sweet or salty snacks, fruit, trail mix, or if we hit the jackpot, a bag of groceries. They were usually either squirreled away in glove compartments or stuffed under the seats. Of course, there was the occasional corpse’s food, but Amanda didn’t want to eat those so we had to find something else for her.

And finally, there was the weather cycle. The beloved, beautiful weather cycle I couldn’t tell if I loved or hated. It was more varied than being trapped in a collection of rooms, yes. And there was even the novelty of now needing to rely on the rain for bathing or use water bottles. But the pure sense of dread I’d felt when we started settling into the pattern again felt like a prolonged punch to the liver. It was a feeling I’d never thought myself capable of feeling other than when coming back to my house to see white powder on the table, and having to walk on eggshells lest he get physical.

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At least we wouldn’t be here long. Well, that’s what I’d thought at first, when I’d heard that Amanda’s world was a mere 15000 kilometers away. Then she calculated our pace and determined we’d need nearly half a year to get there on foot.

Yikes…Welp, ancestors who roamed the continent, let me channel you strength! Final stretch, let’s fucking goooo!

Honestly, if we didn’t have the board games, which we built on top of to make increasingly weirder board games, I’m not sure we would’ve survived the boredom. We’ve probably spent more time collectively dissociating together than actually talking, but we atleast switched turns for who would keep an eye on the HNS. We had to make sure we didn’t slip into another plane when we were already so close after all.

In the end, our victory lap turned out to be a long exhausting marathon. And instead of a cheering crowd when we’d reached the finish line, there was the slow ratcheting tension as we approached the barrier between anomaly and reality. Amanda and I had discussed multiple plans of how we wanted to approach our reintegration into society. Letting them know I was an entity now was out of the question. I didn’t want to be contained. We also needed a guide. My weird “everything’s normal” mindfuck would probably only work so well to actually figure out how everything works and convince everyone I was “crew as fuck for realisies”.

In the end, we’d come up with two plans we combined into one. One was that I’d “dismiss” Amanda for now and try to appear as a normal person as much as possible, hoping they didn’t have any way to tell that I was weird. The other was that I’d make a mask of Amanda and wear it myself, pretending to be her and hoping they didn’t have any way to tell she was weird. In the end, we realized there was no best way to go about it so we’d just do both plans. Amanda would be herself, and I’d be myself. If they figured out Amanda, I’d act heartbroken and terrified that I’d spent so long with an imposter -ha-, and vice versa.

If they found both of us out? Well, we wouldn’t have had a chance in the first place. And that was just the risk we had to take. I’ve spent years at this point wandering around one prison, and containment at least means I'll be around people one way or another. If I die… well, I’ll have escaped hell one way or another.