As always, they set off just before sunset. The waning thermals of the evening desert carried them up, and they entered the easterly winds.
Cas had been expecting boredom again, but the young night quickly proved her wrong.
Halfway through the flight, the prevailing winds curved away to the north and the zanzibat abandoned them. Tilting its nose to the ground, it dropped a thousand feet into the lower atmosphere, trading height for speed. Eventually, their altitude was used up, and their velocity waned, and they found themselves stranded in the dead night-air of the lower atmosphere.
The air was less kind at this altitude. The restless, denser air seemed eager to sucker punch them with random dead-zones and sputtering winds.
During this, Cas remembered her earlier boasting: about being a better flyer than the zanzibat and she cursed herself for ever daring.
Thinking that she was a better flier after a couple months of practice had been hubris, she was now discovering, and reality was paying back her hubris ten-fold.
A sudden cannon-blast of air – shot from the mouth of an open valley that had been hidden behind a mountain – spluttered against her like a fragmentation grenade. She’d never seen the valley, and it wouldn’t have mattered if she had because Cas didn’t even know valleys could direct winds like that!
She had to learn quickly that, when hit from the side, you were to over-correct in the forward direction. She cursed herself for making the wrong move yet again when an invisible gust reached out from the darkness, forcing Cas to dive just to avoid a humiliating tumble.
The sakkari had logged dozens of flight hours over the course of the past year, but those had been taxi trips between the village and the cavern. All of them over smooth terrain with familiar, easy wind patterns.
Out here in the wilderness, it was a different story. Every gorge and bed of rocks were minefields of sudden thermals and reflected winds.
They weren’t very strong winds, granted; in fact it only took the slightest adjustments to correct for them, but Cas seemed always to be making the wrong adjustments, and those to the wrong degree. On top of this, she was constantly ruining her aerodynamics in order to create a forward window to observe the zanzibat by.
Watching its wings and cheating off its answers had been the key to her survival thus far.
Another, slight wind tickled at her and her flight curved like a laugh, flipping her like a surf-board and forcing her into a surprise aileron roll that turned the world into a washing machine.
Being hit with turbulence wasn’t physically painful, but it was very mentally taxing. It was like trying to sit perfectly still while a thousand, invisible forces pressed their fingers just inches away from your face while yelling: “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching youuu!” and occasionally slapping you upside the head.
Well, be that what it may, the mental pain was something Cas was willing to work through.
After all, pain was the best teacher, and Pain (with a capital P) had decided to take the next few days off to give Cas a crash-course in flight dynamics.
Pain, of course, provided no guide book.
…
‘Fridging, fudging, fudge!’ Cas cursed; her wings cut badly into the headwind, forcing her into a breaking dive that nearly shot her eye out of her body.
…
Pain, also, never gave a passing mark..
…
Cas’s body groaned under the strain, fighting against a vortex of cycling air that twisted at her body, trying to force her into a roll… shortly before changing direction and catching Cas off guard.
‘Wahhh!’ Cas screamed in a counterclockwise manner.
…
Pain, also, liked to give a test on the first day of class while demanding that you roller skate, and Cas had never liked disco enough to learn that skill.
Cas was gliding smoothly for a brief period of respite when the air suddenly separated from her body, and she experienced her first unplanned stall.
‘WHAAA!’ dropping like a stone until she caught the wind and rose back up… shortly before falling again. She rollercoastered her way for a mile before finally adjusting her shape enough to fix the issue.
By the end of six hours, Cas was cursing her lack of disco skills and expressing her general disdain for ‘eighties babies’ as they liked to call themselves. And, much like the eighties, the lessons never seemed to end! Immediately after barely getting the hang of one lesson, another came to take its place.
Currently, Cas was failing to learn how to tack against a crosswind. And, unhappily, this lesson had been dragging on for the better part of an hour!
A black silhouette of a mountain range towered in the distance and her guide – rather than simply flying over it – decided to abandon a perfectly good tail-wind and go sideways to the current. Cas flapped hard against the cross face, trying to keep straight against the side-blast. She felt odd and uncomfortable, as if flying with uneven weights, unable to deliver her full power to her wings.
The zanzibat, meanwhile, was crucified in mid-air, wings stretched out into a precarious, side-angled glide that somehow never required it to flap even once.
It flew at odd angles into the wind, at times heading one way before, like an adjusting tight-rope walker, it suddenly tilted the opposite way. The change of tilt resulted in a change of direction for the zanzibat. In this way, it effortlessly slithered its way forward, drawing s curves through the air and gliding, somehow, against the wind.
By this way it gained more and more distance on Cas until – by the end of the hour – it was already five miles distant..
Despite the lack of physical exhaustion, Cas was in a bad way.
It was cold, uncomfortably so at times as the unceasing wind stripped the warmth from her body and turned her wings stiff.
For over ten hours, Cas had been stuck flying through absolutely nothing, assaulted by cold and invisible forces that pulled the air out from under her and took every opportunity to turn her flight into a slippery, unsatisfying disgrace.
And now the zanzibat, her only guide, was about to disappear from sight and abandon her in the middle of the desert.
Cas felt scared to think of the possibilities. She didn’t want to start planning ways to find water before she dried up. It was uncomfortable to take responsibility for everything out here!
Then, just as the panic reached the darkest pits of Cas’s soul, a light appeared over the horizon. The warm, yellow glow of the sun peeked through the twilight, even as the ground remained shrouded in dark.
And the Zanzibat, dropping out of its impossible glide, started descending… falling towards a range of tall rocks in the distance.
----------------------------------------
This next outpost was even dingier than their last.
It was a small crack-maw on the top of a plateau. Crawling through the opening revealed a slightly more spacious cavern. This one, too, was damp and lined with moss-grass.
Were Cas still a human, she guessed she would have found the place disgusting. The foxbat certainly seemed displeased to touch any of the material.
Still, it seemed too tired to make more of a fuss, and – after licking the dew from every corner of the place, lay down and quickly fell asleep.
Cas meanwhile, unable to sleep to pass the time, and unwilling to go outside, reconciled herself to expanding her notes.
And, there were many notes for her to take, even when the only thing of interest in the cave was moss-grass.
A day full of notes passed, and again the fox bat took them up.
Another harrowing journey followed, thankfully with no cross winds this time, and the outpost after that, too, had moss-grass..
In fact, moss grass seemed to be a commonality on all their outposts as, after a third leg of the journey filled with cursing and despair, Cas stopped at a third outpost, where she – with nothing else engaging her mind – sat staring at her notes full of observations on the species of moss that she passed by.
Her notes were abundant and technical, but Cas did leave room in the margins for her personal thoughts about the matter.
—-----------------------------------------
[
* Notes
* Ecosystem
* Plants
* Moss-grass
If there’s one saving grace to studying the creatures of this world, it’s that their strangeness is at least recognizable.
The grass, for example.
The majority species in this cave appears to be a ground cover plant with leaves that resemble terrestrial grasses. Not much more to say on the subject currently. I’m a microbiologist, for goodness’ sake.
I have better things to do than study grass.
*New Note*
I have started studying the grass.
It’s been three months since I started talking to myself, and the fox-bat thing has been gone for two weeks now. I don’t know if it will ever return.
Despite the name, outside of the leaves, the species appear not to be plants at all. Pulling on the stem reveals no evidence of tap-roots. Hair-like fibers anchor it to the floor.
I would call it a moss if it weren’t for the complex leaves.
Life on this planet truly is strange.
*NN*
Flowers!
It appears to be the local spring. New growths are now visible in the base of the plant. Their shape is cup-like, and are filled with what I can only assume is nectar or some other insect attractant.
*NN*
Moss-grasses are a highly specious clade.
They’re abundant in every rest stop the fox takes us too. New specimens appear very different from earlier examples, lacking complex leaves. However, closer observation of their pendicules suggests marked similarity with the more complex moss species.
*NN*
New Moss grasses found. At this altitude they seem to have a retarded growth cycle, and are still sporting buds late in the season.
Appearance is a hybrid between the last two discovered species, sporting more complex leaves but even more diminished anchor filaments.
Strange enough, they seem to sport cups that are identical to those found in the cave.
This goes against basic herbology. Flowering structures should be different even for related species… perhaps that’s just a quirk of Earth, however.
*NN*
New cave is sporting multiple different species, and each has distinct bulb structures.
Although, one species has bulbs that are identical to those in previously described species. The plant body itself is incredibly different in physical structure, however. Roots are even more diminished, and leaves nonexistent except for a flat carpeting.
Strange…
]
----------------------------------------
This last day was passed in a mania of note-taking and sample analysis.
The curiosity of the question burned in her mind… how could so many different species of moss-grass sport identical flowering buds? Why was that particular bud shape so common when they obviously were capable of forming different bud-types? Some sort of mimickry perhaps?
Animals on earth were known to camouflage themselves as other creatures. That never happened with flowers, however.
Cas sat giggling to herself as she looked over her notes and diagrams. The anxiety of a potentially new discovery, a potentially new paradigm shift in plant biology was enough to make the rest of the world disappear.
Cas blinked awake from her studious stupor as the fox shifted… It was evening already?
The fox seemed to care not for her surprise, and took flight without fanfare.
Cas dropped her notes and sighed. She… really didn’t want to go flying again.
It wasn’t fear… rather it was a sort of intense revulsion. The kind inspired by painful and difficult tasks, the sort of thing that made people hit the snooze button on a work day or dally at the squat rack.
Because Cas had gone through the ringer for the past three days of flying. Flying wasn’t fun anymore and it hadn’t been for the past thirty six hours! Every day it was like walking into a boxing class and getting paid to work as a body-bag, except Cas wasn’t even being paid.
Cas had developed a sudden meditation habit for the past two days, but, distracted as she’d been by her notes, Cas had no opportunity to wait. The fox was gone like a bus, and she was forced to catch up without the sufficient minutes of mental preparation that normally carried her through such tasks.
Cas warbled tentatively into the air, a dread posture taking her as she braced for yet another night of pain.
However, this time, the pain never came.
At first, this only inspired further anxiety.
The moments ticked by ominously, and Cas waited with intense anticipation, always expecting some stray wind or eddy to come out of the darkness and upend her entire existence. It was only when a tide of hot air welled up underneath her and Cas caught onto it with only the barest shake, that she realized the winds had already come, and that they’d been coming the entire time.
Cas couldn’t really ‘sleep on it’, considering she never slept, but – after so many nights of suffering – she was surprised to realize that, this night, for some unknown reason, everything just seemed to ‘click’.
Another wind, and Cas adjusted beautifully, meeting it with the tip of her wing and stealing a bit of lift from it as it passed over her.
She was reacting to winds as soon as she met them, stringing together micro adjustments with practiced ease. A soft wind blew from her side, and she remembered to tilt forward, not right; she could even cut an angle!
Cas warbled like an unbalanced foal as she attempted to follow the bat into an upwind.
Well… she could kind of cut an angle.
Still, while it was a wobbly flight, it was at least consistent!
Cas felt a great deal of pride at this. It vindicated her earlier sufferings, now that she’d made it through the crucible and achieved Supreme Mastery of The Skies!
Cas created a box window in her front again, ignoring the shaking it caused and chancing a glance at the zanzibat.
The bat was sleeping through its maneuvers, seeming to expect winds before they arrived as it cut straight through seven different eddies that had Cas shaking like an old lady.
Then again, she thought, looking at things from a more objective lens. All she’d really learned was… how to fly through fairly calm winds.
Fixing her front window, Cas withdrew her crystal eye further into herself. Comparison was the thief of joy, after all; it would be better to enjoy the small victories.
----------------------------------------
Now that she was more comfortable with the winds, Cas was once again flying on autopilot.
And with so much mental capacity freed up, she could now spare the mental energy to start thinking about things again. With some exertion of the imagination, Cas could even appreciate things on a deep level. Like the fact that, when she thought about it, flying was broken!
She hadn’t been of the mind to notice it before, but – now that she had the time to look at her dashboard again – she was frankly gobsmacked to see the odometer still ticking.
[Dashboard: 1123 miles]
One thousand one hundred miles traveled.
Over one thousand miles in four days!
You know that moment when you suddenly wake up in the middle of the high-way and realize you've been driving on autopilot for the past sixty miles?
Well, flying was like that, except Cas had to pay even less attention, and she could travel a thousand miles without realizing it.
After all, once you got used to the winds, there weren’t exactly any pot holes to swerve around, nothing close enough to cut you off, and the ground was something Cas paid attention to only occasionally.
And then Cas cringed a bit as she realized:
She hadn’t even been paying attention to the terrain!
Hastily, she tried to scrounge up memories of everything she’d flown over these past four days. She’d passed over a large, cliffy area. It was a flat region of bare rock, bowled in on all sides by a ring of high cliffs. That had been memorable for its uniqueness. The cliffs completely cut off the environment from the surrounding world… probably had a lot of unique species considering the boundary effect.
On foot, such a place could have taken her a year to explore, and a lifetime to study. That region alone probably had a thousand different species living in it!
And Cas had flown it by in a day. She’d barely stopped long enough to note a new moss species. It might have even had people living there if there was enough water.
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With a bit more urgency, Cas logged through a rolodex of memorable terrain spinning in her mind. At one point two days ago, the desert had turned into black stone before returning to sand again. And after that were the cliffs, or was it before? Aghhh! So many details forgotten or just ignored. In fact, Cas had ignored the ground entirely except to note particularly tall mountains that might blow ground winds up at her.
Strange as it was to say, Cas felt disappointed at that. She hated that she’d neglected so much when it was there to be seen. Cas was a hoarder of knowledge in that respect.
It was something like the fear of missing out.
Still, practical matters reigned and she dropped the feeling.
Looking at her dashboard, their flight speed had slowed dramatically since they abandoned the prevailing winds. Judging by the pace of the ground below, they were flying at jogging speed – ten, fifteen miles per hour max.
But, that didn’t really concern her. They could have flown at walking pace for all it mattered; they’d get where they were going either way, because the real advantage of flight wasn’t speed, It was the fact that, as Cas had, you could ignore the earth.
“As the crow flies.”
Ever heard of that phrase?
It means a straight line drawn across a map, without regard for anything that might be on that map. No following roads, no rounding around mountains or breaking ankles over craggy terrain. If a crow traveled ten miles, it meant she got ten miles closer to her destination. No ifs ands or buts about it.
Cas recalled to her memory her time playing Siablo III on Earth. The half remembered world map she’d seen in some cutscene or other.
It was a hazy recollection. Cas never paid much attention to cut scenes; her eyes were – at such moments – divested with the far more important task of guiding her fingers to her snack bowl, or to the can of sparkling water which sat precariously close to her keyboard.
Still, she managed to remember the scene where The Great Desert expanded to cover half the continent. Assuming that this world was the same size as Earth, and considering the fact that the continent ate up a quarter of the world's surface…
Cas ran the math through her excel sheet.
The desert was five thousand miles at its widest point, give or take.
That… was twenty-five times bigger than the Sahara, Cas realized with some amazement.
However, she was overstocked on amazing realizations tonight, and quickly moved on.
There definitely weren’t any living creatures in the center of the desert, considering what had happened to create it. So, most probably, the Nemorian village was within two thousand miles of the border.
Given an average flight speed of thirty miles per hour, flying ten hours per day, Cas figured she could travel two thousand miles in… eight days.
Cas reiterated: flight was broken.
And she hated to say it, considering the recent headaches she’d suffered, but it was still hard to believe that learning to fly had been this… well, easy..
Flight seemed like the kind of ability reserved for Level-Sixty Epic Steeds. You know, the ones you had to pay real-world money for!
Then Cas remembered that, unlike the game, this was the real world. And this real world, much like her last, didn’t seem to have any consideration for game balance.
The next few days were spent hopping between various waterholes and sheltered craigs. Strangely enough, the water sources seemed to get more janky, even as the general environment turned more hospitable.
Their trip was slowed somewhat by the fox-bat’s desire to recuperate for longer and longer at each stop, whereas Cas, after topping up on some water, was ready to go and often harried the zanzibat with her impatience whenever she felt the zanzibat was dallying too long. In such moments, Cas tried to help it by catching prey or – in rare cases – sacrificing a few grams of biomass to make him some food, but the zanzibat ate lightly and seemed preoccupied with rest.
Cas took the hint and left him alone.
It was strange, though. It didn’t seem that tired.
However, she noted, it had been a long time since she’d felt exhaustion or strain, perhaps she’d just lost the ability to empathize.
Despite the slower pace, their monotonous station hopping continued unabated, and the days and miles passed by like postcards until, on the twelfth day, Cas was interrupted by a sudden notice.
[Two thousand miles traveled!]
Cas glanced over the message on her status page. She vaguely remembered setting a reminder for that milestone.
The mental marker was accompanied by a physical one as – through the false opacity of her status sheet – Cas was surprised to see, clinging stubbornly to a black stone outcropping… a tree!
It was an old, craggy, bent grandfather-tree, with more cracks than wood in its trunk…but, looking closer, Cas saw a handful of living leaves waving wispily at the tips of its curling branches.
That caused her more happiness than she’d known for a long time.
Cas’s friends in college – the ones that liked drugs – sometimes regaled her with stories of talking trees. They told her about the fact that trees had feelings, and that they sent psychic messages about peace, and love, and harmony all the time.
Being a biologist, Cas knew this to be bullshit. She’d studied plants, and she knew trees. Trees were entitled land-lords that tried to choke every other plant in their vicinity to death! Those trunks were made to cast shade, people!
They could communicate using underground root networks, and colluded with each other to steal resources from low lying plants and other species of tree!
Insider trading, murder, racism. There was nothing under the sun trees weren’t capable of, as far as Cas was concerned..
Oh, and she wasn’t sure about them being psychic, either.
Seeing this tree, however. Cas overlooked her preconceptions and sent a mental note of thanks to the plant, for the sign of hope it delivered.
Because Cas knew trees to be water hungry plants. And they never grew too deeply into a desert.
----------------------------------------
For the first time, they breaked in the open, resting in the shade of a boulder next to a muddy puddle stamped into the baked dirt.
Somehow the sun was less intense here, and Cas could see in the distance, the barest wisp of a cloud smeared through the sky.
That was the first cloud she’d seen in almost three years.
She felt the world slow down as she looked up at it.
She longed desperately to see it up close. Flying through a cloud had always been a dream of hers, and the knowledge that she could go up and touch it on a whim troubled her with anticipation, but she stayed herself.
The zanzibat was still her only guide, and she wasn’t willing to risk it leaving or getting eaten by something while she was off sightseeing.
So Cas stayed and watched vigil over the Zanzibat, creating two extra sets of eyes to scan all around and above their position.
Her main eye, meanwhile, lavished the vast majority of her attention on the local flora, which were comparatively abundant in this region of the desert.
----------------------------------------
To the untrained eye, the low lying bushes and short weeds were all fairly random.
However, one plant caught her eye.
It wasn’t too spectacular, really, just two, bright leaves growing out of the ground and waving with the wind. But, it also had bulbs, you see. On Earth, flowers were a unique thing, often used to distinguish even quite similar species. Bulbs, she gathered, worked the same way here. And these bulbs, in their shape, and the depth of their cups and even in the degree of darkenning at their lips, were exactly the same as all the moss grasses she’d seen so far.
Even the leaves seemed identical. In almost every way, it was a perfect representation of what she had been looking for.
Well… every way except one.
It was about ten times larger than the moss grasses she’d seen growing in the caves. It had thick leaves growing two feet out of the ground, and bands of prickles growing out from the edges like serrated knife teeth.
It had been Cas’s running hypothesis that all the ‘moss-grasses’ as she’d called them, had been different stages in the life cycle of a single creature.
It was also her wild conjecture that the end stage of this life cycle was a true plant, one with true roots and a vascular system.
On earth, that would have been a hypothesis that would have gotten her laughed out of the qualification room.
A plant metamorphosing. On top of that, changing basal forms until it grew newly evolved structures?
Saying that might have sunk her reputation.
But, this wasn’t Earth, and Cas’s death had long sunk her prospects for tenure, so she was feeling free about making wild claims.
And… here it was, her chance to prove herself right. There, about three hundred meters ahead, was what looked to be a fully grown moss-grass specimen. It was in full bloom, too! Carrying more cups than she’d ever seen on a single plant, all of them drooping heavily with nectar.
She’d been living in the cave for years and none of the moss-grasses there had grown to even a third of this one’s height.
If she could just dig it up and confirm it had true roots, that would prove everything right. The first plant to transition from moss to vascular flowering plant! And Cas would be the first person from Earth to know.
Cas wanted to go over there and look.
But the zanzibat…
The zanzibat lay in the shade next to her, snorting dust with its light snores, occasionally blinking awake to take a look around before resting its head again.
…It was only three hundred meters away. Cas could stay within sight of it, she would be back in a flash if anything went wrong.
The wind blew a bit harshly, and Cas could see the grass stems waving wildly in reaction, the two leaves dancing together like an inflatable tube man advertising historically low APRs. Such cheap tactics had never convinced Cas to buy a used car, but then again she’d never actually needed a used car. Confirmation on her plant theory however…
She looked back at the zanzibat again; it had blinked awake, though it still lay reclined.
Besides, the zanzibat had made this journey many times without her. It’s not like it couldn’t take care of itself.
Cas leapt into the air, not so much flying as extending the jump into a low glide, one that arced her on a trajectory to land just on top of-
Kree! Kree! Kree!
A familiar, whistling call came from behind her. The last time she’d heard that had been when the zanzibat got a mouth full of acid. That was its panic cry.
So quickly! She’d taken her eyes off it for one second!
Panic inspired her to yank her trajectory upward, retracting her landing legs and circling about to look at the source of the noise.
The fox was already in the air, but its flight was steady. It didn’t appear to be in any physical pain. Instead, it flew tightly over her, making distressed noises whenever her circling brought her closer to the plant leaves.
That was strange. The zanzibat had barely acknowledged her presence all this time except to growl at her. Why take so much care about what she was doing now?
As if to test it, Cas abandoned her circling and made directly for the plant.
Kree! Kree!
Cas wobbled in the wake of the Fox’s dive as it swooped past her. Curling back up in between as if to guard the plant against further encroachment.
Maybe the plant was poisonous and it thought that Cas was trying to eat it?
Though, for the life of her, Cas couldn’t see a reason as to why it would care. She’d only fed it once on this trip, and even then it barely ate what she gave it. Maybe Zanzibat naturally flew in flocks and it had an instinct to warn flock members?
Thinking on it, the Zanzibat did appear to have a surprising variety of vocalizations. That did imply sociality.
Still… Cas was immune to poison outright, and she wasn’t planning to eat the plant in any case. She went on.
KREE! GRRRRH!
This time, Cas was shaken by the wake of the Zanzibat’s impact.
It… it had actually hit her. Not enough to ground her, but Cas felt herself seesawing through the and having to change trajectory just to avoid a crash.
The zanzibat was circling above her now.
By now an experienced flyer herself and familiar with the creature’s flight habits, Cas could tell by the pitch of its wings that it was ready to dive on her again, at a moment's notice.
Cas was ready to call this a flocking instinct. She remembered a study showing that birds made vocalizations when a hawk was spotted, and notably they often did this instinctively when they heard another bird make the same calls. Maybe something about her approaching the plant mimicked a danger signal that was causing it to act out?
Cas was ready to blast past the fox and dig up the plant. It would only take a second to check the roots.
She was already planning the flight trajectory. She could feint right then curve left…
Still…. She didn’t know why, but something locked her muscles up when the time actually came. Call it a gut feeling, or maybe the look in the foxes eyes seemed to hold more human concern than she knew an animal was capable of, but Cas decided to trust the fox… at least enough to investigate its claims.
Diving down, she pulled up just inches over the dirt, picking up a tall rock into her body.
Flying high up, she flew towards the plant and lobbed the stone on a ballistic trajectory.
The stone clattered into the dirt right next to the plant, just barely whiffling past the tips of the grass stems.
Nothing happened.
The fox looked at her with curious concern, and Cas felt stupider than this looked.
This was stupid, she decided, about to take her chances with the plant when – again, for some unknown reason – something called on her to try again.
Venturing closer, Cas felt a bit of heat in her chest. There, inches away from her crystal eye, Cas could see material coalescing, solidifying into a spherical paste of ground flesh. Cas didn’t know why she chose such an expensive material, rather than something like hardened jello, but it was too late to lament when she dropped that ball of flesh down through her underside, watching it fall stolidly through the air and landing just inches to the right of the plant’s stems.
WHAM!
A puff of dirt rose from the plant.
A mouth the size of a soccer ball sprang shut around the grass stems, shaking the earth and whirling the sand as it sank down into the depths of the desert.
Cas almost laughed when she realized what it had been. Well, she would have laughed if she had the vocal cords to do so. She would’ve also kicked herself if she had the extra legs, as – now cured from the greedy tunnel vision that had attracted her to the plant – Cas was, with a bit of attention, able to make out a sign over where the creature had been laying.
image [https://i.imgur.com/eiGYSqg.png]
It was the same sort of sign she saw over Sin and the other villagers when she paid attention. Now that she was of the mind to, she could even see one hovering near the fox when she turned her crystal to it and focused her attention just right.
image [https://i.imgur.com/wcK8ua9.png]
Cas’s hadn’t felt danger like this for a long time. It was a queasy feeling that seemed to have no physical correlate. No heart to beat, no adrenaline to make her hands shake. In fact, the only real sign was the speed at which her thoughts raced, and the insessancy with which they repeated:
You just almost died. You almost died trying to dig up grass. You’re supposed to be better than this. ... You’re a microbiologist!
And it really did bother her. There had been no reason for her hurry. If the fox hadn’t stopped her, she’d be inside that thing right now, and her story could ended here as a cautionary tale. Curiosity killed the Cas, and all that.
She looked back again at the signboard of danger that hung over the beast.
image [https://i.imgur.com/eiGYSqg.png]
This entire time the pop up had been floating there, ignored in the adrenaline fueled of new discovery.
Or… maybe not, Cas realized, watching even more closely as the sands started shifting again. Very neatly, two grass stems laden with nectar poked out of the sand.
As this occurred, the status Sheet, too began fading away, until it was almost impossible to discern.
A new status sheet rose, one that was so dim that it took all of Cas’s concentration to even notice it was there.
image [https://i.imgur.com/tdSlcVK.png]
Hmm… it appeared plants had subtler, and different aura signatures than animals. But… this wasn’t a plant.
Mimicry, she decided.
And it was mimicry, rather than a genuine transformation.
Now that Cas knew its true nature, with enough discernment, she could see hints where the false status sheet appeared to fall apart under scrutiny.
Looking back at the fox, it’s status sheet was the same, though Cas could have sworn it wore a smug look on its face.
----------------------------------------
[
* Notes
* Ecosystem
* Animals
* Sand Angler
Small creature with a lightly colored head. It has the strange ability to modify its aura signature to a greater degree than I thought possible. Appears something called a ‘Skill’ is responsible for this, and it would follow that humans aren’t capable of doing the same feat… at least, not to the same extent.
Hiding one’s stats, however, appears common to all creatures. Looking at the fox reveals no information as to the state of its health or other stats.
Sun Tsu said that, in war, one should appear strong where one is weak, and weak where one is strong.
Perhaps the same applies in nature.
Although, I feel now as if I’ve stepped truly into a warzone. The desert becoming more hospitable, it appears, has only made it so that ever more dangerous creatures thrive here.
]
[
* Notes
* Ecosystem
* Animals
* Foxbat
Zanzibat shows signs consistent with being a social creature. It displays distinct warning calls, which it expects other creatures to understand.
It saved my life, perhaps indicative of a flock protection instinct.
]
----------------------------------------
It made enough sense, Cas decided.
The creatures of this world evolved with aura, after all. Of course they’d be able to camouflage the information their aura constantly leaked into the world. Even people could hide their stats with a little training, as Sin had demonstrated.
Cas also noticed that the plants seemed to be getting a lot larger the further they flew on.
In the desert, the plant bulbs and flowers only opened up during the night, and they reflected the moonlight quite intensely.
Cas, being colorblind, was helpless to distinguish any colors among the bouquet. To her, they all looked like bright points of white light and, as they traveled further, and night grew darker, and the density of plants grew thicker, she felt at times like she was flying over a field of stars.
When they landed again, this time, it was amidst a sparse gathering of desert trees.
Each tree had an obvious mound of dirt packed around its roots.
That was strange. How did they maintain a pocket of soil around themselves when it was desert all around? Where would they get the water to maintain the soil moisture? Cas felt the instinct to go discover the answer, but – remembering the sand-angler – and remembering just how comparatively dinky it had been, she decided to make her observations from a distance.
Cas was surprised, the next morning, when the fox elected not to take to the air. Instead it slept in, snoring in its den for the whole of the next day, waking at odd intervals to lap up some water found in another mud-puddle.
The next day, the fox rested again, going out hunting.
A full week passed like this.
Cas thought this strange, at first. After all, was this the fox’s final destination? It didn’t seem all that impressive.
Eventually, though, her curiosity turned to worry, as the facts slowly unraveled themselves and Cas realized that, no, this wasn’t where the fox planned on staying the spring. It hunted, it ate, and it drank water. And it did nothing other than that except sleep and recuperate.
It wasn’t living… it was preparing.
This brought to mind only one question.
For a creature that traveled two thousand miles, what could possibly be so daunting as to require a week of preparation.
And the question, naturally, only brought one answer to mind.
The final leg of their journey was ahead of them. And, though it wasn’t very scientifically minded of her, Cas could feel in her gut that the next time she took off, she would be landing in a world far different from the one she once knew.