Around the fallen tree, a festival had sprouted, one which Cas had unwillingly found herself as a centerpiece.
Being the only tolerable place in the Area, the Oasis was already a natural hang-out spot for everyone in the community. In fact it was the hang out spot, playing triple duty as a play-ground, religious center, and make-out point -- as Cas had discovered after stumbling upon the odd couple or twelve.
And, right now, it was burning man. It seemed the entire village had been invited to the trees funeral, and people from the other four villages crashed as a dense crowd gathered, watching as the five work men sweated and worked to disassemble the tree. It was not a quiet affair. The women had brought their work with them, spreading out into cliques of weaving circles, apparently expecting a long celebration, while -- throughout the day, men came from their fields to bear witness to the work being done. By late evening the crowd had grown so that no square foot of the Oasis was without a person, and the air had grown hot from the compact of bodies that surrounded the chopped up trunk of the tree.
The immediate crowd around the worksite was composed mainly of older men, all of them shouting either encouragement or back-seating advice on the proper way to perform plant surgery. Squeezing past their figures, young children raced to the trunk, greedily snatching up whatever bits of bark or leaf litter fell from the shuttering saw and turning it in to some of the older women in exchange for some jerky. Girls, too, took part in the illicit marketplace that had sprung up about the tree, dashing in past the workmen who -- too exhausted to file a complaint -- simply ignored the giggling children as they stole away green leaves and other make-up components from the fallen beast. Usually, picking even a single leaf out of the Oasis without permission was a grave taboo. Standards relaxed during a celebration, however, and everyone joyfully skirted the limits of those standards whilst keeping an eye out so that their neighbors didn't do the same.
Cas, for her part, simply wandered about the tree stump, occasionally climbing atop it to double check the rings with a hmm and haw of divination.
She had no real reason for doing this. She'd found out everything she needed to know within a minute of the cut down... but a small crowd had gathered about her for the past few hours. Their faces were full of wonder and grave expectation, one which pressured Cas to make her work seem more important than it actually was.
And Cas, being a scientist that had to apply for grants, was intimately familiar with making her work seem like the most important thing in the universe. In her estimation, she pulled off that three hour long star dance better than the best witches.
"Whoo, yeah!"
To tell by her cheers, as well as the forcefulness by which she forced the rest of the crows to half-heartedly golf-clap, Kari seemed to agree with Cas more than Cas agreed with herself.
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Beyond simply wanting to take part in the festivities, Cas had good reason for playing up her divination. Her life was still in the hands of these villagers, after all. In fact, it was likely to be in the hands of these villagers forever, considering she was effectively trapped here with them. With that in mind, she was careful to present herself as useful. It wasn't lying, it was advertising. Besides, she told herself she actually was working to help them, sometimes that work just needed to be shown off, after all.
Still, she was surprised when the village elder called her up to give a statement to the crowd.
It was late into the evening when the party concluded. By now, the tree and all it's parts had been split off and assigned to the various villagers, all the gathered food had been eaten, and Cas was amazed at how clearly she could see all the faces arranged before her despite the sparce moonlight. Color blindness conferred it's own advantages. If it weren't for the river of stars stretching across the sky, Cas would hardly have been surprised to call this daylight. Still, in this case, being able to see every face and skeptical look with such accuracy did little to help her stage fright.
Either noticing her hesitance, or simply trying to control the conversation, the elder man smiled and spoke jovially: "Oracle!" he shouted, turning to speak more to the crowd than to her, "Sage of the eternal mire! Guardian from beyond the Veil! Fate has brought you to us to solve our troubles! As we all know, our waters are dissapearing." At that, a nervous silence passed over the crowd. Expected, but Nemaris continued with the confidence of a man who's problems were already solved. "As we all know, our Oasis is dying!" This time, his bravado seemed to transfer to the ground, and that veiled nervousness that passed over every face turned into something more hopeful.
Cas had to hand it to the man, he knew how to work a crowd.
"For this reason, we have harvested this great tree so that it may tell you it's secrets! And you have discovered those secrets! So, I ask you, Oracle, is this drought a trouble we can overcome?"
The question, despite being addressed to her, was directed to the crowd, loud and bombastic and unafraid of the answer which she might give.
"Yes," answered Cas simply, and the crowd cheered.
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Cas had no idea whether this drought was fixable.
She didn't want to lie! The cheif took her aside before the speech and prepared all her answers. She'd gone along with it to not cause any panic but... she'd never expected to feel this bad about it.
"Oh, you at the water to our eyes, the wind to cool our troubled brows. May Sorena give you ten thousand gifts, a hundred thousand blessings, and beauty enough to match every star! I tell you even that wouldn't be enough to match my gratitude. Being a mother, I suffer twice, once for myself, and again for my children, and that night has been the first one I've been able to rest at ease, you've cooled my heart, great sage! I am at my knees in debt to you!"
"Uhm... you can just call me Cas, from now on."
"Oh, great Sage, Cas! My gravest apologies," the woman seemed on the verge of tears, swaying under the heavy emotions she'd carried up to this point.
"No need!" Cas got ahead of the diatribe, looking out behind the woman to the gathered crowd of ecstatic village members.
To some extent, the villager's thanks and gratitude had become performative. Each person tried to outdo the last in the reverie of their relief, and tried carefully to show off how thankful they were for the assurance of their mutual safety. Despite the exaggeration, it was genuine emotion that compelled everyone. Whether the goddess wanted to bestow ten thousand gifts was up for debate, but the villagers -- each one coming in turn -- all but packed her house like it was a candy store.
Yes, her house. It'd been the first gift she received, though the villagers seemed to see it more as an empty gift box.
It was a simple, four walled room with two windows, a door, and piles of random crap stacked at every corner. Dried meats, herbs, flour, garlands of weeds, some small trinkets and enough embroidery to cover every wall twice over, turning the barren walls of the space into a viewing port for so many refined patterns that it made Cas miss her color vision.
In truth, it was somehow quite exhausting to receive guests, but the strongly worded advice Nemaris had given her on the importance of making sure to receive every villagers present kept her as the ever graceful host of the procession. She smiled, chatted, received blessings, and traded enough small talk to make her sick of the weather report. All this went on until, eventually, she'd done it! She'd met with every villager! Which begged the question: why weren't they leaving.
Cas stood in the midst of crowd, looking up at them despite her high perch.
"Welp..." she said, wishing she had legs to stand up on, "I guess that's it, right?"
The foremost woman in the crowd stepped forward. A patient bow ducked her underneath all attempts at refusing her advances, and brought the tassels of her head shawl down to dangle Infront of her strained, winning smile. "Of course," she said, with a voice like silk. "We actually must beg your forgiveness to leave you. However, we all simply wanted to ask on thing of you before doing so... regarding the current situation."
"Uhm... the weather?" Cas asked dumbly, begging for the small talk to come back.
"The drought," came the reply simply.
Cas was thankful for her natural poker face as she looked up at the surrounding mob. The lead woman held a pleasant face, but worry and anxious curiosity pattered her lips as she spoke.
That was the strange thing about the villagers. Being so few, and so tightly knit, they were the equivalent of a gated community back on earth. Everyone dressed the same, thought the same, and even spoke with that same, elegant accent and beautiful diction. It had surprised Cas when the homeless transient worker from the neighboring village spoke to her with the same, refined manner that the village chief showed in all his dealings.
Still, the village chief had his own unique manner that distinguished him, enough that everyone immediately turned around when they heard his stern cough coming from the door.
The evening sun hugged him with light, stretching Nemaris' shadow into the empty space that had parted before him. Smiling at her with a reassuring face, he turned his stern, well humored scowl onto the rest of the lot. "I hope we aren't bothering our seer. She's been very tired from her divining session. I'd been worried that you might have forgotten my instructions not to press questions until the answers were ready, so I thought I'd come by."
"Oh... of course," and other such similar mumblings went through the quickly dispersing crowd, all of them paying their respects to the chief and sending farewells to Cas while walking backwards.
Eventually, the hanging cloth fell back over the door and Cas was left alone with the chief. Walking over to the windows, Nemaris peeked out to check for any strays, walked stealthily back to her place and took a silent seat on the floor next to her. For the first time, Cas noticed how young the chief looked for a man with so many gray hairs. Even that youth seemed wasted on the crumpled figure that leant his whole weight back against a wall and hid his face behind curtains of falling hair.
"Don't worry," Cas assured, trying to cheer the man up, "You came just in time."
"I'd know if they found out," Nemaris sighed. "Don't be so scared of their questions," he assured. "They don't distrust you, they just want more information...they just want someone to tell them everything will be ok before they can allow themselves to believe." Nemaris stared at the ground between his feet. "Granted," he let out a dark chuckle, "they wouldn't exactly be wrong to doubt."
Cas prepared to spit out some half-hearted 'it's ok', but the chief stopped her. Letting out a long sigh he rubbed his face down with both hands and stood to leave. Pausing at the door, curtain held open with one hand, he looked back to say, "I'll keep them off your back, just do the best you know how."
And Cas could tell, in that brief moment between them, he'd been struggling not to ask her if everything would be ok.
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Nemaris was a truly kind man, who shouldered everything by himself. It was for that reason that everyone respected his words and obeyed his command to leave Cas to her work. Everyone, that was, except the children, who formed a wild tornado of glee and annoying screams about her as she worked.
Cas was in the middle of conducting a field study around the Oasis. Ie... she wandered around, hoping to find something interesting, not that the girls seemed to appreciate the scientific process as they skipped around with the best intentions, kicking dust up around their ankles and into Cas's face.
The youngest of the girls, a fair-haired child with inquisitive eyes, wandered away from the impromptu game they'd formed to come squat over Cas. "Mommy said you were going to heal the Oasis, is that true?" the youngest girl asked, resting her chin in her hands.
Cas kept up her steady crawl along the sandy edge of the oasis. A curious note floated up into her voice as she answered the girl. "Hmm, I don't know, did your mommy tell you to ask me that?" she accused lightly, turning her crystal to send an accusing glance at her questioner.
The girl looked abashed, light eyes swived suspiciously into a side-glance. "Uhmmm.... no," she squeaked out, pausing there for a second before leaping up and running back to her friend group.
Cas laughed at the reaction. She'd certainly become a lot more popular since the festival, though that did come with some bother from the local paparazzi. Still, being well liked was a good problem to have. Looking over at the girl's, who'd now huddled close together in a suspicious formation. Cas grew suspicious as their conspiring whispers reached her over desert air. Suddenly, they all turned around in unison, marching in formation with badly hidden giggles and excited glances at one another. The leader of the group was an imperious girl with dark hair and bright eyes, and notably she walked with her hands behind her back, leading the group until she was but two feet away.
Unlike the others, she wore a full length shawl decorated with tassels and with wide cuffs -- in the style of the adults, unlike the plainer ware of her compatriots. The smile plastered over her face held all the wonder of a child, however, as she quickly pulled her hands out in front and presented...
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Cas glanced graciously at the embroidered rug. "It's... amazing," she answered, not having the heart to tell the girl that she already had a dozen like it. "I'll hang it up on my wall for everyone to see!"
The girls only giggled at her... rude.
"It's not a rug!" they all exclaimed in unison. As if to demonstrate, the lead girl pushed her fingers through the fabric, spreading it out into the bowl and pulling open the eye slit to reveal it's tailored shape.
"A shawl!" Cas exclaimed, and the girls immediately pounced upon her, capping the fabric over her figure.
Recollecting herself from the ambush, Cas looked around herself to see... shawl. It was strange how used she'd gotten to being able to see around herself just with a flick of her eye. Pointing her crystal through the single eye-slit, however, and seeing the beaming expressions awaiting her answer, Cas found it hard to say anything other than: "I love it!"
"Squeee!" the girls squealed in unison, hopping in place.
"What's going on!" A familiar voice called out from the side, and the girls all but paused in mid-air.
Laboriously, Cas turned her entire body around to see Kari standing with her hands on her hips, looking over at her with a scowl. "Cas, I was looking everywhere for you! I was going to pick you up from your place remember!"
Kari, being her unofficial chauffer, had also gotten a bump to her status after the festival. The kids, at least, made far more of an effort to include her, anyway.
"Oh, sorry! We meant to call after you, but we couldn't find you at your place. We told the neighbors to let you know if they saw you," the lead girl offered apologetically. "Wanna play with us now that you're here, though? We're about to set up a marble course." Gently, she pointed over at a half constructed ditch in the sand.
"No!" Kari answered simply. Walking over, she looked down at Cas with displeasure. "What's this?"
"It's a Juti," the girl answered, "we made it-"
"You know she can't see out of that?" Kari interrupted. "If you were going to make her something, you should've asked me first!"
The other girl, growing frustrated, all but stamped a foot. "We're just giving her a gift!"
Kari picked up Cas and hugged her close. "Only adults have to give gifts," she retorted. "Anyway, we have to go study the other side of the Oasis, now." With that, Cas's world turned as Kari spun them around and walked off.
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"The other side" of the Oasis always meant the south side.
It was a place avoided by most people. Unlike the north side, where the shadow of the Oasis stretched out into a crescent garden of cool ground, the 'other side' was devoid of everything except lonliness and sand. It was a place strategically chosen to avoid the presence of others, though Cas didn't argue the move, as she'd never studied this area during the day-time before.
Again, 'study' in this case meant wander around and look for stuff. Cas, slowly trawling around, her crystal eye brought to the very edge of her body to look through the eye slit, tried to glance around but couldn't even make herself pretend that featureless mounds of sand held anything interesting. Still, she persevered, and found herself thinking of other things. For one, it wasn't until several hours into her patrol that she noticed... how surprisingly cool it was. Not to mention, she hadn't once suffered an update to her max HP. The old habit of looking down at her body taught her something new, as the the patterned holes in her shawl caught the wind, carrying heat away from her body as it shrouded her normally clear insides in heavy shadow.
"Huh," she said, moving the crystal eye all around her insides to take a closer look at the structure. It was transclucent to the direct sunlight, and Cas thought she could see those same intricate patterns decorating it.
A voice interrupted her musings.
Kari was currently doing a hand stand, careful to keep beyond the tree line of the Oasis. "What are you even looking at?"
Cas sighed. "I'm just appreciating how useful this shawl is. I probably shouldn't have walked around naked for so long and wasted so much water."
"Oh..." Kari fell around into a sitting posture. "I guess you really do like it, huh?"
Cas wasn't blind to the disappointment in the girl's voice, but decided to answer honestly. "Yes, I do. I'm sure the girl's worked very hard on it."
Kari pouted, looking aside to rest her cheek on her knees. "They're just doing that because their parents told them to," she mumbled. "They'll turn their backs on you, just wait. You'll see."
"I don't know about that," Cas smiled. "But, actually, you were right about the design, you know. Why don't you take this shawl to the girls tommorow and help them make it so I can see out of all sides!"
"...Ok." Kari answered, a little less hesitant after being praised.
Cas rolled her eye at the reaction, Kids were so... huh, that's interesting.
"What is it?" Kari asked as Cas crawled past her.
"I'm not sure," Cas answered.
With the sun behind her like this, the desert seemed to glimmer, as if fine particles of glass had been mixed into the sand. On its own, this wasn't surprising. Even on earth, the sand had reflective particles, silica grains and other reflective things inside of it naturally. The strange thing was, that some of those particles seemed to reflect, differently. It was hard to describe how, but Cas could just tell from how the light reflected that those particles were different. There were only a few of them among the thousands of points of light mixed into the sand, and Cas headed towards the closest one.
Reaching forward for it, a long stalk stretched out to hover over the glowing particle. Floating her eye out into the end of the stalk, she bulged the end into a magnifying lens. It was a crappy magnification, but it was just enough that she could tell the thing was strange. It was almost an almost perfect sphere for one. It wasn't a crystal or sand grain. It was translucent, and it stuck to the sand like... a water droplet?
Cas wondered what a water droplet was doing in the desert. She stopped questioning it when she noticed that the water droplet was moving, hugging the crescent shadow of a ripple in the sand.
"A slime!" Cas exclaimed, prompting Kari to run over with intense interest.
Kari fell onto all fours, hovering her face over to stare at the same spot... "what's 'a slime!'" she asked in her adorable rendition of the English.
"This!" Cas gestured over at the creature.
Kari immediately grew bored, dusting her dress off as she stood. "Oh... it's just another Sakkari"
"Wh...what, but it's a slime... they should burn away at that size! Aren't you curious about how it got here!" Cas grew a little frustrated by the underwhelming response from the girl... she could at least have the decency to look interested.
"It probably just showed up with the morning dew," Kari pressed her hands to the back of her head, stretching as she walked back into the tree-line of the Oasis.
Cas... did not find abiogenesis a likely theory. Still, she knew it wouldn't do much to argue with the girl about the issue, and decided to continue the next few hours in patient observation.
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Many had burned away in the sunlight, but a surprising number surprised Cas with their tenacity and survival chops. At that scale, sand grains were like boulders, and slimes hid in the shadow of those mountains. When noon-time came, the heat had become truly unbearable, and even Cas, in her shawl, began to see signs of damage.
The slimes that remained, Cas saw their deaths in great detail. It wasn't a notable death, for any slime. Rather it was more a quiet dissapearance, as they shrunk and shrunk and shrunk in the heat until there was nothing left but a dry discoloration on some sand particles. Trying something, Cas stretched out a stalk over one of these remnants. Aiming the stalk, she compressed the tip into a cone, and -- remembering her trick in the cave -- hardened it. Focusing all her resources back, Cas drew away everything from the tip of the stalk until only a watery film remained to drip onto the dry remnants like a leaky faucet.
Sometimes, if she provided them with water soon enough, the slimes revived.
Still, it didn't make sense why they would appear in the desert without a direct water source.
...
Looking about, it was as if she were watching the stars wink out, as one by one the slimes surrounding her dissapeared. Catching one before it had gone, however, Cas was surprised to find that -- rather than dying, it was burrowing, squeezing it's body between the sand grains and going underground.
Cas, buried in the notes section of her character sheet, didn't notice Kari as she snuck up behind her.
"You're really good at sitting around and doing nothing, you know," she drawled, laying on her belly and kicking her feet in the air.
"Hush, I think I'm close to figuring something," Cas, furrowed with concentration, tried to write every thought as it came to her.
"But I thought you didn't know how to fix the Oasis-" Kari stopped herself abruptly, clamping hands over her mouth.
That had been enough to break Cas' concentration. "Where did you hear that?" she asked with a nervous energy.
"I overheard you and Elder Nemaris talking about it," Kari admitted with a guilty look.
Despite herself, Cas felt a sense of relief. "You didn't tell anyone else, did you?"
The girl shook her head no.
"Well... you shouldn't eavesdrop," she admonished, coming up with nothing else to say.
"Well, you shouldn't lie," Kari retorted.
"Touché, but keep this to yourself! And I actually can find out what's wrong with the Oasis, ok?" Cas turned about, looking worriedly at the disappearing sparkles all across the near desert. "I just need a bit more time, she whispered to herself."
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The desert was different at night.
Of all the thousand differences the moonlight revealed, however, Cas only obsessed over the slimes. There were so many more of them that appeared from beneath the sands. Each one without fail, as if compelled, crawled effortfully over the sands over to the Oasis. It was an invisible march of the small, many of them wouldn't make it to the Oasis before night eneded, but they would get closer. And the next night she was sure they would continue their journey after resting beneath the sands.
It seemed a dangerous journey, their numbers seemed lower and lower the closer to the Oasis one counted. Cas had made a simple map of their relative density and average direction of motion. Tracing the lines to their convergence point, Cas looked up from her status screen and back at the massive pillar of stone that stood so imposingly over the horizon, casting a great shadow that pointed with what seemed to be admonishment in her direction.
Cas... wasn't sure what to make of this.
"Cas..." a tired voice interrupted her.
"Oh, Kari," Cas looked guiltily at the girl who's heavy eye-lids fell like blankets over her eyes. "You don't have to stay here, why don't you go back home. I'll be able to make it back by myself."
"No..." The girl's firm stance was somewhat amusingly contradicted by her soft collapse into the sand, resting her head on folded arms as she aimed a soft smile onto Cas. "I really enjoyed being with you," she said.
Cas held back a chuckle. "We didn't really do anything, though."
"I know," the girl said. "I just like being with you, is all."
"Kari, I like being with you too, but the sand is no place for a young girl to sleep. You should go back home for tonight."
The girl made no move to comply.
"Won't your parent's be worried about you?" Cas asked.
The girl only lightly shook her head, allowing a sad expression to shine through for the first time since Cas had met the girl.
"Oh..." Cas didn't say much more.
"Cas," the girl said.
"Yes?" Cas answered.
"Are we friends?"
For the first time, the bravado was all gone from the girl, and she seemed genuinely nervous at what answer might come.
Cas, for her part, actually had to think of the question. The girl was very young, and at times annoying, and asked a lot of questions and constantly challenged her. But...
"Yes," was the only answer that came to Cas' mind.
A gleaming, curious, look, one which held far more wisdom than a girl like her should've been capable off lit up in Kari's eyes. "Why?" she asked, tilting her head.
The question confused Cas, until she remembered how much she'd overthought such things as a middle-schooler. "Well... I've learned that friendship isn't something easily questioned. Friendships are good things, beautiful things, though they're sometimes fragile. I always try to cultivate them whenever I'm gifted with one, especially when my friend is a girl as bright as you are!"
In the soft light of the moon, Cas swore she saw an embaressed flush come over the girl. It seemed the girl was unused to complements.
"Thanks..." she murmured.
And they stood like that for a moment, before Cas finally stood. "Well... that's enough of that," she said, turning off her notes and rising up into a taller, more mobile stance. "Let's go back to town."
"I thought you had work to do."
"I do," Cas answered, "but I've done enough for tonight. Besides, I'm getting tired of recording, I'd like a break," Cas made to move when a word from Kari stopped her.
"Wait!"
It was an impatient, loud, whisper, hoarse with exhaustion as Kari lifted her head into a yawn. Bringing her cheeks back onto her folded arms, Kari placed Cas in the confines of her interested look. "Don't move," she told the frozen slime.
"Uh... why?" Cas asked.
"You said you have to cultivate friendships, right? Just like you're going to heal that Oasis."
"Well..."
"I know you will, Cas," Kari interrupted her, speaking with such surety that left even Cas feeling confident.
Cas hesitated. "...thank you. But what does that have to do with me not moving?"
"Well. I know one day I'll get to tell people about the amazing hero that saved my village." Kari kicked her feet softly, sifting her toes through the sand. "I know people will ask a lot about you; so I want to remember just as you are, as the brave, wonderous hero from another world, as my friend."
Cas wasn't sure she understood the sentiment. Living in a world with photo booths had dulled her memory for images. Still, she humored the girl with serious effort. Unable to think of anything else, she posed slightly, raising a stalk underneath the shawl as if to wave 'hi'.
image [https://i.imgur.com/bLlPTen.png]
For her part, Cas also tried to paint in her memory an image of that curious girl with bright eyes, who'd only shown her a sad expression once. She -- that was, Kari -- struck quite a boyish figure. Like everyone else in the village, she had surprisingly light skin for living in a desert, and her eyes and hair were quite the same. It being night time, she'd lowered the hood of her shawl and her hair, cut into a short, messy start, served as the perfect frame for the perpetually mischievous look that graced her features.
She was the most ordinary girl in the world, in some ways, but that was only proof to Cas that kids could be quite amazing.
Kari [https://i.imgur.com/QkHh6cW.png]