There were moments Cas liked to call 'awkward'.
Cas was very familiar with them, having been an awkward person. She'd also made a study of those moments, because she was an awkward person. These were the moments when you tried to walk past someone on the road, but kept going the same way. These were the few seconds when you accidentally made eye-contact with the other person in the other room. And, of these moments, Cas found -- through scientific inquiry and linear regression -- that the mathematically most awkward possible moment was when you bumped into someone else's kid. You know, those awkward few seconds when you're torn between apologizing to the child and parent at the same time, all while holding in your laughter at the clumsy child that couldn't take a hip-check without tripping over their Sketchers.
Yeah... and this level of awkwardness went up by a factor of a thousand whenever the opposing family didn't speak English.
The worst part, though?
It was the fact that the adults laughed. The grey bearded gentleman let out an obvious chuckle, kneeling down beside the girl and trying to get her to join in as he took her wrist and blew on her hand soothingly.
"Mano, mano," he consoled her gently, breifly glancing up at another man to sternly say: "Noredo no."
The other man nodded and shifted his axe blade in his hand.
Cas, of course, didn't speak the language -- but she sensed that the men didn't seem to take the actions of a slime personally... much like people on earth didn't have personal grudges against wasps nests before drowning them in gasoline. Cas backed away with rapid stilts, but the man easily closed the distance in two strides, taking up the axe in two hands. Cas backed herself up against the base of the tree, looking at the matte blade held high above her.
Something about the routine posture he took, as well as the look in his eye told Cas the people here had experience taking care of slimes. Running was no option, and her hardening was level three... so Cas scrambled and did something desperate. Splitting apart in the center, she caught a sphere of air and vocalized:
"Mano, mano!" she shouted, clear across the clearing. "Noredo-no!"
The man stoppled like Cas had just hit the pause button. Everyone else in the clearing, too, stared at her.
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Cas -- one who normally shunned socialization and all things extraverted -- was now dancing like her life depended on it.
"Shaaaaaaah! Kaka KaKa Soredo"
A jumble of amazed ooh's and excited jeers washed over from the crowd whenever she repeated the simplest phrases. Cas almost found it condescending, in a way.
“Shere dama koro!" a man shouted up from the suggestion box, repeating with his hand in amplifier position, "Shere dama koro!” The phrase drew a row of laughter from everyone, apparently at the expense of a man in a brown cloak, who was left out of the laughter by his own embarrassed and annoyed expression.
Not keen to make enemies on her first day, Cas took this opportunity to stop her parrot act and try to establish some communication. Having picked up some basic grammar rules and what she believed to be a name, she struck out a stalk and pointed at the girl with the bandaged hand -- who so far had been as taken as anyone else with Cas's show, quick to forget her injury. Her excited expression was washed away in a blanket of confusion as he Slime addressed her:
"Kari!" the slime said what she believed to be the girl's name, adding on -- very intentionally -- "My name is Cas! Casss!" she repeated, pointing the stalk at herself. "Kari!" she pointed back at the girl. "Cas," she added softly rounding the limb back onto herself.
"I'm sorry to bother you all, and I'm sorry, Kari for burning you earlier, but I'm actually a person just like all of you, and I'd be happy to entertain you all later, but I'd been hoping that we could establish some channel of communication!"
Cas knew there was no way in hell anyone was understanding her, but understanding wasn't the point of her lecture. She just wanted to establish the rhythym of language in her words. She couldn't communicate much of note to them at the moment, but she could at least let them know she knew how to talk.
The crowd fell silent at this, cocked brows and curious looks everywhere for a long moment before a voice shouted:
"Shere dama koro!"
And another bout of laughter took over the crowd.
The group in attendance consisted of about fifty people, entire families assembled in what was objectively a small group but a gathering which Cas guessed to be the entire population of the small town. It was a town so small that she could see down the road to the very edge of it, and it was at this end of the road that she saw an old woman with a crooked back pacing at the edge of the street. The woman had been notable for her age, as well as the fact that she was apparently the only person in the entire village who elected to skip Cas's fanfare.
It was when Cas started speaking English that the woman stopped in her tracks, whipping her head about to stare at her with an intensity that burned.
Cas felt the pressure of those old eyes from a hundred feet off, and the atmosphere only grew heavier as the woman approached on stocky steps. "Uhm.." Cas stuttered, hardly paying attention to new requests and half heartedly repeated whatever final phrases she'd managed to remember. The crowd booed, but their dissapointment was short-lived as the woman approached and a chill note took over the atmosphere. The villagers almost immediately took on a respectful posture, parting for the woman and doing everything possible to avoid engaging with the woman.
Old eyes and a displeased look were the trademark of the new figure, as grey fox ears stuck atop her head like whitling plants. "Semaro!" the woman called out in a postured voice.
The old man with the grey beard was the one to answer: "Sorena!" taking a courteous bow.
Raising her walking stick to the air, the woman spoke to the man without taking her eyes off Cas: "Narik sahira, soreti korima ven nemo seru."
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The woman's voice was authoritative, and the villagers immediately began to disperse at the proclamation. The man, with a weary look in his eye, only nodded in affirmation as he took the bucket and carefully approached towards Cas' pedestal.
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"The bucket," was what Cas called the improvised hemp bag they stuffed over her face whenever they decided to transport her. Strangely enough, Cas didn't feel at all claustrophobic in the space, feeling almost sorry when she was dumped out onto a padded carpet.
Morning became noon quickly in the spring, and already the sun was glowing through tent walls and illuminating the space with an even light. The interior was dense with artifacts. Twelve layers of carpeting covered every inch of the floor, and shelves of baubles, clay jars and various dried herbs. Along the tent walls and supporting poles, various subjects of embroidery with intricate geometric patterns hung. Looking at such designs, Cas had never noticed her lack of color vision so much.
Her slime's eye was good enough to see by, but it had no sense of color at all. Everything looked black and white. Of course, Cas had been too busy surviving off ants to really care when she'd first woken up, and by the time she had the free time to complain -- she'd surprisingly gotten used to it. Color hardly came up as a point of survival for a slime that could subsist on moss and bugs.
However, it was in this place designed with intention, and decoration, and aesthetics in mind that Cas felt her deficiency hit the hardest. Everything looked jumbled and hard to distinguish, and the powerful fragrance of dried spices and dense herbs only told her stories of how much she must've been missing.
She had no time to reminisce about her memories of color, however. The woman said something harsh to a figure behind her, and suddenly a pair of women's sandals stepped next to her, and Cas saw the bucket floating above her just a moment before the waterfall drenched over her.
Strange enough though, Cas didn't get wet, rather she grew, the water disappearing into her body -- most of it -- as she ballooned up like one of those sponge dinosaurs.
Size Upgrade: Small -> Medium!
Max HP Updated
Internally, Cas felt the eight-bit chime that hit whenever Mario ate the mushroom.
The brief moment of levity was threatened as the old woman approached closer and sat cross legged in front of her. She carried a woven satchel on her waist, setting it down to her side and letting it fall apart to reveal... another slime.
Curious, Cas thought, noticing that the other slime -- a bit larger than her, and filled with some sparkling essence -- looked, different. More curious was the old lady, as she leant down, stuck a reed straw into the top of the creature, and slurped. Her cheeks bulged with the weight of the slime material, and she leant back up, swallowing. Eyes glaring with an intense glow, she raised her hand. The air became laden with static and ozone.
Cas felt her metaphorical hackles raise. It was as if every inch of space, every molecule of air had suddenly become overloaded with energy, a calamitous potential that was teetering, balanced, on the edge of a magic pin.
The old woman, caressing strings of brilliant light at her fingertips, lowered her hand and that energy came crashing down with it.
GABOM!
It was a soft explosion. The suddenness of it jolted Cas's interior, more surprising than painful.
The woman, unperturbed, spoke: "Kara, soreti, naga koru da or nemu fira dama kari paro sere?"
Cas jumped back from her character screen as it popped up with a new tab that had no label, but which presented words in Sans-Serif:
"So, monster, do you truly speak or have I been beguiled by an idiot parrot?"
Cas, taking a moment to discard the thousand questions, and noticing the hint of impatience on the womans' features, replied carefully: "I can speak."
At that, the woman spoke. Her reply came too immediately to be a response, sounding more like a rehearsed statement. In her native language, the woman's words took on a metered, poetic rhythm, as she closed her eyes and chanted with a loud voice. Such appreciation was beyond Cas, however, who's attention was glued to the far more prosaic translation that scrolled past her screen.
"Goddess of wisdom,
Guide our words,
Let truth be spoken,
Bring peace to all."
Cas braced herself at the heavy words, and was almost disappointed at the absence of magical energy that followed. Instead, the woman simply took a deep breath, and opened her fluttering eyes, looking down at the slime and answering as if nothing had transpired.
"Oh?" the woman's eyes widened in appreciation, "and where might a creature like you learn to speak?"
"I come from another world," Cas answered briefly. "There, I learned the language. May I ask: are you the Nemorian people"
"Another world?" The woman hummed, tapping her reed on the lip of a clay bowl, clearing it of slime material. She paused when she heard the word 'Nemorian', twisting an even more suspicious squint at the slime. "You should improve your lies, monster," a harsh, chiding note in her voice, "only the outsiders have ever called us that Name... quite a strange term for an otherworlder to pick up in this desert, wouldn't you agree? Or do you mean to tell me you've somehow crossed the great expanse?"
Despite herself, Cas felt panicked at the accusation. There was something intense about this interrogation that left her choice of words feeling critical.
"I apologize for the confusion," Cas answered stoically, taking a moment to refill her air-sac, buying a few seconds to think. "I was curious about the extent of my knowledge as well. You see, on my world, we have stories of this land, even though no one has ever seen or heard of this place. I was merely asking in order to determine whether those tales were true. It's quite strange find yourself in a land only heard of in stories, you must agree."
The elder woman replied dismissively: "The worlds cast shadows upon one another as they traverse the planes... sometimes those shadows are reflected in people's dreams and imaginations. Many of my prophecies are quite uselessly meant for other worlds," the woman lightened, taking a more conversational tone. Dipping the reed into a water bowl, she swirled it about.
Cas obliged her friendliness. "I'm aware of the mechanics of worlds and shadows," Cas lied. For some reason, she felt desperately that she shouldn't show any incompetence. "However, those stories are mixed in with falsehoods. I'm making it a priority of mine to learn as much about this new world as possible."
The woman laughed. "Oh, you needn't worry about gathering more knowledge."
Cas perked. "Why is that?"
The woman, drying the reed with a cloth, paid more attention to her task than to her answer: "because you'll be killed, of course."