--==Chapter 36: Are You My Shadow?--==

I was hardly surprised when I found myself back on the stone ship in the ether.

"Fucking Denis," I said as I relaxed into the deck chair. "That was a dick move."

Sori didn't answer, and after a second, I began to look around for him.

"Sori?" I called. My voice sounded flat. There was nothing to reflect my voice back, nothing except a silently raging ocean. There was also no response from the eldritch eye.

"Did I bring myself here?" I wondered out loud. If I ever did get my voice back, keeping my inner monologue from becoming spoken thoughts would be a challenge.

I started to look around. I wasn't confident that Sori wasn't playing some kind of joke. He was probably hiding, ready to pop out for a jump scare.

When I didn't find him hiding behind one of the trees or inside the cottage/cabin, I walked to the one part of the ship I hadn't investigated yet. I couldn't decide if it was a storm cellar or a cargo hold. I was inarguably on a ship, but the entrance was two wooden doors set at an angle into the stone deck like a storm cellar. Either way, I hadn't had a chance to check it out yet. I'd had more immediate concerns whenever I'd been here before, so I hadn't done much more than surface-level exploration.

Grabbing each of the wooden doors by their handles, I pulled them open suddenly, fully expecting Sori to come shooting out.

"Boo!" I said as I did. He wasn't there, though, and my eyes narrowed in suspicion. The stone stairs leading into the ship were dark and unlit.

As inexplicably familiar as the ship felt, I still had a chill of unease when looking down into the black depths of the hold. Maybe there was a flashlight or lamp or something in the cottage.

I turned away from the stairs—and nearly jumped out of my skin.

A silhouette was walking silently toward the front of the ship. It was a corporeal shadow, an empty void that somehow managed to have depth.

"Shit!" I swore, surprised.

The Shadow didn't react and just kept walking.

"Are you, it? Are you what they've all been looking for?"

I couldn't tell if it could hear me. Its movements were strange, eerie. It moved like it was stop motion or lagging. The strobing only made it creepier and the whole thing more surreal.

I watched as it extended its arm and spun in a slow half-circle so it faced my direction. It stood that way for a moment, its hand still partially extended, almost as if expecting a handshake.

I wasn't close enough to accept it, and it didn't quite seem to be looking at me. I started to approach anyway, cautious but curious. Before I could get close, it turned and continued forward. After a few steps, it began interacting with something I couldn't see. Or maybe it was miming something. It very nearly reminded me of R2D2's recording of Princess Leia. The shadow bent over and seemed to be manipulating something. As it did, my curiosity got the better of me, and I reached out to touch it.

If this was my Shadow, maybe I just needed to claim it. Maybe there was needle and thread in the cottage that I could use to sew it on like Peter Pan. I decided I'd look for superglue first. It seemed like it'd hurt to sew something to my feet.

As I touched the shadow, it spun, startled.

I'd surprised it.

It backed up a step but seemed to run into something invisible.

"Oh, hey," I said awkwardly. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. Are you my-"

Stolen story; please report.

The shadow took off running, sprinting toward the Zen Garden.

"Ok..." I said, watching. "We're on a ship. Where does it think it's going?"

It grabbed the rake with void-black fingers and turned back toward me.

"Oh. Shit." I said as the Shadow hefted the rake over its shoulder and began to run at me.

Unsure of what else to do—and lacking a weapon of my own—I ran too.

"Hey, wait, that rake's for peaceful meditation!" I shouted over my shoulder as I ran for one of the tree-masts. The Shadow's movements were even more jittery than before. It flickered as it ran, only for it to vanish and reappear several steps back. Even still, it was fast. Its stride was long, and its feet often didn't even seem to hit the deck.

"Can we talk about this? Why are you attacking me? Are you my Shadow or not?" I was pretty sure it was my Shadow. If there were two such shadows, people wouldn't be as obsessed with mine as they were.

It was tempting to think the shadow had been trapped in the cellar and released when I opened the hatch, except that the door hadn't been locked or barred. Besides, Sori had said he'd snooped around. If he'd found the Shadow in the cellar, he would have mentioned it. Probably. You never could tell with the insane bobble.

The Shadow didn't answer my questions. Instead, it aggressively swung the rake at me.

"If you aren't my Shadow, are you the one who took my Shadow?" I didn't really expect an answer at this point, but maybe I'd get some kind of reaction from it.

Then again, Sori had said he had to work to translate me even here. Maybe my questions weren't as intelligible as I thought.

Its flickering movement made it difficult to predict, and I retreated from the tree. I hurried back toward the cottage, hoping I might find something to use as a weapon. If nothing else, I could at least bar the door—though that seemed a little cowardly. Likely, this thing was either my Shadow, or someone using my Shadow. I needed it to save Jessica and Alice from a nightmare future, and to wake up Maebe. I also needed it if I wanted my lost memories back.

Running and hiding wouldn't help with that. At the same time, that thing wasn't holding back with its attacks. This was some kind of spirit or dream world, and I wasn't sure what would happen if I got injured or killed here, but probably nothing good.

Before I could get to the cottage, the Shadow appeared in front of me, already swinging. I dove to the ground beneath its swing and checked behind me to be sure there weren't two. It was still alone. As I watched, it flickered and slid, its form gliding back to a position behind where I'd just been.

I backed up to the ship's railing. The Shadow had more or less cut me off from any cover, especially if it could teleport like that, even briefly.

"Alright, let's just calm down," I said, trying to make my voice soft so my intent would come across even if my words were gibberish.

The shadow advanced on me, holding the rake parallel to the ground at its waist. I prepared to juke to the side when it attacked.

It was too quick, suddenly blinking in front of me, its weapon drawn back to swing.

I grabbed the rake before the Shadow could swing it at me, and we began wrestling for control. I had a height advantage on the Shadow and wrenched the rake to my right.

The Shadow didn't let go and was flung against the rail, knocking its legs out from under it. Flailing, it let go of the rake and scrabbled for a grip on the railing.

It failed. Its momentum carried it past the rail and careening over the side.

"Shit. What the fuck," I swore as I looked down the side of the ship. The shadow had disappeared into the teal waves of plasma that broke against the hull. I set down the rake, leaning it against the rail, and sighed.

"Hopefully, that won't make getting the Shad-"

Something slammed into my back. I didn't even manage to swear before flipping forward over the rail. By pure luck, my hand grabbed one of the posts supporting the railing, and I slammed into the rocky cliff face of the hull.

I hung over the churning waves, dangling from one hand, and panted. In an exchange of fates, I looked up and saw the Shadow looking down at me.

I hadn't actually seen it hit the ocean, I just hadn't imagined any other result to such a fall. I didn't know how it had gotten back up— unless it managed its glitching teleport like before. If that was the case, it didn't seem like it was being dragged back to its previous position like before.

The Shadow stood watching me for a few seconds, and I could only stare back, waiting for it to start kicking at my fingers or swinging the rake at me.

It did neither. Instead, it turned and walked back toward the front of the ship and out of my line of sight. I swung my other arm up so I had two hands holding onto the post and got my knees between myself and the hull to leverage myself up higher.

As I peered over the deck of the ship, I saw the Shadow miming in thin air again, but the why eluded me. I moved a hand to the railing and was about to pull myself up when, in the span of a blink, the Shadow was in front of me again. It grabbed the rake and swung it at my head.

In surprised panic, my hands slipped from the railing, and I began to fall toward the violent plasma churning below. Desperately, I tried to remember what it felt like when Sori sent my mind back to my body. I didn't know what would happen if I hit those waves, but I doubted that I'd just appear back aboard the ship like the Shadow.

A heartbeat before I struck, my mind felt a tug, and my awareness slid into unconsciousness, leaving the ether behind.

--==