Her expression appearing almost deranged with excitement, Kaltyr stood up and took a fresh look at the world with her new and improved eyes.
“Well,” Kaltyr thought to herself, “it’s not my eyes, but a new sense entirely.”
All around Kaltyr flowed the ever-present magical essence which the guidebook spoke of. As though a visible gas, magical essence could be “seen” everywhere, including the ground, the grass, the trees, and the air itself. Everywhere…except in her own body.
“Which is probably why those lines—my meridians—were gray and dull.” She looked up at the sky, seeing that it had changed color again. “That dark shade of purple gives me a bad feeling. For my own safety, I probably shouldn’t be standing around inspecting my new ability so much.”
So she took off, the two fish still in her left hand. However, despite maintaining the idea that she should focus on getting back to the safe glade she awoke within, Kaltyr couldn’t help but to take in the magnificent view of the forest around her, as her Magic Sense added another layer to the world.
The beauty of the vegetation before couldn’t compare to what she saw after leveling her new sense, because although it was very weak, everything just seemed to have a charming, blue sparkle to it on top of being visually stunning.
“And thankfully, the ambient magical essence doesn’t block my vision in any way, because I’m more feeling it than seeing it.” She thought as she jogged.
Some time passed as Kaltyr followed her memory and the marks she cut into the trees until the glade was finally in sight, causing the lass to release a sigh of relief.
“My first positive sigh, actually.” Kaltyr mused.
She entered the small glade with a tired strut, her knees giving out as soon as she reached the center.
“Oh, yeah…” Kaltyr mumbled, hearing the grumbling of her belly. “I need to eat.” She lifted her fistful of fish and looked at it with a blank expression. Before she caught them, they seemed big enough to make up for a at least a single meal, but now…
“I can’t help but to feel disappointed. I might really have to turn to eating nuts and berries…”
On her way to the safe zone, Kaltyr had brainstormed ideas on how to tell whether any given vegetation would harm her once she ingested it. At first, she could only think of experimenting by eating a tiny bit of one seed or fruit at a time, then waiting a day for something to happen. With that inefficient method, she imagined it was possible to find two or three edible plants before anything happened, if she was lucky. However, a sense of danger pervaded her mind every time she even considered tasting any vegetation. What if everything is toxic?
Yet, she eventually realized that she didn’t have to be the one to taste test Nature’s Trail Mix, because she could have the local fauna do it! Even if Kaltyr couldn’t catch anything to force feed berries, she could just leave her assortment of seemingly edible plants outside the clearing for the surrounding critters to munch on. Then, she could check for which ones weren’t eaten!
“Of course, the animals that eat them might just be resistant to whatever poison is within the food, but lowering my chances of dying by any percentage is good.”
Kaltyr shrugged, satisfied with how much she lowered her odds of suffering from an accidental poisoning. Then, she spent a few minutes gathering large leaves and heavy rocks before separating her assortment of plants by type.
“For now, I'll designate north as the direction the sky’s color receded. So…”
Kaltyr went on to place the berries atop a leaf, which she then weighed down with a rock, at the north end of the clearing. She repeated the process with the seeds at the east end, plant roots at the south end, and nuts at the west end. If everything went well, everything would be gone the next morning, eaten by the local fauna. With any luck, that would mean that the plants were safe to consume.
Just having set down the last possibly edible plants in the west, Kaltyr stood up and stretched her arms, only to flinch from the pain in her right hand.
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“Oh, yeah…where was that bottle?”
Remembering her hypothesis about the bottle without instructions, the lass scanned the clearing for a moment before noticing a glimmer of light in a spot near the center. She crossed her fingers, hoping that it was really a healing potion of sorts, then moved toward it.
“Please, please, please…”
After being injured by a simple rabbit, Kaltyr gained a newfound appreciation for medical supplies. If the rabbit could so easily put one of her hands out of commission, she didn’t want to have to face one of the beasts that The System Wishes You Good Fucking Luck hinted at. For all she knew, in her current state, one run-in with any aggressive entity was all it would take for a “game over”.
Kaltyr crouched and picked up the mysterious bottle, then sloshed it around a few times in case it had a reaction like soda.
“Another thing I remember from out of nowhere…”
She shook the memory of delicious, carbonated, sugary drinks out of her head before using her thumb to put pressure on the bottle’s cork…at which point, Kaltyr noticed that something wasn’t right. She frowned, then put the bottle back down before examining her left hand’s fingers, sure that she was missing something.
“Didn’t I cut myself with the knife back when I had the seizure that gave me Magic Sense?”
The lass inspected her fingers for another moment before determining that her memory was correct. She had cut her pointer finger, but…it was healed, now. She tried thinking back to when that could have happened, but nothing came to mind. She had accidentally pricked her finger, then forgotten about it. Maybe it had healed quickly? She really had no way of telling.
“If that’s the case…” Kaltyr mumbled, before gingerly opening and looking at her right hand, “will this one heal too?”
The wound neither bled nor hurt nearly as much as when she first got it—a possible sign that her healing capabilities were more powerful than she had imagined. However, it could also have just been the case that she was imagining the difference, and that how she thought her hand felt was how it had always felt since the bite.
“This is too damn weird.”
Kaltyr closed her eyes and massaged her face for a few seconds before releasing a breath through her nose and standing up from her crouched position. She ignored the bottle of mystery liquid, choosing to wait until the next day before opening the bottle in case her healing factor was simply stronger than what she first assumed.
“Next on my to-do list is…” The girl mentally rifled through the list of achievements she had garnered, crossing off finding food and water. “I need to build a fire to cook these fish, then maybe build some kind of shelter?”
Kaltyr raised an eyebrow in an inquisitive expression, then focused her attention on a few details of her environment that she had neglected before. “The temperature here is pretty good. At the very least, I won’t be cold, so I doubt I’ll need blankets or anything.” Then, she looked up at what little bit of the violet sky she could see—since the clearing she stood within was so small, and the surrounding trees so tall. “I don’t see any clouds, nor do I smell…ozone…” Another word she understood that came from nowhere. “But I can’t be sure that rain won’t suddenly pour on me. I guess if I have the energy after building a fire, I’ll need to figure out some way to build a shelter.”
She clapped her hands together, regretted it after her wounded hand began throbbing, and got to work. Kaltyr first gathered all manners of twigs, sticks, and dry leaves from around her safe zone until she had a pile as wide as her arm’s length and tall enough to reach her knees. The effort took quite a few minutes and dirtied her clothing, but was absolutely necessary, as she didn’t know how quickly a fire would burn through her kindling. Thus, it was the safest option to just gather as much as she could.
The next step was to make a decision.
“Do I use the matches to start a fire without any trouble, or…” Kaltyr dug through her pockets until she held the flint and steel she was provided with. “Or, do I figure out how to use this? On one hand, there are only so many matches, so I should definitely learn how to make fire without them, but on the other…”
A moment passed as she counted the matches.
“There are twenty matches, which might be a lot. It might be fine to use one for tonight and learn how to use the flint and steel tomorrow. So, which is it?”
The girl sat down with her arms crossed and head tilted to the side, trying to analyze all possible pros and cons of each decision she could make. As she did so, the world did not wait for her.
Animals continued to rustle leaves in the underbrush, birds and insects continued chirping, the wind still caressed her face, and the sky's light warmed her skin.
“This is stupid.” Kaltyr spat, irritated at herself. “I’m burning daylight when I should be burning fish!”
The girl quickly made her choice and put away the flint and steel. The dark purple hue of the sky still gave her quite the ominous impression, and she didn’t want to later discover that her impression had been spot on only to not have a fire with her when she faced whatever tribulation came her way.
Kaltyr took one of the matches into her good hand and held the box they came within between her knees.
“Abra…” she mumbled, positioning the match against the side of the box she knew would light it, “cadabra!”
Her hand flashed across the matchbox in an instant, followed by the scratchy, raspy sound the friction produced. Ignoring the “new” word in her vocabulary, Kaltyr held up the burning matchstick, staring at it in wonder, fully aware of how precious fire was as a resource in wilderness survival. Now she had food, water, and a fire. Things were really starting to look up as her innate survival instincts were slowly being brought to the surface.
Then, the sky turned off, plunging the world in darkness.