Ami

“We’ve been going in circles!” I yelled at the bearded jackass.

“We’re not going in circles–” He defended, but I didn’t give him any time to make excuses.

“Oh yeah, smart guy? I’ve seen that weird moss-cactus-thing three times now! Why am I even following you around?! You’re clearly lost!” I interrupted.

He walked over to look at it and then over to a nearby tunnel entrance. “If we’re going in circles, then why are my tunnel marks missing?”

“Excuse me?”

He ran his finger along an empty spot on the wall. “If we were going in circles, there should be a long scrape mark right here. Besides, there are other differences…” He pointed across the cave. “That outcropping pattern looks a lot like one from two chambers ago, whereas the formation next to it looks like one we passed by five or so ago.”

“So what are you saying exactly?”

“I’m saying that we’re not going in circles, it’s similar but not the same.”

I grinned wickedly. “So you mean The Great Beardo doesn’t have all the answers?!”

He stopped in his tracks, closed his eyes, and then after about ten seconds opened them again.

“My name is Grigory, is it really so difficult for you to remember?”

My grin widened. “I’m sorry I didn’t quite catch that, could you say again?”

“So it’ll be like–”

I cupped my hands around my ears. “Huh?! What was that?!”

He fixed me with a glare and then walked into the next tunnel.

But he wasn’t going to get off that easy.

I slid up next to him, my hands still cupped. “Hey! What’s wrong?! I just asked you what you said!” He didn’t even acknowledge me, so leaned over so I was cleanly in view as he walked. “Come on, don’t be such a–”

Suddenly he stopped, and the air around the two of us shifted.

He turned, causing me to take a step back.

“I have only so much patience to spare for your immature antics, stop acting like a child.”

I pushed a clump of hair from my bangs out of my face again. “What are you, my dad?”

He took a deep breath and then continued walking. “If I were your father I’d try for a third reincarnation.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but I was at a loss for words, so I silently jogged to catch up instead.

Several hours passed walking, with no way out in sight.

“How much more of this are we going to have to put up with?!” I complained.

“I was planning on going until I was tired, but I suppose now’s as good a time as any.” Beardo replied, clearing a spot to set up ‘camp’.

My fist clenched. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He looked up at me with a cocked eyebrow. “Pardon?”

“You just said that you weren’t tired, do you want to keep going…? Or better yet, how about you let me blow off some steam by caving your head in?!”

“Mental exhaustion is a perfectly valid type of exhaustion.”

My jaw clenched. “But you’re not suffering right?! So is it because I’m a woman, or because Asians are ‘too dainty’?!”

He stopped what he was doing and looked at me completely baffled. “You didn’t touch any weird plants on your way through the tunnels did you?”

It felt like my eyeballs would bulge out of my head. “Of course not you dumbass! And don’t change the subject!”

He shook his head. “You know that you’re a superhuman being right? That question you asked me doesn’t even make any sense. You kicked apart solid stone if you remember.”

“Okay mister pinnacle-of-virtuous-thought, why is it that you supposedly don’t feel as tired as I do then?”

“I’ve spent many years training myself to endure all sorts of pain and fatigue, I just doubted you had as well.”

I stared at him, completely stunned… that was definitely not what I was expecting him to say.

After a moment, I had my fury back. “Well, how do you figu–”

He didn’t raise his volume, but somehow still stopped me cold mid-sentence. “I didn’t mean anything by it, sometimes it’s hard for me to remember that people have different values on concepts than I do. I’ve long since made peace with the idea that I may never become as durable as my first life, so I just take things as they come, and for that reason I don’t remember that saying people can’t continue will sometimes hurt their pride. I’m sorry if that, or any other insult felt implied in my words.”

Once again I was speechless, but this time, the fury didn’t come back.

I just stood there, trying and failing to put my thoughts to words.

I had a whirlwind of examples of his previous behavior I wanted to point out and say ‘but what about this?!’, yet he was so sincere I found it difficult to choose one that felt good enough to actually mention.

He narrowed his eyebrows in concern. “Are you feeling okay?” He put the back of his hand on my forehead. “Your head is a little warm.”

I pushed his hand off of me. “I’m fine you jackass! I’m just thinking!”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

He exhaled deeply. “I’ll leave you to your thoughts then.”

And with that, he continued clearing the area from where he left off.

And I was left… just standing there.

----------------------------------------

Clarissa

It was the most delicious stale bread I had ever tasted.

I wasn’t expecting much when Klas the master-at-arms had told me I could have a ration as a token of goodwill, especially when he said stuff like sugar was super dangerous to harvest, but still I found myself sobbing tears of joy.

I could finally get the taste of coconuts out of my mouth!

“Woah are you okay?” Galth asked.

“I’ve never been better Galth.” I replied.

He looked at me with some skepticism, but said nothing further.

I folded my arms behind my head and leaned back.

Now that I finally had a quiet moment, my mind wandered to a strange occurrence from the very beginning of my journey… the overlapping text that appeared right after the blinding light.

I decided that my first task was to lay out what I knew so far.

The most obvious thing was that I didn’t recognize any of it, even in passing… which is to say, it matched no script that I’ve ever seen in my life.

After all, I’d remember.

Sure some of them looked familiar, but there’s no guarantee that those biases are correct, so I must assume I know nothing about this language.

I gently clacked my teeth together before sitting back up. “Galth, do you guys have any spare paper?”

Galth looked at me funny. “No…? Did you find some somewhere?”

I shook my head. “No such luck. That said, how have you been marking things down?”

He made some vague gestures with his hands. “We found a white rock that makes an erasable mark which we use on thin sheets of rock or wood.”

I nodded. “Slates huh? Fair enough.” An oldy, but a goody. “Can I use some of this white rock?”

He rolled his head back and forth in a very human looking gesture of indecision. “We’d have to ask Klas, I don’t have the authority to answer.”

So, ask Klas we did.

Basically it came down to ‘I’ll give you one stick, if you want more you’ll have to get your own.’

I was a bit annoyed, but didn’t argue. They probably used this stuff for all their ‘paperwork’ after all.

I took my stick of ‘chalk’ and peeled some bark off of a nearby palm tree, before writing down some of the symbols I’d seen during that incredibly painful opening experience.

I’ll call the event itself ‘The Vision’ for ease.

In The Vision, I saw a few particular sets of symbols over and over, and my cryptologist instincts told me immediately that it was important somehow, so those patterns are the ones I decided to copy down.

The first most common one looked like a cross between an ampersand and an at-symbol, followed by two sets of the same squiggly lines. What came immediately after this pattern varied greatly, but the pattern itself was usually the first part of a line if it appeared at all.

The second most common was a symbol which looked like the outline of a yin-yang with the two halves facing away from each other instead of forming a circle, followed by a chevron which pointed to the right, and then another of the first symbol again. Interestingly enough, this pattern never came first on a line, it also seemed like what did come first on the line was never the same.

Other than those specific patterns was probably the strangest part of it, which was that the length of each line was different, sometimes ending after a short phrase, sometimes ending after a long collection of characters.

But then again, that might just be the preferences of whoever wrote it.

Who knows?

At this point, I had my theories about what this meant, but I had already decided to remove my biases from the equation as much as possible, so I put it in the back of my mind for the time being.

Instead, I decided to write down a few more phrases which I found particularly interesting to see what they looked like at different angles.

That’s when something unexpected happened.

I wrote down a whole line which caught my eye because it included the second most common phrase, and as soon as I finished it, the piece of bark was suddenly soaking wet.

I stared at it in astonishment for a good minute or two, before I ripped off another chunk to see if I could do it again.

Sure enough, as soon as I finished the phrase, it caused the bark to become soaking wet once again.

Without any further hesitation, I charged into Klas’ tent. “Klas! I don’t know how, but these strips of bark became wet!”

He was busy wiping his mouth on the inside of his shirt while a rancid smell permeated the room as I entered. The declaration only served to cause his eyebrows to narrow. “Did you throw them into the lake?”

I facepalmed. “Right, that’s on me, hold on a second.”

I grabbed one more chunk of bark before showing him the phrase that suddenly made yet another piece of wood skin become dripping wet.

That did it.

The conversation immediately became a negotiation on what it would take to research The Vision further, and to teach the Kalkithu what I learned.

I asked for a slate about the span of my arms and an unlimited number of chalk sticks… after all, what sort of a teacher would I be without a chalkboard?