Waking up, actually waking up from unconsciousness instead of finding herself in media res, was a blessedly slow process. Nothing felt or sounded pressing, which gave Mila plenty of time to put herself in order and consider all her thoughts. The largest singular one being that they were indeed all her thoughts. There at the end, before the sweet release of physical shock-induced unconsciousness, everything in her noggin had felt like it was going to splinter apart around her, but now all was quiet, no more symbolic ominous creaking to be had.
Which was not to say that everything felt cohesive and right - there was an incongruousness to her mind, and that was what she began to pick at. It was weird to be feeling out one’s own mind, to trace along the jagged outline. There was a solid core down the center, tall and firm and unshakable, containing all the things she knew to be absolutely true. The size of the stuff was irrelevant, but they all held the same immutable sense of being true. She thought, therefore she was, a fact she was uncharacteristically grateful for right this moment. She was smart, albeit often foolish. She loved spicy foods. She hated bugs. She knew that what went up must come down.
Branching off of this glorious trunk of firmly known things, however, was where the edges ran rough. They were still things that Mila knew, but they lacked the unarguable weight of the other things. For each branch, swaying in the unseen dissonant breeze, there was a counterpart, two facts that she knew but that were at odds with each other too deeply to coexist.
She was a kobold, a member of a bipedal reptilian species that ere small compared to most other folks, but she was also a human, soft and squishy and monkey-derived; she was a tall human, even. Worse still, that human Mila knew that kobolds were not real, instead firmly in the realm of fantasy games and poorly written web fiction. More branches, and connecting tidbits between branches, ran up and down the length of the trunk, all demanding acknowledgement and primacy as THE truth, with no other demanding its place.
Mila traced out through the branches following that and similar threads, adding pieces together in a way that was a little too much like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with her own mind. These branch facts connected to these other branch facts, and so on. grouping what was compatible with what into different piles and merging piles as they connected.
A mental step back, once she had managed to get all those helpful edge pieces put together to see the shape of the thing, allowed her to grasp the whole after a few moments’ consideration. She was Mila, yes, but there were pieces present for more than one Mila. Thankfully, there was only the outlines for two hers, the kobold and the human, but there was not enough present for two whole, separate Milas. That was probably for the better, all things told, as she did not have to worry about a version of her fighting for control of their shared body or anything like that, but it fascinated her.
The answer was there though, in the shapes of those jigsaw pieces. A given trunk fact, a center jigsaw piece, fit into both Milas with ease, the commonalities between the two outlined shapes. There were two Milas just as there were two metaphors, now permanently mushed together. She was both jigsaw puzzle and tree.
She was pretty sure the greater metaphor fell apart there, actually, and as far as labels went for the two different hers she was dealing with, useless and nondescriptive. Thankfully her naming sense was shared, as she swiftly settled on the Mila from Fantasyland and the Mila from Scienceland - but only because ScienceFictionland sounded wrong, and because another shared chunk helpfully let her know that the actual planets both of the hers knew were called Earth.
The shape of the matter figured out, Mila’s mind dwelled on how that came to be, drudging up memories of psychology courses Scienceland Mila had taken in an ill-advised attempt to earn respect from those who had never planned to give her any by getting a graduate degree. It was like all her knowledge and understanding of everything, her cognitive schema, for one Mila had been slammed into the schema of the other. The shared parts had merged just fine, being the same concepts, but that had left the rest remaining. Those conflicts, once she had really started to notice them, had overwhelmed her during that fight with the yotels, creatures that decidedly did not exist in Scienceland, further not helped by blood loss. Scienceland Mila also had never torn into a living creature with her mouth, nor would she have been pulling herself up to her feet ready for more with her leg so mangled. But for Fantasyland Mila, that was unfortunately more the norm than not.
Fantasyland Mila was a badass, was her verdict. That was not discounting Scienceland Mila at all, but that Mila would have looked down at the kobold Mila, less than half her height, and been able to feel the badassery. All that to say, Mila mused, that she was a badass. Because she was both, a gestalt Mila of Scienceland and Fantasyland combined.
Putting that together, feeling it out, and finding it a new place within the shared trunk of knowledge, was reassuring. It felt comfortable, gave her grounding from which to make her next decision. Which, as time dragged on, needed to be turning her attention from her thoughts to her surroundings, the slight shifting down her back and further letting her know full well that she had a tail, and was very much still in a kobold body.
The oppressively hot and humid air still weighed on her chest, trying to grab hold of her lungs from the inside to choke her out, but that unfortunately familiar feeling was about the only point of discomfort. Her leg, despite having done its damnedest tug rope impression for the yotel, did not hurt her at all, not even when she moved it a little. The tingly deadness of anesthesia was not there either, which meant healing magic was pretty damn useful, a fact that she knew as a branch but she was reconfirming.
Eyelids, both the scaled, outer variety and a set of inner nictitating membranes, weighed heavy but Mila threw her mightiest will at them, managing a slow, bleary opening. Beige, so much beige, was there to meet her, and rocking her head to the side, away from the sun that stabbed at her brain, was just more beige, albeit with less backlighting. A canvas tarp was suspended above her, the blunt claws on one hand feeling below her to find another, and the walls of the tent were a heavy bug net, the soft drone outside letting Mila know just how happy she was to be on this side of the netting. It was partially her tent setup, though, so she would have been a little pissed if they had put her outside to get eaten alive.
Mila rocked her head forward, grateful once again that she did not have the cranial horns like Rora, as she knew it made using your pack as a pillow a right terror. Without them, she did not have to worry about poking holes in the waterproofing as she brought herself to sit-up, finding her golden comrade sitting, glittering in a thin beam of sunlight. The annoyingly perfect positioning was clearly not on purpose, either, as the armored woman lurched toward Mila as she sat up, concern worn clearly about her eyes and outstretched hand.
That was not the hand that got to Mila first, though, as a mighty mitt with reassuring fingers and a thick, soft fur landed on her chest, damn near blanketing her whole torso. “Easy now, darlin’. You know how my healin’ goes, no getting up too fast now,” came the comforting, smooth voice above her, as Naw-Naw carefully scooted Mila backwards a bit, to lean against the pack she had been using as a pillow. Mila popped a glance up and to her left, a smile flashing momentarily to look up at the gnoll’s face, stooped low to examine Mila with their caring dark eyes. Fantasyland Mila had never been in better hands, if asked in one of her rare moments of serious sincereness, and the worry present in their face felt good.
As her eyes swept back through the the pavilion-style tent, Mila could see that while not quite the same, everyone was worried about her. Hughestace, a water elf presumably a long way from home, stood quiet in one corner, his light frown more expression that he usually wore, and Aluca was squatting on his heels, the human gripping a book on some magic or another open with enough stress in his hand to let Mila know he hadn’t turned a page in a while. The worry suddenly felt more oppressive than the climate, squeezing in on Mila. She had never been great at getting taken care of.
Before it could get too harsh, though, her own body decided to break the ice on its move, unleashing a voracious rumble from her belly. The canvas could not actually echo, but it felt as if it did so anyway, to make a point more than anything. And that was enough to drain away some of the tension in the air for Mila, as she and several of the others fell to snickering. She managed to contain herself for a few moments, enough to get out, “Yeah, I do know how it goes. Makes me think you’re just healing me to try and evangelize, yeah? Doesn’t matter how good the vittles are, I hardly think I could stand any vows.”
The standard refrain received a laugh and good-natured pat to the chest in return, half holyperson admonishing a heathen and half doctor ensuring their patient stayed in place. “You’d make a terrible Rector, Mila. Stick to your strengths, continue to serve as a great test for those of faith,” came the rote response, the pouch of pan-fried greens and meat bits pressed into Mila’s hands undercutting any possibility for the words being taking seriously. Even then, Mila had long taken them to heart - it turned out that being a test of faith for one who followed the Goddess of Feasts really just meant eating a lot of food. The food prepared by the goddess’s followers, in turn, was typically amazing. The doctrine of no evangelizing and the fact that their holy book was largely a book of recipes helped a lot, in Mila’s eyes. Provided her with plenty of notes that she felt other deities should use for their own stuff.
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Mila’s claws picked at the flap of the pouch, trying to get it to stay open without getting grease on the hand holding the bag, already knowing there was no saving her other hand from its imminently oily doom. A thumb and forefinger darted in to snag the tip of something asparagus-adjacent, and she tossed it into her maw, reveling in the offhandedly precise coordination it demonstrated. And the food was damn good too, easing her stomach’s protests slightly, although it was still anticipating plenty more.
She swallowed her first bite and breathed out to look back across the group. “Sorry about that, y’all. Didn’t mean to worry you.” While Naw-Naw’s accent was the strongest of any of theirs, enough that Mila reckoned they should be finding a weapon for it, she could still hear the traces of one not too dissimilar in her own voice, as hard as she tried to stomp it out. Not that she would turn her back on some of the vocabulary though - y’all might have started down here, but as far as Mila was concerned, y’all was for everyone.
“Are you sure you’re alright? Your leg wasn’t that bad. Did you hit your head or anything?” Rora asked, not buying the words as she swayed forward and back, unsure how to help. Despite their similar backgrounds, Rora’s accent was neutral when using the human tongue. Mila frowned as she fished out a piece of meat - gristly and tough, the chunks were not supposed to be eaten, instead helping to flavor and preserve the vegetables, but Mila’s teeth were this side of a shark’s, so the morsel was good, if mildly more work. The frown was in spite of that, weighing the dissonance. The injury had been horrific for Scienceland, a maiming that would have put her out for weeks, maybe months or longer, depending. But Rora was right, because she had stood up, uncomfortable as that had been, and was now utterly fine, ignoring some snackiness that had come with the eating-aligned divine healing.
Food swallowed down, Mila did her best to lie by telling the truth. “Nothing rattled too badly, feels like. I dunno what caused it. If I start getting belligerent, though….” She trailed off, wondering what would have caused a whole mind to get dumped into this body, not sure she liked any given answer.
“… then we’ll know you’re fine?” Came the jab from the corner, Aluca now relaxing enough to get into his book properly. He and Mila were constantly verbally scrapping, which maybe was not the healthiest form of friendship, but it was their friendship, so critics could stuff it. That Mila and Naw-Naw also joked with each other using semi-barbed jabs did have the pink kobold momentarily consider that maybe it was a her thing, but she moved away from that thought before it could take root.
Instead, Mila just smiled wide and gave a hearty, “Damn straight,” before chomping into the next bite. Hughestace did not talk much, a fellow who preferred listening to speaking, but the silent chuckle that he gave was enough to signal that, Mila seemed fine to him too, added to Naw-Naw’s contented hum. The temporary patient looked straight ahead and it looked like Rora wanted to say something, but the words did not come. Mila just gave her a small smile and offered the opening of the pouch, allowing her to carefully extract a snack for herself, although just one.
Mila kept munching, a few questions coming through between the exercise of determining if each vegetable she pulled out was Fantasyland-exclusive. About half had an immediate Scienceland counterpart, the other half she did not know.
Her going down at the end of the fight had not put anyone else in danger, a bone-deep relief since her job within the group was to keep the others safe by being the most visible target. She’d been out for an hour or so, which was longer than should be, explaining Rora’s extra concern. The big question, though, was one she had trouble getting out - whether the yotels were responsible for the missing group of hunters they were out in the sticks looking for.
Hughestace gave his short, clipped analysis rapidly. “Large pack too far south, but they were half-starved. No den near, either. No campsites.” The elf was a long way from home, and the way each word softly rolled into the next carried with it whispers of a far-away, exotic land. Or, more accurately, some unknown town or city by the coast that nobody else knew of, since none of the group could place the accent and the man was unreasonably tight-lipped about where he came from, not that anyone spoke of where they grew up much. For some reason, adventuring did not lend itself to those who made annual trips back home for the holidays.
His findings meant that the job was still on, though. Most folk that had to leave the safety of civilization behind and move through the unwelcoming wilderness did so with some combination of slow caution, tools to disincentivize wildlife, or hired muscle, the weight of their pockets allowing. The Bletam boys made their living as trap hunters, and managed a combination of all three typically, if one counted their own experience in a brawl as having muscle enough to swing a stick, and Mila knew that they were good at their jobs and smart enough to stick to their jobs - her group had traveled with them before.
But they were supposed to have returned from their last hunt two weeks and change ago, so they’d been sent out to find out why, do what they could to fix whatever situation they found. They being the group, of course, the kind of hired muscle that was less concerned about caution and not thrashing whatever came to call. Adventurers in action, although decent folk said it in the same way they said ‘foolishness’. Mila had a lot to say about the same so-called decent folk, though, particularly when they came offering coin for jobs they could not handle on their own. That she was ready to give those opinions at the drop of a hat likely played a part in why she rarely was present for the actual job negotiating.
They had yet to hit the end of the Bletams’ range, but they had also found no sign that they had started making their way back home either. Given that several of the hunters had families, it did not seem likely that they had scarpered off to some other city-state either, much less the supplies to do so. All together, things were looking to be more of a recovery than a rescue, and that hung over everyone. Their jobs were rarely pleasant, even before factoring in the gods-forsaken environment, but the general bleakness for this particular one was rough.
Nobody could let that drag them down too much though, not yet. Only after they were back and away from the quietly ominous danger of the wilderness could they really allow themselves to feel it, but for all that hard-eyed, steel-souled bullshit they each had drilled in to them, breaking their temporary camp was still a bit slower than usual, with Mila worst of all of them. Fantasyland had hardened Mila to this kind of shit, to an extent, but Scienceland had nothing like it where she had lived in it, even if when she closed her eyes both halves told her that this overall environment was largely the same, some level of ‘home’. It did not help that the others each casually used small bits of magic offhandedly, which kept catching and holding Mila’s attention, even if had one asked the kobold 24 hours ago, she would have waved off magic and instead boasted that she had no need for the stuff herself.
Mila from Scienceland would have jumped at the chance to use magic, because obviously, it’s magic, so the fact that she was the one person here without magic herself made the wonder all the greater. That the little tricks seemed largely logistics-centered did not dampen her sudden interest in Hughestace creating water to wash off the canvas and Rora imbuing the fabric with silvery moonlight for a moment, long enough for the water to bead up and sprint off, leaving dry and (with Mila’s help) folded fabric in its wake. Naw-Naw offered up a quiet prayer that blessed the remaining food, keeping it safe and fresh as she repackaged it, and Aluca gestured out a diagram rapidly, some odds and ends in his hand as he dropped magic across all of them at once - a sound barrier of some kind that Mila could almost just hear, that she recognized as a field that would do its best to turn away the nibblier bugs.
She had items imbued with magic, of course - they all did, all agreeing with the need to reinvest in themselves from the start of their joint venture, but no weaving magics from the esoteric or the divine for her. Yet that fantasyland fact did not quite sit well with what she now knew of Scienceland, and not just because of a small patch of jealousy she now had that she’d have to sate by looking into magic a bit more later on. The way the fight with the yotels had gone was anything but well, yet so much of how she had felt, in the little spaces between the panic, had felt… not quite right with how she had experienced Scienceland. Obviously not to the point of conjuring water from nothingness, which either played hell with conservation of mass or had some alien, hyper-efficient reverse electrolysis at play, but it had not felt normal either. She had been moving fast as lightning and knew that that was normal for her, but also knew that moving that fast was not, in fact, all that normal. And not in the way that a marathon runner could run laps around Joe Normal kinds of not normal, either,
Her lingering gaze on Rora as the other kobold once more spun up the faintly existent plates of distilled moonlight to sit over her armor, while sitting beneath the forest canopy-filtered afternoon sun, was introspective as she weighed that dissonance. She was shaken from her contemplations by the hearty thump of the golden kobold’s tail, a good bit heartier and much less of its own mind than Mila’s, smacked the ground, the armored woman not even rocking from the movement. A glance to her face had Mila noting the slightly puffed up scales across her cheekbones, the reptilian equivalent of a blush, and she realized just how hard she had been staring. Before she could mutter an apology for it, though, Rora stepped forward and slipped into the pitched, chirping native tongue to ask, “Are you sure you are alright? I….”
She trailed off, but Mila flashed her a wide grin, much more teeth than most would be comfortable facing point blank. Rora was in the minority that did not flinch, even if she did not look reassured in Mila’s condition. “You saved my scales in that fight, is all. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t be alright, but here I stand, tall and proud!” That at least got the concern in Rora’s eyes to fade a bit, even if it was accompanied by a soft snort, Mila being a couple inches under Rora’s height, ignoring the horns, and the both of them half the height of any of the others.
“Your work making up for tallness with pride is impressive indeed, o mighty one,” Rora intoned, faux seriousness audible but her yellow-golden eyes bore their gaze into the pools of venom green that Mila sported, trying to dig something up through the bluster, unsure of… something. “You’ve just been….”
Another wander off into silence, Rora at a loss for words, which was rather unusual even if she trended towards being much more thoughtful than Mila’s problem of constantly speaking off the cuff. Mila stepped into the gap. “I got my bell rung, yeah. But it’s hardly the first time, and I’m already feeling better. Now let’s start beating feet, before the others get grumpy. Last thing we need is them getting in trouble without us there to save their mammal asses, right?” She broke out into her harsh gut-laughter, if only because they had all learned that lesson several years ago and had come through intact. A small, calloused hand snaked out to pat Rora’s shoulder reassuringly though, as Mila started to move past, her tail coming up as she walked on to slide against the Rora’s hip. No matter what was going on with Mila, she was more than ready to do her job, and if that meant gutting a few dozen more yotels, so be it