Tsuki had slowly left the temple by using a stick in the guise of a clutch. She guessed that she had slept for a long time after being attacked and saved since the dark night sky was beginning to be tainted by the morning sun. The sky itself was cloudy and hid the dissipating stars.

Tsuki lifted her hand toward this unlit sky so that she could grab a cloud and tear it off. Her hand landed on a thin dark cloud that covered most of the sky and tried to take a part of its large body not unlike someone breaking a tasty galette. Tear, break, and remove from the sky the fluffy meal so that she could say: "Look Alice, all those shiny stars you love so much." But just before she felt like she could reach the cloudy galette, a smaller cloud, more defined and lower than the other, drifted quickly toward her outstretched hand. Like a stone spear thrown by a hero, it threatened to pierce her delicate hand. She coiled back at the danger, one day she'll return for the tasty fluffy galette in the sky.

All of it was just her imagination fed by an insatiable hunger that was running wild. She had only eaten a few berries and maybe a few crumbs of a cookie she had thrown.

She suddenly threw her knife in the sky “If you think my knife forged in the abyss of the damned will lose to your messy spear, then sit down and be amazed when I feast on your throne of clouds!”

The knife landed on a rock, without having reached the fast-moving cloud, and exploded in a cloud of darkness. The mist return to her wrist and formed a brown cloth that was then pulled on to transform it back into the knife which was instantly thrown at a tree. She had seen a bird fly by and tried to kill it, but because she was messing around, the bird/food was already far away.

“It was all just a distraction…You win this time glorious hero of stone. You win this time…” lamented Tsuki.

She needed to eat something and more importantly, she had to find a new source of water. The path of decay she was following had yet to even come across a small puddle of water. But with that many clouds in the sky, it might start to rain in a bit…

For now, Tsuki needed to make an important choice. Whether she finds somewhere to sleep or kept following the path and hoping there were enough clouds to cover most sunray which would leave marks on her skin. She was Tsuki and Alice was the responsible one. Thus, Tsuki decided to keep walking for some time, forgetting she once wanted to take good care of Alice’s body. More so with the wound on her leg. It did hurt a lot, but Tsuki was thick-headed. Also, she felt strangely calm while clutching the leaf necklace at her neck.

“Sinorous,” Tsuki said toward the necklace. “That was a bird. A bird. Food. Tasty. Ha right, Alice didn’t like it when I knocked one out with a rock. It might be a good thing I missed.”

For some reason, she felt as if the necklace was her child and she needed to educate it well. It was weird to look at from the outside. A wounded girl in a misty forest telling stories of someone she cared for to a blue necklace.

“Sinorous,” she said. “I can’t wait to show you to Alice! She always wanted a pet. She had a cat once, but I think it died? A spider said in a cute voice: ‘This is shameful for what happened to the cat. The crows wouldn’t stop squawking what they did to it’. I should have asked what they did. Well, not like I care about that cat anyway. Wait! I’ll care about you. Ok? It was just an old and senile cat but you’re young and…cold?”

Tsuki wasn’t acting like someone normal in this situation. There was only one sentence she hadn’t forgotten from her past. Most likely from her father. “Even if the nights are dark and cold, you need to put up with it and face everything with a smile so that tomorrow the sun can shine bright.”

Putting up with the worst of life she did… The wound, the insult, the beating, the lying, the manipulation, the abuse, the violence… She did put up with the disgusting and filthy facets of life with a smile. All so her only treasure might return a smile back. Her sun, her everything. Putting up a front of smiles and joys while the pain of life tore her apart. And here she was now, forcing like always a façade of smiles. Just like the moon high above which attempt to mimic the glowing sun while lacking all its warmth and truth.

She put up with the unjust and scary situation she was in, waiting for the sun to raise itself above a cloudy sky… Maybe if it did rain, she might be able to cry without Alice able to see it.

❀

She came across an old hunter lodge which had been reclaimed by nature some years ago. Her body was screaming for rest also, her mind was becoming slow from her hunger and thirst. She felt as if the edge of her vision was twisting around. Dead branches would swirl, orange leaves would close like the wings of butterflies, wildflowers would have their colors radiated, the dark clouds would have dark lightning move between them, and the crack in the cabin plank would morph around the wood. It might have been the berries’ fault since she ate a few of them while walking, or it might have simply been her tiredness.

The lodge was furnished with a fireplace, a table on its side, and an oven that had fused with a tree that blocked most of the cabin. There was a broken wooden door at the back of the cabin which Tsuki prop a bit and the door completely broke down on the ground. The newly made opening led to a small garden in disarray with a pound of running water. It looked too serene to have ever been a simple hunting cabin. But there weren’t any traces left of who might have lived inside.

Tsuki went to the pound in the blink of an eye and drank large gulps of the cold water. Droplets fell from her lips, clinging to her skin while giving a cooling sensation, as she used her hands like a cup. She didn’t care about the history this place might have had; it only boosted her conviction that people similar to her should still exist somewhere in this world.

She managed to obtain water again, but what she really lacked was a nice meal. The garden itself only consisted of tall grass and flowers. No food in sight. She’ll have to try harder to get her fill.

"War! War!" Said Tsuki repeatedly with her knife drawn. "It's time to go to war with hunger"

She brought down the shiny black blade on the end of a long stick in order to craft a simple spear. But…

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

'Crick'

The knife broke on impact and returned into the brown cloth. She tried again and again; each time more careful but the blade broke every single time.

"Why you? Did I do something wrong to you! [Enraged biting sound] You'll break my teeth if I bite too hard, but 'crick' looks at you…'crick' That was grass! How?"

Tsuki was starting to go mad with the dark knife. It was to the point she doubted it wouldn't break if it touched water. She gave up on the knife and instead used the first stone which looked sharp enough to make something that looked like a spear. It took her some time to craft her spear and although it wasn’t pretty, it ought to work well. Or it might not even be of any use with how shoddy it was…

For now, she had a simple goal: To hunt for some food. But first, she had to deal with the strange distortion of her vision which was only growing in size. The only remedy she knew was rest and rest she did. She slept directly on the floor of the cabin like a baby. She woke up five hours later because a strong wind forced the front door to open and close with violent bangings.

“bang bang bang…bang bang bang” The door resounded in the old cabin.

“bang bang bang.” The wind called forth the dead with this eerie song.

“bang bang bang” The drums of war were played at will.

But only a sleepy girl rose up to block the door with a table. The drumming of the wind was silence; only its whisper could now be heard. Tsuki was used to such loud noises, but it didn’t lessen her being scared of the sudden noise. Her heart was beating wildly, and it took some time for her to calm down by doing calm breathing exercises. She noticed that her vision was better after calming down. It did improve, yet there was now a headache that was plaguing her. It was hunger. Her body was able to heal quite fast, but it still required nutriment to do this, nutriment she now needed. Taking her spear with her, she left the cabin. The wind should be able to hide her smell and the noise she would make.

Tsuki marched forth in the strong wind and although it was day, there were so many clouds that she didn't have to worry about the sun’s rays.

❀

She found a small cave about ten minutes away from the cabin. It wasn't big, with the outside made of glazed dirt with roots piercing the entrance here and there. Tsuki ventured inside. The sound of something hard scraping against stones could be heard in the heart of this cave.

She moved on, armed with the shoddy spear. She saw a small silhouette in a dark corner of the cave. It turned its head in a quick and nervous motion after it heard Tsuki breathing. And here Tsuki saw a pair of bloody red eyes.

'Splat' Tsuki instantly stabbed it with her spear. The spear didn't go far and was stuck between the thing's ribs. She could feel it squirming for its life while making panicked squeaking. She felt the sharp tip break. She now only had the long stick pinning her prey to the cave's wall. She didn't know what the thing she had attacked was or whether it would be something that could kill her if it ever escaped.

She put all her weight into the stick but even this wasn't enough. The thing kept squirming, possessed by the will to survive. It then managed to push the stick, just a tiny bit, by shifting its position. Tsuki feeling the loss of her tight grip on the thing pushed with all of her feeble strength.

'Toc!' She broke something.

The unknown thing began to produce shrilling sounds as its body was taken by violent spasms.

Tsuki kept hitting the poor creature, drowning the cave in gruesome sounds until 'crack' the stick broke off.

At this point, only the rash breathing of a young girl could be heard in the dark cave. Tsuki went to her knees and supported herself with the destroyed spear. She tried to breathe more calmly but her heart wouldn't stop drumming like crazy. Cold beads of sweat were exiting her body, drenching her cloth, and gluing her hair to her face.

She felt something disgustingly warm touch her knees. She didn't react to it other than being surprised she had done this much damage to the thing. Although she was used to blood, she still got up to avoid any possible illness. She walked forward and managed to grab a furry leg and waited for a response. None. The thing was dead for some time.

After pulling her reward outside, she tried to identify what she had killed. But she couldn't. She had no clue what to call what was in front of hers. A squirrel with eight thin legs and two large crab-like claws to the front might be the best description of this strange animal.

She dragged it back toward the cabin without any difficulty. She wanted to clean the blood… there was nothing on her knees other than a few rocks. Looking at the squrab, the name she invented for the animal, there wasn’t any large wound that would have caused it to bleed. The biggest wound was the spine she had broken. As for the first stab, a large splinter plugged the squrab blood flow. Only a few droplets would cake its fur and nothing more. Also, if blood or any liquid would have really touched her, it would have also touched a part of her cloth, but there was nothing that was either wet or dirty…

No matter, she had reached the old cabin and the door was open because of the wind. She looked at every dusty corner to avoid being surprised by an intruder and there didn’t seem to be any from the inspection she did.

She took the corpse into the garden and made a simple fire for it. She then took a large and heavy rock which she dropped over the corpse’s limbs to break them. She did a grotesque job hacking at the meat with stones and branches and without even draining the blood, simply placed chunks over the fire. She wasn’t a cook, and neither was she a butcher. She did know a few methods to end an animal’s life, but the work related to processing the meat wasn’t something she was familiar with.

She ate the result after removing a lot of dark parts and some patches of fur. It was disgusting. chewy and bitter. She wanted to vomit every bite she took but force herself, nonetheless. She didn’t even manage to eat a full crab arm before being full.

She suddenly felt extremely exhausted. She laid on her back, looking at the cloudy sky while thinking how dumb and dangerous the things she had done were. It all started when she saw the young wolf get attacked… She had no reason to put her own life in danger, more so to go out of her way to murder some godforsaken freak of nature that could have even been poisonous for all she knew. It wasn’t rare for Tsuki to do things in the past that could put herself in danger, but now, it was another story. She was, by extension of having Alice’s body, the one she so dearly wanted to protect, so why did she go and make a fire with an alluring smell in a forest she knew was inhabited by monsters who could end her life at a moment’s notice.

More so were all the dreams and nightmares she was getting when in the past, she would rarely have a single dream when she slept… And not to talk about the strange thing she was seeing at the edges of her vision.

She tried to look in the sky, to see the strange planet that was visible on her first day. From time to time, the clouds would clear up and allow a small glimpse of this strange planet. It might have been closer than the other planet in the system she knew since it was still day, and it was visible. She tried to think back to the nightmare where something tried to strangle her while looking at this planet. She fell asleep again. But couldn’t.

The ground trembled, the air vibrated, and a screeching sound broke her ears. A violent light broke through the door and outside she could see a dark mass that was simply a bunch of mouths with sharp teeth all collapsing on one another. They floated in the air and a large slit opened from under, where a large red being was vomited from. It landed with a large thud, almost knocking Tsuki from her feet. This was her cue to run away. She escaped by the back door and ran back toward the cave. The entrance was small enough to let her inside but block the monster from coming inside if it followed her.

She went to the deepest part of the cave; her breathing was irregular and as fast as she trembled. Her heart beating so fast that it hurt, and her body unable to manage this stress simply collapsed, making her vision go dark…