Ogda's large figure was a hiking blessing for the duo, as he covered more ground, while insisting that Lian get a free ride on his back. “You humans are very frail. I remember that”, he added with a look that wouldn’t take no for an answer.
-" So stretching limbs or your torso for more than a few centimeters is out of the picture? And what about pain or tiredness? Do you feel any of those?"
The giant pinched different parts of his body, but his stolid face remained unchanging as always. He then tried to hit himself, both in solid and liquid forms. Pain, checked as nonexistent. Fear of death, though, was now a normally crippling concept for the being.
-" I feel…weird. It's not pain, like you described that feeling. It's more like little shakes traveling across my body. It's, uhm, making me feel not…linked? I don't know how else to explain it, but if you hit me hard enough, I might crumble. Does that make any sense to you?" he asked, without hope for a clear answer.
For the girl, some parts made sense, but there were still many more mysteries surrounding Ogda that Lian couldn't wrap her mind around. He was of liquid matter, with the ability to change his body elements while retaining his mind. But at the same time, he wasn't invulnerable; everything about him was peculiar, but he could be hurt, damaged. The girl, now trapped in her train of thought, automatically disregarded the world around her and conducted that ride without paying any attention to her surroundings.
In turn, Ogda was leading his path toward the middle of an internal crisis, started by a combination of uneasiness and self-doubt about his abilities. Just because he could stretch easily, he became convinced that the rest of the body should be able to do the same. All the while, drums of angst were beating hard inside his mind- " What if I need to catch her from falling off a cliff…or from the sky again…or from being mauled by something weird…", he questioned himself, stretching his body back and forth.
-" Ogda?", she asked calmly. But no response.
-'' Hey, Ogdaaa…", the girl tried a second, third, and fourth time, but the monster was trapped in imaginary scenarios. Recognizing the pattern, Lian tried several ways to grab his attention, waving at him, poking him with a stick, hurting her foot while trying to kick him.
-" AmIuseless, canIdoanything, whatcanIdo?", repeated the monster inside his mind until another voice replied, from a void that Ogda never realized existed. "... You can…middle one… Steady the meniscus and become still!" With a frozen look on his face, immediately came out of his trance and finally heard Lian's yells, who was now on his back, trying desperately for a while to wake him up from his stupor. After her latest shout, she could feel his body wobbling, then faster, trembling now, making small waves appear all around. Until he suddenly stopped and crumbled back into a puddle.
-" Ogda! Ogda, can you hear me? Are you… Ogda…", she cried out with a break in her voice, then louder and faster, repeating his name in the water in front of her. She didn't recognize the feeling at first, but it was familiar to her, as if meeting an old friend whose face you forgot.
The red outline stretched a finger and swirled it in the puddle in front. Out of desperation, fear of remaining alone or other motifs, Lian quickly did as the outline indicated. She then felt a sting behind her cornea, and something invisible felt like it dropped from her finger. Nothing then happened for ten eternal seconds.
Before the darker thoughts could hit the surface, a tired growl brought her relief like she hadn't felt in a while. Ogda's head was the first that reformed from the puddle but looked a lot more translucent than before. A thin, gray, coating covered the outer layer of his body, while the interior was moving around, with small bubbles bursting from time to time.
-" Oh…hi Lian," he claimed dejectedly, but even with his one eye, she could tell that he felt some type of pain. Lying about his well-being, he tried to reform to his previous form, but the girl stopped him and asked him to describe how his head felt. "My head?... A bit of lighter, I guess." He tilted it a bit to the left, then right. A memory came back to him, of a figure familiar to him. One he couldn't mimic entirely, but it made him feel more at home. "How should I put it? It's like…I no longer feel as though I have to keep on trying to hold on from falling apart."
After he explained the figure from his memory, the two decided on how to proceed next. With help from his partner, Ogda formed the blurb in his mind, then applied it to his real body, while Lian described if the images matched. First, a thin skeletal frame from which to start the body. Most of the inner fillings should remain liquid, except from his legs, half of his arms and to wrap it all up in a thin layer.
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What resulted from it was a smaller version, a head at least, of his previous form, with thin, but sturdy legs, while his arms were still wide in the width of the palm, but less bulky. He was hunching forward, but he could stand upright without relying on his arm planted to the ground to keep him stable. However it seemed, he felt like he grew.
….
A few hours have passed since they started this long walk, and the landscape barely changed from their leaving point. Lands filled with cracks and maybe some wilted wild plants here and there, covered by a blanket of dust, which sparkled in thousands of colors. And no beings both on land or in the sky, just rocks of different pastels, minerals rising like flowers from the earth.
At first, they did it as a jest, something to do to pass the time, but after taking a gulp, Ogda found that he could "eat" the crystals, or dissolve them inside him somehow. If he concentrated hard enough, the rocks would just slip through his hand and travel until they reached his belly. But while one hunger pang was solved, Lian struggled with hers. "Maybe…one bite", she thought, longingly staring at a crimson pebble. " Or maybe don't", replied Ogda, after catching her eyeing the rock for too long.
To their luck, a few hours later a cousin of Lady Luck gave them a small reprise in the form of a little pond, just as they hoped. The oasis was hidden between the dunes, shielded by the wind and prying eyes, except for the few flying critters.
At the pond, they found some clean water, carcasses of dead birds, and some shellfish creatures munching on them. In a different life, or time, the girl might have been squeamish at the sight of the slimy creatures, but this wasn’t then. After boiling and frying some of them, Lian remembered the taste of fish, and it wasn’t anything like it. Just sour, dry, and crunchy from being overcooked. The feast brought other thoughts to mind, though. She realized that old smells were a mystery, anything that could be sweet or bitter, nothing as simple as a soup even. Whatever her life was beforehand, it was a passing world right now. But the same could be said about her current existence.
After the break, the two thought about hatching a plan on how to move onward. Ogda dissolved the interior of some of the rocks and used them to carry water. Lian filled the new containers with everything she deemed useful, like plants, sharp rocks, and water from the pond. That was also the first time she finally managed to see the stranger she was, green eyes to green eyes.
The pond’s surface wasn’t crystal clear, but it was enough for her to see her face, her bruised cheeks, forehead, how her crimson bangs reached her shoulders, but the rest of her hair was ravished, oily, and parts of it randomly ripped probably at the crash. She also mirrored the rest of her body, seeing her ragged clothes from different angles, the long, white shirt and pants reaching her knees, covered with dirt and holes. “ I’ll need something tougher…and with more colors”. She repeated the names of the clothes several times, adding new remembered ones as well with each repetition, but that’s about all she gained from the fabrics. Nothing else triggered like before.
To their surprise, sundown caught up to them in just a few minutes, and the sky's blue hue became darker in tone like it was dialed in. Both of them agreed without even talking to start up a camp and spend the night there. The day was harsh, but the night in the desert was much more dangerous and colder than any could imagine. Beasts that preserved their energy for the nightly hunt started now to roam the rocky wasteland for their next meal. The girl was a bit chilly, but she tried to fight it at the fire they prepared. Neither, though, felt tired enough to beat the anxiety they felt about their surroundings. And it was well founded, as just as the last rays of light hit the tip of the opposite dune of the oasis, a sudden wave of sand came rushing down from it. Their eyesight was still adjusting, but they caught three figures on top of it, sliding downwards.
-” Hide!”, commanded Ogda in a harsh, grave tone, unused until then. Even though he lacked a mouth, his body imitated the growl and cry of a monster preparing for battle.
Lian, while objecting under her breath, knew that whatever plan she might concoct, or attempt to fight back was meaningless. She was far too weak, Ogda’s memory far too broken and the figures far too unknown. Nothing that could ensure their survival came quickly enough, and she just hid. At the same time, a rogue thought of running on her own brushed by, something that left her with a deep shame afterward.
Ogda, crouched over on fours, tried to make himself look bigger by arching his back like a giant cat. If they were wild creatures, maybe appealing to their instinct would scare them away. But he also prepared himself for battle. As one of the shadows reached the bottom, they stopped in their tracks when they saw Ogda on the other side. A second later the other two crouched next to the first, and slowly moved towards him. But their target stood steadfast, trying to keep an eye on all of them. He tried a loud growl, which landed on deaf ears, but then something weird happened.
Two of them split alongside the bank of the oasis, while the third dived into it. They were coordinating. Planning. “But so do many wild packs'', thought Lian. Still, what if though?
The girl clutched her hands together and saw how easily the attackers dodged the rocks Ogda threw at them. Same with his attempt at hitting them with his elongated arms. The creatures were not just adept at fighting, hunting, or whatever else, but experts, way out of their league. Lian knew that her next move was a gamble, but either way, both could be killed in a second. She got on her feet and ran as fast as she could, yelling out “ Wait, wait!”.
The two figures stopped, surprised and unsure of what to do next. The pleas from the girl missed the third one though, who couldn’t hear anything from underwater. As soon as he got to the edge of the water, he jumped out of it and tried to strike Ogda at the base of his neck. Or that was his plan until a yellow chain grabbed his striking hand.
-” Stop! That isn’t our target. It’s not the wild one!”
The man clad in weird armor took a better look at Ogda, and then at Lian as well. He sighted and retracted his claws back into his gauntlets, and without even addressing what just happened, drops nonchalantly in front of the two and asks a simple, but also convoluted, question.
-” So, have you seen a giant creature with 4, I mean it when I say, ginormous legs around here?”