By the time we made it back down the hill and to the Rabbit Woods, as I had so eloquently named it in my head, the sky was already starting to turn dark. My shoulder was starting to get sore from the weight of the bucket dragging on the spear, but I kept it to myself. As we had been walking down the hill, Gaian had kept bumping up against my side, not in a hard way like he was trying to shove me around. More like he was trying to just be there for me, I’m sure as a bear he is used to being without, but with his newfound intelligence, I’m guessing he is recognizing that humans don’t have it so easy. I think he is doing his best to comfort me while doing his best to not make it obvious, so as to let me have my pride. I appreciated the gesture, while I was never one to care about face, I could appreciate the fact that he wanted to look out for me.
Finally, we arrive back at the edge of the woods, and there is one of the regular rabbits standing guard. Apparently, it was waiting for us and as we crossed into the woods, it began to hop along in front of us. Taking this to be our escort we began to follow him along. As we do so, I can hear a crowd of rabbits hopping along the undergrowth around us. The one in front seems to have been the one to have drawn the short straw and I’m guessing he is supposed to be the sacrificial lamb for them, on the off chance that we had been trying to sucker them. Smiling at their attempt to be subtle, I make no indication that I am aware of the horde of rabbits following around us unseen.
The bunny leads us farther into the woods to a giant Oak tree on the edge of a meadow. At the base of the oak are several tunnels, none of them are big enough for us to actually try to go into. But it seems that while we were gone, the rabbits had been busy trying to fulfill their part of the bargain.
They had a log that was filled with crystal clear water in the hollow of its center. There are two massive beds of grass for us to lay on, and in another log, there are a variety of root vegetables and some fruits that look to be an analog of apples or pears. The ground that everything is lying on seems to be a tough turf that the rabbits had nibbled close enough to the ground so that it resembles a putting green.
I was sure that this had all been done recently as most rabbit warrens are normally hidden. Guessing that they had abandoned this one to us, I was nonetheless grateful for the hospitality. Setting my stuff down next to the log, I laid out the spear and shield next to each other, as they would be the first thing I was going for if I was started awake at night. I set the club down next to the spear to grab instead, for if the whole setup was actually a double cross by the little rodents. I didn’t think so, but as the stick was twice as long as my knife and ax; it was almost certainly going to be my weapon of second choice for the foreseeable future.
Dumping the sand out in a pile next to the bed of grass I was claiming for myself, I carefully dipped the bucket into the water, swirling the little bit of water I had gotten into it, I gave it a good rinse and dumped it off to the side, before refilling it two thirds of the way full. I thought about trying to make a fire to boil it for safety, but was having trouble bringing myself to care at this point.
I was trying to be okay with the fact that all of my stuff had been destroyed, but the ups and downs were getting hard to handle. As Gaian came over and nosed me in the side and put his head up into my hand, I started scratching his ears and when he lay down, I sat down next to him and leaned against his warm bulk. Closing my eyes I continued to scratch his ears while I just breathed and tried to process. I had been running nonstop since getting here. Hell the last time I had fallen asleep, I had to be knocked out by a flower for heaven’s sake.
I had been pretending that I was okay because that is what I knew to do when things got tough. When the world is crashing down on you, all you can do is shove your feelings to the side and put one foot in front of the other, keep going because if you stop that is when the weight gets too much to bear. When you work in a kitchen, sometimes you get asked to work a lot of hours, the longest shift I have ever worked has been twenty-nine hours straight. I had been asked many times back on earth, how you can do something like that, and I have always had two answers. One, be young. Two, don’t stop moving, the second you stop is when you stiffen up and you can’t get started again.
I don’t have youth going for me anymore and the tank was starting to run dry so I was going to have to start processing my feelings and coming up with an actual plan. It is all well and good to say I want to find my kids, but just because this is a moon we are on doesn’t mean I have a small area to search from and that is even if they were transported here in the first place. What if they weren’t taken, what am I going to do with my life then? I liked to pretend that I was achieving Serenity or failing that, that I had been having the courage to continue on in the face of constant adversity. Realizing I was not okay and running myself so ragged was bound to end up with my having a breakdown, I decided to see if we could get an additional day before the raid on the goblin wood.
Asking Gaian to talk to our hosts, our rabbit concierge bounded off, not having the authority to agree to it on his own. While he was gone, I took off my boots and socks. Wiggling my toes in the air to help them dry off, I undid the laces and pulled the tongue of the boots out as far as it would go to help them dry while laying my socks out to dry as well. I was sure I would be missing all of the extra pairs I had packed shortly. Hopefully, the bear’s healing spell worked on blistery feet.
When he came bounding back and screeched a couple of quick sounds out before jumping quickly back to the edge of the glen, I knew before the bear had even raised his left paw that the answer was no. Sighing softly I found I actually wasn’t that disappointed. It made sense from their point of view, they had two dangerous predators in their territory. While we hadn’t made any moves against them, neither had we done anything to help them yet. Already they had provided some payment before collecting anything on their part. While I would have liked a day to gather myself I was going to just have to do my best to keep putting one foot in front of the other for a little while longer.
Taking a deep drink from the bucket, it was so cool and fresh, that I wondered if it had been created by magic instead of just being prepared in some way by them. Not wanting to seem to pry more, after already having one request denied, I didn’t want them to get in the habit of saying no to me. Also, the thought of drinking magic water was so much more palatable than the alternative, on second thought maybe I really didn’t want to know how it had got there for now.
Picking up one of the fruits, I bit into it. As the juice sprayed out of the flesh into my mouth, it quickly went through a range of flavors, first I was hit with a clean fresh feeling, before having that almost sticky sweetness hit my tongue. After that, it seemed to have waves that almost went from between sour and bitter, and then back to sweet. As I chewed the bite I had and felt the waves of taste going through me I pulled it back and saw that the meat of the fruit had purple cast to it, almost like a plum. Continuing to chew and swallow, I found that the aftertaste landed on a light sweetness instead of the overpowering taste I got while chewing.
Picking a second one up, I held it out in my palm for Gaian to take a bite of. As he sneezed it out, I laughed a little as he seemed to dart over to the log of water to rinse the taste out of his mouth. Happy to take the fruits for myself and leave him to the tubers as it meant I wouldn’t have to start a fire tonight. I picked up another couple to eat, setting them down next to the bucket, I walked off to the woodline to find a small stick. Taking my time in my hunt, I was looking for something straight and about half of an inch thick, while being between one and two feet long. Finally finding one that I thought would be suitable, I walked back to my seat, stopping to grab some of the root vegetables and toss them over to the bear who had laid back down.
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Picking up my club, I sat down leaning my back against the bear. Pulling my knife out I tapered one end of my chosen stick to a point, before putting a small notch in the middle of the club handle. Dribbling some sand onto the notch, I took a small mouthful of water and swallowing most of it, spit onto the sand to wet it. After everything was finally ready, I started spinning the stick in my hands like I was trying to start a fire. Continually adding more sand and water so as to not actually start a fire, I eventually managed to drill a hole through the handle of the club.
Running the sand covered stick around all of the edges of the hole, I took off most of the burs and smoothed it out as best I could. While not as pretty as if I would have used specialized tools back home, it wasn’t a bad job for the conditions and it was serviceable, which was all that really mattered in the end.
Reaching into my pocket for the small bit of paracord that I hadn’t returned to my pack, I pushed it through the hole and tied it off so I ended up with a loop of cord I could tuck through my belt so it was more accessible in tomorrow’s fight. Also if I needed to wield it in the event I had lost my spear tomorrow which judging by the past fights seemed more likely than not, I could leave it around my wrists for both better strikes and security.
For once, my clothes weren’t filthy and covered in blood and dirt, so I held off washing them for the moment and continued to eat the fruit that the rabbits had provided while occasionally washing it down with sips of water from the bucket. Gaian had no problem finishing off the tubers, and when I asked if he thought we should request more, he held his left paw. Whether it was because he was full or just didn’t want to trouble our hosts, I didn’t press
Running out of tasks to keep me busy, I thought about trying to bring out one of the three cores I had left and trying to absorb one, but in the end, decided against it. While gaining a healing power might have been useful, at the end of the day these were only from basic goblins, and if I was only going to get one ability, I might want to wait until I could trade for something better or get more information. More and more I was beginning to wonder if the way I had formed my core on the trip here might have been a mistake.
Pulling out my small baggie of dried fruit, the sole food I had left for earth, I really should keep it for a rainy day. But I had already tried to save so much and look what had happened. Maybe I need to stop trying so hard to make the perfect plan and just live a little. So I shook the bag to mix it up and then poured a small handful out onto my palm for the bear. As he licked up the tropical fruit I sat up straighter and put myself into a lotus position. I thought about trying to enter my core again but realized all I was doing was trying to continue pushing off dealing with my feelings and emotions.
I have been running myself forward in an effort not to deal, and I couldn’t hope to keep going. Eventually, I was going to run out of steam, and then I would stumble or fall. And if I did either of those two things in front of the goblins tomorrow, it was likely that I would either end up with more bites taken from me or I would literally be in the hot seat.
Breathing in and out I did my best to just process and let everything flow through me. I had to keep thinking about how happy I was that my children weren’t here with me. Despite the amazing things I was experiencing, I had been fed dinner by rabbits with glowing purple eyes for god’s sake. If I thought my daughter wouldn’t have loved that I was just trying to fool myself. But the counterpoint to that was the goblins, they had been just fine before we had arrived. And while I was sure they might be fine with using us for now, I was also sure that the rabbits wouldn’t be willing to support us full time.
Also, I wanted answers, I wasn’t delusional enough to think that I might be sent home. It was looking more and more like whatever brought me here was some kind of cosmic accident rather than something bringing me here to fulfill some purpose. The only chance I had of seeing them again was if they were brought here as well, and wishing for that seemed like an incredibly selfish thing to impose on them. But some part of me couldn’t help but want that.
How do you reconcile those conflicting feelings? I was almost certainly never going to be able to leave this moon. Think about how few people have traveled beyond the borders of our own planet, and their we were at the top of the food chain. Here there be dragons! Not the silly hollywood dragons either. These were dragons the size of mountains, Not a mountain, Mountainssss plural. I couldn’t even begin to conceive how it had been able to limit the damage it had rained down to the size of a city block. Something that would be like a missile barrage for us humans was for that monster like spitting and only managing to take out a single ant in the middle of a hill broiling over with them.
Thinking about it some more I wondered why it had even bothered with restraining itself. Was it an energy limit, or was instead the god-like being showing its magnanimous restraint? I hated not knowing the answers to important questions, not having access to the internet to swiftly look something up was really starting to cause my brain to itch.
No, breathe. I told myself, You have to deal with your feelings, you can’t just keep burying them in puzzles hoping they go away. It’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to be angry. Feel your feelings, let them wash over you. This is neither going to be easy nor quick. You aren’t going to be better tomorrow, this will come up many times, loss doesn’t go away, it just dulls with time. Feel your losses and grieve. Then get up tomorrow and kill some goblins and protect some rabbits. It’s not the healthiest way to deal but it is the only way you’ve got for now. As I finished my monologue to myself in my head, I continued to breathe slowly, in and out while leaning back into the warmth of the bear.
Closing my eyes I let myself go back in my thoughts to relive experiences with my kids until I finally drifted off to sleep, this time with drier cheeks.
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Waking up in the pre-dawn of my fifth day on this moon, I couldn’t believe that it had only been five days. It seemed like way too short of a time for everything that had happened to me. Getting up off of the bear I was grateful for the warmth he had shared with me. I actually had managed to sleep through the night and was feeling well rested for once. Part of me was wondering if I still had a little bit of the pollen from that purple flower in my system, but either way, I was willing to take whatever wins I could get. As the light of the planet started filtering its way down through the trees, I pulled out my wallet to look at the three pictures I still had of my kids. While I looked down at their smiling faces, I resolved to always keep the leather container on me, I never wanted to wake up in this world without some kind of reminder of what I had to search for. Until I had better answers on what had happened to the rest of Terra, I would pretend they were alive, at least in part of my heart.
Putting them away for now I secured them back into my thigh pocket and pulled my socks and boots back on, tightening the laces securely. Nudging the bear awake, I said. “Hey, call our liason over.”
A few seconds after he sent a growl out into the woods around us, a bunny came hopping up. Whether it was the same one from the night before or it was a different one, I wasn’t going to pretend I could tell the difference. With the bear as my translator, decided to adjust the plan a little to get us some more bargaining power.
“Are you going with us on this raid later?” I asked. When Gaian raised his right paw, I tapped the bucket beside me and offered our help. “Well the deal your boss made with us was for us to escort you and protect you and your friends from the goblins. So if you and some of your friends want to bring back extra, I can offer you the use of the bucket if you split your take with us.”
When the rabbit started to get indignant and turn away, I spoke back up again. “If you don’t agree, then we’ll just ask others that are going on the raid with us, I am sure eventually one will see the wisdom in making the deal, you aren’t losing out on anything, you are gaining. It’s only right you share a little bit with the person sharing the means with you.” As it paused to reconsider, it finally sent back a screech of assent. “Good,” I said. “Let’s go gather up your friends and hop along to visit our neighbors for breakfast.” Snatching up one of the remaining fruits, I gave lie to my words, after finishing it off, I drained the bucket from the remaining water.
Pulling the bear spray off my belt, I left it in the sand with my shovel. I didn’t think it would be of any use against the goblins and going on multiple marches where we might have to run for our lives, every ounce might make a difference in the end. Finding my kitchen tweezers in my pocket, I wondered how I had missed them before, taking them out, I added them to the pile of sand the spray was sitting on. Looping the club around my belt, I checked to make sure the knife and ax weren’t caching on anything before picking up my shield and spear. I looped the now empty bucket around the end of the spear again. With Gaian following along behind me, I let the rabbit lead us to where his fellow bunnies were gathering for their foray.