CHAPTER 12 - EVENING
Before long, the helicopter arrived at a hospital helipad to drop off some victims of severe internal injuries that were only detected mid-flight. The healthy passengers, including Kayden’s group, were simply sent down to the ground floor via an elevator.
"Are you sure you don’t want your tail, like, iced?" Kayden said, "They said you didn’t break anything but that bruise looks nasty… those missing scales look bad."
She nodded weakly, and Kayden took that as agreement. Her lizard friend was clearly still trying to process what happened.
Not having any interest in visiting more landmarks so soon after this fiasco, they went back to their motel room. Kayden put some ice cubes in a plastic bag and told Nheka to relax on the bed as he placed the cold bag on her tail’s bruise, as the other three watched.
She was completely static, and hid her lingering pain well, laying on her side with her head resting on a pillow. "I am not feeling good…"
"I understand," Kayden said. "You need to stay still. And– who’s switched in?"
"Takhghari again…"
"Makes sense. Do you want me to give you fin rubs? Or do you not like that."
"Pleasse don’t touch my fins with your filthy, oily human fingers… they are very ssenssitive and will dull in color…" Nheka hissed.
"Fair enough. But you have all those earrings?"
"They were ssterilized… And in any casse, they aren’t caked in cracker dust and meat gunk…"
"So aren’t my hands though?" Kayden looked at his palm.
"Ssenssitive…"
Kayden sighed. "Alright then."
Nheka took out her datapad and started reading some kind of website while Kayden stood up from the bed and walked up to Lai. "Hey."
"What is it?"
"After what happened here, honestly I’m wondering about canceling the trip and going back to New Arizona."
The relmai rolled his eyes. "They’re gonna bhollow you back ibh you doooo. Don’t be a scaredy rat, or what is the human expression, and keep pushing."
"But–"
"Actually ibh ya think about it, they’re less likely to try and bhak you over the closer you get to dhe core. Or actually, to even follow that faaaar," Lai interrupted while gesturing wildly.
"If–"
"And come to think of it they’ll probably drop it obh at Cocytus. Also, isn’t it named bhor a lake in Hell from the human creation myth?"
"Not a l–"
"Aaaaanyways my point was that you– and us all bhor that matter– stand more chance of living if you keep going."
Kayden gave up on trying to get his word in, sighed deeply, and said "Okay. You have a point."
"And if you two do go back anyways I’m continuing towards Eardh with Ray and Tiik and without you. Just getting that out of the way."
Kayden just leaned onto the windowsill and stared intently at the carnivorous flower, then picked up a large dead fly and gently placed it onto the center. While watching it dissolve following its smashing by the petals, he just thought deeply. Thought about what else he will come across in his travels, as this was merely the second leg of the journey. Hopefully, things will get better. Perhaps his stalkers will give up on him after he will spend weeks in core space. After all, it would just be too much of a risk.
He stepped away from the windowsill after a small while and sat down beside Nheka, looking for anything to watch with her to distract themselves from the uneasy mood. He scrolled through VidJoy’s feed. The algorithm seemed to only partially carry over between planetary Internet shards, leading him to dig through a whole lot of junk only vaguely related to his interests, which had thumbnails with lots of arrows and bold text.
* I built THIS in Simulacrum!
* AstroPolSim 1.93.1 PATCH - Black Fang Republic now OP?! (Grand League DLC)
* Jaxon Melo SCANDAL! For what… find out!
* This AMAZING new G. Hadean species will BLOW your MIND!
* 10 SHOCKING facts about the Kseldani Collective!
* Want to move to Tama? Here’s what you NEED to know!
* Will Manuel Dufresne win the MIDTERMS? Expert POLITICAL ANALYSIS!
With a sigh, he tapped on what vaguely interested him. A video about the local underground ecosystem, located beneath the hills in which the flitter crashed.
Nheka lazily looked at the screen alongside him, as a soothing voice narrated the specifics of that isolated world within a world. The glowing bulbs providing dim light around which insects swarmed, the waterfall going all the way down into the cave’s depths, and unique fauna such as predators that resembled nearly blind, hairless cats with tentacles. Both of them were kind of zoned out, trying their best to empty their heads of the trauma they experienced, attempting to prevent it from really coming into its own. There was a slam-click as Lai and Tiik left the room and closed the door behind themselves, followed by the soft rustling noise of Ray laying down to watch with the human and the chohjozra.
Time passed. An hour, exactly, of watching related videos together, relaxing and resting from what happened.
***
In the mid-evening, the group set off to wander the city again, this time going to stock up on non-perishable food for the next leg of the journey. They went into the local supermarket, located at the first floor of a squat rectangular tower, with its densely-packed aisles full of various goods. Kayden bought various long-lasting, high-density foods such as candy bars, canned meat, and, of course, various flavors of crackers. The packaging was very different from that on New Arizona, and the small text on the back was notably bilingual.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Nheka wandered off to a small, secluded aisle in the corner. There, the signage was similarly bilingual, but not with English and Spanish-Portuguese, but with English and Dhhrkhzchaab, the chohjozra language. Everything was quite dull in color, and it was stocked with an assortment of various products, not categorized. It was clearly an afterthought, after all this was not an enclave. She took a whole variety of foods, from dried insects to salted meat to, well, ‘special’ meat (considering their unusual dietary traditions). Nheka quietly lamented the lack of live crippled mragez on the shelves. Ah, those pesky Federation animal cruelty regulations.
When she came back to Kayden, who was at the checkout machine, he caught a glimpse of the packaging of the last product.
"They… sell that stuff here?!"
"Yess…"
"Do they also sell the bunnies here? You know, with their feet broken and twisted so they can’t move."
"No…"
"So that’s legal and this isn’t. Huh. Honestly I don’t think either should be."
Kayden’s tone was just a little disturbed. To him, chohjozra cuisine was just completely barbaric. He didn’t voice it all that much in an effort to avoid offending Nheka, but he held that opinion strongly.
Nheka rolled her eyes. "And you eat compressed platess of watered down plant dusst… I could ssay that sshould be illegal too, because it iss gross, and yet I do not… Who iss the clossed-minded one here?"
Kayden sighed. "Sorry."
He then noticed he was holding up the line behind him and Nheka and hastily went towards the exit. "Anyways, do you know where Lai and Tiik are? Last I saw them they ran off to somewhere."
"No…"
The two relmai soon came back, each carrying large bags of groceries and various other items and supplies. They both seemed in a sour mood, with ears flat against the sides of their heads and tails held low.
"What happened?"
Lai just shook his head.
"Right… I hope you two are okay."
***
It was getting late, and the sun started setting behind the towers of the cityscape. Littlegulf was still as lively as ever, but even after a day, the travelers felt a little apart from the people, who were just as dour as their first impression was.
"So… the grove?" Kayden said. "It’s close enough to not require a plane ride, right?"
"Yeah," Lai said.
"By the time we get there it’ll be pretty dark."
Following a bus ride to the outskirts of the city, they disembarked at a small, auto-staffed roadside building that was almost hidden in the jungle’s shade, which was exacerbated by the time of the day. After signing up for a tour of the grove, they followed deeper down a trail, led by a guide in front. The guide was a human in his forties, wearing white clothes and a wide-brimmed cap.
The mosquitoes started assaulting Kayden, as before. He swatted at his arms, his belly, and his spine, muttering swear words. "I forgot to take the repellent from the motel room like an idiot…"
Lai pulled a can of mosquito spray out of a pocket of his jumpsuit and grinned. "I got ya covered."
"You got that with you or did you just buy it?"
"Bought id… But we do have blood suckers back at Tama. Ones the size of my hand," he held out his four-fingered palm. "...with a what’s-it-called the length and shape of a large needle."
"Proboscis," Ray beeped.
"Thanks Ray."
Kayden winced and continued talking as they went down the trail. "You have whole plains of that flesh-melting fungus too, right? Or am I confusing it with something."
"Yes we do! Still use id to carve rock and to recycle anything organic. Anythiiiing. We also have underground swarms obh worms that sense vibrations, come out of the soil, burrow into live prey and strip them to the bone."
"Please remind me to never ever visit Tama. How did you guys even survive?"
"Cooperation, good analytical thinking," Lai said.
"And how’d you all not go collectively insane?"
"Drugs."
Kayden paused. "...yeah that all makes sense now. Never thought about this before."
After a short hike, they arrived at the grove. The trees there were much sparser than in the near-impenetrable jungle, and the glowing trees were lower than those surrounding the grove. They were shaped a bit like acacias, but with leaves like maple, veined with brightly-glowing yellow lines. Those, alongside the melon-sized spherical fruits hanging down on thick stalks, illuminated the grove as if it was day, while up above the feather-like clouds were illuminated by the sunset. An entire chorus of birds sang elaborate songs, chirping, honking, and squeaking.
As has been promised a few hours before, Maeea was there, though there were not many other people here yet. He was photographing the grove with something that looked a bit like a professional camera on a tripod, albeit with three lenses and odd patterns that looked like writing covering its dull metallic surface.
Kayden walked up to him and waved weakly, not sure if the aadalu was too preoccupied to notice, and not wanting to distract him if that was the case. Maeea did notice.
"Hello Kayden and company. I’m just taking images for my eeookmiiyaaa."
"Hey Maeea. Your what?"
"During a pilgrimage, an aadalu must rrrreccord as much off their journey ass possible. In centuries past, it was done in a special jourrrnal, but now any medium is okay. I chose a slideshow, rrrecorded with a blessed camera."
"...can I and my friends pose for it?"
"It must be of scenerrry or architecture. Recording people in focus, especially heathens, is discourrraged…"
"Right then."
Nheka, Lai, Ray, and Tiik, who lagged behind, caught up to them, but then without any further words took their seats on a fallen log at the edge of the grove. Looking up at the sunset sky above. Kayden quickly paced over to sit down next to his friends. A feeling of calm washed over his mind, erasing all worries as he looked alongside them. This was the first time he ever saw something like that: all trees on his homeworld were almost clinical in their form, genetically engineered solely for maximum photosynthetic efficiency. But here, they were imperfect, and yet those flaws made them soulful in a way that the trees he knew weren’t. In general, there was an overwhelming amount of greenery here, like the Amazon compared to Arabia. He only saw this much flora in pictures, in movies, in video games… seeing it up close, in the real world as opposed to a false simulacrum or a literal Simulacrum, hit differently.
And tomorrow would be the day where he leaves this planet, for Cocytus. Kayden guessed that Nheka wouldn't like it very much: to go from a lush Heaven to a frozen Hell. Of course, he didn’t think of his next destination as Hell.
Slowly, the sun set under the treeline. Stars began appearing in the half-orange, half-black night sky, twinkling like sparse diamond dust in water. The moon, as red as before, began showing. Meanwhile the grove seemed to shine even brighter… and more and more people began entering, disrupting the atmosphere somewhat.
"We spent what… forty minutes here?" Kayden said. "Let’s go."
"Agreeing."
The group left the grove. Lai and Tiik lagged behind, both quiet and stumbling slightly.