Flower woke up feeling cold and alone. Her waterbed felt hard and her blankets had fallen off at some point during the night. Rolling over on the hard water bed she felt a cool breeze slip through her thin cotton cloths forcing her to curl up into a tight little ball. Did someone leave a window open? No, that’s silly, the only window in her room was the skylight and that didn’t open, she must be imagining it. She felt the breeze again and slowly it came back to her. Her family was dead, she was lost, alone, no, not alone. She flailed her arm in a big circle calling out “Where are you?” in a sleepy voice, but she didn’t feel anyone or hear a reply, in fact what she did feel was that she was closer to the edge of the stone than she thought.
Slowly she opened her eyes and looked around. The morning sun was just beginning to stream through the branches, that was probably what really woke her, but that chilly breeze was still unpleasant. Looking around she couldn’t find any sign of her friend. Did something happen to her? “Maybe she’s just watering the flowers.” Flower muttered to herself, unconvinced, but with no real way to locate her.
As clarity slowly returned to her mind she began assessing herself. Still in the woods, check, still a stone arch, check, same cotton tie dye, same key dangling from her wrist. Carefully she unwound it and put it on her neck beneath her shirt to keep it safe. Maybe they’d have to flee back that way if a monster came for them. The silver turtle was there too, but her friend was missing. The stone felt rough and cold under her feet. It hadn’t seemed to matter much in the void, but out in the forest she was beginning to notice it. Thinking back she remembered the turtle was meant to have cloths in it, somehow, magic maybe?
She squeezed the turtle, a mildly uncomfortable feeling, but only really unpleasant enough to notice. She squeezed it again, and a third time, suddenly she felt something surge from it into her mind. Her vision darkened as three figures appeared; they looked like mannequins, faceless formless figures dressed exotically. The one on the left wore brightly colored velvet with shimmering trim and embroidery. The center one had hard robust looking leather boots, dull colors, thick woolen fabrics, and seemed to cover everything but the eyes, with gloves, handkerchief, and hood. The one on the right had a long thin brown summer dress and soft silk slippers. All were useful cloths, but maybe not here? She tried to step towards the central figure, but suddenly found the whole mental image dissolve.
Flower stumbled in surprise as the lights came back, only for her feet to feel stiff and awkward forcing her to flail her arms to regain her balance, but when she did she saw a brown sleeves and mute red gloves. “What? Did I? What did I just?” Feeling around she confirmed she was wearing the central outfit, and her outfit as well as the key had vanished. In fact the only thing that remained was the turtle. Anxiously she squeezed it three more times and found her vision fade again to the three figures, only now the middle one wore her own cloths as well as the key around its neck. She didn’t want to change cloths again, so stepping forwards towards any of them was not the right answer, unless she had to switch to get out? She tried stepping backwards and felt relieved to find her sight return again.
Now that she had boots she could search for her friend, hopefully she hadn’t gotten too... That thought was cut short when she saw the green girl walking back towards her from the tree line with something in hand. Something seemed different though, she was crouching defensively like she had with the old woman, was something here? Wildly Flower spun around, but couldn’t see anything. Looking back at the girl she double checked, and her friend was indeed looking at her. Looking behind her she made sure there was nothing there. Suddenly it occurred to her and she pulled down the hood and handkerchief before waving to her friend. She saw her relax visibly at the revelation. Flower began walking over, but her friend quickly raised her hands as if pushing her away from the distance. Flower’s steps slowed and she saw her friend nod slightly as she picked up her own pace. Soon they reunited on the little stone platform, something between relief and wary amusement on her friend’s face, and two rabbits in her friend’s clawed hand. They looked around in panic and sniffed the air, but didn’t struggle much.
Flower took off a rucksack she hadn’t noticed she was wearing and set it down in order o take off her newfound outer coat to quickly draping it over her friend’s shoulders, insuring they were both at least somewhat shielded from the elements. Ignoring the rabbits her friend pulled her over to the arch to sit together, than pointed to a tree. “Sekgravasha” she said, carefully pronouncing the sound that resembled wind whistling through a crack as leaves rustle.
It was a difficult sound that Flower had no hopes of quickly replicating, but it seemed like as good a game as any. Her stomach rumbled again, but she pointed at the same tree and said “Tree.”
This time her friend pointed to the grass “Sekgravasha” she repeated, leaving Flower to understand that she’d guessed the meaning of the word wrong.
Faithfully Flower pointed to a new tree and said “Tree.” The next Sekgravasha was a bush, maybe it meant plant? They would do three items for every word and try repeating each other’s word back three times.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
They were both clearly struggling, but her friend’s fanged mouth seemed better at approximating English than her own mouth was at making hissing jittering wind noises. Still they both managed to learn to approximate a few words before she heard the strange plinking sound again. Her friend wearily sighed before saying “Finohlay.”
Flower paused, confused, she wasn’t pointing at anything this time. “We’re not playing anymore?”
“Noo.” Her friend said, making Flower turn and gape.
“How did you do that? I don’t think I taught you that did I?”
“Noo.” The green girl replied, seemingly bemused. “Eeh lehrn”
“You learned? But how? Is this magic?” Flower asked “that’s got to be the handiest spell I’ve ever heard of.”
Her friend shook her head, than nodded, than shrugged clearly a bit baffled at the notion. “Shay shtatsus”
“Say status?” Flower asked.
Her friend nodded “Menching imporshshant”
“Menching, munching, meaning? The meaning of status is to check up on things right? What am I checking on? The world?” The green girl shook her head and pointed to Flower herself. “Me? Um, status?” Strange symbols appeared in her mind. They weren’t words, not exactly, it felt like listening to the merchant, the symbols were blurring and dancing through her mind. It reminded her of how someone had told her dyslexics feel.
Focusing harder on what looked to be the most active part she saw a flashing rune which seemed to say, she waited while the word came back together, notifications? The other symbols seemed to fall away as more symbols came from the one that said notifications. Slowly, patiently, she tried focusing on symbols until they became words. There were two blocks of symbols, the first was far longer. “Welcome to” she couldn’t make out the next symbol; maybe it couldn’t translate things when they didn’t have a word in your language?
“This is a system supported world, if you have reason to suspect that this system is being used unlawfully or outside of compliance or is being heavily modified, please use the report function to inform” this time it was several symbols that weren’t translated “merchant group incorporated so corrective measures may be taken. Informants may be rewarded up to seven small tower spirits for their cooperation.” She really hoped it wasn’t all going to be this heavy, she wasn’t even sure she understood all the words she was getting from it.
“From soul wave observations it has been determined you will receive [7] skill points for entering this world, beware, theft of spiritual structures is unlawful, remember to perform checkout procedures before leaving the world. If you feel this evaluation to be in error, please contact a system administrator to argue your case. If you wish to reject system assistance, please do so promptly. Do note, only local administrators can assist you in enabling it if you choose so. Acceptance of the system is taken as agreement to the applicable rules, norms, and basic courtesies spelled out in the [local laws] section. Please enjoy your stay in” another rune that wasn’t translated. At the base of the block of text were several flashing runes that she tried to read without focusing on like she had with notifications. “[Report] [Administrator] [Reject]”
That sounded, there was allot to unpack there. Companies, systems, it sounded complicated, but Flower caught a few keywords that made it allot more simple. “Soul, agree, reject, receive, laws”, and something told her that “penalty” could have been used too. Was this another demon’s contract? Her friend had told her that her ability to peak had come from something that was and wasn’t magic, had told her to do this, but souls were important right? Flower was roused from her thoughts by a clawed green hand gently patting her hand, a reassuring smile that danced in the corner of her eye while she tried to keep enough focus that the runes won’t disappear on her. With a sigh of resignation she accepted that this system thing was probably useful to them. As she did so the notification seemed to dismiss itself.
The second notification was shorter “You have studied a new language and observed your surroundings, you have gained level 0 sylvan language variant 347, you have gained level 0 identify.” Flower whined in discontentment. She was definitely on the right track to solving their communication issue, but it was so hard. Who was the smartass who decided there needed to be so much reading? Maybe if it was the right language from the start it wouldn’t be so bad, but all these letters and symbols dancing around in her mind was decidedly aggravating.
As the “notifications” faded she was returned to the initial status screen. This one was the longest yet, but she knew what she needed to find, sylvan language 347, somewhere in this large block of runes. First she started at random, the first word was “level”, skipping forwards “vitality”, skipping ahead “skills”, and well, this was probably the right section. She noticed there seemed to be category headings, so she opted to go for those first. “general”, “life skills”, “physical”, “language”. Flower stopped and quickly shifted her focus to the runes that went with that one. There were three options, the first was “System standard”, the second was “English variant 126”, and finally the third ”Sylvan 347”, focusing hard on that one she saw a “[0]” appear, than slowly start to tick upwards. One, two, three, all the way up to seven.
With a sigh of relief she stopped focusing on the mess of runes and was relieved to see it all fade away. Tentatively she tried making the breezy rattling sounds of her friend’s language. “Ahh, why was that so difficult? Couldn’t they have simplified it?” but then her eyes widened. She wasn’t sure how, but more words came out than she knew. No, it was more like, somehow she did know them, but how? Magic. Her parents would be over the moon if they saw this, they’d… that was odd. When she pictured her parents she couldn’t seem to see their faces, it felt like an old half remembered memory from long long ago, but that was yesterday right; a long yesterday, sure, but yesterday.