Looking around the flat rock Jake focused his attention on his immediate surroundings for the first real time since falling here. He knew he was surrounded on all immediate sides by rock, but standing up now he was surprised to see that it was rock for miles in every direction. The only thing that broke up the unending landscape of grey was the dotted brushes of dead trees or dried-out patches of grass. In the middle distance from where he was currently standing he spotted a cluster of densely packed trees surrounding what looked like a sudden, sharp drop-off.

Intrigued, Jake was about to start walking towards where the trees were gathered when he felt his foot brush up against something on the floor and start rolling away. Looking down confused, he was shocked to find the carved wooden cup the elderly tribal had splashed him with rolling around on the floor. Jake supposed he’d been holding onto it when he fell through to wherever he was now, so it followed him.

Deciding it could prove useful, Jake collected the cup and the remnants of the rope that had bound him and started walking. Over the past few days, Jake was quickly getting used to not just walking longer and longer periods (which he had never done much before as a homebody) but also journeying across large swaths of untamed wildland. Though he still struggled with his unbalanced legs, he found the continued walking an almost familiar sensation.

He counted himself lucky he’d landed on such a large, flat surface. He doubted he’d be able to navigate up any hilly terrain successfully or, God forbid, trek through another desert. As he was considering his luck amid this hellish situation, he reached the end of his walk arriving at the patch of dried-out trees. Looking past them, he saw that they seemed to be growing clustered around the edge of a cliff face.

Looking down the edge of the cliff carefully, he couldn’t see the bottom—just a black drop-off obscured by a whisp of rolling fog. Further down the expansive canyon edge, about maybe a hundred or so meters down, Jake spotted fresh, thriving trees growing proudly and unobstructed out of the side of the cliff face. Though it was hard to see on this side, on the opposite end of the canyon he could see that below that line of trees a carpet of green seemed to blanket the cliff face stretching down without end.

He decided to move away from the cliff face, as he saw no way to easily climb down towards the living trees and didn’t want to risk being so close to the edge while being so unbalanced and focused on the collection of dead trees. There were four in total, he couldn’t tell what type of tree it once was as they were all identical, so Jake didn’t see a reason to try and differentiate between the trees.

The trees themselves were a tannish color, bordering on grey. No leaves remained on the few branches still clinging to the trunks of the trees, and a large collection of the tree’s branches had already shriveled up and fallen in haphazard piles on the floor. The bark of the trunk felt dusty and dry, and when Jake pulled with his fingers it easily gave way from the trunk. The inside of the bark was as lifeless and dry as the outside had been.

Looking at the crumpled bits of dry bark cupped in his hands, Jake vaguely recalled reading once that in certain survival situations, tree bark could be eaten for nutrients. If there was ever a survival situation, this would be it, the problem was that Jake couldn’t clearly remember the details of what he had read, and looking down at the crumpling pile of dryness in his hands he couldn’t imagine any sort of nutrition remaining in the corpse of the tree.

Still, he had woken ravenously hungry, and though he was starting to get used to ignoring the sensation he had the potential here to sate himself. He hadn’t spotted any source of water while walking, and nighttime would soon come making it dangerous to continue scavenging with the cliff edge so close by. He’d like to at least address one of his body’s needs before tackling the challenge of night. With gritted teeth, Jake cupped the bark and forced it into his mouth.

It was edible, not just the horrid taste but the dark itself quickly felt like it was turning to ash on his tongue. He was forced to bend over and cough the bark out for several minutes. Towards the end, his coughs had turned violent as his body physically rejected the bark Jake had tried to force-feed it. This violent coughing fit left Jake wheezing to recover for several minutes, vowing to himself that no matter how desperate the situation got he would never try that again. At least not before he had a chance to properly remember how to do it.

By now, through his walk across the flat top of the stone and his escapades with the bark the sun had nearly set completely leaving only vague hints of sunlight to work with. Jake didn’t like the idea of another cold night exposed to the elements, so he decided to busy himself setting up the task he’d first thought of when he noticed the decrepit condition of the trees surrounding him.

Before long he’d successfully managed to gather a substantial pile of shriveled branches in front of him, mixed with a smaller pile of broken strands of hay-like grass to act as starter kindling. It was ready to burn as soon as he lit it. The only problem left facing him was how exactly he would light his fire.

His initial plan had been to try simply rubbing two dried sticks together, like what he often saw in movies. He didn’t know the proper way to do this and was improvising the way the sticks should be placed together or orientated. His lack of knowledge proved inconsequential, however, because as soon the slightest amount of pressure was applied to the sticks they would crumble to powder in his hands. No matter how many sticks he tried, as soon as he pushed them together or tried rubbing the sticks together in his hands, they all met the same fate.

Soon Jake was surrounded by a growing pile of wood ash amassed from his fruitless attempts to make fire. Frustrated, Jake wasn’t sure what else he could try anymore. If just rubbing the sticks together with his bare hands hadn’t worked, he had planned on also trying to rig something together using the leftover rope that once bound his legs together. However, not only was the hemp rope becoming more frayed and useless the longer he carried it but none of the sticks he had on him would survive long enough to even potentially start a fire.

His frustration bubbling over, Jake grabbed the nearest stone sitting next to him and flung it away with all his might, screaming into the sky as he did so. He would likely have continued flinging objects if he hadn’t noticed the emergence of sparks from the ground where the rock landed. Crawling after the rock quickly to not lose it in the pale moonlight he managed to retrieve the discarded rock. Looking over it carefully, it didn’t look special or unique, it didn’t even look chipped from its flight.

Jake tried lightly tapping the stone against the ground but got nothing in return. It was only when he wound his shoulders back and slammed the rock down into the ground that the sparks returned. Feeling excitement quickly overtaking his boiling frustration, Jake returned to his pile of lumbar and began repeatedly slamming the rock down to the ground in earnest near his kindling, hoping the sparks would catch. Unfortunately, the banging on the ground was too random, and often the sparks would fly in the complete opposite direction of his would pile. If a few sparks did land on the wood pile, it wasn’t long before they went out.

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Improvising, Jake grabbed the sharpened rock he used before he cut his bonds and began roughly scrapping the rocks together as if he were sharpening a knife. This did the trick, as it gave him basic control of where the shower of generated sparks would land, and with careful aiming he was soon able to start a small fire amidst the small pile of kindling he gathered.

It wasn’t long till this small flame turned into a decently sized campfire once it caught hold of the dry sticks surrounding it. By now, night had long since risen, and Jake was left to lean back and enjoy the warmth of the fire and glow of the moon and stars uninterrupted. He wasn’t feeling particularly tired, he had taken a particularly large nap earlier, so he decided to put off falling asleep for the time being and enjoy the calm serenity of the night air.

This serenity was soon interrupted, however, but an annoying chirp coming from his pocket. Confused, Jake pulled his phone out of his pocket and shut off the alarm which dominated the screen. Twenty-three hours had passed. According to his phone, it was six-fifty-six in the morning, and he should have expected to fall out of here in the next thirty to forty minutes or so.

Jake was confused, looking around it looked like it was the middle of the night to him. It was hard to see the exact position of the moon as some clouds were rolling in that obstructed the sky a bit, but he was positive it wasn’t early morning. He decided wherever he was must simply have longer days than Earth and started preparing himself to leave.

He decided that along with his phone, keys, and wallet, he’d also take along the pair of sparks-producing rocks and carved wooden cup, as they could be useful. The hemp rope, at this point, and nearly completely unwoven itself and wouldn’t be useful for much else besides fuel for the campfire, so he decided to simply leave that behind. He wasn’t sure exactly how much or how little he could pull through with him, and he didn’t want to risk leaving behind a helpful item for something that was a wad of grass at this point.

His preparations to leave were over faster than he had expected them to be, leaving him with nothing to do except sit and wait. Periodically he would check the clock on his phone, trying to catch the exact moment he fell through to wherever he was going next. That could prove to be useful information.

So the wait began:

Seven-ten

Seven-fifteen

Seven-twenty-five

Seven-twenty-seven

Seven-thirty

As time went on, he found it harder and harder to ignore his phone, checking after what he felt must have been tens of minutes only to find two had passed. But soon he checked it to find seven-forty-six. Only ten minutes away from when he set the alarm. It could be any second now. He sat there, on the edge of his seat simply staring into the fire. He was trying to distract himself. If he was honest, he was nervous about where he might end up next. Though he felt slightly more prepared now to face it, it was still nerve-racking to sit in silence, waiting.

When at last he couldn’t take the endless wait anymore he checked his phone again, expecting to see barely any time had passed. Instead, he was greeted with eight-o-five. He couldn’t believe it. The time he’d set the alarm had long come and passed. The alarm itself had been set after he’d been here for a little while too. He had been here for well over twenty-four hours now and yet… He was still stuck here.

Right as he was about to start panicking, he was interrupted but a sudden sensation splashed onto his head. Then another crashed onto his shoulder and a third onto the back of his hand. Wet and cool. Looking up just in time for a drop to splash directly into his eye he could make out that the gathered clouds above had thickened substantially, and they were beginning to rain. His brain blanked for a second, not sure if this was good news or bad news.

On the one hand, he was incredibly thirsty and was extremely open to the water which both solved that problem and helped wash out whatever remained of the wood ash still in his mouth. On the other hand, the rain was already starting strong and showed no signs of weakening. There had been no drizzle stage, it had started as full-on rain and seemed like it would progress to a full-on downpour. While he was thirsty, Jake didn’t like the idea of spending the night wet and cold for who knows how long.

He'd already guessed the days here were longer than where he came from, and he could guess that probably meant the same was true for the nights. He’d managed to escape the chill of the desert without dying of hypothermia, he didn’t want to risk it twice by spending what could be over twenty-four hours sitting in sopping wet clothes. The dead tree branches above covered some light protection, but it was hardly sufficient. Already his hard fight for fire was starting to die out.

He needed to act fast, while he still had the firelight. Glancing for some sort of solution, Jake managed to spot it. One of the four dead trees was slightly more elevated than the others. Looking under it, Jake discovered a burrow he could just barely fit into. Quickly, he gathered up his odd assortment of knickknacks and crawled into the borrow.

He had expected it to be tight, as tight if not tighter than the prison pen, but once inside the burrow he was surprised to find it was rather spacious. The area under the tree was composed of dead, dried old roots which had a similar consistency to the rest of the tree. The rocky burrow seemed to stretch further into the dark, but Jake had no interest in exploring any deeper than necessary.

Though he had acted quickly and done his best to move as fast as possible out of the rain, he was still soaking wet. He would have to light another fire. He was nervous about doing so in such a compact, underground space, but he saw no other way of drying his clothes. He had no way to hang them to dry and the sun had long since set.

He was able to gather and rebuild his pile of timber fairly easily thanks to the collection of dead roots lining the wall, and along with the remains of the hemp rope he had another fire starter ready to go. He assembled this one as close as possible to the opening above, hoping the smoke produced would drift away and not accumulate in the hole. He had gotten used to producing sparks using the rocks fairly quickly, so thankfully starting the fire this time took relatively no time at all.

Jake quickly took off his clothes and arranged them near the fire as soon as it was lit, before stepping back to observe it. He didn’t know how long he’d be able to keep the fire lit, so he was planning to get his clothes as dry as possible while simultaneously keeping a firm watch on how much smoke was produced. Thankfully, barely any smoke was produced from the fire of burning, dried-out roots, and any that was produced simply drifted away out of the hole.

Relaxing a bit, Jake next took the wooden cup and utilizing the rainwater outside, secured some much-needed water. While the rain had sent him into a scramble and destroyed his original fire, he was still grateful for it because it was only now, after satisfying it, did he realized how thirsty he had been.

Leaving the cup outside to gather water, Jake took his phone out again to check it. There was only twenty percent battery life left, so he couldn’t keep checking the time like this, but for now, tracking the time was a matter of critical importance. Roughly two hours had passed since the rain first started. During those two hours, he was still stuck here, having not fallen through to somewhere new. He wasn’t sure what to do next, he considered setting a new timer but he wanted to save the battery life and he didn’t see how a new timer would help.

The twenty-four theory had been wrong, that just left two options. Either A) it’s a completely different theory he hadn’t considered yet or B) he was done falling into new worlds and was stuck here. Refusing to accept option B yet, Jake enjoyed one last cup of rainwater before moving to the opposite end of the rock burrow.

Sitting down nestled against the smooth stone of the burrow, he watched the fire and pondered his options without having much else to do. Eventually while gazing like this he drifted off to sleep.