He woke up as the morning sun rays fell on his face through the window. As soon as he opened his eyes, he started channeling his power to pump air into his lungs, immediately clearing up his state of drowsiness. He hadn't seen a clock in this world. It was uncertain if this world even had the same concept of time or similar length of days. Judging from the extent of light peeping through the window, he estimated the time to be around 8 am. He pulled himself to the side of the bed and put down his only leg on the warm wooden floor. The pajama-like clothing that his hosts had put on him hung was a little too long for him, clearly belonging to Smirnie. On his right leg, it was folded at the ends while on his left leg, it hung loosely from the knee down.
Satoshi pulled up the pajama sleeve on his left leg and examined his injury. It was bad. He will never be able to walk the same way again. It had consumed a forceful amount of rationality to ignore it yesterday and he was sure that without the power keeping his brain functional in an elevated state of perception, he won't be able to keep his emotions in check and break down. That is why when he priorly desired to sleep, he caused it forcefully instead of just naturally letting it come to him.
He would have to eventually stop ignoring his injury and come to terms with it, and he decided now was as good as ever. As he had rolled up the pajama, his stub of a leg came into view. It was unnaturally smooth and clean, as if he was born that way.
“Forget surviving through that, the fact that it was healed to this extent in a matter of days, or possibly hours… damn, this world is crazy.”, He said that as he touched himself where his leg should have been. His eyes had almost got a bit watery as he had done that, but he focused his thoughts elsewhere and spoke out to distract himself. Simultaneously, he had used his power to breathe deeper. Now with a slight pain in his chest, he was unsure whether it was due to having used too much power, or from the welling emotions that he had forcefully suppressed.
He pulled down the pajama sleeve. There was no changing the past. He simply had to get used to it.
He got off the bed and positioned himself for his remaining functional limbs to be touching the floor. He struggled awkwardly as he attempted to crawl his way out of the room. It was cumbersome and no matter how functional his brain, his body would take time to adapt to this kind of movement.
He wondered whether he was making a lot of sound, or whether the hearing capabilities of those wolf-men species was supernatural as Smirnie came running up the stairs.
As Smirnie naturally extended himself to help his guest as he had the previous day, Satoshi put up his palm to his host stopping him in his tracks.
“Thanks for everything, but I cannot impose forever.”, Satoshi said, more out of practicality than morality. And even though verbal communication between the two should have been impossible, the message got across as Smirnie nodded and backed off. Satoshi was glad that irrespective of their differences, communication was still possible.
(What if they howled instead of nodding… well, that would have been fun.)
While idling his mind with some rude thoughts, Satoshi crawled towards the stairs as Smirnie stood to the side, ready to help at a moment’s notice. It was a little annoying being babysat, but Satoshi chose to ignore the attempted goodwill and continued onwards towards the task at hand, literally. He considered using the stairsteady to upright himself, but he was unsure whether it was strong enough to support his entire body weight. So he turned around, and feet first started to descent with Smirnie following closely. The descent wasn’t particularly harsh, just tedious. He let his eyes wander and he was more than a little impressed with how similar the structures were to what he had been used to seeing, even though this was a different world with different sentient species.
The room he had been since yesterday was plain. It had a bed, a table, a chair, a window and lastly, a door. All of it was constructed out of wood including the walls. Here he observed that the entire home was wood. Apart from the material of choice, all the objects that he had witnessed in his room were very similar to the objects from his previous world. Then there were the stairs. It was a different world and he was among a different species, which judging purely from the looks of it, was very athletic. They could have just jumped across the floors, use ropes to swing down, have poles to slide down, practically anything. Yet it was stairs, moreover with stairsteady. He was fascinated by how this world had, from a utility perspective, evolved in a reasonably similar fashion.
He let his influence loose to get a feel of the place, just to spot anything interesting. What his focus went on first was something unexpected. Apparently, the rest of the family was downstairs standing around watching him climb down the stairs in his own unique manner. Irrespective of their reasons and concerns for doing so, Satoshi felt annoyed at being eyed and people not minding their own business. He disregarded it and felt for other things around. Much of it didn’t make sense to him with his limited practice and so as he was about the reach the end of the stairs, he tried to make a detailed mental map of everything in a 2 meter radius. To the right of him was blocked by the wall. Above was empty space and stairs below him. The left was the rails with hollow space beneath the stairs. There was nothing of note in his findings, but he considered it good practice none-the-less. Though this was only the beginning. It would take a lot more if he was to subconsciously incorporate this new ability in his daily life and he definitely wanted to do that.
As Satoshi reached the end of the stairs and landed on the floor below, Smirnie who had been following closely hopped off as well. He had mixed feelings of the human trying to climb down the stairs by himself so soon after his injury but chose not to say anything since it was their own wish. He noticed the man turn to him and do an action he had previously seen and had learned the meaning of. The man was holding up a pinky.
As Satoshi sat on the floor holding his pinky and ignoring the stares of the family, he instinctively sensed the dilemma in Smirnie’s head as the man in question held his chin in thought. Satoshi made another mental remark as to how that action was similar to that in his world when the wife said something. And then the husband said something. And then elder daughter said something and again the husband. The back and forth went on for about half a minute and at the end, Smirnie sighed, provoking another mental remark from Satoshi at the familiar action and pointed towards the washroom. Satoshi had already used his influence to feel for the place and was delighted that his judgement was correct. He wordlessly turned around and crawled his way to the washroom, simultaneously using his influence to feel for as much around the house as possible. With yesterday’s experiments, it was evident that his host family could not discern his use of the weird power and now he was using it more proactively.
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When he reached his destination, he didn’t close the door all the way. Even in his attempted self-reliance, he was not so ludicrous to believe no further misfortune was possible. If he locked the door, he would not be able to use his power to open it should there be any issue, unless of course, he decides to just blow it apart. Only once he was inside, did he realize that the door did not have a lock in the first place, making him smile patronizingly at his elaborate reasoning. He crawled over to the toilet, glad that was similar to the western style. He remembered the previous day and his splashes and noticed that it had all been cleaned. He climbed himself onto the wooden seat and sat in the required position to do his thing. Though a little awkward without one leg, it was not hard to maintain his balance and so he managed with almost no issues. He had been feeling the surroundings with his power through the gap in the door, and was glad that no one was standing outside for emergency sake.
Finished, he washed up using the nearby wooden tub and mug. There was no soap and though he did feel a little awkward about it, he washed his hands extra hard with just the water and decided it was sufficient. For the lack of a brush and toothpaste, he used the water and a finger (of the other hand than the one he washed his ass with) to rub his teeth clean. Lastly, he washed his face, deciding not to bath for now and spending just a little more idle time admiring the hole meant to serve as drainage, he crawled out to where the family sat together chatting and eating. Even before he came into their view, they stopped talking, reinforcing his theory on their acute sense of hearing. Like always, he paid it no heed and just pathetically crawled over to their midst where Smirnie pointed to a chair, though clearly ready to get up and help at a moment’s notice. Satoshi made his way over to his assigned place of seating and climbed up. The wife got up and left, presumably to bring him his part of the food. Meanwhile,
“Perripi.”, said the eldest daughter pointing at herself.
“Rodavie.” said the only son, pointing at himself.
“Dorafi.” said Smirnie patting the youngest one.
“Dola!” repeated the girl cleverly in excitement as she was introduced.
“Satoshi. Thank you for saving my life and for the hospitality.” He said but knowing his meaning would not get across, he bowed his head simultaneously. He was a little apprehensive about doing the action, for all he knew it could mean anything to their culture: a challenge to a fight, a marriage proposal, or maybe even nothing at all.
Seeing Smirnie nod at him with a smile, he desperately hoped he hadn’t just been confirmed to marry the man.
(Smirnie. Peripi. Rodavie. Dorafi. They all end in ‘e’ sound. Huge coincidence that I came up with a similar name.)
Meanwhile, the wife brought him a bowl of something semi-liquid white.
“Tanami uh niam ru.”, she said with a smile as she placed the bowl in front of her guest.
(Uh, so I’m guessing her name is Tanami?)
“Satoshi.” he bowed again as he introduced himself to the last member of the family, her well-endowed chest not escaping his eyes as he bowed.
Not letting himself be distracted by the scenic view, he turned to the food. He couldn’t make out what the dish was, but he was thankful for there being a spoon. He had crawled the way back using just one hand, to keep the other sanitized but not all food could be eaten with just one hand.
Though it looked a little unappetizing, it was fine. A little bland, but in his starving state, it was heavenly. He noticed how everyone else, including ‘Dola’ the little girl who liked drawing, were having meat. He went through a multitude of reasons why they would serve him differently and concluded he needed to know more about the world.
He ate quietly and hungrily. The other members of the family dabbled in idle chit-chat, or that is what Satoshi chose to believe for he had no idea what they were saying. He chose to completely ignore them and felt for the air around him again. He could sense everyone’s breathing. The power was exhilarating, to the point of consuming him. Satoshi had to contain himself from not bursting everyone’s lungs right then and there. He tried to shift his focus elsewhere. Feeling for this and that around the house, he was done with his bowl of semi-liquid food. But he was not done yet. And learning from yesterday’s mistake, he didn’t just return the bowl back to the wife.
“Tanami.”, he called out the name of the wife putting an abrupt stop to the conversation that was going on the dining table. He ignored all the gathered stares and made an eating motion with his spoon, trying to indicate he wanted more. Fortunately, this time the trick seemed to have worked as this time she got him another bowl of the same stuff to feed upon. He gave her another bow in gratitude and proceeded to satiate his eager stomach.
After he was done, he crawled back upstairs to his assigned room and practiced his powers in serenity.
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Two and a half days passed by in a similar manner.
Other than getting steadily more used to his power, the only things of note that happened in those days were the visits by two certain individuals. The first was undeniably the person who healed him. He was most professional, not bothering with the human at all other than making sure his injuries were still suppressed. Satoshi was so sure of the man being the one to heal him because of what he saw. He was almost not even surprised with all that that had happened to him recently. The man used signs to ask him if there were any discomfort, and just for curiosity sake, he had lied that there was. The man had put his hand over Satoshi's leg and about a dozen seconds later, his hand started emitting a green hue, slowly covering the bottom area of Satoshi's leg. He felt a tingly sensation, one that he would undeniably classify as a good feeling. Even if he was unsure whether he'd be able to perform it, he wanted to ask the man to teach this 'healing’ to him, but the man's attitude(and the inability to communicate) kept him at bay. It was hard to judge whether this was the man's personality, or he didn't want to get involved with the human more than he needed to. But Satoshi inclined his opinions to the latter, having clearly noticed the casual interaction between the man and Smirnie.
The other man to visit was a blind old man that exuded an aura of authority. He asked a bunch of questions from the human about his origins, how he managed to get here, whether there were others like him in the forest and more. But unfortunately (or fortunately), the man was blind. The question-answer session ended up becoming a 3-way communication. The blind man would say something to Smirnie, who would try to make hand signs to relay that to the human, who would either not understand or pretend not to and make some weird hand signs to confuse Smirnie. Smirnie would say something to the blind man to which he would either tell Smirnie something or try to make some hand signs himself. Satoshi did his best to not answer any question, in part to his own amusement at their complicated expressions. He even mixed some questions of his own to throw them off. This went on for about 2 hours before the blind man left, but Satoshi knew it was far from over. This all happened today, and he had a feeling it would continue tomorrow. Which is why he preponed his escape.
In the midst of the night, he used his influence to make sure the family was asleep and proceeded with his plan as quietly as possible. This place had no artificial sources of light. As Satoshi remembered their strange pupils, he had a feeling that their extraordinary hearing capabilities weren’t the only thing their species inherited from their animal counterpart.
Hence, in the dark of the night, soundless and sightless, a lone human walked and opened a window. If there was somebody to observe, they would’ve been shocked as there was no way the one-legged could have walked, and if they looked closely, they would’ve noticed that even the one leg he had hadn’t moved in any way to assist his locomotion.
The human climbed out the window and jumped, for the second time in his life, pummelling to his death. And as it had not happened the first time, it did neither the second. The only difference was that the second was achieved due to his own competence, as the air wrapped around the human slowing his descent, stopping him right before he hit the ground face first.
(FUCK THAT WAS CLOSE!)
His heart beating fast from his failure, he took steady breaths to calm it and slowly forced himself upright.
“Alright, I can do this!”, he whispered. There was something about speaking out and hearing himself that brought him courage. Using his influence, he detected no movements in the vicinity and steadily began his climb to the sky, finally free to travel the world by his own.