Aris did not sleep that night. His mind was quite occupied by the shattered moon floating in the sky. He examined it from every angle he could see, even reaching a few of his soul-strands up to uncomfortable distances so he could etch everything into his mind. There was some good news, at least from what he could tell. Whatever had led to the moon’s breaking, it happened a long time ago. Millenia at a minimum.
How could he know this? The fragments were stable. That had been one of the first things he inspected – not that he could have done anything if that was not the case. Over hours of study from countless angles, Aris could not see any movement. Pieces were not rotating in space, they were not drawing closer to the planet, and there were no signs of volcanic volatility in the main core piece of the moon. After Aris felt reasonably certain this was true, he allowed himself to breathe and just take in the sight.
Most of the moon was intact. From what Aris could see, it looked like a large object (he thought maybe a very large asteroid) impacted with the lower third of the moon, breaking off two large chunks of the moon and hundreds of smaller fragments. The chunks still drifted near the main piece of the moon, floating like lost children. There was a large amount of dust in the air around the moon – it reflected the light like silver mist – and most of it had gathered loosely into rings. The rings were angled around the moon just right to be seen by Aris. They reminded him of the wide brim of a hat, lightly inclining towards him so he could see the entire rim. It was banded in beautiful shades of silver, gold, and violet.
There was just one issue with the moon – and this is what kept him up that night. It wasn’t the moon Aris remembered, which meant he definitely was not on Earth.
How could he know this? Well, when the Moon had first crested the horizon, bringing horror and terror along with it, its arrival sparked one of Aris’s memories. He remembered being held – he must have been a small child – while he looked up into the sky. Earth’s Moon had been floating there, massive and bone-white with its three massive craters making it appear almost human in his mind. He saw its two eyes and its mouth, all open wide in a fearful shout. He felt a distant sense of wonder, a fragment of what he felt as a child gazing up at that celestial orb.
This new moon, not the Moon, but maybe a distant cousin, was very different. He couldn’t see any distinguishable craters on its face apart from the massive crater that had cracked it open and sent ripples through its body which could still be seen today, massive frozen waves of broken stone rising into distant mountains.
The moon was also colored differently. It had a very distinct gold tinge to it (there was a lot of gold in this new world, Aris was noticing), and it was smaller than Earth’s moon, maybe two-thirds its size.
The undeniable understanding Aris obtained was earth-shattering. (Or mysterious-other-planet-shattering to be more correct.) He lay there under the tree’s canopy and worried until the broken moon drifted beneath the horizon and the sun rose again. All he could think was that he was alone on a strange planet, surrounded by things that looked like they were from Earth but were alien, and how he may never speak to another person again in his life.
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The sun rose. Aris lay there emptily watching the world come to life around him. He saw birds wake up in their nests and begin to sing before winging off to hunt bugs. He watched clouds drift through the sky and flower buds open on trees. This world, much like Earth, was uncaring of the thoughts and fears of humans. It had more important things to do.
Gradually, Aris sat up from the dirt floor he was lying on. Then, steeling his nerves, he stood up, brushed the dirt off his back, and slipped out from under the branches. ‘If the world can keep moving, then so can I.’ He thought determinedly, ‘I have a world to explore, sights to see, and a new life to live!’
With that, he began his trek down the hill, striding with confidence, knowing each step he took was safe and stable. After he reached the bottom of the hill, he began to walk towards the sunrise again, leaving the quorum of trees to grow and live in this unfamiliar world.
‘Now,’ Aris thought to himself, ‘where can I find some pants.’
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Walking through a forest nude was an uncomfortable experience, and that was putting it lightly. Aris hadn’t eaten or drank since awakening, so he was fortunate enough that he didn’t have to piss or shit in the woods, and since his body was fresh off the press he didn’t smell yet. But that didn’t change the fact that he always felt vulnerable and exposed.
It was a cool morning. The sun was barely up for the day and the forest was dark and still. It would take hours before the sun warmed his path enough to make it pleasant. A breeze wound through the trees, brushing against his flank. He shivered as his skin rose at the unwelcome touch.
Aris knew there was nothing dangerous around him. Anything within his (just over a half-mile) range was continuously observed. He hadn’t seen a predator larger than then the insect-eating birds (which were about the size of two fists put together), so there was nothing that could threaten him. And if something did happen to appear, like an alien bear, he would be gone before it even knew he was there.
He had been thinking about solutions to his nudity problem frequently. Now that he knew that he wasn’t in a wildlife park somewhere on Earth, the problem was more pressing. No one was going to show up and give him clothing. He had to make it on his own. The question was how.
Aris had a few ideas. None of them were great.
He could weave cloth and somehow turn it into pants. Maybe using the tall grasses he saw in the meadows and glens he walked through. There were quite a few issues with that idea. First, he would have to stay in one place for days to make pants and he had not yet found a suitable place to stop. Secondly (and this was quite important), he didn’t know jack-shit about weaving. Where would he even start?
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His second idea was better, but only because it was marginally more probable. He could hunt some of the small animals, skin them, eat them, and turn their furs into clothing. With his sight, it would be easy to find them. However, one major issue was that he didn’t have a weapon to kill the animals with, and, if he did kill an animal by, let’s say hitting it with a rock, how would he skin it? Finally, if he somehow skinned the animal, got it all cleaned up with some water, and wrapped it around his waist, what’s going to stop it from rotting? He had never cured animal hide before and he didn’t know where to start.
So, he was left in the same spot; stark-naked, his back covered in dirt, and his feet stained black and brown by the mulch as he trekked through the empty forest. Sensational.
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The sun had risen quickly, and Aris was still walking. The trees around him looked different. Most of the trees were the same, tall thin trunks dappled in brown and crimson. The trees’ leaves were wide and thick, the color of a rich dark lacquer. Sprinkled throughout the leaves were beautiful flowers. They were shaped like conch shells, pale white, and lightly stained with pink. Peeking out of them were blood-red stamens covered in pollen. The air was lightly perfumed with their scent. It reminded him of sweet cherries and strawberries.
Aris was concerned again, something which was rapidly becoming a frequent occurrence, maybe even his standard state of mind. Why was he concerned this time? By his best estimates, Aris had been awake non-stop for more than a whole day without a sip of water, a bite to eat, or a drop of sleep. The eerie part? He didn’t feel like he needed any of them. As far as he could tell, his body was functioning just fine. His muscles were not even sore from all this walking. It was like he was a machine. ‘But if I’m not eating, drinking, or resting, how is my body still functioning? It just doesn’t make sense. Where is this energy coming from?’
Immediately after Aris had that thought, he was struck with a realization. Where could his body possibly be getting all this energy from? Perhaps the quite large accumulation of golden energy he had collected every second of the day since the moment he woke up, the same energy that created his body?
Aris felt like a fool for not seeing what was right in front of him. He had even noticed the small rush of pleasure and energy from each speck he collected. He hypothesized that his body was consuming the golden light he collected somehow. The only reason he had not noticed a shrinkage was because he was collecting energy in such massive amounts that it was almost impossible to track any usage. He had too much of a surplus.
Aris conjured up his sense of the sphere in his mind. (He always had an idea of how much was in there, just like how someone is always aware of a toe but doesn’t truly feel it until they focus.) His core was larger. It wasn’t a peach pit anymore; it was a whole peach. As he focused on his core, Aris felt energy trickle into his body from his soul-strands. It came tumbling into the odd pocket of space in his stomach where this sphere of energy resided; warping into existence as it finished following his soul-strands back to their source. The specks of energy tumbled onto the sphere, falling like grains of sand in an hourglass.
The only way for Aris to know for sure if his theory was correct was to put it to the test. He would have to restrict his energy collection while monitoring his core to see if it shrunk at all.
Aris had nothing better to do. He found a suitable location within his sphere – there was an ancient tree nearby, so old its insides had rotted away leaving it completely hollow. There was a decently sized hole at the base of the tree; he could walk into it if he crouched down and shuffled. Best of all, it wasn’t currently in use. He didn’t see or smell anything indicating an animal lived there.
Once Aris was comfortably situated, his ass firmly planted on the ground inside the hollow, he began doing something he hadn’t done since he first appeared in this world. He removed his soul-strands. The process was easy. He didn’t need to do anything more than pull them back a little until they no longer peeked into reality. All his distant strands were locked away back in the unreal dimensions that paralleled his new reality. For his personal strands (the ones he didn’t feed through alternate routes before poking them into the world), he just pulled them back into his body. It was done almost instantly. As soon as Aris decided to do it, it was done. His strands were fully in sync with his wishes.
Aris briefly felt like his eyes had been plucked out and his nose cut off. The world was limited to the sights directly in front of him, and the only thing he smelled was the decaying wood in the middle of the tree. It was disorienting as Aris collected himself. He focused on his breathing, inhaling slowly and then exhaling.
Once he felt stable, Aris focused his attention on the sphere of light floating in his body. There was a final trickle of energy as the light his strands collected before he tucked them away finished their journey to his core. Then, it was done. No more power was being collected.
Aris watched intently. He had no idea how much energy was needed to fuel a body, but he knew there would have to be signs. So, he sat in the tree, breathing in and out, while he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
About fifteen minutes passed and there was no change. Aris kept waiting.
Another fifteen, and he thought he saw a flicker of light. He locked onto it, only to realize it was a speck his body had collected after it collided with him during his meditation.
He continued to wait.
Another fifteen minutes passed before Aris finally saw something. He had been so focused on the sphere itself, monitoring its size and trying to see if it would shrink, that he had not noticed the extremely faint lines – as thin and delicate as spider silk – connected to the sphere. There were only a few connection points, scattered randomly across the surface of the sphere. As he watched one of them, it pulsed with light, pulling a fragment of energy from his sphere and shooting it off into the darkness.
‘Ah,’ Aris thought, ‘finally, something to follow.’
His mind raced along the thread, following the tiny bead of light as it flew along its path, until, eventually, it met the fleshy membrane of his stomach.
Aris was ecstatic. As far as he was concerned, this was proof his body was siphoning power from his sphere of light and using it for something. The amount it took was negligible, it looked like it used up energy comparable to the smallest flecks of light every minute. If he was correct, then he had months or years’ worth of power stored already. This assumed his body didn’t draw more when he was moving, but even then, he had considerable resources.
This meant Aris did not have to look for an area with abundant food and water to make his home. Instead, it needed strong flows of energy. He hadn’t seen any areas with higher levels of golden light than others, but he had only seen a fraction of the region. There was still plenty to explore.
Aris stood up, stretching tall and touching the ceiling, before stepping out of the tree. He had more to think about. As he moved, he slipped his soul-strands out from hiding within his body and the weird in-between spaces. He relaxed as information came pouring in. A bird he had never seen before was singing a quarter mile away. Some bee-like creatures had found the trees’ flowers and were busy inspecting every single one. Finally, there was some weird creature walking up a nearby hill. Aris moved a strand closer to get a closer look, then gasped out loud as it drew closer.
It was a person.