Max stared at the golden outline of a body and the nodes where they hung suspended over the body’s head, neck, chest, forearms, hands, legs, shins, and feet. They all pulsed slowly, like the rise and fall of breath, and each was wreathed with a circle of green dust. The multicolored star that expanded into green, blue, and yellow stars, hung next to the diagram’s right hand. The green, blue, and yellow bubbles that looked like they had been layered over each other hung next to the left hand. They were also wreathed in monster dust.

Max looked down at the brightling. It sat attentively in front of him, its eyes blazing with golden light. “What are you showing me, little one?”

The creature continued to stare into nothing with its blazing, expressionless eyes.

“On my own. Got it.”

Max looked back at the diagram. He stared at it a while longer, then slowly lifted his ring hand and slid his index finger experimentally across the golden outline of the body. The silver circle, the same one he’d used to navigate through the layers of the diagram until he selected his ability to shoot bolts of flame, appeared over the diagram’s shoulder. As it moved across the body along with his finger, it made a bright chiming sound each time it passed over a node.

“These sound different,” he said, looking down at the brightlings little face again. “Don’t they?”

The brightling’s only response was to begin swishing its tail in slow, lazy arcs.

“Great,” Max said. “Thanks.”

Max decided to start with familiar ground. The last time the brightling showed him this diagram, he’d tapped that scintillating, multicolored star and it had separated into three different versions he could explore further. If the monster dust had changed something about what the brightling was showing him, he’d be better able to spot the change if he was looking at something he’d seen before.

Max dragged his finger to the star and tapped. As he expected, the star fizzed and separated into three colors, yellow, blue, and green. Monster dust appeared around the green and the yellow stars.

“Ok,” Max said. “That’s different.”

He tapped the green star and it expanded into the same hissing circle of green energy that he’d seen while he’d been laying on his back by the ravine. At its center the familiar scene began to play, but Max barely noticed the heroic version of himself fit a stone to a slingshot and take aim at the approaching tentacle monster. He was distracted by the faint outline of a life size slingshot that had appeared on his real wrist.

The last time he had seen an insubstantial outline of a slingshot on his wrist, it had looked like the real thing, only faded, transparent. This version was the same unmistakable, shimmering green as the monster dust the brightling had been pulling from monsters.

Max held his wrist in front of the brightling’s eyes. “I can have this now? I don’t have to choose just the rings?”

The brightling chirped.

Max stared at the brightling, its eyes still blazing with golden energy, and felt a twinge of guilt. “Is this why you’ve been eating this stuff? Or…collecting it?”

The glowing golden creature chirped again.

Not to nourish itself, or for some nefarious ulterior motive. It had been “eating” monster dust to make it available to him, here.

Why it would do that, he still didn’t know, but he felt a wave of gratitude wash through him.

He swallowed twice, then gently reached out and used three fingers to scratch the creature between the ears. “Surprise inside surprise inside surprise. Thank you. Again.”

The brightling’s tail twitched more quickly through a few arcs, then resumed its lazy swishing as the brightling stared forward at nothing.

Max froze as a new possibility occurred to him. If now he could have both the rings at the slingshot, maybe he could also have two kinds of elemental bolts.

Ice, he thought. Ice would be useful. I could use ice for all kinds of things.

Then he thought about the furry black and white monster that had hit him in the forehead with a caltrop.

Or lightning. Lightning would be good.

Max jerked his finger back to close the green star, then began to drag the silver circle over to the blue star. He paused when he saw that it shone less brightly than the other two. And it didn’t have a swirling circle of green monster dust.

Oh. Maybe not.

He dragged the silver circle over it anyway, just in case, but when he tapped it the field of elemental icons didn’t appear. Neither did the illusion of him fighting a monster with various bolts of elemental energy. All he heard was a low musical tone.

Max swallowed his disappointment. There had been so many options before, so many elemental icons to choose from. If he could have the slingshot now as well as the rings, why not let him use the rings for two elements?

Why why why, Max thought darkly as he looked down at the brightling again. Why give me some things and not others? Why give me anything? Why am I even here?

Max sat there for a while, staring, ruminating. Only when his frustration began to fade slightly did he realize he’d been glaring, intensely, at the brightling.

He felt a faint pang of guilt. This creature had saved his life. It had given him fire to fight back against the jungle’s monsters. It could have left him to die, or it could have saved him but given him nothing. But it hadn’t, and now both the green and yellow stars were his to claim if he wanted them. He should be grateful for what he had.

And the creature continued to surprise him. Maybe, eventually, he could have all three stars. Maybe some time in the future the blue star would light up again.

Maybe. Why not?

Sitting up a little straighter, Max focused again on what was already available right in front of him.

He tapped on the yellow star, then the green. They each sparked and expanded to show him the same scenes they had displayed originally: Max fighting a tentacle monster with a club and being killed brutally, and Max using a slingshot to kill the monster with stones he pulled from a pouch hanging at his hip.

Max watched himself die holding a club only once, wondering as he did why the brightling would offer him this option. As profoundly satisfying as it may have been to club the black wooly monster off one of its perches, nothing about the yellow star’s gift seemed practical or promising.

The slingshot, however, might be useful. But what could it offer him that a bolt of flame couldn’t already accomplish?

Max watched the scene in the green star again. When the first stone struck its target, Max realized the monster seemed much farther away than anything he had hit with his fire bolt. Bringing an enemy down from farther away would certainly be useful.

“Maybe,” Max said.

But there were also other options to explore. None of the nodes on the rest of the diagram had responded to the silver circle the first time the brightling had shown it to him. They had just made that low musical sound, like the blue star had. Now, as Max closed the yellow star to look at the diagram of the body, he saw that all of the nodes pulsed brightly inside their circles of green dust. And those bubbles. They looked just like the shields that appeared around him or the monsters he fought. The last time he had seen this diagram he hadn’t been able to select them the way he had the star. But what could he do with them now?

He dragged the silver circle over them and tapped. They made the same low tone as the blue star and continued their overlapping undulations uninterrupted.

Nothing.

Max looked at the brightling.

“Why are you showing me things I can’t use?”

Its glowing eyes seemed to stare straight through him.

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but what good are these? What am I supposed to understand about these?”

The brightling ignored him, so Max frowned at the bubbles in frustration for a few moments longer, then pushed them from his mind. The circles of streaming monster dust were new and different.

Focus on those.

Max dragged the silver circle to one of the nodes on the diagram’s legs. The green circles of dust around both leg nodes hissed and widened a fraction as the circles around the other nodes on the rest of the body faded away. The circles on the legs were connected, then. Whatever illusion he was about to see would likely show him something that applied to both legs. Leaning forward slightly in anticipation, Max tapped one of them.

What might the monster dust do to his legs? Let him run faster? Jump higher? Maybe it would harden his skin, or give him some kind of leafy camouflage to better escape the notice of the monsters that wanted him dead.

The diagram vanished and in its place, appearing exactly the same size as the outline of the diagram, stood an image of Max. The image was wearing a simple pair of pants made of a thin looking brownish-gray material.

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Max stared at the image.

“Oh,” he said. “Pants.”

He stared at the image a while longer, feeling childish. Why wouldn't it be pants? Why hadn't he thought of that? Pants would be good. Helpful. Practical. Pants were an essential he’d desperately wanted since he’d arrived. So why, he wondered, was he so disappointed?

He absently flexed the fingers of his right hand, feeling the bronze rings click together.

Because the last thing the brightling gave me was fire.

But pants were still good. Helpful. Practical.

Remembering the way the slingshot and the rings on his hand had partially materialized with one tap, then fully and permanently with a second tap, Max tapped one of the nodes still pulsing over the thighs on the image of the pants.

Green dust began to swirl around his own legs, condensing into a transparent version of the pants that appeared on the diagram.

“Very nice,” Max said, pressing one hand experimentally onto the garment. The transparent fabric that settled over him still left nothing to the imagination and his hand passed through it to rest on the skin of his thigh. But they would solidify permanently if he tapped again, he knew.

And they would be useful. He thought about how painful it had been to fall into bushes with nothing to protect him from branches or slapping leaves. He could run more confidently if he needed to. He wouldn't have to worry about shielding himself so carefully. He could crawl or roll along the ground.

Better that he have pants than be able to jump a little higher or run a little faster. Certainly.

Even better to be fully clothed.

Max dragged the silver circle over the node on his chest and tapped again.

The circles of green dust spiraling around the nodes over his legs broke apart and flowed upward in two tiny rivers to surround the node over his chest. When it widened invitingly, Max tapped it twice, not waiting to see what appeared on the small representation of himself. He wanted to see his actual body fully clothed.

Max held his arms out to his sides as green sparkling dust swirled around him. He looked down at himself, anticipating another swirl of green dust appearing to manifest a transparent garment over his chest. Instead the transparent pants clinging to his legs collapsed into dust, flowed upward, and resolidified as a gauzy shirt made from the same brownish-gray as the pants that had disappeared. He was naked from the waist down again.

“What…?”

Max swept his finger across each node on the diagram, tapping experimentally. When he touched the node on his head, the shirt broke apart and became a crown of woven vines across his forehead. When he touched the node on his neck, the woven crown became a torque that looked like a single, long red flower petal had been hardened so it would remain in a U shape. Then he clicked on the chest node again and the shirt reappeared. He turned to look at the brightling.

“Is that it? I only get one?”

After a moment the brightling flicked one ear.

Max looked at the floating image of himself. He looked at the thin shirt that was his only reward for surviving alone in a jungle filled with monsters that wanted to kill him. He had killed four of them, including the one that had nearly eviscerated him. He'd killed two at once as they threw deadly missiles at him and tried to blast him into pieces. All so he could choose between jewelry, thin pants, or a shirt that left his most delicate regions exposed.

Max hadn’t laughed since he’d woken up without any memory of who he was–couldn’t remember ever having laughed before in his life. But looking at that image of himself, in a simple shirt that left him naked from the waist down, he began laughing. He didn’t stop laughing until he collapsed onto his back with tears streaming from his eyes.

“Is that it?” he gasped between fits of giggling. “Is that what all your noise was about?”

He sat up and gestured down at himself, at his nakedness. The partial coverage of the shirt made him even more aware of his exposure than when he was entirely nude. “All that fire and light and noise, for this?”

The brightling continued to glow and the image of Max hung in the air.

“Take it off,” Max said. He gestured vaguely at the image. “Stop. Take it off.”

The image vanished and the glow in the brightling’s eyes faded.

Max ran a hand over his chest, anxious to verify that the brightling hadn’t forced the shirt onto him, by accident or design. When he felt nothing but the hair running down the center of his chest, he collapsed onto his back. He lay that way for a long time, giggling every time he recalled that image of himself standing in nothing but a shirt. Or when he imagined himself walking through the jungle, the shirt snagging on branches and thorns while he continued to use his hands to shield his lower parts.

When the giggles had finally died away, he lay for a long time staring up into the nothingness of the lightless room.

–

Max awoke in complete darkness with the vague fear that he had just heard something. He sat up, trying to listen through the silence–no, not silence. There was also a strange, gray hissing noise. His heart pounded as he waited for the sound to change in some way that would help him understand what it was. When he heard the sound of splashing, he flung his hand out and conjured flame. The room around him exploded into light and color as his flame was reflected in the thousands of tiny glass tiles of the mosaic walls.

Max heard another splash, then nothing. It was coming from down the hall in the other room.

“Oh,” he said.

He knew that sound. The hole he’d fallen through must be dropping more stones down into the water. That was the likeliest answer. But there was that other noise, a low monotonous hissing.

Anxious, groggy despite the adrenaline coursing through him, Max climbed carefully to his feet and oriented himself to the doorway before he let his flame go out. Moving carefully and stepping over the brightling that still lay curled in the archway, he made his way down to the room with the pool of water. Halfway down the hallway he finally recognized the monotonous sound: rain.

Max stood in the doorway to the chamber with the pool and watched as the rain water pouring through the hole washed another stone down into the pool below. He still didn’t know if it was an ancient floor or a rotting ceiling that he’d fallen through. Was it all made of stone? A wood resistant to rot, but no longer strong enough to hold his weight? A second stone toppled through the hole and into the water. He watched it fall, then looked up to see another teetering on the edge of the widening waterfall. He raised his hand and sent a fire bolt at the earth just beneath it. The burst of flame scattered mud in every direction, then stone toppled inward. It hit the water with a satisfying splash.

Max watched the place where the stone had fallen for a moment, then scanned the edge of the hole for another target. He fired at a short, squat looking block, but it remained stubbornly in place. Not seeing any other promising candidates, he shifted his aim and sent a bolt up into the ceiling. It splashed flame along the bottom of the dark material, then died.

Max stood looking up at the immovable blackness as the rain hissed down into the pool of water. As sleep continued to recede from his mind and he thought again of his unmade choice between pants or a shirt as a reward for surviving in the jungle as long as he had, fury began to build in his chest. When he felt like he might scream, he raised his hand again and sent a series of bolts up into the unbreakable nothingness at the top of the chamber.

Over and over again he pushed his hand forward to send a splash of fire up against the ceiling. The bolts made little roaring sounds as they burst, and as Max sent more and more of them upward in a wild burst of flame and anger, the roars faded into one another. Then they began to blend with his own inarticulate shouting.

He stopped when his throat was raw. Then a falling stone, hidden by the darkness, exploded on the landing in front of him. The crack made his ears ring and three sharp fragments stung his left shin. Instinctively, he threw himself backward into the hallway, then lay huddled on his side, choking on dust, hands pressed to his ears, as the rest of the ceiling collapsed with a roar.

By the time the cacophony finally died away, enough water had been forced out of the pool to wash down the hallway in a small wave and turn ancient dust and dirt into mud.

Max opened his eyes. The brightling stood looking down into his face.

“Made a mess, didn’t I?” he said. “Sorry. That was stupid.”

He got slowly to his feet, scooped the brightling up into his arms, then made his way back to the mosaic room. Standing in the archway he summoned a flame and looked around. The water that had swept down the hallway had muddied most of the floor before it began seeping down between stones and into holes. The only dry place was a strip of stone along the wall farthest from the archway.

“Stupid,” Max said again, then he sighed. “Felt good though.”

Max tried to pick his way carefully across the floor toward the dry spot against the far wall, but he stopped when he nearly sliced the bottom of his foot open on a broken rock submerged in a shallow puddle. He backed up until he was back in the hallway. He put the brightling down and crouched next to it.

“Can I see what you showed me before? The picture of me with all the monster dust.”

The brightling burst immediately into golden fire, filling the hallway and the mosaic room with the deep sound of bells.

Max dragged a finger along the small golden outline of himself and tapped his way through the different pulsing, glowing nodes.

He ignored most of the options the brightling showed him, trying to keep his frustration in check. The nodes on the head, neck, and fingers seemed merely ornamental. They left him still naked, but wearing beautiful jungle jewelry: a vine circlet, a flower petal torque, a ring that balanced a tiny, bright blue flower on the middle of his finger. The nodes on his forearms seemed slightly more promising, each depicting a pair of bracers or greaves that resembled long, flat leaves bent to hug his arms or legs. Meager protection, though, when so much of the rest of him was still exposed. The nodes on his legs and feet seemed more practical.

He tapped on the pair of nodes hovering over his thighs, then stared at the image of himself wearing pants. He realized he cared very little for modesty as he continued wandering the jungle. He had met no one else moving through the trees and had no idea when he might. He cared more that pants might make walking or running through the jungle undergrowth easier. That he would have to worry less about an unseen branch giving him an undignified slap. But that would have to wait. Now that he’d had time to ruminate on his options, he knew there was really only one practical choice.

Max sighed and tapped one of the twin nodes hovering over his feet, then tapped again. He sat down grimly on the muddy floor, trying to ignore the muddy squelching sensation on his backside, and examined the phantom boots that had appeared on his feet amid a swirl of green dust. They were constructed from a plain brown material, just like the shirt and the pants, and they looked as if they would fit snugly. Rising a few inches past his ankles, they ought to keep his feet dry if he had to step through shallow puddles.

“Well, this is it, little one,” he said. “This might be the very first piece of clothing I’ve ever called my own.”

Max tapped once more on the image of himself wearing boots and the green dust enveloped his feet again.

When the boots had solidified, Max stood and took a few tentative steps. The boots were soft, supple, and well fitted. He found the puddle with the sharp stone and stepped slowly down. The stone pressed into the sole of his foot without pain. He found the deepest puddle he could and plunged one foot in up to the ankle. Inside the boot his foot remained dry.

Max turned back to the hallway where the brightling sat. "Thank you for the boots.”

He returned to the hallway and stooped to gather the brightling to his chest again. “Thank you for everything."

Max walked across the mosaic room to the patch of dry stone against the far wall. He set the brightling down next to him as he sat.

“I should give you a name. Would you like that?”

The brightling watched him attentively and waggled both of its ears, one after the other.

Max smiled as he leaned his back against the wall.

“I think that’s a yes,” Max said. Then he frowned. “Or do you already have one?"

Startled, Max watched as letters in a flaming golden script began to write themselves in the air above the brightling’s head.

When they stopped, Max looked down at the creature.

“Oh.” He read the script again. “I should have asked before.”

Max reached out and scratched gently under the brightling’s chin.

“Thank you, Aurum.”