Eager-Horizon hadn’t even been awake long enough to fully process what was going on before the crow began to panic.
“I need you all to keep it a secret! Omit it from the report, pretend it didn’t happen, lie if you have to! Please!” It flared its wings and kept looking at the door, as if some intruder was about to burst in and attack.
“Typically, Physicians try to avoid spreading misinformation about serious health conditions.” A very annoyed wombat growled at the crow, looking more than willing to put its considerable bulk towards removing the bird in front of it from the room. “Either explain why I should, stop arguing, or get out. Providing assistance in the treatment does not give you the right to be disruptive.”
“Because if the Guardians learn about this, the lives of me and every other human here will be in danger!” The room fell silent at the declaration, but Eager-Horizon could only think about one thing.
Human. That was her species. What happened to her happened to this crow, too. And others! Did they take their bodies by force, then? Or were they allowed to take them, like I was? Or did they not have a choice? As all those questions and more whirled around in its head, the crow continued.
“Do you remember that ‘treatment’ the Guardians attempted on me? The one that nearly killed me?” It took a deep breath, bracing itself for something. “Well, it technically worked. In that horrible twilight consciousness, Scholar Ink-Talon resurfaced. We got to have a conversation, and it asked me to promise it something. It didn’t want to erase me any more than it wanted to be erased, and it wanted me to do something only I could do. I agreed, but if the Guardians know that Ink-Talon, Keen-Ear, and the others still exist, then they are never going to let us go.”
The crow had expressed all of that with frantic wing and head movements, clearly afraid of being overheard, and immediately slumped against the nearby wall and settled onto the floor. While it recovered, the wombat (a Physician?) turned back in Eager-Horizon’s direction.
“Explorers, I would like to hear your opinions. So far, you are the only ones among these ‘afflicted’ to retain their original-”
“I agree with the crow.” It did not even wait for the wombat to finish before squawking out an answer. “If the… if she is still here somewhere, if there is some hope of both of us existing, then I will do whatever it takes to save her. I will lie to a Guardian’s face if I have to.”
“Are you certain?” Verdant-Trail looked at its friend with an abundance of concern.
“She is my friend. We do not leave friends behind, remember?” Eager-Horizon peeped its response with as much certainty as it could convey. The komodo dragon froze for what seemed like ages before nodding slowly.
“Of course. I remember.” It was not a formal rule or oath. It was a promise they had made each other during their first disastrous expedition together. It was a promise that had kept them both alive. It was almost certainly the promise that had motivated Verdant-Trail to drag them all of the way here, wherever here was. It turned back to the Physician and gave its own answer. “I cannot claim to be friends with Chase, not having formally met, but I am similarly convinced of its right to exist.”
“Very well, I will omit that the original Eager-Horizon is the one that woke up here.” The wombat sighed deeply.
“Yeah, great, we’re building a complicated web of lies and our lives are in danger. Fantastic to learn.” Very aggressive and annoyed squeaking came from behind the physician, and a very feeble-looking fruit bat wobbled out into view. Verdant-Trail visibly flinched at the sight of it, as if it were reminded of something embarrassing. “So, are any of us actually going to do anything about it?”
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Introductions and being filled in on the essentials filled the rest of the oilbird’s day, but throughout it all it struggled to keep from being overwhelmed by its own memories of its stasis becoming clearer as it learned about everything else.
Oilbird. That was the name for Eager-Horizon’s species as it existed in her world. It had a rather gruesome origin relating to traditional uses her species had for feral hatchlings, but the bird couldn’t hold that against her. She came from a world of language and abstracted meaning, and the meaning in this case was simply “you.”
In retrospect, it wasn’t exactly sure just what kind of people it would take for two consciousnesses to spend so much time intimately connected without the two of them becoming friends. When the two of them already knew all there was to know about each other and instead could just poke and prod at ideas and memories and questions without needing to explain any details or context. And thanks to that, imitating the idiosyncrasies of how humans expressed themselves when placed in a foreign body was surprisingly easy.
“God, I’m not even sure how much I’ve eaten since you’ve had me here. Can’t I just get a little bowl of something delivered?” It was all in the details. The explicit informality, the evocation of a higher power as an affirmation or pejorative rather than as an expression of faith, references to foreign concepts like individualized food deliveries for those perfectly capable of getting the food themselves. In concert, they were more than enough to convince strangers that Eager-Horizon was one of the humans here, even if its knowledge was more or less surface-level. All it had to do was express things in the right way and avoid outright falsehoods and the exceedingly bored and incurious Guardians made to monitor them all never thought twice about any of it.
“No. You can go to the feeding areas like everyone else.” The exceedingly bored eagle tapped its talons on the rock it was perched on, clearly annoyed. “Go find the others like you, they know how this works already.”
“Okay, got it.” The Explorer took wing and darted across the courtyard in deliberately short, clumsy bursts. It prided itself on its skills in flight, and the hyper-specialized leg configuration of its species could barely waddle, much less properly walk, but it needed to make sure that it didn’t come off as overly competent in public, at least at first. Still, even at a reduced pace it wasn’t much of an issue to reach the little pond in the center of the courtyard that had apparently become the central meeting place of the humans here. As far as it knew, the only one of them missing was Explorer Valiant-Claw (or whoever resided in its carapace at the moment). It was making steady progress in its rehabilitation, but it was not yet capable of walking unsupervised.
“How’s your first day back been going?” Maggie asked in a perfect mimicry of the human language it was familiar with. The myna was in a good mood, though it could not help but feel that she was perhaps too happy, given the circumstances.
“Overwhelming.” Eager-Horizon chirped, fluttering just a little bit farther to its left to a clear spot next to Verdant-Trail, who acknowledged it with a friendly nod, but otherwise remained silent. “Extremely overwhelming.”
“I can only imagine.” A gentle splash from the salamander in the pond (whose name the oilbird struggled to recall) expressed her sympathies. She had apparently merged with the consciousness of her host body to some degree, a potential outcome that it very much hoped was just a fluke and not a possible fate for all of them.
“If you need any help, please let us know,” Ink-Talon clicked his beak and gave an understanding nod.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“I appreciate it, thanks.” Eager-Horizon nodded in return. The crow was hard to properly assess. Obviously it was grateful that he had found the root cause of that waking unconsciousness that it and its friend had found themselves in, and the fact that he wanted to recover everyone’s counterparts without sacrificing anyone was extremely reassuring, but something about him just made the Explorer uneasy.
After his panicked explanation in the infirmary, the way he had carried himself since had a practiced, calculated edge. It made sense given what it had gathered about its Attunement, but it did mean that every single thing it expressed was perfected to the point that there wasn’t a single piece of unintentional nuance to it. When Ink-Talon said something, you Understood exactly what he wanted you to Understand and nothing more. He didn’t come off as restrained or reserved like most would when carefully controlling their expressions, nor did he feel disingenuous or empty. But it was uncannily clean, like he could withhold anything he wanted effortlessly. And it seemed that some of the other humans had picked up on this as well.
“Yeah, being open and honest about everything is extremely important.” Quiet-Dream growled the sentiment, glaring at the crow rather than looking at Eager-Horizon and sending both of his kits scampering for cover behind a tree root. This was actually the first time it had met the squirrel, but everything that had been said about him had made him out to be a caring person, but extremely nervous and prone to being extremely hard on himself. That was not the squirrel that stood in front of it, hackles raised and expressing an overwhelming sense of betrayal in its movements.
“I know, and I’m sorry, but I-” Ink-Talon had barely begun to formulate a response before being cut off.
“No excuses! Not until I tell you exactly what you’ve been doing, because if I’m being honest, I’m not sure you even know.” Quiet-Dream plopped his hindquarters down and became extremely still, closing his eyes and slowing his breathing as much as a small rodent could before expressing his story in small, murmuring squeaks. “I never pushed you on what happened to you in that room. It was clearly painful, and you needed time to recover. But afterwards, something changed. I didn’t quite get what was wrong for a while. We spoke like normal, you were your usual clever, analytical self, nothing seemed strange. But something still felt off, and when we had that argument about investigating the Guardians, I felt like I was missing something. So I’ve spent the last few days working with Archivist Sharp-Search to look into things anyway. And I was right to be suspicious!”
“Quiet-Dream, I…”
“Ink-Talon, you lied to me. To all of us! And then you had the gall to chastise me for believing that the Guardians were being deceptive, too! Did the double standard never occur to you? Are you even aware of just how easy it was for you to do it?”
“It wasn’t that easy-” the crow froze, the realization hitting him all at once. “I think I need a minute. I’m sorry.” The crow took a few stumbling steps away from the group before taking to the air, settling in a tree on the far end of the courtyard.
“Well, this was a disaster,” the bat huffed, speaking up for the first time. “We kinda need him if we want to plan anything. He has all the important details.” Of all the assembled creatures, the bat was the one that Eager-Horizon knew the least about. Outside of what Verdant-Trail had explained about the origins of their Attunement and their irritable disposition, it’d gathered nothing from their few short interactions.
“Just take a break and relax until he calms down,” Maggie said, settling into the grass and closing her eyes. “It isn’t the first time emotions have run high, and it won’t be the last.”
“Agreed.” The salamander swished her tail across the surface of the pond. “Don’t blame yourself, Quiet-Dream, and don’t blame him, either. We’re all just making choices as we go, and they’re not always going to be the best ones.”
“Right.” The squirrel sighed, gathered itself, and turned around to comfort his kits, one of which was already being comforted by the other.
“Eager-Horizon, I am going to find some shade by the wall, if you would like to join me.” Verdant-Trail lifted its body and looked duskward, where the late afternoon sun cast a long shadow across the far end of the courtyard. It was anxious to actually hold a proper conversation with its fellow Explorer, as the bird had spent the entire day “playing catch-up,” as its human friend would have said.
“Of course. I have already spent far more time in the sun than I would like.” It flew up to perch on the lizard’s back and save itself the effort of faking incompetence across the entire distance. Once the pair was an appreciable distance away from everyone else, it spoke up again. “Verdant-Trail, this is the most dysfunctional group of creatures I have ever encountered. And I had to rescue that Apprentice Explorer team that traveled for two entire days before realizing that they had forgotten to bring literally anyone capable of flying or swimming to cross a Deep.”
“Agreed. But that is why we need to help them,” Verdant-Trail rumbled as it settled down in the shade.
“That is… not what our roles usually entail,” Eager-Horizon chirped. “I would not know where to begin.”
“I do not either, but it would be cruel to Chase to abandon them.”
“I heard you mention Chase earlier, in the infirmary. Who are they?”
“Chase is my… otherworldly counterpart. I do not yet know why, but we alternate being conscious in my body whenever the other falls asleep.” Verdant-Trail shifted uncomfortably, prompting Eager-Horizon to hop off and settle in next to its head. It couldn’t tell if its friend disliked Chase, or just didn’t know how to feel. “We have only been able to communicate in written messages, and it has only recently expressed anything to me other than the bare essentials of events. But I know what it has done for me, for all of us. The evidence is in what witnesses have told me, in the physical distances we have moved, in the work that has been performed while I slept. Without its contributions, you and Valiant-Claw would not have survived that expedition.”
The elder Explorer had always had a meandering way of telling stories, going on tangents about small details and providing far more context than was necessary.It may have been extremely serious in going about its life, but it had always relished being able to look back on events with wonder, pride, and even a little whimsy. So when its telling of what happened in the days immediately following the “arrival” of Chase and the others was extremely direct and unembellished, Eager-Horizon knew that it was serious.
Chase had woken up alone, and somehow had managed to collect both Valiant-Claw and Eager-Horizon and take them a considerable distance in the general direction of the Hightnests, having worked out their heading, as well as who in the group was who, from the Expedition Logs. Furthermore, it had managed to fashion a set of canvas slings for carrying both their unconscious bodies and essential supplies. The wagon had apparently been mired in mud and lacked the means to keep passengers safe and secure. Verdant-Trail freely admitted that it would have attempted to sit and wait out the illness rather than move to safety if it had been the one to wake up there instead, and that it would have been a fatal mistake, given the initial difficulties in feeding them while incapacitated.
“Chase has a combination of cleverness and a desire to ‘atone’ for our shared situation that I do not know how to respond to other than attempting to give it opportunities to be kind to itself.” Verdant-Trail stared ahead blankly, more thinking openly than conversing at this point. “I originally intended to go home as soon as we were able, but spending just one day among others of its kind helped it treat itself with enough respect to actually tell me its name and express why it felt the need to punish itself. If we leave these people behind and allow it to isolate itself, I fear it may destroy itself. And it would tell itself that it is doing it for my sake.” Finally, the lizard angled its head to look to its companion. “Eager-Horizon, I don’t want to live with anyone having thrown their life away for me like that.”
“No. You don’t.” The cold expression escaped the oilbird’s beak before it thought better of itself, but it couldn’t bring itself to apologize. Not for this.
“I am sorry, friend. I should have considered-”
“You’re right, though. You don’t want that, and I don’t want that to happen to you, or anyone else.” Eager-Horizon extended a wing and gently laid it across its friend’s snout in an attempt to comfort it. “It happening once was bad enough, and I’ll be rotting in the ground before I let it happen to anyone else.”
“Thank you.” Verdant-Trail stood up, and motioned with its head for the bird to return to its perch on its back. “We should return to the others and see how we can help.” As Eager-Horizon landed and the pair made their way back, the lizard made a slightly teasing observation. “You slipped into your ‘afflicted impersonation’ just now.”
“Huh. You’re right.” The oilbird pondered that. It had come naturally, and it was how it had been expressing itself in its own mind after a while of being trapped there with its friend. Was it just more used to that now? Did it even care?
It concluded that it didn’t.