Richie's hangry rampage saw him stomp about the house, ripping open and as quickly slamming fridge, pantry, and larder doors closed. Snacks, snacks, damn you! May the fates rain down some mana to feed this poor lost boy!
Richie found the remnants of the jerky gnawed to bits strewn about Snaggles' tawny fur, and the candies he and his friends had accumulated from many trips down the boardwalk now left only empty wrappers fluttering in the breeze. His barbecue and smoked meats were gone. The cheese? Hell no! Chikita must have savaged all the core rations like a wild, feral wolf. They were three hairs removed.
Ah, but Cuppy's secured cookie cabinet, the apotheosis of the cookie jar you got caught with your hand in when the parental units stormed out and asked you exactly what you thought you were doing -
"Damn you, arrogant Cuppy!" a delirious Richie clenched a fist of rage toward the proverbial heavens. "How dare you hoard the sweet bready goodness to yourself, foul ball-jointed doll thing of the underwhere! I shall liberate the sweet cookie princess from her tower!"
Chikita, a bit delirious herself on account of her collapsing ice shelf, gave a protracted moan that sounded like "yeah, damn straight, go get the cookie princess, stud knight."
That was exactly what Richie had in mind. Bravely he charged to the cabinet. Huzzah! Cuppet was not here to play bouncer this time. Victorious, Richie straddled the counter and wrenched the door open.
A fully automated turret unfolded itself from within, and its conjoined twin machine gun nozzles stopped five inches from Richie's forehead.
"Facial recognition scan in progress. Match found - Richie - moderate risk cookie thief. Protocol - a formal warning, 10 seconds grace period to retreat from vicinity of cookies - after offer expires, answer with extreme ballistics force." the turret helpfully explained itself.
Cuppy somehow casually put together high-tech automated military weaponry defenses piloted by what appeared to be competent AI. Sure, why not. Cuppy is good at crochet, fishing, painting. Really, advanced modern warfare engineering is just another form of sudoku when you think about it.
It was nice that Cuppy had talents and hobbies.
"Hi there!" Richie waved, smiling audaciously.
"You have 10 seconds to retreat before I am authorized to open fire." the turret said.
Richie raised an eyebrow. "I'm calling bullshit. Cuppy wouldn't pump his best friends full of lead."
"Pure capsaicin rounds are nonlethal - and exceedingly painful." the turret said.
"Understandable. Have a nice day." Richie calmly closed the door.
Clever dick.
Richie stormed through the house, regressing into a moody spoiled brat throwing a tantrum.
"I WANT A FUCKING SNACK!" Richie whined.
Holly made a polite suggestion that perhaps Richie should resign himself to something healthier, like fruits and vegetables. Trail mix, if he absolutely needed salty sweetness.
Richie sighed and resorted to checking the produce drawers of the fridge. He found a solidly two pound bag of gorgeously-colored mushrooms, and he netted them out of the fridge, plopping his fungal treasure hoard on the counter. He couldn't call himself a mushroom fan in full honesty. He liked the long crunchy ones that came in some egg rolls, he liked button mushrooms stir fried with meat and rice in hot oil, and the tempura garlic mushrooms were juicy, tangy bastards like golden radiant suns of unexpected tongue bliss. But if he just found mushroom slices hiding like parasites in the fold of a lasagna?
How dare you.
How fucking dare you, mushrooms!
And Richie was firmly convinced that anyone who relished taking a bite into a raw white mushroom had no soul.
It was a love-hate relationship.
But frying things always made shit better. If tempura made zucchini edible, it made anything edible.
So, Richie got himself a big bowl and a big fuck-you slasher villain butcher knife, and he began to slice the shrooms down and across, splitting and halving the caps, and dicing the stacks into equal four strips of fungi flesh. He tossed his lovingly dissected hipster kingdom organisms that felt both fauna and flora were too mainstream in oil and bread crumbs, with a bit of coconut oil and cayenne for an undercurrent of sweet and spicy aromatic goodness. The wok exploded into flames that kissed the ceiling, and iron chef Richie began tossing and flipping his golden-brown little shroom babies until they were ready to trade the skillet for the runway.
Yeah, look at those sassy fried mushrooms! Mmm, god, so sexy.
Just you wait, toadstools - you're gonna get it.
Richie dumped his mountain of fried mushrooms into a decorative rice bowl, grabbed a fork, drizzled some sweet and sour sauce packets over the mound of ascended fungi, and plowed into his meal like a pig diving snout-first into a swill trough. Holly, watching from the corner of the kitchen as the ravenous noises of domination over the fungal kingdom pulled her attention away from her book, raised an eyebrow as Richie gorged himself. Toward the center of the pile of fried mushrooms, some didn't even seem fully cooked, and the adhesive oils were running loose, causing great clumps of golden brown breading to fall away like discarded scabs. It didn't matter. The presentation and quality of the meal did not matter.
What mattered was violently demolishing food, to sate the reptile brain and feel like he had accomplished something. Stomach ache aside, satisfied bliss overtook Richie. He couldn't get into the Backyards on command, but at least he really showed those stupid mushrooms who was boss!
His victory celebration was short-lived. Holly strolled up next to Richie and caught his gaze. Before either of them spoke, Holly pointed out that Richie still had a dribble of grease going down his chin. Richie wiped it away, and sucked on his thumb.
Holly, not sounding judgmental but only concerned, asked "are you aware that you just ate two entire pounds of fried psilocybin?"
Richie paused, and his eyes slowly widened.
"I am now."
"Uh huh. I see." Holly nodded, holding her chin.
"You couldn't have told me that before I finished them all?" Richie asked.
"My morbid curiosity outbid my better judgment on this one. I'll take notes on you during the duration of your psychosis. Should be fun and illuminating." Holly said, pulling a clipboard out of nowhere.
"Holly help." Richie pleaded.
"I suggest you pack your bags," Holly sighed. "Because you're going on a trip."
Well. Shit.
Richie huddled himself in the corner and hugged his knees, breathing deeply and trying to mentally prepare himself. He had hoped that his first foray into hallucinogen shenanigans would have been on his own terms, and surrounded by more trustworthy companions than an ancient alien (wo)man in black, a genetic puddle of felid whose introduction had been attempting to eat him, and a literal contract killer who needed to take a seat right over there with a cookie.
Unfortunately, those were the only friends he had on hand right now.
Richie blinked. Then, he cracked a small smile.
"Friends :3" he hugged himself a bit tighter, and felt warmer.
A lot warmer.
He was sweating.
No, actually, he was burning up. He tossed his sweltering scarf aside and began stripping his jacket next. Luckily Chikita was still bound in the bathroom by the monthly debuff of the female character class, and unable to bask in the glory of Richie's strip. Sweat was pouring off of him in buckets. This shit wasn't supposed to be instant, two pounds of it or otherwise. What the hell was going on? Richie looked up at the clock and saw that an hour had passed.
Oh goody. Time dilation. Richie thought, and immediately wondered if he had said that out loud. He wiped sweat from his brow and then looked at his hand. It was wavy and running, like watercolor paint leached away. Whenever he moved, he saw faint but unmistakable trails of blurry color follow his limbs. He flexed each individual digit and watched them blur, fascinated. He turned toward the wall and saw that it seemed to be pulsing outward as though made of flesh. It was breathing. He could hear it. Attuning his ears, he could hear other things too. He heard electricity coursing through wires and cables, he heard the flutter of distant bird wings, and he heard a gopher's carcass digesting in Snaggles' pretzel-shaped intestinal tract.
…
The caution tape was unsealed, and Chikita emerged from the bathroom. She was doubled over and panting, sweat drops rolling from her body and turning to sleet mid-fall. She caught her breath, stretched and cracked out her back, and collected herself.
"Stupid kamikaze uterus." she grumbled, still sore.
She walked out to the living room and saw Richie, standing still like a statue, head tilted forward, and eyes bugging out of his head.
"Ok, Richie, did you want some more practice?" she asked, strolling up to him.
He didn't respond.
"Richie?" she asked.
His pupils seemed to take up his whole eyes. Chikita waved her hand in front of his face a few times. Then she started poking the side of his head with her sheath. "Anyone home?"
Richie blinked one eye at a time and started speaking in an unusually subdued, calm voice. "Hello there. Lovely weather."
Chikita scratched her head. "Are you feeling alright?"
Richie had a vacant smile. "I feel wonderful. Thank you for asking."
Chikita began looking around the kitchen for evidence of food poisoning. She found the unwashed wok with a bit of oil still in it. She scooped up a bit with her finger, sniffed it, then licked it.
"Ah, I see." she deduced, "the Fruiting Bodies of Illusions."
She walked back to Richie, circling him and examining his posture and demeanor.
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"Got impatient, eh?" she asked.
"Time might not be real." Richie tilted his head.
Chikita cocked her head like a confused dog. "...do you want to elaborate?"
Richie pondered the question.
"Yes." he answered.
Another twenty seconds or so passed. Chikita started snapping her fingers in front of Richie's face.
"Well, get on with it then!" she barked.
Richie nodded, still smiling. "I think I went to the past, in spirit, when I slipped into the yards. I helped Frey power-up to fricassee an angry chicken."
Chikita tilted her head further. "A… A chicken?"
Richie looked at her the way a parent might look at a slow toddler struggling to grasp that square pegs won't go in round holes. "Yes," he said, "keep up."
Chikita felt a moment of pissiness well up, but her curiosity forced her to suppress it. "My bad. Continue?" she said through gritted teeth.
Richie blinked again, and continued. "So, like, I keep encountering the number 12 and stuff. Seeing recurring colors, patterns, themes. They have their own taste and scent too. Some are squishy, some are crunchy,"
"What's mine?" Chikita asked.
"Abrasive." Richie smiled.
Chikita grit her teeth harder. "Look harder."
"Mmm, no. Too much ground to cover." he said. "Anyway… uh, where was I?"
"Wonderland." Chikita said.
"Right. Having weird dreams lately. The rain told me that Frey and I have been connected to others. 12 people saw the fight with the chicken. They all were represented by a different aura. They were linked, like, everything converged into one singular truth. A super reality, above this one. Freyja fell into the Backyards to heal after I helped her beat the chicken, but I only went to the past because I met Freyja in the Backyards. Bit circular, ain't it?" Richie said.
Holly, unnoticed on the couch, took notes. Causal loop? she noted an underlined bullet point. The mere fact that I'm here implies intersecting histories. Mason was on the right track, I think. I wonder if Crocus has foreknowledge of all the threads? Could any of us predict the "future" if we had previews? Questions for later.
"I'm completely lost." Chikita scratched her head.
Richie nodded. Then, he slowly tilted his head to the side, lost interest in the talk, and started wandering around the room, touching and rubbing things as though he were a blind man suddenly given sight. He put his ear to the kitchen counter and smiled.
"I can feel the world's heartbeat." he rubbed his face across the counter.
Snaggles swished his tails irritability. He had already rubbed his face all over the counters, they were his, goddammit!
"So, what do you see?" Chikita asked.
"As in right now?" he asked.
"...yes?" Chikita said.
"Which one?" Richie requested clarification.
"Which what?" Chikita asked.
"Which right now?" Richie asked.
"What the fuck are we talking about right now?" Chikita drooped.
"Well, in one of the right nows, there are a bunch of infinite fractal patterns. Everything seems like it's spiraling outward - inward? Eh, both, simultaneously - into repeating patterns that fold in on themselves. I feel like a kaleidoscope." Richie asked.
"Ok, what about one of the other right nows?" Chikita asked.
"Seals." Richie said.
"Seals?" Chikita blinked.
"Seals. Seals everywhere." Richie said.
"Where, why, how?" Chikita asked.
"You don't understand. It's all seals." Richie nodded sagely as though offering up ancient wisdom. "Their vibrations are rippling through me. I can smell their will. It's hard to put to words "
"And if you could?" Chikita asked.
"Approximately? Dorf." Richie said.
"Dorf?"
"Dorf." Richie nodded.
It shouldn't have been possible to get a contact high from mushrooms, but Chikita felt like she was anyway. She began to wonder if she was inhaling shrooms-spiked sweat vapors leaking out of Richie's pores, or if this conversation was so profoundly confusing that her feudal-oriented mind was getting numbed as though stung by a blowfish.
"Why are you kneading the bean bag chair?" Chikita asked.
"Soft. Everything is so wonderfully soft." Richie said. "I could fall asleep in the softness enveloping me. It has the texture of the sheep you count when you go to bed."
Chikita was thrown off by the sheep idiom, but that was old news - a thought struck her, and she grinned a wolfish grin.
"Wanna feel something else soft?" she struck a pose, caressing her own curves.
A hard blow struck the top of her skull. She clutched her head, crouching. "Fucking ow!"
Holly had smacked Chikita with the broad side of her new macuahuitl. She tapped her foot, frowning at Chikita. "Bad girl. Bad."
"What are you, my fucking mother?!" Chikita growled.
"Consent. Look it up." Holly sprayed Chikita with a water bottle like a misbehaving cat. Snaggles cringed vicariously, terrified of the wrath of the Storm Pistol. The water froze on Chikita's face, and she shivered.
Holly pointed to the iron cage Chikita was required to sleep in every night. A cardboard plaque reading "Horny Jail" marked it.
Chikita grumbled. "Yeah yeah, I'm going." she turned herself in and pulled the gate closed shut, pouting like a sullen child.
"Enjoy your stay in Château Pédophile." Holly sighed.
Chikita gripped the bars. "Ephebophile! E-pheb-o-ph-ile! Get it right!" Chikita growled.
Holly dropped the curtains over the cage. "My sincerest apologies. Go to sleep, oh Shameless One."
"Shame. Ding ding." Richie giggled.
Holly gave Richie a brief check-up.
"Look into this light for me?" she said, shining a little penlight in his eye.
His pupil appeared to be rotating.
Holly blinked. "...uh huh…"
She took notes. After a moment, she went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. "Here, Richie. You need to stay hydrated. Remember to drink lots of water."
Richie gratefully accepted the glass and drank deeply of the life-sustaining sky dew. It was cool and crisp on a tongue that could taste colors and the fusion of stars. A small tear rolled down Richie's face, despite his placid smile.
"Richie? What's wrong?" Holly asked gently.
"Nothing. Thank you for watching me. It just reminded me of when I was sick and mom would take care of me." he had a bittersweet nostalgic grin.
"Oh, honey." Holly's face fell, and she pulled Richie into a delicate hug, patting his back comfortingly.
Richie allowed himself to melt into the hug, enjoying being held and comforted. After a few moments, on account of the shrooms, he began rubbing the side of his head over Holly as well. A pity she and Chikita had opposite personalities, because Chikita's bosom likely would have been rather comforting, detached from any sexuality. As it stood, Holly was a more ineffective pillow.
"Cheesegrater." Richie said, eyes still closed, mind drifting.
Holly blinked. "C-ch- cheesegrater?"
She heard the muffled sounds of cackling from within Chikita's cage.
"He called you flat!" Chikita clutched her belly, laughing so hard her sides hurt.
"Yes, well," Holly pushed her glasses up, flustered. "Cows have udders, lizards do not. Reptiles aren't known for their mammaries, now are they?"
Richie opened his eyes slowly, face still pressed against Holly's sad chest.
"...what?"
"Hmm?" Holly blinked. "Oh, right. Never mind."
"You're a lizard?" Richie couldn't suppress a giggle.
"Convergent evolution happens, you know, there are lots of reptilian traits ideal for space travel. A slow metabolism for maximizing rations, adhesive pads for clinging to walls in zero g-"
"You can climb on walls?" Richie stepped back, looking excited like a small child visiting the zoo.
"I could. Reconfigured my hands to emulate human fingerprints when I infiltrated-"
"Do you lay eggs?" Richie asked.
Holly had the sudden impression she was talking to Cuppy. The moppet had already figured it out sometime ago. It made helpfully flaying the damaged biosuit off of Holly along with the top layer of her skin a bit easier, when she needed to regularly shed anyway. However, that unexpected shedding had been about two months too early. The memory still tingled her nerves raw whenever she thought of it.
Holly shuddered. Richie could somehow read this thought in Holly's body language, and pictured an orange being peeled.
"I keep forgetting you're terrestrial+. Tell me about it." Richie sat down, legs crisscrossed and him holding his head like a young child. Holly felt like she was teaching school again.
She pointed to herself, taken aback. "Tell you about it?"
Richie nodded. "Yeah. Only got the cliff notes last time."
Holly pushed her glasses up and smiled. "Glad you've finally taken an interest." she looked back, gazing up at the ceiling - no, through it. Past it. Beyond the azure sky.
"You already know that I belong to a hybrid population among the ancient Maya. The union of our races made us stronger for it, and was a precursor to their civilization - my civilization's - ascension. As a child of both worlds, I was born on earth, but along with my psychometry, I inherited another gift, a psychic memory of our home world. There was a great cavern beneath the pyramid where my clan lived, where the Maya performed rituals akin to vision quests. In this chamber, those of us who were bloodline links between both planets communed with our ancestors, our minds traveling back in time, to touch the soil of our home world in spirit." she said, smiling.
Inside her cage, Chikita leaned against the bars, feeling pensive, eyes downcast.
"Chu?" Chinokiri popped out of her vessel to sniff Chikita.
Yukihana sighed inwardly.
Home. That word… is the most painful for Chikita of all.
Richie was utterly fixated on Holly and her story. As he watched and listened, her cadence and words became visible echoes, like ripples across a pond. Like the impacts of many raindrops. The room melted away before Richie's eyes, the droning of Holly's speech fading away into the distance. Then, he was there, seeing and feeling the story in real time.
Hot, humid jungle. Lush vegetation, broad leaves dripping with the dew of recent rain. The floral, musky air of the South American tropical rainforest flowed through dense pockets of vegetation and through the great stone monuments at pyramids that would one day be crumbling ruins, consumed by the jungle and the tides of time. Like the present day site of Tikal, the plazas were surfaced with stucco and channeled rainwater into canals which fed great reservoirs. The stonework, platforms, and higher and lower tiers were linked by limestone causeways. Grand stone staircases cut sharply into the sloping sides of pyramids and temples, and the nested lost city within the jungle was illuminated at night with great torches positioned at intervals between the intersections of stone.
Beneath the central pyramid, a hollow limestone cave was fed rainwater that collected down the pyramid's sides, and converged with the streams channeled through the city. The cave, accessible by way of a heavy stone slab door opening onto stairs carved right into the rock, roared with the sound of a great waterfall pouring down into the black abyss beneath the walkways. At the extremity of the platform, a vista opened up out of the side of the cave onto open jungle, and a great lake that began within the cave. A chamber beside this lake housed those communing with their forebears.
Richie felt the dampness of the cave, and the echo of the surging water vibrating through his being. Perfumed incense permeated the cave, and ambient chanting became the hum of the earth's core beneath the mantle. Their collective consciousness lifted up, staring into the sun, and then passed through it, the brightness radiant but not blinding. Off and away, their conjoined psyche touched the soil of Holly's home world.
Then, he was in a great misty canyon, great waves crashing against sheer cliff sides slick with blue algae and moss. Huge fungal structures of many shapes and colors spread at wild angles down the sides of the sea channel, and crowned the peaks. A coal-black rock standing out of the sea served as the base of a huge mushroom the size of a tree. It was a fleshy orange thing with a wide, flat cap, like the brim of a giant's hat. An eyeball-like growth was set into its center, staring up at a sky clouded with streaks of green and turquoise, and the stalk was coated with dangling filaments of what looked like red mistletoe. Further inland, across great Plains of dark blue grass and bright orange shrubs, strange creatures skittered, scuttled, and lumbered about. Something that looked like a jellyfish but swam through air lazily drifted in a loose zigzag across the bases of stout, scaly trees. A thing that looked like a dandelion poof with antennae raised an arachnid leg and poked at a large, spherical fungal ball. It, shivering like gelatin, shrank to a fourth its size and spent out glowing green spores. The poof leaped into the air and grabbed one, snapping it up.
Richie looked past a circle of robed, hooded figures with swishing lizard tails, gathered around a tremendous bonfire, and chanting. Then, the sky was night, and he looked up. Off in the distance, he saw the glittering blue glow of the Sapphire in Silk, the star which had shone when the storm cleared at the end of the battle of Tide Town.
It was this planet's sun.
The blue glow filled Richie's vision and consumed it. All was blue, and then it faded to black. Richie opened his eyes, and saw his living room again. He was staring at Holly as she finished describing their ethereal azure sun.
Richie's heart lurched. His dragons tensed and sniffed the air, their slit eyes narrowing to even keener slits.
"Tide Town." Richie said.