Addie had been trying to ignore the hunger panging into her gut for the last two days, subsisting entirely on water as she had been, but today it was finally too much. Honestly, Addie surprised herself by even lasting this long without solid food. Squishy had not eaten either, leading her to believe that the small creature's body might partially supplement itself with magic—a trait she suspected she had inherited as well.
Even with that, today she had very little ability to move. Her limbs dragged like lead, and she felt abnormally tired. Her mind worked within a fog, and her stomach had long since moved past hunger. Now, it felt like her stomach twisted itself painfully, squeezing and digesting itself for any scrap of nutrition.
It didn’t matter that Squishy guided her forward, nor did it matter that she was so close to seeing her dad again. If she didn’t eat something, after the last few days of constant travel through the forest, Addie worried she might actually die. At least, that’s what her stomach told her. Addie tried to think back to the last time she ate and realized it was the morning she talked to that villager, almost an age ago.
“Squishy, I think I’m dying.”
“I can sense your state, my lady. You are not dying, though perhaps I can try to find something for you. It is about time I found sustenance myself, after all. Though I will admit, I worry raw squirrel will be unappealing to you.”
To Addie’s surprise, the idea didn’t immediately repulse her, “I must be really starved, that image didn’t even make me gag.”
Addie would at least like to make a cooking fire first, but she didn’t think she had enough energy to try one right now. The first time had been strenuous enough.
Squishy felt her reluctant acquiescence to the idea of raw food and went scampering off. He returned shortly after, but with a fish instead of a squirrel (thank Aggan). He said there was a river not too far off, so Addie decided she might visit it later to get a drink, too.
Addie had seen her fair share of game in the village but never unprepared like this. Seeing the scaly creature reduced to a limp body bothered Addie on a fundamental level. She felt awful about taking its tiny life. She thought how she would feel, chased by a scary creature much larger than herself, only to experience pain and fear when caught in the jaws of the predator—a horrific final memory. Addie tried to shake the pity off; she needed to eat, and besides, she knew she only felt this way because it still looked like a fish. Addie hoped she would feel better when its skin was removed.
However, Addie felt even worse once the skin was removed. Her unease intensified as she watched Squishy shred the fish with his claws to prepare it, trying to make it suitable for Addie.
“I can feel your sympathy for this prey through our bond strongly. A foreign feeling to me. I never gave my prey pity or empathy in the past. It is a new experience. To me, this is necessary, just food.” Squishy explained.
“I know that! It’s just so...” Addie lost her words, but seeing the pitiful fishy shredded to pieces, and knowing she was directly responsible for it, touched Addie’s feelings in all the worst ways.
“Other cultures eat raw fish all the time,” Addie tried to put on a brave face at it. She had never tried something like this herself, of course, but her dad did always say she ought to try new things.
Squishy passed Addie a misshapen, half-shredded chunk of fish which she accepted with wide eyes. As she examined it, she tried to tell herself it was just a chef-prepared slice of fish, the same as what she often ate at the manor. The lie only worked until Addie looked over at the lifeless fish eyes, still freshly staring up into the sky. Addie looked back down in her hand and didn’t see a cube of fish. She saw a shred of life, not even capable of begging for its life.
Addie closed her eyes and quickly put it in her mouth. She chewed for a moment, then retched, struggling to keep her mouth closed to not waste it.
The acrid pungency of raw fish invaded her nostrils. It reminded her a bit of eating seaweed, which she hated. Addie kept chewing, trying not to vomit. It was raw and cold. Addie gagged a few more times but managed to get it down. The strong flavor of fishiness still coated her tongue.
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It was now well past afternoon. Addie had rested for a while after sating her hunger and overcoming the nausea, but now she was hoping they could resume the hike.
“You did good.” Squishy praised.
“Don’t talk about it. Don’t mention it. I never want to remember that poor thing.” Addie declared sternly. “It didn’t happen.”
“Very well.”
A few hours later, when her stomach and body begged for more, she ate another piece of fish.
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Soon, the forest began to thin out. Addie's hope of reaching the village increased, resonating through the bond with Squishy, who harbored his own aspiration of finding the village. Their combined hope seemed to flow between them in waves, somehow compounding with each move between them. The feeling was much stronger than just the sum of their parts— it seemed as if the feeling resonated and multiplied.
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Their spirits soon damped, as the Binary stopped being visible, resting behind dark puffy clouds.
Squishy put his snout up in the air and gave a few huffs, looking at the sky. “I smell rain,” he announced.
And like that, their burgeoning hope wisped away.
As the forest thinned, Addie knew that the canopy overhead would offer little protection from the impending rain. She hoped they could find the village before that, but just as that thought came to mind, a fat raindrop hit the tip of her nose, announcing an evening of misery.
An hour later, Addie tromped through the frigid mud, one foot in front of the other. With the rain brought cold, and Addie had no way to stay warm other than to keep moving. To make matters worse, the binary had just finished its descent down the horizon.
Addie thought back on the last few days, all the things she had overcome. Bond-exhaustion, thirst, then hunger. She also managed to escape from Christena, and she had even survived a number of nights in this forest. But out of all of that, the heat-sucking rain seemed most likely to end her.
Her day boots were not designed with rain and mud in mind. With each squelching step, more and more muck seemed to pile up on the inside of her boots. For the last few hours, Addie had become accustomed to the sensation— wet and goopy. Squishy frequently glanced back to check on her, but he knew any words here would be unnecessary. Addie just needed to keep moving if she wanted to survive the biting rain.
She had actually gotten past caring. Her world was dark, wet, and miserable. At this point, she didn’t particularly have a strong drive to survive, it just seemed like the only thing to do. So she kept on walking, doing the bare minimum to stay awake in the downpour.
When Addie pushed her new bond to its limit those many days ago, she never realized it would mean a grueling survival trek through the forest. She hadn’t even been thinking about her dad too much; Right now, Addie just focused on trying to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Over a particularly tricky root, Addie tripped and fell. She landed on her front and earned herself a mouth full of mud, barely managing not to swallow it on reflex. She spat the mud out best she could and used her sleeve to try to get rid of the rest. It didn’t help much, though, basically just smearing the gritty texture around on her tongue due to her now muddy sleeves, but it was better than nothing. She put her hands down on the ground to push herself up and continue on, but soon realized she was stuck in some kind of bog. Face down in the mud, craning her neck out of the muck to breathe, Addie began to laugh.
This really is the icing on the cake, huh? I’m just trying to walk forward but the universe won’t even let me do that properly.
Somewhat lost in her thoughts and enveloped in darkness, Addie didn’t even see Squishy approach until he stepped just in front of her face.
“At first I thought you had begun to cry, but it appears as though you are laughing. Why?” Squishy, being a newly awakened animal, sometimes seemed to have a hard time understanding Addie’s emotions.
“It’s just funny! I mean, how did I even get in this situation? It’s so silly! I can’t—” Addie burst out with another fit of laughter, “I’m stuck!”
“I see. Think not as a human, little one. Now, you are special. Dip into Realmspace and, in words you might say, ‘un-stuck yourself’.”
That actually seemed like a good idea to Addie. She didn’t waste any time beating herself up for not thinking of that— it had been days since she last used the ability, and she had been taking a break to make sure their bond healed properly.
With a moment of will, she was no longer sinking into the bog, instead she lay face down on the cold, solid ground of Realmspace. She hurriedly rose to her feet, but only took a single step forward before being ejected back out into reality.
She gasped upon her re-entry to the rain-filled forest, the shock and frigidity biting into her. For her brief moment in Realmspace, the universe spared her the wet and cold. Thinking on it for a moment, Addie realized Realmspace seemed different than she remembered. When compared to the frantic flight through the forest from a few days ago, this time, she had almost no control over her return to reality. Before, it seemed like she alone held authority over how long she decided to travel through Realmspace. This time, without the boost granted by bond ignition, Realmspace seemed to spit her back out into true reality the moment it noticed her alien presence.
Unfortunately, Addie quickly realized that her single step forward in Realmspace only meant one of her feet made it outside the bog. Her back foot was quickly swallowed almost knee-deep into that gritty cold mud. She tried to yank her foot out, but it seemed to suck on her leg, trying to drag her back in.
She panicked for a moment, thrashing her foot around before she heard Squishy’s calming tone, “Just move slowly, little one. The mud is no predator. Relax, and gently move your foot out. The mud will release should you cease your struggling.”
Addie took a moment to take a deep breath, then she replied with a panic-restrained ‘ok’. To give herself a bit more leverage, she dropped onto all fours. Next, she did as Squishy instructed and slowly began lifting her foot, though it went against her instincts (she still wanted to yank her leg out as soon as possible away from the danger).
Within just a few moments, Addie realized it was working. Using her good leg and now her two hands for better leverage, it became a simple thing to extricate her leg from the bog. She just needed to be a little bit patient.
Her foot came out of the muck with a wet ‘shlurp’, and Addie felt more than a little relieved her foot was intact. Though, with dismay, she realized the stupid mud had eaten her boot. She dared not try to wade around in there to find it. She gave up on it with a sigh, trying to get the determination to make it through the forest with a bare foot. But then she realized she might not need to walk the whole way without a shoe. After all, she could use her ability to travel through Realmspace to avoid the forest at least partially.
“Squishy, let’s travel using Realmspace for a bit,” Addie winced slightly, remembering the soul-ache she experienced after overdoing it during their bond ignition, “But just a little bit since I don’t want to tear up our bond again. That was awful.”
“Very well, my lady,” Squishy prowled over to her and leapt upwards. Addie could feel his intentions through their bond and immediately reached her arms out to meet him, where he jumped right into her arms. Then she squished him tight into her chest, enough so that he was secure but not anywhere close to hurting him. With their combined will and strength, they leaned back through the membrane of reality, dipping into Realmspace.