\|/ Turn 48, midlight
I've had the most absurd dream of my life.
Mik and I went to Shlika last dark to sleep. When I was falling asleep, I wasn't sure whether Mik was awake or not. Its taste was neutral, but it wasn't breathing as deeply as when it slept. I think it was trying to guard us against the hunters if they found us. I doubt it would change the outcome if they did.
I woke up and it was extremely dark. I was slumped against a tree, some bioluminescent mold sticking to my back thorns. It was extremely dark and there was oddly no air taste, not even the regular forest one.
I stood up and looked around in confusion.
Why am I here? Where's Shlika?
I started searching around, being as quiet as I could be. I reasoned I sleepwalked out, though I was confused on why Mik didn't stop me. All of the details, like me not having my spear and my disfigurements, were there.
After some aimless walking in the dark, I heard trills.
Having no other lead, I sneaked towards the noise, hoping to see where the threat at least was.
They intensified as I got closer, and then screaming joined the horrible chorus.
When I got close enough, I could see the scene perfectly, despite it being dark.
The screaming was Mik, held in the air by two of the hunters. They were trying to tear him apart.
I saw the collapsed tent in the ground, but instead of leaves it was covered in red blood from the deat hunter. Despite the impossible amount of blood present, it was still bleeding from its half hacked off neck.
Then, I saw a blur go towards Mik.
My spear.
I immediately recognized her by the lack of injuries.
She struck Mik straight in the stomach, sending blood flying. She was laughing manically, spearing repeatedly.
However, this time, I recognized it was a dream. It felt too unreal, and I was too tired to panic properly.
Could this be any more dramatic? I thought as I sighed deeply.
Paradoxically, I felt exhausted, despite being asleep. I decided to lay down and stare at the dark sky, waiting for the dream to end.
The screaming, trills, laughing and fluttering of wings continued as I started counting the stars in the sky. Interestingly enough, they were constellations I remembered from Varanth.
After a few spans, the sounds slowly faded.
I hoped I would wake up, until she loomed over me. Her eyes were wild and… annoyed.
"What are you doing?" she asked me.
"Waiting for you to give up." I answered, not moving my gaze from the stars.
She groaned and sat down next to me. I heard her put the spear on the ground.
"Lucid dreaming makes this extremely awkward." She complained.
"sorry." I muttered.
"Don't be sorry, do something!" She ordered, frantically shaking my left shoulder.
I didn't answer, letting her tire herself out. At least one of us felt motivated to do something, even if it was trying to torture me.
After a few moments she gave up. I could feel her stare drilling into the side of my skull.
We were like that in silence for a bit. I let my mind wander, and I couldn't help but wonder about how having an internal personification of my worst traits and dreams functioned, seeing I was aware of her this time.
"I don't know either." She said, reading my thoughts.
Have I actually lost it?
Probably. She thought back at me.
That got me to flinch and sit up, feeling more than a bit weird.
"Oh, so that's got you doing something!" she exclaimed, her tail thumping against the ground as if it were the best thing in her life.
"What's your problem? Why do you… I…? Why are we doing this?" I asked, staring back at her.
"You're asking your psychosis for a reason?" she chuckled.
…
We sat like that, staring at each other for a bit.
"… can I ask for a favor?" I whispered.
"You want to switch, to remember how it's like to have a normal arm again." She stated, reading my intentions.
"…yes."
"Well, since you're lucid dreaming, feel free to change us. Or am I lucid dreaming?" She pondered, making both of us even more confused. After a moment her tail stopped moving.
"Who knows, life is a dream, after all!" She laughed maniacally while hitting the ground.
"I'm going to imagine you disappearing." I warned, less than amused.
"Oh, you're far too deep in to do that!" she laughed more.
I grumbled at her, not wanting to entertain that monster anymore.
I decided to think about us switching bodies, like she did when I was drowning her. I closed my eyes and focused, willing the change.
After a few moments, it worked.
"Oh my Suns!" I gasped, feeling my left arm not hurt or strain in the slightest. I moved it around experimentally, actually feeling relieved.
"Open your eyes." She told me, jarringly calm, unlike her usual manic tone.
I opened my eyes.
The dream was broken.
I saw the stars in the air melt together, writhing in the sky. The air felt sweet and acidic, exactly like that of the living shadow. Trees blurred with countless eyes staring back at me. My own tail was thumping against the ground without my consent.
"Isn't It Beautiful?" We asked.
I snapped awake, quickly standing up and slamming my head into a bunch of leaves and branches.
"Ow!"
I fell back down, rubbing my head. Shlika slowly opened, making the usual path accessible.
After a few moments, I could register reality again. It took me some more time to get back to a sane way of thinking; it felt like I had broken in that dream.
Suns I am never doing that again. I made a mental vow.
As I made it, I felt a part of me laughing again. A laugh almost crept into my throat, but I managed to force it down.
I looked around but didn't find Mik, instead, I found a message.
"Lake" was written in the ground next to me. I made my way towards the lake, the red dwarf already almost at midlight.
I'm at the lake now, writing this while lightbathing.
Mik's here, and it's been busy making a bottle from what I noticed, guessing from the general shape of the drying leaves and fungal vines. Mik's air taste is especially potent this turn, which seems to correlate with how warm it is outside.
Mik is harassing some trees right now, meaning we're eating bark again. I really am not looking forward to that in the slightest.
I guess I'll try doing something more productive this turn. I think I'll go for a walk around the lake.
\|/ Turn 48, late light
This turn has actually been very pleasant. Though I wasn't productive, doing something I used to do felt incredibly fun.
I also had a pretty dangerous thought, but it might help us.
After my last entry I got the idea to explore a bit. Mik was sorting food out, water wasn't a problem and the weather was stable.
I needed to force myself to do something except for wallow in sadness, and I thought about doing something interesting; documenting things while I'm here.
I got out of the warm sand and went over to Mik. It was peeling yet another tree, making an impressive pile of Tau's worst non-poison cuisine.
"Mik" I hissed to it.
Mik turned around in mild surprise, leaving its hatchet embedded in the tree bark. Mik's taste was more potent again.
I tapped its journal pocket, asking to borrow it. Mik started giving it to me, but its face quickly contorted into an evil version of its smile.
Just as I was about to grab its journal, Mik held it high above me, taunting the height difference.
"No." I groaned, staring at Mik's face. I've played this game far too many times.
Mik tried to trick me into grabbing the journal and quickly moving it away a few times, but I just waited until it got bored.
Of course making fun of height is universal…
Mik stopped smiling and gave me the journal. It was absolutely disappointed.
I ignored Mik's hatchlingess and wrote "Maya go around lake" in the journal.
Quickly realizing it probably didn't know the word "around", I drew an extremely simplistic top-down view of the lake and my planned route.
Mik took the journal and wrote "Know word around". It added a weird combination of symbols next to it, which can't be translated, but I can redraw.
:P
What in the Suns does that even mean?
I pointed at the symbols in the journal in utter confusion, tilting my head to make it clear.
Mik laughed and showed me its tongue.
…
I just stared at it. Mik usually didn't taste the air, and its tongue was out for far too long to get a proper reading.
I tasted the air and didn't taste anything out of the ordinary. Mik's tongue was still out while I did this.
…
My mind went blank. What Mik could possibly be trying to show with the gesture was far too complex for me to understand. Seeing its species uses a threat gesture as an affirmation, there was no way I could guess it.
I just slowly put Mik's journal on the ground and backed away, facing it. This was the first time in a long time I didn't understand Mik's tone.
Mik had a laughing fit as I made a good distance between us before turning around.
What a weird species…
After resolving… that, I went on my planned walk around the lake.
I started on the right side of the lake, going in a wide circle to avoid all the animals resting around it. Since it was a little past midlight, most of them were hiding in the shade, which still felt paradoxical to me. Only the big filter feeder was in the middle of the lake, doing its usual thing.
I made my way to the top part of the lake (relative to where the tent used to be). It was just plants on the way there, so I didn't have to worry about sneaking around, though I struggled to get through all of it.
On the way, I accidentally found some resting divers next to the lake.
I quickly hid in a bush about five lengths away. It was green with yellowish leaves, but the divers weren't paying attention anyway.
Up close, the divers were beautiful. They were quite lean, with their blue cloaks having silvery accents. Their cloaks looked oily, from how they reflected light. One of the divers there was constantly rubbing something from its back across its cloak, which might've been the oil.
From the five there, some were resting in neat positions, legs tucked under their bodies, but some of them were splayed comically. They had four webbed feet, reminiscent of those Gatorid have, but much flimsier and with an orange hue. Their two wings were very small compared to the rest of their own bodies.
They didn't look too threatening, either. Their necks were long and flimsy, with smaller chitinous snouts and two wide eyes.
I took a rock and threw it in the middle of the group.
Two of the divers immediately fled to the water. Three stood up, staring at the rock. They made odd, short high-pitched noises, with their snouts clacking when they did so. Some had their cloaks puffed up, which I didn't know they could do. I felt bad about scaring them.
After a few spans, one particularly brave diver went and lightly kicked the rock with a webbed foot. After the rock did nothing, all of the divers calmed down, though one of the divers that had fled stayed in the water.
Seeing that the divers would flee if I tried anything else, I continued around their resting area and continued walking around the lake.
Then I got to the familiar screecher nest. I hid in another bush that was much further away.
I saw scattered eggshells and tiny screechers moving around. The speed at which they had hatched astonished me.
I tried walking around the nest towards the 'bottom' part of the lake (the closest to where the tent used to be), but I failed to find a path around them. It was far too overgrown, and I had to be extremely quiet and careful, so as to not rustle the bushes I was going through.
In the end, I went back the same way I came from.
In total, I spent a few marks walking around the lake. It felt really nice doing something I knew how to do: observing and documenting. It wasn't productive; mostly a waste of energy, but it felt calming, after everything that happened in the last few turns and my absurd dream.
When I got back to Mik, it was in the water again. It left its shirt next to the two (full) water bowls and the bottle. The red dwarf was much less intense, so there were more divers in the lake, but the large filter feeder had left.
Something that made me quite happy was that Mik was also swimming with its left arm.
… In a completely weird an alien way.
Mik was on its back, its legs underwater and its hands going around in a wide arc, both providing propulsion at the same interval. It constantly drifted to the left due to its much weaker left arm. It's speed, however…
Oh Suns…
Mik was painfully slow.
I stared in awe at how slow Mik was swimming. Water-inclined Scalari would leave Mik in the sand, and Darkonids and Gatorid would have made laps around Mik for fun.
I didn't want to laugh at Mik, seeing it was biologically proving beings could swim without scales, but it was also proving why that was a very poor idea.
I stifled some laughter and lay down in the sand, not far from the shore. I closed my eyes and rested, exhausted from walking for so long.
Despite my choice not to be rude by making fun of Mik, Mik decided to disturb me.
My face got splashed with a whole bunch of water.
I immediately woke up, snarling loudly.
Mik, still in the water, laughed and sprayed more on me. I wasn't thirsty at the time, so I was more than a little annoyed.
I took a handful of sand, compressed it, and threw it at Mik.
Mik simply dove under the water.
…unfair
I sighed deeply and went over to the part of the shore further from the water. I saw a Squirmy-like being on the way, but I left it alone. I really didn't want to hurt another one.
Sometime later, before late light, Mik came over to me and tapped me on the tailtip. I opened my eyes and saw it smiling with a bunch of compressed leaves in the shape of an orb.
"Yeah?" I asked it.
Mik dropped the orb next to my head. It landed with a sad 'plop'.
What now?
I sat up, not sure what Mik was trying to do.
Mik picked the orb up and sat opposite of me, about three lengths away. It threw the orb at my feet again. My tail twitched in irritation.
"You're really creative, aren't you?"
Mik, not understanding me, held its hands out expectantly.
Humoring Mik, I got up and brought the orb to it. Its smile drooped.
Mik really isn't going to let me rest…
I went back to my spot and took my journal out.
Then, the orb hit me on the right arm, bouncing off harmlessly.
I looked at Mik in utter discontent. Suns, was Mik being unnerving.
It stared back, still smiling.
…
Mik then held its hands out and waited.
"I am not getting up again." I said, throwing the orb back.
Mik caught the orb and threw it back to me.
I threw it back and turned away, trying to get back to my notes.
A moment later, I felt the orb hit the side of one of my back thorns. Mik was extremely adamant.
Seeing there was no helping it, I threw it back again. We continued this loop for a while, with Mik putting in way too much effort to catch the orb when I miscalculated the throw.
Despite myself, I was starting to like the game.
I put more and more effort into actually catching the orb, and Mik put more effort into throwing it in weird ways.
That is until I accidentally tried to catch it with my left arm.
I brought my left arm up, immediately bursting into extreme pain. The ball flew over me as I clutched my arm and lied down.
Mik came over to me and tapped my back, avoiding the thorns.
"I'm fine, I'm fine." I told it, trying to move Mik away.
Mik stayed with me for a couple of moments until I felt better. I got the orb back and we continued playing for a while.
It's late light now, approaching dark. Mik made a fire and boiled a bunch of water, putting a lot of it in the bottle when it cooled down.
We ate the bark Mik had prepared. Both Mik and I feigned happiness while eating it.
We're going to have to sleep under Shlika again this dark, though I see some ominous clouds in the distance.
During the turn, I got an idea. One which I loathe.
My ship.
However much I hate the thought of going there again, of being reminded of SILT…
It would be useful.
The tent was good, but it was destroyed easily.
We can't make some better shelter from wood, since Mik's hatchet is barely even sharp at this point. It's been overused to death, from trees to butchering. The back side of it is barely holding on together due to the fires started with it.
But if we were to find some metal to fix it, or even find enough metal to make a proper shelter…
I'm still thinking about it, since I really don't want to go back there. Parts of my ship could've possibly survived, unlike Mik's, but I can't be sure.
I'll decide on it this dark and tell Mik about it next turn.