∗ ∗ ∗
The late afternoon Sun was oppressive and Aoi's body was gloved in a veil of sweat and condensation, cooling him as a gentle breeze blew by. Pins and needles. The circulation, or lack thereof, in his left arm pulled him from his sleep.
Hmm?
Aoi felt the cool relief of a hard structure, draped in his arms, against his own sweltering torso.
..giant beetle…Bwah.
His left arm numb as he gently attempted and failed to dislodge the coffee table sized insect.
I'll let him sleep.
Once again he attempted to pull the dead weight of his arm from underneath the beetle, and once again he failed. Finally forcing open his eyes, Aoi shoved his new friend off of his phantom arm. Bwah, cherubic, was resting just as peacefully as he had been before, and during the entire jolting affair.
"You're so funny."
Aoi rose to his feet. He was still in a magical, possibly sentient jungle of unknown origins.
Most likely somewhere around the equator…in the sky…
He pondered as he stumbled a pace or two away from where his friend rested and pulled the front of his pants down.
Pissssssssss.
Not good, ohmanohman
Farrrttt.
I need water
Aoi looked back over his shoulder toward his sleeping friend, mostly concerned for his hydration and, secretly, whether or not he was listening.
We need water.
Half gagging from the rush of concentrated ammonia, half from an entirely separate fetid pungency, he stumbled toward the makeshift camp where he had left out that cup.
"Oh yeah" he murmured, barely audible, even to himself.
Eyes wide, possessed, he reached for it. Desperation flushed through his veins, though he paused, just before his hands made contact with the semi-phosphorescent golden green tumbler.
He tilted his head and narrowed his gaze.
Aoi looked back toward camp to see if Bwah was watching, which he was not. He folded himself toward the ground, down on all fours to gingerly sip samples at the rim of the vessel until it held a manageable volume. He raised the faintly glowing golden green cup and drank a mouthful.
Gulp.
Burp.
Fwooooh..
Tears of the goddess herself..
He reached into his pocket, fetched the coffee leaves he squirreled away, laid a few in the remaining water, picked some coffee cherries and began to eat them.
Fresh. Delightful sparkling wine. Effervescent juice danced atop supple, mild, melon flavored flesh. He swallowed the fruit while his tongue stashed the seeds.
Mmm.
Lapping his tongue, he scooped the seeds from the hollow of his lower jaw, and gently flicked them alongside the leaves, into the water, inside the golden chalice; his perfect coffee cup.
Heat is the transfer of energy increasing molecular motion, and temperature measures the average translational kinetic energy of the molecules in a system. Water resists heating more than most liquids, four point one eight four joules per gram per degree. About a third of the energy needed for the molecules to get excited…
"heh heh heh."
…is siphoned toward breaking down hydrogen bonds.
He began to trace his finger around the circumference of the cup.
Essentially, in removing the all powerful obstacle that is the hydrogen bond, I'd guess about fifty five, fifty six thousand joules would be more than sufficient. Directly heating the system with no interference from vessel or air.
He dipped his index finger inside the water and continued tracing the circumference of the vessel.
Lattice fall. Conductor, dance. Move, excite. I am He who commands you swift.
A faint orange glow just visibly emanating from his fingertip, Aoi moved his face closer to the cup. Looping and swirling, delicate and acrobatic atop itself, an array was forming along the bottom of the vessel trailing the glow of his finger's tip.
"Dafit–" he paused, looked left, then right, removed his finger from the cup. "–epovere…"
The faintest wisp of steam rose from the water's surface.
Aoi sat in glorious silence for three to five minutes…
∗ ∗ ∗
Dafitepovere (dah-feet-eh-poh-veh-reh): the spell to warm a solution held within a small vessel.
Deep dark, musk. A concentrated, resinous, lingering bitterness. A faint sweetness of would-be floral was lost, the harsh semi-medicinal taste dismissed all possibility of other flavor profiles.
"Oh, wow..heh heh...I'm okay." Aoi choked at Bwah who looked genuinely concerned, or would have if it weren't for the fact that he was most likely just parched.
"It's all kinds of bitter, truly a vile abomination.." he said, in between sips.
Slurp.
"Yyack…you really won't like it. I'm sorry, we'll share a real one someday."
Aoi brought the cup down to ground level where his thirsty friend began to drink.
"'Coffee is only coffee if it's made in a Bialetti'"
He was inexplicably misty eyed..
So enthusiastically Bwah had been drinking that his outrageous horns, both of them, were threatening to spill the delightful horrors inside.
"Okay okay! Let me get the weird cup back…okay.."
"Thanks, Bwah." He looked to his friend who looked like he wanted more.
Aoi crouched down, made a cup with his open hand, where he poured the rest of the swill for Bwah, who drank tenderly, tickling his cupped palm as a smile swelled over Aoi's sweaty face.
Omg he's — this is ridiculous!
"Okay look we need to prioritize survival here and that's got to include water. You and I, well, we're definitely not twinks.. ..which means we'll also need some food, a bit of it– actually, you found those berries yesterday.."
Bwah had begun to walk following alongside the sailless ants, the same direction they had just come from only hours earlier upon meeting. Aoi was licking the remaining dregs of his bastard coffee from the cup as he stumbled to get to his feet.
"I was thinking we make a plan, ya know, stick to a predetermined route..this way isn't so bad actually, but maybe we can keep to the path we traveled yesterday.."
He stashed the cup and had caught up with the beetle – the giant blue beetle he was now following deeper into the jungle.
"Bwah, I want to apologize again, the new plan, I think is… to just follow you, right? You grew up here, you have a connection to this place. I met you near the feijoa fruit. You even found more food along the way, you are totally my guide not vice versa, got it. Sorry. Thank you!"
To which the beetle merely paused, waddled his body back and forth to align his horn with Aoi, bumped Aoi's shin admittedly quite tenderly, for a mini rhino, then waddled his strange little body back toward his path and pressed on.
Even if nobody else…I know Bwah's got me..
The ant trail they were following, still a horrendously straight line but a useful one amongst the stranger depths of the jungle.
"Oh NO! The ants in that Cecropia Bwah do–"
He's got it. He's like a 60 pound…boulder...
Grrrkk grrrk… Zzzzzzzeeeeeeeee…tic tic tic…
…
They'd still take him down actually
Tik tik tik tik tik…grrrk grrkk grrkk…zzzZZZzzzzeeeEEEE..tic tic tic… whooooop … whooooppp..
…
"Hey, what are you? No offense meant, I just…it's just that you don't seem to be the same as that pincerella I was checking out when we met, only biologically similar. Hmm ? Oh, how big were you as a baby? You must've been like what..30 inches! So cute."
Tik tik tik, zzzZZZzzzzeeeEEEE..tic tic tic...
Aoi stopped.
"Hey Bwah, your mom must've been pretty tough too.."
…
He started to follow Bwah once again.
"Yeah I don't want to talk about it either."
The ant trail, miraculously ordinary, now that the path had once again unwound and untangled. Thick matted vines, overgrowth and twisted terrain became rising vaguely angular surfaces covered in soft lime green mosses.
And, just as Aoi expected.
Primordial, tremendous…like standing in a geyser…like it could lift me off the ground..
The atmosphere, syrupy. The invisible fog, the awe inspiring pressure, had returned.
"Truly sublime."
Aoi held perfectly still, basking, a cat in the sun.
An undulating red-violet slithering creature, a caterpillar-worm hybrid looking creature, bright hazardous oranges and reds that warn one not to approach. It moved as if it were a wave, and a snake but yet also a millipede.
Oroperipatus sp. The Velvet Worm
"Nice."
Aoi knelt down to inspect the creature that seemed to almost float whilst winding its way along its nonsensical path. He raised his hand to the worm and directed his musings toward Bwah.
"They spray you with slime cannons...watch."
Anticlimactically and in response to the considerably large man yelling and waving his hand at it, the worm rolled itself into a ball, shooting no cannons of slime.
Aoi, dejected, called after Bwah who had not stopped his march for the silly worm or for any more of Aoi's shenanigans.
"I get it, you already know.."
∗ ∗ ∗
Bwah had come to a halt a little ways ahead of Aoi, who had been distracted by the no less than thirteen species of mosses and twenty six species of fungi he had only ever read about and never seen.
"Hey what's the hold.."
Aoi said, in between gasps for air, jokingly.
"Up…oh" He froze.
The clearing ahead was nearly, perfectly circular. Meticulously swept clean, presumably from the blazing maelstrom rising in the arena. Dancing, living, breathing flames of spectacular orange and reds. Hypnotic, terrifying and somehow, somewhat hilarious. A loud piercing call tore through the gathering of wild, peacocking birds, somewhere between a buzz and the grunting and squealing of a pig.
Yuiiiiiiii.
"Bwah. Buddy.." He whispered and tapped his armored friend, eyes rapt on the bizarre avian mating ritual in front of them.
"Rupicola peruvianus. I saw a single male in the treeline before we met, all these haughty cocks are trying to bed that fair maiden, the large one you see over there." Aoi whispered, his face now very close to Bwah's head.
Kip-kip-kip.
The sound adding percussion, rhythm, metronome to the birds mating calls. As they rocked their emblazoned feathers toward the sky and back down toward the ground, back and forth and up and down, bleeding into one another. They danced and skipped, jubilantly gathered around one another's fire in a singular mission.
Uank.
The incandescent flames spun in place and hopped back and forth from the branches above to the gilded dancefloor and back again. Never breaking pace, one after the other, acrobatic feats, unbound by gravity they danced, fiercer still, feathers flying; embers holding shape in an updraft.
Kip-kip-kip.
"Bwah…this is like…nature."
Crack.
"AH!"
The pain from a bone dry, thorny branch underneath his knee caused him to squeal rather dramatically, he realized, as he wasn't actually feeling all that much pain.
FLAP FLAP Click FLAPP Click SQWAAKKK
The clearing had descended into chaos, each flame sprouting wings and blazing toward the sky obscuring their vision, the entire lek, a wall of bright orange flame.
FLAPPP Snip SQWAa–
FLAP FLAP FLAP
"I'm sorry that was my fault. Let's–Hey where are you going?"
Bwah had already made his way from the clearing and once again Aoi had to clamor to catch up. He was hot, even for the jungle. His face, especially warm, almost tingled…
He's pretty fast, really fast and… he's so… blue.
∗ ∗ ∗
Aoi was led along descending stairs of stone covered in moss, huffing and puffing, the air thicker here, more viscous with mana than before, it was almost a challenge to wade through now. To his left and right were walls of green, ancient stone ascending high as the two descended deeper into the jungle. The path askance before them.
Damn…Bwah really do got me!
Bwah shone resplendent in the green filtered light breaking through, emphasizing the subtle emerald sheens across his mostly deep sapphire exoskeleton. As they climbed deeper into the earth, sounds seemed distant somehow, and yet they climbed what looked to be sky gardens, –gardens on stilts– and danced atop great gold statues, hanging heavy in the air.
"Bwah."
He looked around behind him as he continued.
"Where are we–"
Thud.
"Mmmfgg ah what.."
A horrific depiction of a spider-human hybrid was shaped in the golden statue before him, Aoi shivered at the sight or the peculiar sensations he was feeling from the accidental collision between his face and the evil spiderman. He looked at all the structural elements that lay before them, face screwed up. To his disbelief, they were still in the jungle.
Gold statues? Steps? Lattices. So…a lot of people, they were here...
The next statues were a pair.
To the left a noble looking snake warrior, and to its right, a humble eagle warrior wielding a spear.
The faint glow about the statues suggests they grew from gold deposits deep in the earth and coalesced with mud and terrain, commanding themselves into form.
A jaguar.
It was formed of golden strewed earth just as the previous statues had been, and yet, its glow was just brighter than the others and as Aoi's eyes moved, the statue began to as well. Shifting. Shining brilliant opalescence under the filtered light of the canopy – the jaguar statue was now of a man! He held the same position as the beast, legs where legs had been and so on.
Aoi moved back four paces.
The same brilliant opalescent flash of light gleamed off the statue, that yes, was now a jaguar again.
I know that this is some phenomenon I've read about I just…can't recall the information
"Bwah, you're seeing this too right?"
Whether or not Bwah was seeing it he wouldn't ever know because he had once again left Aoi to perform some kind of foolishness, on their emergency water scouting mission.
Aoi moved his head side to side to catch the trick but with no success, he pressed on. Taking one final lasting peek at the statue, which at the moment Aoi couldn't even discern man or jaguar, and merely brushed it off. An explanation by science or magic, or both lost to him in this place.
Tic tic tic
…
The faint sounds of distant waves crashing, and the boisterous unavoidable rush of a waterfall both somehow equally loud, as the world around them became unusual.
Bwah had led them to water!
An enormous amphitheatre-like structure surrounded the lake. The green filtered light of the canopy was now overtaken by the scintillant gold. The levels of the amphitheatre were filled with hundreds of motionless, human sculptures cast in the brightest gold.
I..feel…odd.
A shadow descended to the edge of the lake, the infamous feline silhouette unmistakable. Holding steady, its deep eyes of amber gazing at the two, it took a drink. The jaguar made its way, walking along the surface of the water, weaving through the reflections of the golden statues, until it reached the very center of the lake.
Aoi and, presumably, Bwah, were unable to take their eyes off the figure. It was surely made of shadow, a jaguar typically isn't capable of walking on water — although was there any scientific precedent when it came to Bwah? Not that he knew of. His face burned from anticipation, confusion, or something else entirely altogether.
The jaguar dove into the placid water of the lake glowing with golden faces, leaving no ripple nor wake, just the faintest shimmering gold flecks floating down the path of its descent.
∗ ∗ ∗
That was..what was that even..?
"Bwah, tell me you saw that…the jaguar that walked on the lake…just now?"
"We are meant to follow it."
Aoi was ice.
"Bwah…was that you?"
∗ ∗ ∗