Chose! Live forever ignorant, or die and see eternity. Angelo Gordon may never see the completion of his lifework, this realization causes him to jump into the still unfinished portal-project, only to awake in a world far beyond his comprehension.
If you could choose, would you rather live forever and stay ignorant, or would you like to see eternity even if it means your death?
An innocent question causes Angelo Gordon to doubt, what should have been the culmination of his lifework. A fit of Thanatophobia later, and he finds himself in a strange world that seems to defy everything he ever learned, and suddenly existentialistic terror is the least of his worries, as he struggles for bare survival.
In a world with no giants Ch.01 “It’s full of stars”
When Angelo Gordon awoke this morning he felt a jolt of youthful energy, the likes of which he hadn’t felt for at least twenty years. Even the cracking of bones and his chronic knee pains didn’t serve to remind him of his age.
For once he didn’t turn of the radio of his alarm clock, and instead decided to sing along to the generic pop song that was playing, despite not knowing the lyrics. Humming along with more enthusiasm than skill, he went straight for the kitchen and turned on the coffee machine, before he made his way to the bathroom.
A quick shower, shave, and brushing of teeth later, and he felt ready to take on the world. He took a short moment to check his features in the bathroom mirror. The face that looked back at him couldn’t be called handsome in the traditional sense. His black hair already showed a worrying amount of grey, and the bags under his eyes couldn’t be explained away as laugh lines anymore, but he had a strong jawline, and his deep green eyes shone with an undeniable spark of intelligence.
His opinion of himself often varied between spent-Sylvester-Stallone and George-Clooney-lookalike.
Today was definitely a ‘Clooney’-day.
By the time he had donned his suit, the coffee was ready and he enjoyed a quick cup of black goodness. The amount of coffee he consumed, and what this did to his biorhythm, might have been one of the prime reasons for the bags under his eyes, but he just couldn’t begin his day without some ‘jumpstarting’.
A quick glance to the clock revealed that it was time to go to work. Being late on his “Big Day” just wouldn’t do.
A German import waited in his driveway. Frankly speaking, the car was far more expensive than would have been appropriate for his scientist’s wage, yet he kept the black sports-car, claiming that it was a nice memento of his midlife crisis. (Others would argue that it was a sign that he was still stuck in it.) With a satisfying purr the engine started.
The sun was only barely scraping on the horizon, and the streets had yet to fill with the daily bustle. In the fifteen years he had worked at the lab, he never quite understood why he had to get up at this god-forsaken hour, but his superiors had been quite adamant about it.
Having made good time on the highway, he approached the flat glass building. With the early morning sun reflecting in the artfully shaped window-front of the building, for the first time in his life, Angelo could read the slogan above the front door without cringing at how cheesy it was.
“Building the future, step by step,” the chrome-plated sign announced to the world.
With a spring in his step he entered the building.
“Morning Becky!” he greeted the receptionist. The receptions design had been inspired by sci-fi motives and presented itself in a pristine white, with smooth surfaces and without sharp corners. Becky’s black suit was the only contrast in the room.
“Good morning Mister Gordon. Good luck for your big day,” Becky replied, as he walked past her towards the elevators.
With the push of a button the doors opened and he entered the steel lined cabine. A quick swipe of his keycard unlocked access to the lower levels. Much of the research-complex had been built underground, not to conceal their horrible experiments from the public eye, like that scandalmonger from the local newspaper regularly wrote, but to shield the sensitive equipment from interference.
The elevator doors opened and revealed his kingdom, ‘Laboratory 12’.
To be more precise, he stood in the locker room, which would lead to the disinfection corridors, but once he passed those he would stand in his laboratory.
One change of clothes and a shower with various aggressive chemicals later he entered the large room.
Much to his surprise he wasn’t alone.
“Anna? I thought I had told you that you weren’t to enter the laboratory alone,” he scolded the young red haired women (not that her hair could be seen under the hair cover all lab workers were required to wear).
“I’m sorry, but I just wanted to go over the control programs once more before the test run,” she replied. Angelo sighed. That Anna was allowed into the lab in itself was already an oddity, since she technically was only an intern. Anna was a student at the nearby university, but once he had caught wind of her almost supernatural affinity for programming and system analysis he had pulled some strings to allow her into his lab. Of course his colleagues had other ideas about why he had brought the attractive 20 year old women down here.
“Didn’t you allready check those twice yesterday?” he asked raising an eyebrow.
A sheepish chuckle escaped his young intern, “I guess I’m getting a bit nervous.”
“Haha, and here I thought it was MY lifework that is about to be fulfilled,” he fobbed his young assistant.
“You can continue here while I take another look at ‘The Suit’,” he said, as he fought down the urge to further poke fun at Anna.
‘The Suit’ of course had another name, given to it by the PR department that already was gauging the projects monetary value, but “Foreign-Environment-Acclimation-and-Hazard Avoidance-Unit” was a bit of a mouth full for casual conversation. And ‘The Suit’ had a nice dramatic flare to it.
Behind the overly complicated name hid a reinforced aluminium exoskeleton covered by a silicon-skin with a lead lining. An array of servos allowed the wearer to move the yellow behemoth, that weighed as much as two grown men, even after they had replaced the original steel construction with as much light weight materials as they dared too. The water- and air-tanks and the plethora of measuring devices added to the suits sizeable weight as well. From the outside ‘The Suit’ looked like an oversized Hazmat-suit, unsurprisingly so, since it technically was one.
They wouldn’t actually need the suit today, seeing as the first test run was thought of as a proof of concept more than anything else, but Angelo always found that working on the suit helped calming his nerves. When he was sure that all joints were still sealed tight, he began with his actual work.
In the beginning the work in Lab 12 had been a shock for Angelo, but over the years he had learned to love the almost ‘hands-on’ methodology that they applied around here. While he started out with only a PHD in physics he soon found himself dabbling in engineering, chemistry, and metallurgy as well, as he tried to adapt to the needs of his new job.
But the machines had been built, the programs had been set up and now only data gathering, fine tuning, and double checking mathematical formulas remained.
Not that he minded, after all it was this ‘dry’ lab work that had drawn him into the field in the first place, but sitting still behind his desk only added to the nervousness his assistant had awakened earlier in the morning.
Little by little the team arrived and the large underground room filled with the noises of activity. Twelve men and women, not counting him and Anna, each of which had become a friend over the many years they had worked on this project. Martin, Johnson, Abdullah, Jennifer, Martinez, Alex, Florence, Kim, Ramirez, Mrs. Smith, Jensen and Bjorn, names that by now he almost knew better than those of his family.
A quick glance at his watch revealed that there was only half an hour left until the testrun.
He cleared his throat and instantly the room fell silent. Of course they all had waited for him to make a speech, after all his flare for the melodramatic was well known.
As he looked at the thirteen faces that suddenly turned towards him, Angelo found himself struggling for words.
“My dear... colleagues...” he began, only to vigorously shake his head before he started again: “No! My friends... You know that I’m not a fan of long speeches...”
“Since when?” Ramirez interrupted him eliciting a round of laughter from the room.
With a smile on his lips Angelo continued his speech, “You all have worked with me for a long time now, and some of you have stood with me from the beginning of this project until today, but regardless of how long, I have one thing I want to say to you; thank you! Thank you, for listening to this crazy man's ramblings, thank you for standing with me, thank you for helping me achieve my life work.”
As he ended the room was silent. That is until Ramirez once again interrupted.
“Little bit early to declare your life work isn’t it? You still got another forty years left to ramble,” he joked. The tense atmosphere in the room dispersed as quickly as it had come, once again leaving the troupe of scientist laughing.
“Okay, everyone knows what he’s got to do. In ten minutes it’s go time!” Angelo shouted, sending the room into a busy chaos once again.
Ten minutes later the thirteen and a half scientists had gathered in front of the experiment-chamber.
Inside the white tiled room, stood a single machine. A simple steel ring about two meters in diameter placed on a solid steel pedestal. The outside appearance of the machine was deceiving, beneath the smooth steel surface hid some of the most sophisticated technology known to mankind.
There were no consoles or flashing buttons, only two computer screens and the matching keyboards and mouses. The operations that were about to unfold were much too complex to be controlled by merely human reflexes, and the necessary settings had been input into the control software days ago.
The only bit of drama the scientist had allowed themselves, was a huge switch that originally had been part of a old high voltage fuse box, which was wired into the computer to give the control program the start signal.
“Ladies and Gentleman, cross your fingers!” Angelo intonated as he walked up to the switch. He took a deep breath and the silence in the room told him, that everybody was holding their breaths at well. With a satisfying snapping-sound the switched fell into the on-position.
For a moment nothing seemed to happen only a soft noise indicated that the computer was busy with it’s operations. Another moment passed. The first few members of the team had to gasp for breath and still nothing had happened.
Disappointedly Angelo turned away from the window into the test chamber. He looked at the desolate face of his colleagues as he tried to come up with something to say, but his mind was blank. Then Anna suddenly screamed, “There look!”
Angelo whipped around on his heels and stared back into the chamber.
And yes, there it was. Just in the middle of the Steel ring, a small black dot hovering in midair. As if it had only waited for them to look at it, the dot began to expand. The dot didn’t seem to be a physical object, and it’s growth was reminiscent of watching a whole being burnt into celluloid. When it’s edges touched the outside of the ring it stopped expanding; a perfect square shaped hole, floating in free air.
Just as he thought that the hole had stabilised, it began to change again. Like thick dark fog, the inside of the square began to billow, slowly dissolving and freeing the view into the inside.
It was full of stars.
It might have been cheesy, but the quote seemed entirely appropriate. Like the monkeys staring into the obelisk, Angelo felt like something had been unlocked inside of him, revealing a bigger part of his existence, as he stared into the starry void.
Angelo licked his dry lips and with a raspy voice he managed to say, “The Portal Project was a success.”
It took a few moment before the message sank in, then the room suddenly exploded into cheers. Someone, probably Jensen, produced a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses and soon the entire team was busy giving toasts, hugging each other, or openly crying tears of joy, whichever seemed appropriate to express their excitement.
---
It had been nearly an hour and Angelo had been busy partying, and why shouldn’t he? He had just completed the biggest success of his lifetime. A part of the team was already starting to get drunk, but today Angelo wasn’t bothered by this. Only when he could free himself from the cheering crowd for a moment, he noticed that Anna hadn’t returned to the main lab, with the rest of the team.
Silently he departed from his partying teammates and searched for his intern.
He found her still standing in the test chamber, her nose pressed against the window. Just for a moment, Anna seemed less like the twenty year old women she was, and more like a little kid staring wide eyed at the display of a candy shop.
“Why aren’t you with us in the main lab celebrating?” he asked her, but either she hadn’t heard him or she ignored him.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked, awe clearly audible in her voice.
She walked up to her and took the place to her right. Once again he looked into the star filled void, that was still hanging there, suspended in mid air.
“Yes, yes it is. But a bit eery if you ask me,” he confessed. Something about the patch of black unsettled him on a level he couldn’t comprehend.
“Where do you think it leads?” Anna asked, not prying her eyes away from the portal for a second.
“I don’t know... Probably just empty space since we didn’t work out how to aim it yet.” His romantic side of course wanted to believe that there lay another world on the other side of the portal, but realistically there was just a lot more vacuum compared to the few specks of matter that floated around in the emptiness of space. The probability that they had hit another planet on their first try was laughably low.
Anna looked somewhat saddened by this revelation. Better to keep her expectations realistic. This was a huge jump forward for mankind, but they still had a lot of work ahead of them.
Suddenly she turned to him, and looked him into the eyes, “Do you think, I’ll still be around when we figured out how to aim this?”
The question hit him like a ton of bricks. He stuttered and tried to come up with an answer that was at the same time truthful, and yet reassuring, but in the end he could only lamely mutter, “I don’t know.”
Angelo turned around yet again. The clock told him that it was midnight, which simply couldn’t be right, that would mean that he had spent the last four hours tossing and turning in his bed.
With a groan he rolled onto his back, facing the huge skylight above his bed. Usually he found the sight of the night sky calming, but today Anna’s question had stuck with him, plaguing him with unbidden thoughts.
“Will I still be around when we finish the project?” he asked nobody in particular, maybe hoping that some merciful god would have pity on him and reveal his future. This wasn’t like him. Yes, he had always been a man of vision, of dreams, but never had his head been stuck in the clouds like this. Countless scenarios of the future passed before his eyes, and he was shocked in how many of them his life would end without his dreams ever coming to fruition.
He let out a wry laugh. Yesterday was supposed to be the pinnacle of his life and here he was lying in his bed despairing about the future instead.
He pried his eyes from the mental pictures and instead focussed on the stars above. He had often heard people talk about how looking at the stars had made them feel small and insignificant, but until today he had never really understood why.
Suddenly the blinking lights of the night sky seemed to mock him and his laughable human lifespan. The normally ignored darkness, that hung between the stars became an insurmountable rift that would forever seal him of from the rest of the universe.
He was easily twice Anna’s age and yet even that young girl with all her life still ahead of her had been startled by the sheer size of the project they were conducting. How could this foolish old man ever even dream of being anymore than a dust speck in this huge laughable game that was life?
Angelo regretted sleeping alone. Had there been a warm body besides him, maybe he could have fought of this undeniable feeling of dread and loneliness. Not simply the feeling of being alone, but feeling like it was never truly possible for two people to understand each other, like the walls between peoples were just as insurmountable as the void between the stars.
He stood up. This night he wouldn’t get any sleep anyway.
Quickly he prepared coffee, but after he had poured the steaming black liquid into his cup he just sat there in his clean kitchen, staring at the drink in his hand while it slowly cooled down.
The quiet “tick-tock” of the clock was the only sound that could be heard.
In a sudden fit of anger he threw his cup at the offending timepiece. A brown stain remained on the wall as streams of black brew ran down the wallpaper. On the counter below lay the broken clock, puddles of coffee gathering around it, as if it was bleeding out.
Shocked, Angelo looked at his murder victim.
He broke down to the floor sobbing. His wails were childlike and unhampered, strains of snot running down his face as he was reduced to a babbling mass.
It were several minutes before he managed to regain some sort of self control.
He ran for the front door, still wearing only his pyjama but he didn’t care. He needed to get out of this house. Maybe a small midnight ride along the coast would do him some good.
Shivering he opened his car. It felt weird laying his bare feet onto the pedals but he didn’t dare going back into the house. A cold chill ran down his spine, and quickly he turned up the car-heating. Hesitantly he turned the car key, and the humming of the motor filled the cabin. He choked the car two times before he finally managed to leave his driveway.
It took him only fifteen minutes to reach the shore, but as soon as he could see the water he shivered once again. The normally friendly rocking waves looked just like the dark featureless void in the night sky, without any sunlight to reflect on them.
Instead of watching the sea he tried to concentrate on the street, on the purring of the motor, and the feel of faux leather under his hands, but the excitement that normally overtook him when he realized the amounts of power he could call forth with a press of his foot, didn’t come. The lousy one hundred miles per hour he could coax from the motor suddenly seemed very insufficient.
---
Angelo looked at the flat glass building. He had spent another hour driving every which way he wanted and only when he had backed into his parking space he had realized where his nightly journey had taken him.
Somehow he wasn’t surprised and now that he thought about it, it was almost logical that he wound up here. The parking lot was empty except for his own car. At this early hour, the staff was probably fast asleep and at home.
For a few minutes he just sat in his car, not thinking about anything just staring at glass front. A bit of light, it’s source untraceable, reflected of the chrome plated shield above the main entrance.
“Future” was the only illegible word.
The car door slammed shut behind him, as Angelo made his way for the front gate.
---
“The Suit” was uncomfortable. While the thick protective layer around him would certainly protect him from nearly any environmental situation, including vacuum, searing heat, and radiation, it hadn’t been built with user friendliness in mind. The rough inner layer rubbed against his bare skin, no other clothes would fit into it’s tight confines, and it had been designed with a smaller men in mind originally. Ramirez had been chosen to do the first test run.
It had been a bit of a bother setting up the experiment alone, let alone getting past the front door and powering up the generators without causing any alarm, but he had found that his broad education could be used in very creative ways.
In his hand lay the flip-switch with which the experiment would be started. Originally it had been conceived as a joke, but now it would allow him to start the process while inside the test chamber.
The test chamber was nearly completely dark. It was illogical but Angelo had only lit the most necessary lights, even though there was nobody he would alarm twenty meters below ground level.
The snapping of the switch had something final to it, and soon after it was followed by the sound of metal hitting the tiled floor. Angelo stared at the center of the steel circle. Like the last time it took a few moments before the hole began to form. As the black fog cleared, Angelo noticed that the stars inside the rectangle weren’t giving of any light. The eerie feeling he had felt during the first time returned, amplified by the implications of what he was about to do.
Hesitantly he took his first step towards the portal.
“This is crazy!” Angelo shook his head, trying to clear his mind of the unbidden doubts that suddenly clouded it, or was it just his common sense finally acting up? He had no idea where the portal might lead, or for that matter if it would even lead anywhere. His atoms could be ripped asunder, his body thrown into a sun or a black hole, he wasn’t even sure if anything would happen if he touched the dark surface of the portal, maybe he would just wind up lying on the floor behind the portal looking like the fool he was.
He took another step.
One more step and he would touch the “hole’s” surface.
He raised his foot.
He sat it down again.
Finally the doubts had reached his mind. Was this really worth it? Would he risk everything he got, over a stupid fit of thanatophobia?
“Will I still be around when we finish this?” The question resounded within his head.
He took the final step.
---
A red haired women, wearing only her pyjama, entered the test chamber just as the shape of a yellow suit vanished through star filled hole.
---
Angelo’s first step through the portal was accompanied by a sickening fit of vertigo. Gravity seemed to shift around him, as his body hit the ‘surface’ of the portal and for a short moment he felt like he was standing on the side of a cliff staring down into the star filled abyss below him.
The sensation of falling persisted and he could feel himself losing his footing, as his own weight pushed him through the rift in space-time. His first instinct was to let himself fall backwards, back into the safety of the laboratory, only the twisted determination of his half-broken mind drove him forward. He jumped into the darkness.
A mistake as he soon found out. The momentum of his leap of faith send him spinning uncontrollably, the stars before his eyes blurring into white stripes.
Blaring alarms reverberated inside his helmets and brightly flashing warning lights, that lined his visor, blinded him temporarily.
Angelo fought hard to keep his lunch down, fully aware that throwing up inside the sealed helmet could very well spell his death. He swallowed hard as he felt bile collect on his tongue. Shifting his attention to the inside of his helmet, Angelo experienced a strange case of ‘seasickness’.
Reading the different gauges and scales that lined his field of view at least proved to be ample distraction.
The thermometer was jumping erratically between absolute zero and six thousand degrees kelvin, which placed his current position somewhere between the empty void between galaxies and the surface of the sun. Seeing that he was neither freezing to death, nor incinerated instantly he dismissed the warning signals and turned of the alarm. The same applied to the radiometer and the geiger counter who both measured enough radiation to melt him out of his suit; this amount of energy wasn’t even released at the core of an nuclear reactor.
Most perplexing however was the readout of the spectrometer, which tried to convince him that there was no visible light outside of his suit, even though he could clearly see stars through the plastic-pane of his helmet.
The same curiosity that had once lead him down the path to become a scientist, took ahold of Angelo’s mind once more, compelling him to ignore the lingering sense of nausea and to scan his surroundings.
During his first glance through the portal the sight of white stars against a black background had seemed familiar, reminiscent of the night sky he saw through his bedroom window, but now that he was surrounded by them on all sides the differences became glaringly obvious.
The stars themselves had no resemblance to the soft lights that filled the firmament after sundown, they seemed more like white blotches of paint, their edges much too sharp to be mistaken for normal stars.
However most unsettling wasn’t the appearance of the stars, but the black void that filled the space between them. Not a few hours ago the sight of the azure skies had sent him into a fit of existential terror but compared to the utter darkness of this void it suddenly seemed almost warm and welcoming. Whenever he tried to fix his eyes on a particular part of the firmament, it seemed to shift around as if the black in black sky had some hidden texture to it, just barely outside of what was visible to the human eye.
Angelo blinked a few times. Had that star just vanished? Any further investigation was cut short by yet another alarm going off. This time it was his air-gauge warning him that he had only another hour of air left in the tanks. Had it really been a complete hour already?
The fact that he had absolutely no way to determine his position suddenly became a very pressing concern to Angelo. Even if he weren’t still spinning around his own axis, he would have been hard pressed to make any assessment of his current state. He had lost sight of the portal the moment he had been sucked through it, and the featureless void didn’t offer any pointers to determine his own position or even if he was still moving.
One thing that stayed with him was the feeling of falling, but he was still hesitant to attribute the description “down” to any particular direction.
By the time the vanishing star entered his mind again he had long since forgotten where he had seen it. Intently he scanned the foreign constellations, seeing as the nature of the stars was the only thing he could investigate about his surroundings at the moment and he was still determined to find out as much as possible about the strange place he had stumbled into.
At first he had thought that the portal had brought him to some empty corner of space, where he would drift through the vacuum until his air ran out, but this would neither explain the strange readings of his monitoring equipment nor the abnormal appearance of the stars.
Several theories flooded his mind, some of them realistic and some of them fueled by too many late night sci-fi-marathons, but he dismissed them all, he still knew too little to make any sort of assumption.
There! This time he had caught the moment one of the stars disappeared. It hadn’t simply blinked out of existence, but was gradually covered up, as if a giant curtain had been drawn over part of the night sky. He continued his observation, hoping to find a pattern in the disappearance of the celestial objects.
Sure enough, another star vanished a few moments later, however near it another star was revealed in it’s stead. He had meant the curtain-metaphor as a joke, but slowly but surely he he became convinced that there was actually something out there, blocking his sight of the stars.
He didn’t like this trail of thoughts at all, since the position and relation of the vanishing and reappearing stars either meant that whatever was out there was gargantuan, or much closer than he would’ve liked.
He continued to watch the stars, but the more was revealed the more he wished to just close his eyes and forget that he had seen anything at all. Slowly his eyes and mind adjusted, now that he knew what to look out for, and bit by bit the figure of the mysterious star-blocker was revealed.
A serpentine body, long and slender, stretching through space. A scaly hide, of a dark black colour that matched that of the void between the stars. His mind reeled as he realized that it’s body wasn’t of the colour of the night sky, it was the night sky. What he had thought a black void, in reality was a writhing mass of snake like bodies filling every part of the sky, the occasional “star” the only hint to what may lie behind them.
As if the revelation had broken an invisible wall between him and those creatures, one of them crept into his field of view, close enough for the lights of his helmet to reflect on the dark scales.
The sheer size of it made a mockery of words like huge or gargantuan, and Angelo could only stare in terrified awe as continent sized scales rushed past him at worrying speeds. He couldn’t pry his eyes from the spectacle before him, but eventual his momentum got the better of him and it vanished from his sight again. He panicked as he thought about what might happen if the creature came too close to him, and the fact that he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, even if he did face the planet sized creature, made for cold comfort only.
Angelo was still busy trying to calm his terror stricken mind, but apparently it wasn’t meant to be. Of in the distance, how far away exactly was hard to tell with the nature of this place, one of the creatures began to shift. He wasn’t sure if it was just the adrenaline or if the creature really turned with glacial pacing, but no matter how fast a glowing red crescent slowly turned into a bright shining sphere as one of the serpents looked at him.
Angelo had never been a man of faith, but as the alien red gaze passed over him, he prayed for a miracle, since nothing short of an act of god would hide his bright yellow suit against the black backdrop. Sure enough the creatures looked directly at him, its black iris locked onto the foreign elements in this black and white world. It open it mouths.
What washed over Angelo couldn’t so much be classified as sound, as a massive shockwave and only the barest resemblances of sound ever reached Angelos ears. Eerie whale-like singing washed through the vacuum making Angelo curl up, as much as his suit allowed him to.
More and more of the behemoths opened their eyes and looked towards the involuntary yellow astronaut. Had there ever been any doubt about the nature of this place, it was eradicated now that the beings began to move, their bodies turning the sky into a roiling mass.
With nowhere to hide and no way to change his course, Angelo was condemned to watch the behemoths approach to end his life. Hadn’t he been frozen stiff in terror, he would have laughed. Hadn’t the worry of being small and insignificant driven him to this place? And now he had the attention of thousands upon thousands of beings, each huge enough to eradicate his own world without much of a second thought.
The creatures closed in on him, their massive scaled bodies rubbing against each other, in a display of power that his mind outright refused to understand.
One beast in particular seemed the closest to him, and it would be only seconds until he vanished in it’s humongous maw.
Out of the corner of his eyes he noticed another shape, not black like the goliathan snakelike things but white. Only a short distance away a patch of white adorned the sky, it’s form perfectly rectangular, and it’s colour pristine.
This discovery would have been a short lived one, after all he was about to be crushed between the jaws of a creature that dwarfed planets, but a shock went through the the gargantuan snakelike being. Moments later the cause became evident for Angelo: Another creature had locked his jaw around the girth of the first one.
Not wanting to find out if he had found a defender, or if he had just become the subject of a fight for food, Angelo reached for his air tank. If he emptied it, it could produce enough thrust to carry him towards the white anomaly, even if that meant giving up on his supply of breathable air.
He had a theory what exactly the white square was, and if he was right it could very well spell his only chance at survival.
… Provided the air in his suit held out...
The tag of one of the creatures tails graced his vision reminding him what the alternative was.
The thick coated glove of the hazmat suit, came down onto the valve of the bottle, denting it but not breaking it. Angelo slammed his hand down another time, and another time, his eyes darting over to the fighting place of the creatures every now and then.
With a final effort the bottles outlet suddenly gave way, sending Angelo propelling through space on a stream of frozen oxygen. The current of compressed air was violent and unpredictable and for a short moment Angelo feared that he had missed the white shape, but then a bright blinding light surrounded him on all sides and he could feel his body hitting something solid.
Angelo closed his eyes, but his ears picked up the songs of birds, and a gentle wind blowing through treetops.
A pure undiluted joy, unlike anything he had ever experienced before, spilled into his mind. A soft chuckle escaped his lips, only the prelude to a much longer hearty laugh, that segued over into wild unhampered guffaws. For several minutes he lay there on the ground, unaware of his environment, relinquishing in the simple knowledge that he was still alive. Before he could compose himself, the stress of the day finally caught up with his brain, and he passed out.
In a world with no giants Ch.03 “Live, die, get back up again...”
The sound of ragged, raspy breathing was the first thing to greet Angelo as he fought back of the black fog of unconsciousness. The horrendous stench of cold sweat, stale air, and of other bodily fluids made him realize that it was his own coughing that had awoken him.
His whole body felt sluggish, and the thought of just closing his eyes and going back to sleep become more tempting by the second. He tried to shake his head, to clear his mind, but he only managed to lazily sway it from side to side. Focusing every fiber of his will on his arms, he managed to slowly grasp for the clamps of his helmet. The gloved hands slipped of the smooth metal clasps a few times, while each passing second brought him closer to the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness. Just when he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, his lungs screaming for fresh air, the visor finally gave way.
Greedily he soaked in the clear, fresh air, that streamed through his little viewport into the world. In his half choked state even toxic fumes would have smelled like roses to him, but even his befuddled brain noticed the deep earthy smell and the almost sweet texture of the air, that was so unlike anything he had ever smelled. Images of his first camping trip rushed past his inner eye.
As his gasping finally subsided and his mind found freed up faculties for anything aside from the imminent need not to suffocate, Angelo began to take in the world around him. He was lying flat on his back, the thick layer of the suit making it hard to feel what he was resting on, but the small viewport that his helmet provided gave him more than ample clues to the nature of his surroundings. Above him he could make out the silhouettes of broadleaf trees against the backdrop of a clear blue sky.
At first he thought he had landed back on earth again, that was until he saw his first cloud. Angelo was no meteorologist, but even to the untrained eye the small lump of white cotton candy, that was floating under the baby blue firmament, was an odd sight. It was white, yes, and it was vaguely cloud shaped, or at least what a grade schooler might call cloud shaped, but there was no way that this thing could fly unnoticed through earth's sky. Odd meteorological sights aside, he didn’t want to believe that he had braved those dangers only to end up back on earth.
Angelo tried to get up, but found himself pinned to the floor by the weight of the suit. A quick glance at the helmets lining confirmed his worst fears: The electronics were dead. Apparently slipping through two rips in space-time had turned “The Suit” from state of the art environmental protective unit, to three hundred kilogram of deadweight. Angelo had to fight down an panicked fit of laughter. He wasn’t even sure if he could get out of the suit without the servos to support his movements.
Apprehensively he tried to move his arms around inside the suit, trying to reach for the latch that would allow himself to break free of his confines. He cursed his own lack of foresight, Ramirez probably would have had enough room to wiggle free, but he was nearly a head taller than his colleague, and even after several minutes he had made no headway in dislodging his body from the heavy yellow straightjacket. Once again he tried to lift his gloved hands, but with the adrenaline not pulsing through his body anymore, his exhausted body was unable to move the heavy sleeves.
He contemplated if he should call for help, but he knew nothing about this world, what if he attracted some kind of predator? After having just escaped the clutches of planet sized, serpentine, eldritch beings, he really didn’t want to get eaten by space wolves, or whatever crazy creature this world had in stock for him.
The thought of getting eaten alive however brought with it an unpleasant realisation: He wouldn’t get out of this suit if he didn’t do something. His manly broad shoulders, which he normally was so proud of, now prevented him from moving his arms, and without moving his arms he was trapped. Alone. Without any chance of help finding him.
He tried to clear his head. This was not the time to be panicking, no matter how much his frenzied heart insisted, that it indeed the the time to do exactly that. “Okay Angelo, think! What options do you have?” he muttered to himself, wracking his brain as he tried to apply his scientifically schooled mind to the problem, but no matter how long he thought about it he always came back to one conclusion. Desperately he tried to come up with an different approach, but his sense of logic told him that he would only grow weaker the longer he lay here. A small sip from the inbuilt water tank, helped him clear his mind.
He took a few deep breaths trying to steel himself for the task that was to come. He applied all the force he could muster, only to lose his nerve and back out again. Counting the leafs on the tree nearest to him, he tried to distract himself. His second attempt was fast, too fast to back out, and with a wet plop he could feel his shoulder popping out of it’s socket.
His screams echoed through the forest. After dislocating his kneecap once, he had thought he knew what he was in for, but the pain was so intense that he feared (or maybe even hoped) that he would pass out again. By the time he regained his senses, and felt strong enough to move his arm again the sky had already turned a warm shade of orange.
The peaceful scene of a forest in the evening sun, was a sharp contrast to the pain in his shoulder and his forlorn situation.
Grasping for breath and again and again screaming in pain, he moved his arm through the insides of his suit, tryíng to undo the latches.
---
Angelo didn’t remember how he made it out of the suit, but here he was lying, naked, freezing, and hungry, the yellow husk of the hazmat suit lying besides him like a discarded snake skin. The pain in his shoulder was agonizing, and briefly he contemplated chewing off his arm entirely.
Ignoring the pain he scrambled to his feet. The sun was only a short way from disappearing behind the horizon, and he still had no clear idea of his surroundings. He might not have been a survival specialist, but even he could tell that staying outside during the night was just asking for trouble.
From the looks of it, he was in a forest. The tree’s were similar to normal broadleaf trees, but overall a bit more stocky in appearance. The same could be said about much of the environment, really. If it weren’t for the strange clouds and the almost abnormally clear air, he would have had no way to tell that he wasn’t just lying in the park of his hometown. Even the birds, the only animals that he had seen as of now, were eerily similar to the species native to earth.
His inner scientist wanted to investigate this strange coincidence, but another part of him insisted that they could take care of that after they had found shelter for himself. At least the similarities provided him with some idea of his surroundings. The tree’s didn’t look like they would belong into a tropical climate, and after mentally reviewing his own planets tropical fauna, he was quite glad for that.
What he didn’t see was any sign of a portal. No black floating rectangles, no machinerie, nothing that provided any explanation as to where he came from, aside from the empty husk of “The Suit”. Angelo felt like he should panic, but his body and mind both were utterly exhausted, pain and discomfort saturated any form of sense for his environment and so he just stood there despondently staring at the yellow wrack.
He broke himself loose from the sight, if there was no way to escape this place he would have to find shelter. The growling of his stomach reminded him that food was also a high priority. Looking at the suit for a last time he began to explore his surroundings.
Dead branches and sharp stones tortured the soles of his feet as he made his way through the forest. If the colour of the leaves was anything to go by, it was summer; at least he wouldn’t have to worry about freezing to death.
He had walked for nearly ten minutes, when a thought occurred to him and he made his way back to the hazmat suit. He chided himself for not thinking of salvaging what he could from the suit earlier. It took some work, but after a few minutes he held the water tank, and a good length of thick cables in his hand. Once again he left the suit behind. He would have to adjust his thinking if he wanted to stand a chance of surviving. Like a mantra he repeated to himself, “You’re alone, there is nobody that can help you if something happens to you.”
---
Angelo’s shivering form lay in a hollow beneath some tree roots, the rests of the hazmat suit half heartedly drawn over himself.
His exploration of the forrest hadn't revealed anything new so far; The tree’s and the few animals he had come across all were reminiscent of earth creatures, although most of them seemed to posses more exaggerated proportions compared to their earthly cousins. Especially the heads had been far bigger than those of the animals he knew. It gave them an almost cartoonish appearance, something that was more disturbing than endearing when you stumbled upon it in real life.
The other thing he had found out was, that apparently naturally formed caves and thick canopies were far more seldom than fiction would have you believe. Wild growing berries also joined the list of things that you had to know how to look for.
Hunger, cold, and worries about his future fought for his attention until finally he succumb to Morpheus’ call.
---
When he awoke the next morning, his body was drenched in sweat. His dislocated shoulder was glowing red and waves of pain pulsed through his veins. He knew that those symptoms were most likely only a side effect from the pain, but this only made for cold comfort.
Using some of the salvaged cables he made a makeshift sling for his arm. Once the arm rested firmly in it’s sling and most of the weight was taken of the mistreated joint, some of the pain subsided, at least up to the point where he thought he would be able to resume his exploration.
He sat up in his small makeshift shelter and thought about his situation. Headlessly running around had, unsurprisingly, yielded no results whatsoever, meaning he had to carefully think of a new approach. The growling in his stomach and the sight of a half empty water tank, only encouraged him to do so.
In his head he compiled a list of things he would need for survival: First and foremost he would need to find food and clean water, the clear azure skies above showed no sign that it would rain anytime soon; a mixed blessing, on the one hand it would mean that he would stay dry and warm, on the other hand it cut of one possible source of water. Second came finding some sort of shelter. His fear of wild animals still hadn’t subsided, and the yellow suit might have made for a decent makeshift tent, but it’s bright colour was sure to attract attention. Thirdly he would need to find a way to take care of his shoulder. The pain was already distracting enough as it was, and it would only get worse. Not to mention that it prevented him from using one of his arms. And lastly he would need to find something to cover himself, not so much out of decency but the last night had shown him how cold “fresh morning air” could really be.
He gathered up a sharp stone, and carved away at the bark of a nearby tree. After a few moments he looked proudly at his work; a small circle, once around the whole trunk, clearly visible even from afar, made for a good orientation point.
He made for one direction which, based on the direction the sun had risen, in he had dubbed east, carefully counting his steps. Two hundred steps away from his campsite he left another mark, before turning to the northwest and walked another four hundred steps before marking another tree. All the while he surveyed his surroundings looking for anything useful.
He continued in this fashion until he had circled, or squared to be more precise, his camp once, only to then widen his search radius and repeating the actions of before. While this wasn’t the fastest way to explore, it was thorough and gave him a good sense of his surroundings, and sure enough after a while his systematic search paid off.
He stared at the little pond, that was fed by a winding creek, barely big enough to even be called that. It wouldn’t still his hunger, but a source of fresh water was nearly invaluable to his continued survival. Apprehensively he approached the body of water. The water was muddied but otherwise clean, as a small school of tadpoles proved. At first he was hesitant to fill his makeshift canteen, with water that other things were swimming in, but logic and need soon overtook his unfounded concerns.
He could feel his spirits rise as he took a small sip from the clean water. This was his first step to surviving in this strange new land.
It was the third day after his arrival in this new world. His cantine was filled to the brim with water and he had made good progress with his exploration yesterday, his growling stomach however reminded him that this was the only thing he could check of his list.
The landscape had proven almost unchanging, the only telltale of his progress being the marks he left behind and the slow rise and fall of the hills. The thick brush kept him from seeing more than a few meters, and with the state his arm was in it was impossible to climb a tree to get a bearing of the landscape.
Once again he steeled himself and left his impromptu hideout to continue his search. The pain in his arm had dulled to a constant pulse. It still was distracting but he didn’t find himself screaming whenever he was forced to move his shoulder.
Quickly he passed the thousand steps mark, the distance he had managed to explore yesterday, and once again began circling his “encampment” in straight lines.
---
It was the fourth day after his arrival. His search yesterday had once again had yielded no results, but surely he would find something today.
---
It was the fifth day after his arrival. Surely there had to be some sort of eatable greenery in this world, a complete ecosystem couldn’t survive on grass and leaves alone, could it?
---
He had spent the sixth day writhing in pain, clutching his shoulder.
---
On the seventh day he had restarted his exploration, but once again he found nothing.
---
Some distant part of his brain told him that one week had passed since his arrival, but he couldn’t see any significance in this fact. Near him was a puddle of bile, courtesy of his latest experiment to see if grass was edible. It had been three tries so far, but he was pretty sure that on the fourth he would be able to keep it down.
---
Angelo lay in the dirt hidden underneath a bush. A length of wire led from his hand to a snare a few meters away. His breath was slow and his eyes showed the focus of someone truly obsessed. The trap was crude and simple, but it was all he could manage; and as long as it promised him a meal he was willing to do anything.
The mud was cold and uncomfortable, and something was poking him in the ribs, but he didn’t dare moving in fear of scaring possible prey. His determination, or insane zeal as it was, eventually paid off.
A small white hare hopped onto the clearing where he had lain his trap. It looked around but didn’t seem to notice the veiled predator, that was hiding under the bush. Another few hops, a small nibble here and there. Angelo had to focus all of his remaining willpower to not simply jump out and chase after the small woodland critter.
Only one more jump and it would stand right on the concealed sling. Nervously the hare raised it’s nose and Angelo held his breath hoping that the mud he was covered in would be enough to mask his scent.
Hop. With a victorious cry Angelo pulled on the string and watched as the cable closed around the terrified hare’s leg. With hasty movements he half drew the hare towards himself, half ran towards it, eager to claim the price of his ingenuity.
His hands closed around the hare. He stared down at the immobilized lagomorph, before suddenly breaking out into laughter. With a gleeful smile he danced across the clearing, twirling the hare around in his outstretched arms as if it was his dance partner.
“I’m not gonna starve! I won't starve!” he announced to the world.
With a spring in his step he made for his camp. Such an amazing victory had to be celebrated in the confines of his homes.
Once he had crawled under the protective yellow cover into his burrow, he tied up the hare with what was left of his cable, not an easy task with only one arm. His prisoner properly secured he scurried around for a large stone, not too large, not too small, easy to grip, and heavy enough to smash in skulls. He turned towards his meal and raised the stone.
The hare looked at him.
It wasn’t struggling, it wasn’t trying to escape, it just stared at him with big black eyes.
He lowered the stone, only for the growling of his stomach to remind him of his situation. It was eat or get eaten. Once again he raised the stone.
Two dark desolate orbs focussed on him. Desolate? Yes, desolate was the right word. The mind behind those eyes had without a doubt grasped it’s situation, and it had given up.
Angelo flexed his arms and a loud thud echoed through the caves. Without looking at the hare he undid it’s bindings and pushed it towards the exit. The small woodland critter shot towards the exit. Once it stood on the threshold towards freedom it turned around once more and looked at Angelo, than it dashed out of the small hollow.
Angelo broke down sobbing, his own eyes mimicking the desolace he had witnessed not moments prior.
“I’m going to die here,” was the last thought that rushed through Angelo’s mind as he cried himself to sleep.
---
The instant he opened his eyes he somehow knew that he was dreaming, like some part of his brain had accidentally forgotten to turn off his consciousness for the duration of the night.
He was standing in a star filled void, the black of the sky was comprised of dark serpentine bodies. All of the eldritch creatures had their eyes on him. The sky shifted, or maybe it was only his perspective that changed, he didn’t know, but a huge figure suddenly blocked out everything else. Before him hovered another serpentine creature, but unlike the others, this creature had three glowing red eyes. As he looked in the blood like red irises the word “God” flooded into Angelo’s mind without that he could help himself. This age old and hate filled gaze couldn’t belong to any mortal being.
The creature opened its maw and a single word escaped with an earth shattering force that was threatening to rip Angelo’s dreamself apart.
“Ordo.”
---
Angelo shot up from his resting place. His body was sweat drenched without him knowing why. The ever growing pain in his stomach and his shoulder soon dragged his attention away from his fictitious problems and back to the harshness of reality.
He remembered yesterday and would have given up on his life then and there, hadn’t something in the corner of his eyes caught his attention. There on the ground near his resting place, lay a single berry of deep red colour. Normally the lonely fruit would have been easy to miss, but it’s placement made sure that it would be noticed.
Tired he robbed towards the red orb, and picked it up. It was small enough to be held between his thumb and index finger, and gently he rolled it around between them. Nothing showed how puzzled he was by this turn of event, like the fact that he didn’t gulp it down in the instant he reached it, but eventually his stomach overwrote his curiosity and he stuffed the fruit into his mouth.
It tasted sweet and a bit sour at the same time, not entirely unlike blueberries. It was however only a single fruit and the small bite had only agitated his hunger stricken stomach more. His gaze darted across the floor in search for more fruit, and indeed closer to the exit lay another red berry.
He didn’t question where it came from, it was food and that was the only important thing right now. As soon as he had swallowed the second berry, a third berry came into view right outside his burrow. Like the starving men he was, he jumped at it. He noticed another berry, and another, and another, and finally the fact that they laid out a trail penetrated the thick veil of hunger and insanity that had clouded his judgement so far.
A trail could mean a trap. On the other hand a trap would mean intelligent beings. Quickly he considered his options: Either follow the trail and perhaps walk into a trap, or staying here and starving...
Sometimes decisions just made themselves.
He followed the track for several hours, nearly throwing up sometimes, when his mistreated stomach protested the sudden increase of activity. With worry he looked at the sun that had already wandered over a good part of the sky, however curiosity and hunger drove him forward still. However the time wasn’t the only thing worrying him; slowly but surely the fatigue was getting to him and it already had to be considered a miracle that he was able to walk for hours after being starved for several days straight. Before he could finish this line of thought however he stepped over the ridge of a small hill, and his eyes fell on a small piece of shrubbery.
The lush green bush was laden heavily with the red fruits that had lead him here, enough even to last him for weeks if he rationed them accordingly. Of his mysterious benefactor there was no sign however.
Angelo decided to take every favor that he was granted and began to gather up as many fruits as he could carry. When his arms were full of fruit he turned around and stopped dead in his tracks. Had he really just spent several hours walking, without leaving any marks, and eating his only way to find the way back.
For a moment he just stood there, berry juice smeared around his face, and with a dumbstruck expression. Slowly he glance from side to side, but there really was no way of telling where he was.
A soft smacking noise made him turn his head. There half hidden beneath a bush sat a white hare, his paw firmly planted on it’s face in a abnormally human like gesture. A little apprehensive it jumped out from under it’s shrub and towards the still dumbstruck Angelo. With a paw it tugged on the hair on Angelo’s legs and gestured towards a certain direction, before hopping ahead.
Angelo remained on the hill, mouth agape.
The hare reappeared from the underbrush and waved at the still staring human impatiently.
Purely on impulse Angelo trotted after the white hare.
“Sapient rabbits, huh?”
---
The white hare ate a berry.
Angelo stared at it slack jawed.
The white hare ate a berry.
Angelo still stared at it slack jawed.
Angelo and his animalistic saviour had found their way back to Angelo’s burrow, a title that had suddenly become all the more fitting.
“So you can understand me?” Angelo asked when he finally broke out of its reverie.
The white hare looked at him, with an expression that could be interpreted as confusion just as much as as agreement, then he continued to eat the berries. Angelo took a berry as well, sapient hares or not, he was still hungry like a horse, but while he was eating his brain was bustling with activity.
Okay, assuming that you haven’t just gone crazy, which may very well be the case, then the hare has shown clear signs of sapience. Does this mean that all hares are intelligent in this world? Heck, if the hares are intelligent then the other animals could be as well, you did notice a clearly enlarged cranium on most of these critters. Wait, brain mass has no relation with intelligence, does it? I really should have studied neurology instead of physics, what is physics good for anyway? Well, except for building portals into new unexplored worlds that is....
He felt a slight tug on his leg. The white hare was staring up at him with slight concern on it’s face. Apparently his thoughts hadn’t been as well concealed as he had thought.
“What should I call you anyway? It’s not like I can keep referring to you as ‘hare’ in my head,” he addressed the white woodland creature. It only stared at him with apparent obliviousness.
“Hmmm, I probably should find out if you’re a girl or boy first.” Angelo continued his musings. He was answered with a very rude gesture that a rabbit shouldn’t actually be able of making.
“Of course, that you do understand,” he sighed.
“Look, I’ll just throw some names at you, and you nod when you hear one that you like.”
The rabbits expectant stance seemed to indicate that it agreed.
“Snowball? Daisy? Nibbles? Oreo, Bunbun, Fluffy?”
All of his suggestions were met with very definitive denial.
“Urgh, Flopsy, Pepper, Gizmo?”
No reaction.
Another few dozens of names followed, but none seemed to meet the rabbits approval.
“Come on, there’s gotta be some name you like, or do you expect me to call you ‘my liege’ from now on?” Angelo finally gave in. The hare's eyes gleamed with approval and he nodded furiously.
Angelo shot it a deadpan look.
“No, absolutely not! It’s enough that I’m sitting around naked in a cave, talking to a hare, but I’m not gonna start giving out regal titles to the local wildlife,” he insisted.
The hare looked at him with big pleading eyes, even some tears collected in their corners.
“Tough luck buddy, I’ve got two nieces and you don’t survive that without knowing how to fend of puppy eyes,” Angelo said, remaining vigilant.
The hare's eyes narrowed. Quickly it gathered up the remaining berries and made for the exit of the burrow.
“Hey! wait!” Angelo shouted. Sure, it was a hare, but so far this had been the only intelligent creature he had met since coming here, or at least the only one that was willing to ‘talk’ to him.
The hare turned around and looked at him expectantly.
“Erm, King?”
The bunny shook it’s head.
“Emperor?” Angelo forced himself to ask.
Once again the bunny began to shake his head, but then it made a vague paw gesture instead. Angelo stared at it for a moment trying to decipher the pantomimic message.
“Empress?” he finally asked, earning an approving nod from the hare lady.
Empress still hadn’t left, and if the way she was splayed on her sides was any indication, she wouldn’t leave in the foreseeable future either. Not that Angelo complained; the lack of food might have been tough on his body, but what had really surprised him was the sheer pressure that being alone had put on him. She might not have been the best conversationalist, but having someone to talk to was a relief in itself that he felt genuinely grateful for. That she also knew where to find food, of course in no way had influenced his opinion of her...
At first his stomach had protested against his new diet of fruits and water, but when faced with the choice of stomach cramps versus starving to death, his body had begrudgingly complied. Sooner or later he would need to find a different source of nutrition, if he didn’t want to experience some serious deficiency syndromes but for now he would survive.
If his memory could be trusted, it had been nine days since he had entered this strange world and finally he felt genuinely confident about his chances. He had spent most of the day hauling fruit back into his lair, in an attempt to make room for some tasks aside from basic survival, and finally he was ready to use this time productively... if only he could figure out just what productive entailed in this situation.
“Tools!” he finally announced to the world, startling Empress from her afternoon nap. The white hare shot him a reproachful look, but Angelo didn’t even notice her as he crawled around the confines of his small burrow, gathering up stones.
He had never been the most handiwork inclined person, always more interested in finding out how things work then in how to produce them (a trait that had caused his parents to soon lock up all electronic devices around the house, to prevent them from turning into very expensive spare parts), but his lab work had often required him to build his own equipment and he was reasonably confident that he would manage to craft some basic tools.
“How hard can it be?” he asked nobody in particular (meanwhile all around Equestria soothsayers, fortune tellers, and no small amount of magically inclined literary critics felt the sudden urge to facehoof, facepaw, or reach towards their faces with whatever appendage was available).
The first thing he would need was a knife or at least some sort of wedge. The plating of his suit, would have made for good material, but “The Suit” had been built with durability in mind, and he doubted that he would be able to take it apart without at least a blow torch. He had been lucky enough that most of the electronics were on the inside of the suit, only protected by the insulation.
He took two of the stones he had gathered up, solid pebbles, no sedimentary rock.
A few seconds later, the peaceful idyl of the forest was interrupted by a naked man jumping around on one leg, while he held the other foot in his hands.
“Okay, when trying to splint stones, always make sure to secure the stone you’re working on,” he mumbled as soon as he sat back down in the burrow, still holding his mistreated toe. Judging from the amused sounding squeaks his fluffy companion was making, the small interlude at least had been funny for one of them.
He rearranged some of the stone he had gathered to form a sort of workbank for his further attempts at toolmaking. The stone he had deemed the most promising rested in a mould, firmly secured against slipping. Once again he took up his hammer and resumed his work.
…
The sun had made it’s way over the firmament, and slowly but surely the sky was turning orange. The strange low hanging clouds looked like small puffs of pink cotton candy, and the clear fresh air revealed an breathtaking view. It was a real shame that Angelo didn’t notice any of that.
At his feet lay an ever growing pile of rubble, while the pile of stones that he had prepared was ever shrinking. Much to his frustration, he hadn’t managed to produce any sort of edge so far, the stones resisted even the most basic attempts of shaping them. Empress still hadn’t moved from her spot, and watched him with half lidded boredom.
With a groan he sat up. His back protested against the prolonged cowering, and gave an audible crack.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about how to make a knife?” Angelo asked the white hare, of course only receiving a blank stare.
“Thought so...” he mumbled and bowed over his workplace again.
Yet another stone was quickly turned into rubble.
“Goddamnit!” Angelo’s pent up anger suddenly erupted, and he threw aside his latest failure. Angelo froze.
“Did you see that?” he asked without looking away from the spot where the stone had hit the ground. Whatever Empress answer was, Angelo didn’t see it as he crawled towards the unassuming mold in the dirt.
Had there really just been a spark? Could he have sat on a deposit of flint without even noticing it?
Frantically his hand dug into the dirt, throwing handfuls of earth left and right. Several minutes passed, and he was just about ready to believe that his eyes had played tricks on him, when his hands suddenly touched something hard. This didn’t feel like the pebbles and stones he had dug up earlier, it was smooth, and with some clear defined edges.
A stray beam of light found it’s way into the burrow, for a short moment illuminating Angelo’s find, that short moment however was enough to make Angelo’s eyes grow wide. He redoubled his efforts and before long he held the stone in his hands, not the shiny, glassy flint he had expected, but a nearly fistsized ruby.
Had he just stumbled upon a hidden treasure, or maybe a relic of an long lost civilization? But no, the gem showed no scrapes or other signs of long exposure to the elements, and he was pretty sure that burrowing something would have left at least some tracks.
Could it be that gemstones just formed naturally in this world? The thought was absurd, but then again so was falling through a transdimensional portal and nearly getting eaten by space-leviathans.
With a sigh he brushed aside the hypotheses that were about to flood his mind, he had other more pressing matters to attend to. Briefly he considered using the ruby to craft some tools, Crystals were generally more brittle and it would probably easy to break it into some form of sharp edge, but then he discarded the idea for the meantime. The perfectly cut gemstone was a mystery and he intended to solve it.
As he carried the stone deeper into the burrow, somewhere where it would be safe from the elements and the occasional curious magpie, he dropped it. In his mind he already saw the stone hitting some hidden rock and splintering into a million pieces, but as the stone hit the ground a bright glowing spark was released from the gem.
“I’m pretty sure, that rubies shouldn’t do that.”
He looked towards Empress, but the hare seemed to be just as shocked as he was.
Carefully he Angelo picked up the red gemstone, placed it on his “workbench” and then proceeded to hit it with another stone. His efforts were rewarded with another spark, that landed on his calfs. With a swat of his hand he extinguished the small ember.
The stone itselfs didn’t show any signs of abuse, still as perfectly smooth as at the time he had dug it up.
Once again Empress was left alone looking quizzically at the exit through which Angelo had just vanished, but before long he returned with a bundle of sticks, moss and other dry foliage. His half mad grin, while slightly disturbing, was an honest sign of relief and happiness about his find.
A pile of tinder was quickly assembled, and some larger branches lay readily available. It took him a few tries, and once he nearly set his hair on fire, but predicting where the sparks would fly soon became an easy task and soon a small ember rested in it’s nest of dry leaves. Angelo blew on the small orange dot, but as soon as his breath touched it, the glow died down. Cursing his carelessness he once again tried to light a spark. This time, careful not to put too much force behind his blowing, he fanned the small spark. A small laugh escaped his lips as the glowing ember turned into a flame. Bit by bit he added more material to the fire, careful not to suffocate the flame, until finally he could lay some of the bigger branches into the fire. Before long a homely fire was burning in the burrow.
He nearly broke into a celebratory dance, but then his eyes met the black orbs of Empress. The white hare had retreated back into the deepest recess of the cave. She shivered and her eyes were peeled on the dancing orange colours of the flames.
“... You’re still just a animal, I guess...” Angelo said. There was a comforting smile on his face, but his eyes betrayed another emotion altogether.
He moved slowly, choosing his motions carefully in order to not startle the leporide lady any further. When he stood between the fire and the scared Empress, he sat down, his back towards his fluffy companion. He remained still, only occasionally stretching his hands towards the fire.
Time passed, he couldn’t tell how much exactly, but the sky outside had turned dark. Angelo felt the sensation of fur against his back, and sure enough there to his right he could make out a shiny black nose, peering past his broad figure. He stretched his arms towards the fire, carefully to not burn himself.
“See, it’s not dangerous as long as you are careful,” he said, keeping his tone soft as if he was talking to a little kid.
Encouragement or not, Empress seemed to be content with watching the fire from her current position, and Angelo was too tired to try anything else today. He lay down on his side and let his mind wander, while he waited for sleep to come.
Only moments before he finally fell asleep he realized that this was the first time that Empress had come this close to him. The smile on his face grew just a little bit more honest, and before his eyes finally closed, just a little bit of that strange painful emotion had vanished from them.
In a world with no giants Ch.06 “A world with no giants”
There were two things that occupied Angelo’s mind as he woke up: The first thing that barely registered in the higher echelons of his brain, was the fact that he hadn’t dug a fire pit and that he was lucky that he hadn’t set himself or the tree on fire. What however was a far more pressing concern to him, was the nature of the red stone. Yesterday, in all his anger and frustration, he had accepted the strange properties of what he had dubbed “fire ruby” with open arms, but sleep had brought with it a clear mind and some insights that had been denied to him before.
The ruby defied almost all physical laws he could think of. It showed no signs of erosion, neither chemical nor environmental. Judging from it’s surface remaining spotless, even after he had hit it with a stone several times, it converted physical energy into either electricity or heat at a rate of almost hundred percent. But even then, that didn’t explain the sparks.
The small embers it had produced looked almost like the ones one could get when playing with a cigarette lighter, but you only got those by chipping heated materials and that would mean that the stone should show obvious signs of abuse. If the spark would have been caused by electricity, or by igniting the air, their form would have seem different, and he most likely would have hurt himself rather than being able to ignite a fire.
With fear he looked at the innocent looking ruby that was still sitting where he had left it, as his mind slowly formed the only plausible conclusions he could thinks of.
Either the stone itself worked on an unknown physical principle, or this place he had landed in had it’s own physical principles that were similar but different from the ones on earth.
Suddenly he felt faint, his head swimming and his vision blurring. Never before in his life had he felt so helpless, even in the face of the leviathan creatures. He had always defined himself over his knowledge: He was Angelo Gordon- Physicist, and now suddenly all that knowledge that he had earned would be worthless?
“All great men stand on the shoulders of giants.”
He didn’t remember who had spoken this famous words, but the truth of it had always been evident to him. His whole work would’ve never been possible without falling back on the knowledge that generations before him had gathered, and he had always taken pride in the fact that he was the last in a long line of researchers. If this world really ran on other principles than he was used to, he was suddenly alone, not the last in a long line, but the first one.
He wasn’t ready to be a giant.
His breath came quick and pressed, the more reasonable part of his brain told him that he was hyperventilating, but the majority of his thoughts was consumed by panic.
The soft press of a furred body against his hand called him back into reality. Empress was looking up at him, concern clearly visible on her face.
That oh so human expression on the foreign looking hare's face suddenly caused Angelo to burst into laughter.
The white leporid lady now looked at him confused, and maybe even a bit more worried.
“Sorry. Sorry, I’m fine,” he managed to say between to guffaws.
Here he was, sitting in a strange new world, naked, and with a dislocated shoulder, talking to a sapient hare, and he really worried about whether or not the physical laws still applied? Maybe it was time to reassess his priorities.
“What do you say, up for some exploring?” he asked his fluffy companion, now managing a halfway confident smile again.
“Maybe you could show me how to find some fruit.”
Empress looked puzzled at the strange creature that she had chosen to follow, not able to make anything out of his constant mood swings. Shaking her head and letting out a sigh, she followed Angelo, who was making his way out of the burrow.
---
With renewed vigor Angelo rekindled his tool building efforts. Maybe he had just attacked the issue from the wrong angle. Prehistoric people had had generations of trial and error to find out an effective way to produce tools. Since he didn’t share this luxury of time, he had to use every advantage he got; namely science.
Not the tables, and rules he had spent all his life learning, but the mindset that was so important for all scientific work.
“Okay, calm down, look at the situation from all angles. Only trust in the facts, don’t assume anything,” he mumbled to himself, trying to imagine that the sticks and stones he had gathered were instead the tools he had in his lab.
At first he took a length of stick, roughly the size of his thumb.
“Roughly five to six centimeters,” he concluded.
Quickly he produced another longer branch, sturdy and nearly straight. Using the smaller stick he measured the first five centimeters, and then left a mark with a rock (he still hadn’t managed to produce a proper knife, or even a sharp stone, but the bark proved less resistant than expected). He repeated his actions until the branch was marked to his satisfaction.
Equipped with his impromptu measuring stick, he went outside of the burrow, and proceeded to mark a straight grown tree, until he had roughly three meters of markings. He would have liked to make it even higher, but with only one usable arm, he didn’t want to risk climbing.
He took two stones of the same size and weight, and held them both as high as he could, taking note just where on his scales he had reached.
He dropped the stones.
Then he picked them up and dropped them again.
...and again.
...and again.
It took him nearly ten minutes until he was satisfied with his sample size.
“Hmm, I guess that at least air resistance and gravity work similar around here,” he mumbled.
At some point Empress had come to watch the spectacle. She shot him a questioning look as he finally took notice of her.
“I’m trying to figure out how this world works,” he told the slightly bewildered looking hare lady. He picked up a stick and began to scribble some simple equations into the ground. He found it rather worrisome, how long some simple division took him without a calculator.
“About one-point-two G, ignoring air resistance, but I guess without precise equipment it won’t make any difference anyway,” he continued to elaborate, although only the blankly staring hare was around to listen to him.
He gathered up another set of stones, both roughly weighing the same, but one nearly twice the size of the other. He resumed his test on his new stoney victims.
The difference between the stones falling times was immense. If the stones didn’t follow some other weird rule altogether, the air density had to be considerably higher than on earth.
“No, that would have caused countless other side effects...” he mouthed his thoughts. He wasn’t clear on the details, but he knew that an air density high enough to cause a visible difference in the falling of rocks, would at the very least would have caused some mild euphoria from the excess oxygen, not to speak of the breathing problems that compressed air brought with it.
“Interesting...”
He patted himself on the back, that he wasn’t panicking again, but instead could view this as a scientific challenge. As long as he didn’t remember that his life possibly depended on understanding this phenomena, he would be fine...
“Damnit...”
He immediately took up his work again, trying to banish the morbid thoughts.
As interesting as it was to analyze gravity and air resistance, both weren’t of immediate importance and he had only done so as a kind of warm up.
Next up was material science and kinetics.
He was glad that he had been too exhausted to clear out the rubble yesterday, since this meant, that he didn’t have to bust up another load of stones. With interest he looked at the remains of his tool making attempts.
The first thing he found out, was that he had no idea about the material he was looking at. Due to a flight of fancy, he roughly knew about sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks, but the material before him showed signs of all those origins.
It grained structure hinted towards sedimentary or metamorphic origins, but the structure seemed to be only skin deep, since even with it’s varying colour, the rocks seemed strangely homogenous. Quickly he realized where his craftsmanship had gone wrong; he had tried to chip away small bits of stone, to sharpen the edges of the stone, but the rock seemed to lack any form of natural structure causing it to act brittle.
Allready new idea’s formed in his head, telling him how to manipulate the stone.
He took one of the smaller stone, and kneeled down in front of one of the larger boulders. Carefully he dragged the small stone over the rough surface, watching as a trail of stone dust formed, while stone rubbed against stone.
It was a slow and arduous work, but eventually he stared down at something that could be called an primitive edge.
He walked over to his collection of branches and began to test the limits of his new tool.
It soon turned out, that his new cutting tool left some things to be desired. It wasn’t particularly sharp, and the edge wore down quicker than he liked, but nonetheless he had managed to turn make some clean cuts before the knife broke.
With a smile he stood up to gather some stones.
---
When he awoke, he immediately could see one of the improvements, his new cutting tools had brought into his life, his calendar.
Maybe calling a stick, with markings for every day that had passed, a calendar was a bit silly, but it provided him with a way to keep track of himself. Just another way to remind himself that although naked and freezing, he was still a civilized being.
His eyes wandered to Empress, who was still sleeping, one leg twitching in the air as she dreamed about god-knows-what. He looked at his calendar again.
In the end he left yet another mark, although maybe not with as much conviction as before.
Counting this one, it was the fourteenth day after crossing the portal, and he was itching to return to his chosen task of crafting some tools, after he had spent the last two days gathering enough supplies to feed him long enough.
Today he wanted to put the “knives” to the test.
After actually thinking about it logically for a while, he had realized just how much work went into crafting rope, and without any conveniently placed lianas around, he had given up on binding materials for now.
Instead he had found something else.
Silently he followed Empress through the woods, the small white hare guiding him around patches of harmless looking flowers and dangerous pitfalls. He swallowed as he remembered the days he had traipsed around the forest without her, congratulating himself on his luck, that had prevented him from running into anything dangerous. It took them nearly two hours until they reached their destination.
The remains of a young tree were lying on the ground. It wasn’t directly apparent what natural disaster had felled it, but whatever it was, it had been quite recent, and the wood hadn’t had a chance to rot yet. Angelo hoped that whatever had caused the tree to tumble wasn’t around anymore, be it natural disaster or, what he feared more, a large beast, but the chance to get his hand on fresh wood just was too good to pass it up.
With some effort he dragged the small trunk back to the hollow. Empress meanwhile made herself comfortable on the log.
Then he sat down and stared at the piece of wood.
Unlike with rocks from before, he only had a limited supply of wood. He was surrounded by trees yet wood was a rare commodity, the thought almost caused him to break into laughter again. But the reality of the situation remained the same, he couldn’t effort to muck this one up, with how much effort it would cost him to get another piece of wood that was big enough to carve anything from it.
Carefully he started to rip apart a small piece of the tree, until he had a collection of samples, some bark, some fibres, and a solid piece of wood, before him. He wiped away the sweat that was running into his brows, causing his eyes to sting. The wood itself had proven far more resilient than he had expected, and having to work with a brittle stone knife had only made things worse. With some worry he looked at his hands, which were covered with red welts where the stones had almost cut into his flesh. After taking a few minutes to let his tortured hands calm down, he resumed his inspection of the materials before him.
He prodded the bark a few times, and then went on to bend it. Much to his dismay the tree kin broke almost immediately as he put some pressure onto it, only a small piece stayed unharmed. He turned the piece around in his hand, but couldn’t discover what made this piece more durable, and so he sat it aside for the time being.
Next up was the wood fibre, something he had placed a lot of hope into. It had taken him some tries to find a way, to loosen some long strands from the trunk, but he hoped that his work would pay off.
It didn’t.
The wood had probably lain in the forest for some weeks by now and since he hadn’t seen it rain once in all this time, the wood was dry, and the fibres broke whenever he tried to spin several of them into a rope.
That left only the solid block.
Thankfully the wood had acted just like normal wood so far, given him good hope that he could carve some simple things from the trunk... at least if he actually managed to carve something and didn’t just turn the wood into splinters.
Angelo shook his head.
“No use, getting depressed before even trying,” he said to himself, and started to carve away at the wood.
Having learned from his experience at stone carving, he didn’t immediately try to form something, but took his time trying to understand his material. Only when he felt confident, that he somewhat understood, the way the timber reacted, he started trying to give it a form.
...
With an unsteady smile Angelo looked at what he had intended to be a bowl of sorts.
“... I guess, I could always use a plate...” he tried to reason, not sure who he wanted to convince, since he wasn’t even fooling himself.
But then he smiled to himself. It might have taken him the better part of a day, and might haven’t turned out the way he originally had intended it too, but it was a proof of concept. And as every scientist knew, a working proof of concept could take you a long way.
“I tell you Empress, before long we’ll be living like kings,” he joked towards his fluffy companion.
The white leporid lady didn’t understand what had caused this sudden urge of happiness in her companion, but she had long ago given up on understanding the strange being, and just accepted the occasion as it came. Another berry found the way into her mouth, hiding the fact that the corners of her mouth were drawn upwards ever so slightly.
With an absent minded gesture, Angelo carved another groove into his “calendar.” Counting the new one, fortyfive marks adorned the stick besides his resting place.
The “burrow” had transformed. A curtain weaved from flexible young branches and covered in leaves, shielded the entrance, making it blend into the background. Inside his new found home, there were several wooden containers, some of them filled with berries and nuts, others with water, and others yet again with various pebbles, sticks, and other knick knacks he had thought interesting or useful. His “bed” was made up of moss and leaves.
It still was a hole in the ground, but by now it was a comfortable hole.
He crawled out of the bed and towards one of the bigger bowls to wash himself. It seemed counter intuitive to waste water on pure vanity, but Angelo was well aware of the amount of illnesses that could be caused by a lack of hygiene, and while he was thankful for Empress companionship, he doubted that the white hare would make for a good nurse if he ever fell ill.
“Rise and shine!” he shouted towards the curled up fluffy figure, that lay in a corner of the burrow. Somewhat sluggish the hare lady raised herself, from the small piece of bedding, which had been crafted by Angelo, under the carefully, one might say bossy, watch of her.
“Oh look it’s nuts and berries for breakfast,” Angelo groaned. He had managed to snatch an egg from a low hanging nest once. Fighting down a feeling of guilt, he had been relieved to find that the egg was unfertilized, just as he had assumed. A pre heated stone had been his makeshift pan, and he had nearly cried tears of joy while eating the slightly undercooked mess he had produced. Today however the taste of egg was only a far of memory.
“Well, let’s try to get a bit farther today, shall we?” he asked Empress, after they had finished their simple but filling breakfast. “Exploring” had turned into his main way to spend time whenever he didn’t need to worry about food, or water. He had once again taken up leaving markers, but with his new knife he had also started adding some more information, like direction and distance to the burrow, or his water sources.
And slowly but surely he had expanded his search range. The expanse of the forest had proven vast, but not endless. At times he had come across vast fields of grass that somewhat reminded him of the hills around Ireland, or maybe the less populated pieces of France. However no matter where he turned, he had found no signs of civilization. Still, it was not like he had anything better to do.
Naked like the day he was born, he stepped out into the open. Whatever improvements he had made to his lifestyle, it was the production of fabric that still eluded him. Different tries with, bark, leaves, and woven grass had all proven worthless, and whenever he looked at Empress, he knew that fur was out of the question.
He winced slightly as he tried to stretch his arms. Generally the constant pain reminded him that his shoulder was still dislocated, and that he had no idea what to do about it, but shortly after waking up, he sometimes managed to forget the pain for a while. Never for long though.
“Let’s go, the day isn’t getting any longer,” he said, and started walking east...
---
Day sixty...
Two and a half months...
Angelo tried not to think about the time he had already spent in this world. He ignored his reflection in the bowl of water, and he didn’t look as he made another mark in the calendar stick.
“Let’s go,” he grumbled in the direction of Empress, not bothering to see if the hare was actually following him.
He stepped outside and looked around. He had erected some basic windshields by weaving branches between the trees, somewhat shielding his home from the elements, and giving him a weird sense of security. It was amazing how much even a symbolic wall between himself and the rest of the world served to reassure him.
But even so, the wind still made him shiver.
“Hmm,” he grunted. If the weather took a turn for the worse, that would be a problem.
Nonetheless he continued his way, this time he was northbound. In the north there lay the small creek and the berry fields that had kept him alive during the first few weeks of his stay. By now it took him him nearly half a day to catch up to the point where he last had stopped his exploration, even though he knew the landscape much better.
There! That was the marking that he had left the last time, roughly thirty to forty kilometers from the burrow.
“You’re gonna take the lead?” he asked turning around, only to notice that he was alone.
He cursed. Not only was he left without a guide, but he was pretty sure that among the birds he had seen thus far, there had been at least some birds of prey. For a moment he thought about turning back, but that would mean to waste a complete day, just to satisfy his paranoia. Empress had survived without him before, and if worse came to worse, she could always hide in the burrow.
He resumed his track northwards. The forest was thick, and even the normally light underbrush grew heavier as he pressed on. At one point he had to backtrack for almost ten minutes, because the shrubbery around him had grown so thick that he couldn’t move anymore.
...
“You gotta be kidding me,” Angelo cursed. He had just broken through a particular dense part of the undergrowth, and now found himself standing atop a large gorge.
Beneath his feet the landscape suddenly fell, leaving a five meter wide cleft in the landscape. On all fours Angelo crept towards the edge, slowly sticking his head over it. The cliff walls were littered with sharp outcroppings, making the gorge look like the hungry maw of a woodchipper. What was worse was the fact that he couldn’t even make out the bottom, which was hidden beneath thick fog.
Turning his head left he saw the fault stretched into the horizon, and to his left it continued for at least 20 kilometers, before making a turn towards the south. It seemed that without a way to cross over the enormous gap, this was where his exploration would end.
“Damnit!” he dragged himself to his feet, and turned back for the burrow.
---
The sun was slowly nearing the horizon, and he still had a lot of ground to cover, before he would be back.
“I should have paid more attention to the sun,” he muttered into his beard. He broke into a brisk jog, trying to make up for the time he had lost, circumventing a large field of unpassable thorn-bushes.
Focused on his breathing and the path ahead of him, it took him several minutes to realize that something was wrong. He stopped and tried to hold his breath, even though his burning muscles were telling him to gasp for air. He perked up his ears, but the only thing that broke through the silence were the leaves rustling in the wind.
Weird.
During all the weeks he had spent here, the forest had always been full of life. And even if the critters of the forest avoided him for the most part, their squeaks and chirps had always surrounded him.
Angelo might not have been the most connected to nature, but one only had to visit the movies or pick up a book every now and then to know that sudden silence never was a good thing.
“Did I douse the firethis morning?” he thought, horrific visions of a sleeping Empress slowly being consumed by the flames filling his mind.
“No, don’t panic! I didn’t make any fire yesterday. It’s got to be something else,” he tried to calm himself, as the sun slowly crept closer to the horizon.
His first impulse was to start running towards the burrow. But what if there was a predator? He hadn’t seen any signs of larger animals so far... except for the dislodged tree that had provided his first wooden bowls. Carefully he sneaked towards the burrow, his senses strained to the limit, trying to pick up even the slightest hint of danger.
Then he heard the howling...
It was a strange guttural sound, carrying with it the images of vicious teeth and ancient forests. This was no greeting, no declamation of territory, it was a hunting call, and it came from straight ahead, from the burrow.
Angelo ran. His mind was blank except for the image of a small white hare, being chased by nightmarish creatures. Just for a short moment he thought he heard a all too familiar squeak. The sound of blood pounded in his ears, and his legs burned, as he forced himself to accelerate even more.
With a final jump he burst through the canopy and onto the clearing.
Empress was surrounded by three creatures, wolflike, but made up of sticks and leaves. A green fiery glow emanated from their eyes and their chest, and a smell of moss, rotting leaves and blood hung about them.
He didn’t take the time to look at them closer. With a savage war cry he lept at the closest creature. The thing that collided with the timberwolf was no longer Angelo Gordon, but an ancient savage beast, made up of instinct, muscle and rage.
The pain in his arm was irrelevant as he grabbed onto the beast’s back with one hand, while the other raised his stone-knife, only to bring it down where a normal creatures throat would have been. Something snapped and what had been a fierce predator just moments ago, was now only a pile of sticks and shambles.
Before he could turn towards the next wolve a hard wooden body crashed into his own, pushing him down into the remains of what had once been his enemy. Just barely did he notice the feeling of something puncturing his skin, that wasn’t important right now. Something had tried to hurt the only friend he had in this world, and he wouldn’t rest before it had been wiped from the face of the earth.
Again a cocktail of rage and adrenaline shot through his body, as he pressed his hands against the ground slowly uprighting himself again, the timberwolf still on his back. A small tremble went through his body as the third timberwolf sank his teeth into his arm. He sank to a knee.
There was a flash of white fur, and the wolf holding onto his back yelped. Temporarily being relieved of this burden, Angelo brought down his knife into the eye of the wolf before him. There was no blood, but the fiery orb almost seemed to explode, and Angelo had to let go of the sharpened stone.
His eyes shot towards his other enemy, just in time to see him swipe at Empress. Time seemed to slow, and for a moment Angelo couldn’t focus on anything but the few droplets of blood that seemed to hover in the air.
Despite his injuries, Angelo launched himself into the distracted wolf. He threw the dog sized creature to the ground, his fist raining down on the stunned being. He grabbed one of the larger sticks that made up the wolfs body, and began to pull. Slowly but steady the wood began to bend, until finally accompanied by yowl of pain it snapped in half. Once again he reached for the creatures chest and started to pull. And again. And again. He pulled and clawed his way straight into it’s chest, straight to the source of the green glow. A small pulsing green orb hang there, amidst the the branches and sticks. He closed his hands around the orb.
Another body slammed into his, the timberwolf which he had blinded on one side, quickly withdrew again. Heavily breathing Angelo came to his feet , trying to keep his eyes on the last wolf who was circling him cautiously. Slowly he took a step back, and another, until he stood above the wounded Empress. He leaned down to the blood stained hare. Much to his relief, he saw her sides rising and falling. Her breath came erratically, but she was still alive.
His eyes shot back to the last timberwolf, but for some reason the creature held it’s distance, mustering him. A rustle went through the first wolf’s body. Sticks and leaves rattled as if there was a fierce wind blowing, even though the clearing was shielded on all sites. Angelo could only stare wide eyed as a green glow took ahold of the remains and lifted them into the air. Before long a completely healed timberwolf stood before him.
Angelo didn’t wait to see if the other wolf would stand back up as well. He grabbed Empress and dashed towards the burrow. The wolves ran after them. Hastily he pushed aside the woven mat, that had served as his entrance door, jumped into the hole, and pulled the cover back. The small mat of flexible branches, was almost laughable as a defense mechanism, but maybe it would buy him the seconds he needed.
Laying Empress on the ground he reached for the fire ruby, and his tinder.
“Come on, come on, come on!” he almost screamed as his stone clashed against crystal, causing small sparks to fly. The timberwolves howled and rattled on the door, but Angelo focussed on his task. Before long the mat gave way under the wolves assault, but just as the first of the wolves jumped at him, Angelo spun around and rammed a piece of burning wood, into it’s body. The effect was immediate and drastic. In a matter of seconds the creature was ablaze, as if his body had been covered in lighter fluid.
Yowling and screaming it stormed out of the burrow. The two remaining wolves tried to escape, but Angelo ran after them a burning log in each hand. He jumped after the first one, thrusting his torch like a lance, and setting the creature ablaze.
The other one however had used his distraction and had almost left the clearing. He shifted his remaining torch into his healthy hand, took aim, and threw it after his fleeing opponent. In the dark of the evening the flying torch turned into a wheel of flickering fire, and for a moment he feared that it might be doused by the wind, but then a yowl and a spurt of flame coaxed a satisfied grin out of him.
Only for a fraction of a second though, then he turned around and darted back into the burrow.
A sizeable pool of blood had already formed around the white rabbit, and what remained of her movement was shaky and jittery.
Quickly he looked around to see if he could do anything to stop the bleeding.
“Can’t tie it off... no dressing material...” Angelo’s voice came quick and had a robot-like nature to it as he rattled of the ways he knew to stop a bleeding.
“MOSS!” he shouted, and ran to his bed, gathering up a small amount of dry moss. Quickly he pressed it onto the wound and applied pressure, but blood still spilled between his fingers. His head shot left and right as he scanned the contents of the burrow, but he could spot nothing useful.
Then his eyes suddenly focussed. A warm orange shine was reflected in them...
---
Empress awoke in pain. She felt like something was clawing into her sides. Panic clouded her mind as she remembered the events from before she fell unconscious. Her gaze raced down to her side, where she expected to see the blood slowly dripping out of her, instead there were only three pink streaks of charred flesh and fur.
Confused she looked around until she notice the sluggish figure of her companion leaned against the walls. His fists were clenched, but his eyes were closed and his breath came steadily.
Fighting back the pain, she crawled over to him. As she came closer, she could see that just below his ribs, there was a spot of burned flesh, not unlike the one on her sides.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
She didn’t understand what the words meant, but hearing him talk was strangely comforting. She nestled against his leg. He stretched his arm out, as if to pet her, but as he opened his hand, his face contorted into a mask of pain. Empress caught a glance at the inside of his hands at this moment; There were black welts of burned flesh.
Empress didn’t quite understand but for some reason she felt safe as she pressed against this strange creature, which was so unlike everything else in this world.
---
Angelo watched as his breath turned into fog, as he lay in his bed. Besides his resting place there lay a small stack of sticks, each filled to the brim with carvings. He hadn’t counted them for quite some time, but it probably had been about half a year since his arrival. Or it least it would have been on earth, who knew what an year meant arround here.
“I guess there’s a winter around her as well,” he said, as he saw another cloud escape from between his lips. Empress apparently startled awake by his mumbling looked at him.
“Good thing that we stored some supplies,” he told her. He had made another few bowls, and lids to close them. He even had managed to fell some small trees. Fire wood, berries, and even water if the creek should freeze upstreams.
Although he would have traded that all for some warm clothing, or really any clothing at all.
His “bed” had turned into a large pile of dried leaves, in which he buried himself at night, trying to keep at least some of the cold out. He had managed to make a new “door” by weaving branches together, and it even held some of the warmth inside the burrow, but even with his supplies, he had to ration the firewood, unless he wanted to run out in the middle of winter. Provided that winter only lasted as long as on earth...
That Empress hadn’t fled or urged him to wander south, like a pelted southern bird, at least gave him some hope that the winter would be survivable.
“Let’s see if we can find some more supplies, before it get’s too cold to leave the burrow,” he suggested. As he went for the exit, he grabbed a long sharpened spear, that lay on the floor. The scars on him and Empress served as constant reminders of the dangers that lurked out there in the wilderness.
Together he and the white hare lady went into the forest, so focussed on discovering food, that they never even noticed the gray Pegasus above, that was pushing around snow clouds. And maybe she wouldn’t have noticed them either, if it hadn’t been for her left eye, which suddenly didn’t follow it’s owners orders anymore, and instead wandered down to stare at the ground below.
Lyra twiddled with her tie, trying her best to look professional, but along with her uneasy cantering it made her look like a school filly that’s too embarrassed to ask where the toilets are.
The hinges creaked fiercely announcing that her knocking hadn’t gone unnoticed. A young grey unicorn filly stared out of the half closed door.
Lyra twisted her mind, trying to remember the fillies name. She was sure that she had met her at least once, after all there was nobody in Ponyville that didn’t get at least one “Pinkie-Party”, but actually remembering the hundreds of ponies that lived in the small town was an entirely different matter.
“Hi there, sweetie. Is your mother home?” she compromised.
The filly only stared at her. The gaze from the young golden eyes made her feel uncomfortable. Somehow they looked far older than they had any right to be.
“You’re not here to make fun of her, are you?” the filly finally asked.
Lyra flinched. Of course she had seen the newspaper articles, and heard the rumors, but she had never believed it to be bad enough that even this kid would notice it.
“No, I’m her because of work. I just want to ask your mother some questions,” she replied. That much at least was true.
Once again she felt the gaze of those golden eyes rest on her. Suddenly the filly broke into a smile and turned around.
“Ma! We’ve got a visitor,” she shouted inside, now looking just like a normal filly her age. Since she hadn’t closed the door, and was trotting deeper into the house, Lyra took it as an invitation and entered.
“Oh? Who is it? Tell them to get comfortable in the living room, I’ll be with them directly,” another voiced yelled back, similar to the fillies voice, but a few octaves deeper.
The living room was small but comfortable. None of the furniture seemed new, but it was clearly only the wear of daily living, not of neglect. The walls were lined with shelves and cupboards, each filled to the brim with knick knacks and souvenirs.
Lyra was just inspecting a porcelain lamb, when a horrible racket filled the house. Several loud metallic clangs, were accompanied by the sound of glass breaking, and for good measure even a short honk could be heard!
Lyra looked around the room, unsure what to do, but before she could decide whether to look what had caused the noise, someone yelled, ”Don’t worry, I’m okay, I’m okay!”
The outburst was followed by another crash. Lyra stepped away from the suddenly very fragile looking shelves, and set down on the couch, pressing her legs close to her body.
After a few minutes a slightly bruised looking grey pegasus entered the room, balancing a tray with glasses and a bottle of apple juice on her back.
“I hope you don’t mind applejuice,” the pegasus mare said, setting down the tablet and sitting down on the other side of the table.
“You’re Lyra right? I saw one of your performances in the park,” she continued before Lyra could say anything.
“And you’re Ditzy Hooves?” Lyra finally managed to interrupt.
“Yup, that’s me,” Ditzy answered with a small laugh.
Lyra grabbed a glass, and filled it with juice. Her eyes wandered over the shelfs...
“It’s okay to stare, you know,” Ditzy said still smiling. There wasn’t even the slightest bit of annoyance in her voice.
Lyra gulped and looked at the pegasus’ face. Her eyes were of the same brilliant colour as her daughter’s, but while the right eye was focussed on her, the left one wandered around the room.
“It’s a sort of muscle-spasm, a bit disorienting at times, but mostly it doesn’t bother me,” Ditzy explained, the unspoken question.
“Dinky said you were here for work, but I don’t know how I could help you, I don’t know anything about music,” she continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.
“Erm, no, that’s more of a hobby,” Lyra said with a laboured smile. Not many ponies worked in fields that didn’t fit their cutie mark, and she had to explain her reasons far too often.
“Ah, okay. What can I help you with then?” the grey pegasus mare asked her.
Lyra levitated her saddlebags closer, and took out a old and battered exemplary of “The Canterlot Inquirer.” The sorry excuse for a newspaper normally wouldn’t have found it’s way into Lyra’s household, but her marefriend BonBon insisted on buying the tabloid rag. In this case however, an article had provided an important clue for her work.
Ditzy’s smiled faltered, as she saw the article which Lyra had highlighted.
“Mad mare reports alien creature,” read the headline from a few months before. The picture of the pegasus with mismatched eyes was unmistakable, Lyra’s host.
“There’s nothing to say, I must have mistaken what I saw... who knows, it could have been anything really. I mean with these eyes, I can barely see my own hoofs at times!” Ditzy said, laughing awkwardly.
“Please, Ditzy. You just told me that you can see perfectly fine. I’m not here because I want to make fun of you. I work at Celestia’s school for gifted Unicorns, in the biology department, and I want to start an expedition to study the specimen you have seen,” Lyra interrupted the pegasus angrily.
She knew what it felt like to be shunned, but in her case it had always been for her own choices, she couldn’t imagine what it feel like to be picked on because you were different. Even so she couldn’t stand the thought of someone demeaning himself, only to avoid getting hurt again.
Ditzy looked at her, shock visible on her face, but beneath that Lyra could see a sliver of hope as well.
She leaned in closer and said, “How about you tell me about the biped.”
---
“Tell me why I’m here again?” Bonbon asked, pulling her hoof out of something which she was only willing to call “gunk,” since otherwise she’d have to acknowledge what it was made of.
“Well... do you remember that the budget I’ve been granted was smaller than I expected?” Lyra replied, readjusting her backpack.
“Yes,” grunted Bonbon.
“And you also remember how I had to buy all this expensive equipment?” Lyra continued, pointing at the heavy backpacks the two of them were carrying.
“Uhu...” Bonbon said.
“And there might not have been enough money to hire an assistant... or a balloon... or a wheelbarrow... also, did I ever mention just how much I love you?” Lyra said turning towards Bonbon and gazing deep into her eyes.
Bonbon stared back with a deadpan look.
Lyra chuckled apologetically.
“Look at it that way. You’ll be right there when for the first time in centuries a new mammalian species is discovered,” she said, changing her tactics rather abruptly.
Lyra looked at her blankly.
“She’s screwed up every single task she’s been given for both the winter preparations and winter-wrap-up, ever since she moved to Ponyville. She was send to the border regions, because here it wouldn’t matter if she did any damage,” Bonbon said, dropping her saddlebag and sitting down on a fallen tree.
“You shouldn’t believe all those nasty rumors,” Lyra chided the beige coloured earth pony, “I’ve talked to her, and her observation all sounded conclusive.”
Truth be told, she had heard those rumors as well, and from no other than the head of Ponyville’s weather team, but she couldn’t help but defend the walleyed pegasus mare, after all she had promised her that she would investigate the creature properly.
“We should be leaving the Hayseed Swamps soon,” Lyra said as she sat down next to Bonbon. A quick search of her saddlebag revealed a map, which had cost a sizeable part of her research grant.
The woods south of the hayseed swamps were close to dragon territory, and nobody in their right mind went close to dragon territory. Dragons lived for hundreds of years and quite a few of them thought themselves above such trivial things as state borders, ownership, the law, and quite frankly good manners. A problem that was only amplified by the lack of a central dragon government.
After a time even the most optimistic ponies had given up on living close to dragon territory, which had left quite a big stretch of land to fend for itself. Of course the occasional pegasus was still sent there, but the borderlands had proven surprisingly adept at surviving without pony influence, and as the years passed they had turned into a region almost as wild as the Everfree forest.
And now two ponies would venture into this place full of dangers in the name of SCIENCE!
Okay maybe only one pony ventured there in the name of science, and the other had been left clueless about the nature of the trip, until after it was too late to turn back, but it was for a good cause.
“We just need to pass this gulch up ahead, and we should finally be leaving all this mud behind us,” Lyra said, pointing at the map.
The prospect of dry land seemed to invigorate the confectioner-turned-research-assistant, and the two of them continued on their way. Both Lyra and Bonbon weren’t the most athletic of ponies, and the last paved road had ended a few miles prior. The worst part however wasn’t the exhaustion, but the water. They could hardly walk a few meters without having to wade through knee deep swamps, and their coats clung to them uncomfortably in the cold autumn wind.
As such it came as no surprise that they felt great relief as the gorge, which marked the edge of the hayseed swamps finally came into sight.
The nameless canyon was several miles long, and went all the way from the mountain ridges in the west to the sea in the east, it was however barely five meters wide. As Lyra peeked over the edge she could see several waterfalls burst out of the walls below her and rushing into the depths below.
“Any ideas how to get across?” Bonbon asked from her resting place on a stone nearby. A life with a constant access to candy, not to mention the sampling that was required for her job, had made the beige earth pony clearly the less physical reliant of the two.
“Help me test if the tree can take our weight,” Lyra motioned to her marefriend as she gave the rope a tug. As soon as the tree proved sturdy, she secured the rope on her side as well. The second rope followed soon, hanging roughly at withers height.
Bonbons gaze wandered between Lyra and the makeshift drawbridge.
“If you think that anything could make me crawl across that thing, you are more crazy than I thought,” she deadpanned.
...
“OH GOD, OH GOD, I’M GONNA DIE!!!”
...
Bonbon sank to her knees, and kissed the ground on the other side of the chasm. Meanwhile Lyra was busy observing her surroundings. Apparently the chasm served as a natural barrier for the groundwater, since this side of the canyon was far drier than the swamp they had just left. In fact it looked almost like the whitetail woods near Ponyville, but only on the first look.
The longer she looked, the more obvious it became that it had been a long time since the forest had felt the organizing touch of a pony hoof. Broken branches and fallen trees lay all around, making the brush almost impassable. Dead leaves still adorned the branches of the trees, and the thick canopy shadowed the land beneath the tree’s in a eternal dusk.
“The place looks eerie,” Bonbon commented. Apparently she was finished with worshiping solid ground for now.
Lyra chuckled nervously, “Nonsense, it’s just a bit of shrubbery, no need to be scared, am I right?”
It didn’t escape Bonbons notice that Lyra huddled closer to her, no matter her words. Momentarily she thought about suggesting to turn back, but as much as she disliked being here, she knew that this expedition was a huge thing for her mate, so instead she said, “Come on, we’ll have a lot of ground to cover if we want to find your creature.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Lyra replied with newfound confidence.
“Got any plan on how to find the creature?” Bonbon asked, looking around the large forest ahead of them.
“For now I’m hoping that whatever it is is not magical, which means it needs to eat and drink. We’ll try finding a good observation point near a freshwater source and wait,” Lyra explained. Once again she took the map from her backpack and held it in her magical aura.
“See? That small river over there should be the only source of fresh water,” she said pointing at a miniscule blue line, that went straight through the biggest part of the region. After an affirmative nod by Bonbon she continued to explain her plan, “I want to see if there are any natural lakes or ponds along the rivers course.”
She folded up the map, and waited for Bonbon to gather up her saddlebag.
---
It had taken them almost five hours until they located the river which, as it turned out, hardly deserved the moniker. The had followed the small trickle of water, until they reached a pond that Lyra deemed promising. The earth on its edge had been disturbed by a number of animal feet, and for a moment Lyra considered investigating the tracks, but ultimately she decided against it. She didn’t know anything about the creature other than the rough description that Ditzy had given her, and she didn’t want to risk alarming it before she could take a good look at it.
She surveyed the surrounding area for a good vantage point, and finally she found it.
She turned towards her marefriend and asked, “Say Bonbon... how good are you at climbing?”
Angelo stuck his head out of the burrow. It wasn’t snowing anymore, but the leafs on the trees had yet to return to their normal luster. Much to his surprise, the tree’s didn’t seem to shake their dead leaves, even after the cold had stayed for almost three months now.
The pile of sticks beside his bed had once again grown, and he soon would have to think of another counting system, since he started to lose track of how many days had passed.
“Empress?” he vied for the white hares attention, “We need some more water.”
Empress nodded, and rolled one of the larger wood bowls towards him. The large bowls, with the handles on top were the newest addition to Angelo’s ever growing collection of household utensils. Carefully he threaded his spear through the handles of the bowl, and a second’s one just like it, and hoisted the whole contraption onto his shoulder.
It was the simplest form of a yoke, but even this simple solution had taken him several weeks to think of and to produce. Still, he was slowly moving forward, and if his suspicion about bark being held together by the layer of wood below it, would turn out to be true, he might even have some form of clothing soon.
Angelo enjoyed stretching his legs, and taking a walk through the forest. His supplies and the changes to the burrow had done him good service during the winter months, keeping the snow out and him reasonably warm, but that didn’t change the fact that he had spent almost a month cooped up in a hole in the earth. He spend a little longer walking around, checking if his markings were still in place and just enjoying the feeling of the fresh air and the sun on his skin.
After a while he and his lagomorph companion reached the watering hole, which had frozen over. Angelo sat down the bowls, and used his spear to break through the thin sheet of ice, before bowing down and taking a sip of the icy cold water.
He didn’t know what made him sit still, until the water surface was undisturbed again, but with some fascination he looked at the face that slowly revealed itself as the waves and ripples become smaller.
The most notable change was his hair and beard, which had grown grown into a wild mess. With a smirk he had to admit that the jumbled mane that was his hair, at least hid his receding hairline. But it was not only his hair that had changed. His face had become sharper, and the middleaged masculine look that he had always been so proud of, had taken a turn for the predatory and haunted. The lines under his eyes had disappeared, but there was a nervous, and somewhat devious glint in them that made them seem all the more wild. Did it make him look worse? No... maybe... he didn’t know. Did it make him look different? Definitely.
With some wonder he looked at the rest of his body. Angelo had never been a slacker and he had taken care to keep his body in shape, but his desk job had inevitably lead to some pounds of fat in places where they didn’t belong.
Now there was no fat anymore. With Empress help he had never feared starving, but food was far from plentiful, and consisted mostly of berries. The best way to describe his body right now would probably be wiry. Not overly muscular, but clearly molded by a life that consisted mostly of running through the forest and carrying heavy loads.
Was this person staring back at him really still “Angelo Gordon, Physicist?”
---
The crutch on which the two ponies had mounted their observation platform was far from comfortable, but combined with a camouflage net, it was nearly invisible from the ground, and that was far more important.
“Lyra?” Bonbon asked lowering her binoculars for a second.
“Yes, Bonbon?” Lyra replied, not taking her eyes of the small pond.
“I need to go to the little fillies room,” the candymaker said.
“You should have thought about that before we climbed up here.” Lyra huffed annoyedly.
“I did.... that was yesterday...” Bonbon deadpanned.
“Ugh fine, I’ll keep an eye on the pond, but I’ll blame you if you scare the creature away.” Lyra warned her marefriend.
Bonbin climbed down, leaving the mint coloured unicorn alone. Lyra stared after her for a while.
There was no doubt that she loved her, but she knew all too well, that Bonbon only indulged her interest because she loved her as well. It wasn’t often, but sometimes she felt guilty that she couldn’t hide her boredom as well, when Bonbon talked about her candy making business.
“I really don’t deserve her,” she sighed, turning her eyes back towards the pond.
All thoughts off Bonbon were forgotten instantly.
There right at the edge of the water stood the weirdest creature she had ever seen. Quite a feat in a world of enraged natural spirits, and three headed hellhounds.
At first she thought it was a minotaur, with it’s bipedal posture and the clawless manipulators at the end of it’s arm, but there were some very distinct differences: It’s skin was covered in a thin sheet of fur, but not like the smooth colorful hair that covered ponie bodies, but more akin to a pig’s bristles. The longer she thought about it, the more the comparison to pig skin seemed fitting.
Additionally where other creatures had hooves or paws, this being had long flat flipper like appendages, that ended in another set of wriggling manipulators. It’s face was flat and brutish, as if someone had punched a diamond dog in the face one time too often and the overhanging brows made it seem somewhat primitive. An impression that was only furthered by the wild lion-like mane that framed it’s features. It’s ears stuck out from the side of it’s head, like the crest of a sea serpent.
The creature was hideous, yet Lyra was intrigued.
It was only then, that she noticed something lying next to the creature. There just outside of it’s reach, lay two large wooden containers, both fashioned with two simple handles at the top. And just besides the creature lay a clearly sharpened stick, a spear.
Lyra’s mind raced. This changed everything; this was no simple cataloging and examination of a foreign species, but a genuine first contact scenario with an intelligent race. She shivered as she remembered the history lessons of Miss Straightrule, her old teacher. One of her favourite topics had been the first contact between pony kind and the sea ponies, and the ensuing war.
It had taken nearly a year, until the diplomats of both sides had figured out, that there had been a miscommunication.
Lyra swallowed heavily.
“Maybe I should ask for help, I’m sure there are people in Canterlot, who have been trained specially for this,” she thought to herself, as she watched the being fill up his wooden bowls, with water.
“And give up on the biggest scientific discovery of the century, are you mad?” the voice of her ambition asked her.
And it was right. Lyra could either spend another sixty years in Ponyville, commuting to her job on a daily basis, and categorizing yet another subspecies of mayflies. Or she could be known as the person who established contact with another race, the first one in nearly three hundred years.
She made note, of which way the creature was leaving, and began to compile a plan on how to make contact.
With a thud Bonbon let herself fall besides Lyra.
She turned towards the mint coloured unicorn and asked, “Did I miss something?”
---
Lyra looked around the small camp. A simple tent, purchased from leftover guard supplies, and a fireplace, cold because she didn’t want to risk making smoke. Hopefully the place she had picked was out of the way of the creatures normal roaming grounds.
She turned back to the journal before her:
“Fourth day of the second month of the one thousand-and second’s year of Celestia’s reign second year of the renewed Diarchy.
Today is the fourth day of my observations of the creature which I have dubbed ‘Lyracus Bipodus sapiens’ (have to think of a better name before submitting to neighbell-prize-commission). The creature is male which is apparent because of his ...”
Lyra sat down the book, stared at what she had written and struck out the last sentence.
“The creature is male.
It seems to follow a very simple daily routine, which consist of gathering food and water in the mornings, followed by patrolling of his territory. Much to my relief, his diet seems to consist mostly of berries and nuts. Strictly carnivorous sapient species have been unheard of so far, but it’s still a load of my mind.
There are some things which worry me about his behaviour though. At times he spends hours on seemingly pointless tasks. For example yesterday, he spent two hours throwing stones into a water filled pot, only to retrieve them and throw other stones in. I can only guess that it’s some kind of religious ritual.
The day before yesterday my assistant noticed that Bipodus left regular marks in trees and stones, while he was patrolling the area. This doesn’t seem to make much sense since he seems very familiar with the terrain. Thus far I’ve theorized that he acts as a scout for the rest of his herd which has migrated during the cold months. If this should turn out correct, it might be advisable to make contact soon, to avoid having to deal with the whole herd.
Most interesting is, that he seems to have a sort of rapport with a wild hare. This could indicate that the creature has the same kind of magic which is present in earth ponies. If not, that would support the theory that Ponies and animals already coexisted before the changes that happened during the Discordian Era. Studying the creatures lifestyle could lead to more insights about how ponies lived in ancient times.
Much to my chagrin I haven’t been able to take a closer look at the creatures dwelling yet. The place that he returns to at night is surrounded by a simple fence, and sneaking in has proven to dangerous.
Tomorrow me and my assistant will take the first steps to establish contact.
Lyra closed the book.
“Are you still working? We’ve already spied on him the whole day,” Bonbon said, walking up besides Lyra.
“It’s called observation, not spying. Spying is what horny teenagers do, we are ponies of science!” Lyra replied defiantly.
“Sure, would the pony of science still come to bed already?” Bonbon deadpanned, before heading back into the tent. Lyra gave her journal a last look, before she followed her inside.
His mind was entirely blank, and had any buddhist monks been around they surely would have praised him for his state of enlightenment. Maybe they even would have called him a buddha.
But since there weren’t any monks, buddhist or other, he was just staring pretty dumbly at what appeared to be a picnic basket.
He had awoken this morning and like every other day he had planned to get some new water, shaking Empress out of her sleep, and half awake making his way to the cave entrance, but when he turned south, much to his surprise there stood a small wicker basket, complete with red checker pattern blanket.
Slowly, very slowly after all it was early in the morning and so far Angelo had found nothing that even remotely resembled coffee, his mind began to work again, analyzing the situation that presented itself before him. He had seen many bizarre things since he had come to this world, for example he would never forget that time when he had tried to eat an apple, only to instead be attacked by a screeching furry ball of rage, for days his dreams had been plagued by nightmares about those creatures which he dubbed “fruitbats”, but some part of him refused to believe that the spontaneous materialization of fully filled picnic baskets was among the oddities of this world.
… he had to chuckle when he realized that he had just used the same trail of logic that some creationist’ used to justify their views. But yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that picnic baskets weren’t on the list of things that just happened naturally (a view that was entirely wrong. Picnic baskets are a universal constant that every sentient race throughout the galaxy created once they reach a sufficient advanced level of civilization. Another few constants are Infomercials, corrupt politicians and strangely enough some guy named Bob.)
It was then that he remembered that he was still standing out in the open staring dumbfoundedly at a wicker basket, chuckling to himself. Embarrassedly he looked around.
“Okay,” he thought to himself, “you’ve just been confronted with a situation that can only mean one of two things. A. I’ve gone crazy (not entirely unlikely) B. I’m hallucinating (those mushrooms did look kinda strange) Either way there’s only one way that a learned and sophisticated men like me can approach this situation.”
Carefully he closed in on the basket constantly scanning his surroundings and eying the small wicker container like it was about to attack any minute. He prodded it with his spear.
The basket let out a yelp of pain and jumped at Angelo baring his vicious teeth...
Okay not really.
It actually just sat there and did what picnic baskets tend to do, quite a lot of nothing.
Gordon felt like a fool. What had he expected? A bomb? Had he really been alone so long that he could only view a sign of civilization as a trap?
This last thought reverberated in his brain.
“CIVILIZATION!” he couldn’t help but scream as he stared at the basket with renewed wonder. Could it be? Hastily he looked arround once again checking his surroundings; were there any tracks, anything that could help him locate the owner of this basket? No, nothing.
He fell to his knees and began to rummage through the contents of the container. Under the blanket lay a small assortment of food, some which he recognized, but other that looked comparatively alien. Finally his eyes fell on a familiar sight. Almost awestruck he lifted the thing of beauty out of it’s confinement.
There it was, the triangular shape was almost unmistakable even through the thin paper wrapper. Hastily he ripped away the frail packaging. As Empress peeked her head out of the burrow she could see the shape of Angelo sitting on the ground weeping tears of joy as he stared at what appeared to be two triangular slices of bread.
A sandwich.
A goddamn Sandwich.
It was like someone had taken a part of his homeworld and brought it here.
He raised the snack towards his lips, moving slowly. He wanted to savor even the last bit of anticipation. His mouth opened wide and with much gusto he took his first bite.
He spat out his first bite into the grass beside him.
“Grass?!? FLOWERS?! Is this some kind of cruel joke?” he whined as the skeptically looking Empress looked at him from the sidelines. The empty gaze from his companion brought back some sense into Angelo.
He looked at the mess that he had made out of the picnic. Bits of food and the blanket were strewn around haphazardly where he had thrown them in his search of the basket. If this basket was really placed here by intelligent beings than this was definitely not the best way to make an first impression.
Hurriedly he collected all of the foodstuff and tried to sort it back into the basket, at the end folding up the blanket and hiding the damage he had done beneath it.
Then he looked at himself. For a moment he weighed whether it would make worst first impression if he was naked, or if he was currently clothed with a picnic blanket that he stole. Modesty, the strange thing it is, won this particular battle and soon Angelo was covered by, a rather colourful, toga.
What to do next?
Whoever had left the basket, had left all his food inside as well, which meant that they would return, wouldn’t they? Should he hide? No. Then they might think that he wanted to harm them. Carefully he sat down besides the basket and tried to look as nonthreatening as possible.
A wet feeling reminded him that he had just spat out a sizeable chunk of sandwhich onto the grass.
He sighed.
---
“Huh, weird.” Lyra mumbled.
“Damn straight it is! Did you see that?” Bonbon raged, loud enough to make Lyra fear that she would give away their hidden observation spot. “He just spat out MY sandwich.”
“Maybe he can’t eat flowers?” Lyra theorized, more to herself than to her enraged marefriend.
“What? That’s crazy, whoever hear of somebody not eating flowers?” Bonbon continued, trying to hold onto her anger in the face of Lyra’s observations.
“Diamond Dogs...” Lary mumbled absentmindedly, while she flipped through her notebook.
“...” Bonbon stared at her the mint colored unicorn.Then she bopped Lyra on the shoulder.
“Ow! What did you do that for?” Lyra complained.
“It would be nice if you payed attention to me while we’re talking.” Bonbon replied.
“Oh... I’m sorry sweetie. It’s just that this might hint at him actually being an omnivore, but we haven’t seen him eat anything but nuts and berries yet.” She explained.
“Wait! You mean that thing eats meat?!” Bonbon mouthed wide eyed.
“That’s just it, he doesn’t. But most herbivores are able to digest almost all plant matter.” Lyra continued her explanation.
Bonbon seemed conflicted by this new information.
“Are you sure that this is safe?” she asked, more out of concern for Lyra than for herself.
“I... I can’t say for sure, no. That’s why we’re doing this. We want to gauge his reaction to see if it’s safe to approach .... Look!” she suddenly interrupted herself.
“What is he doing now?” Bonbon looked puzzled by the bipods new behaviour.
“Look, Bonbon: This might just be my only chance to ever make a really big discovery. I can’t promise you that this is entirely safe, but I will do my best to keep you out of harms way,” she pledged.
“But what if he’s aggressive? I don’t want to watch as he eats you!” Bonbon protested.
Lyra couldn’t help but shudder. Just for a moment Bonbon’s words had reawakened some old memory of a story her mother always read to her at bedtime. It was one of those really old folk tales, with tons of blood and battles galore, but while she usually had appreciated that, this particular story had a passage about a dragon eating a little foal. It was safe to say that Lyra had some very imaginative nightmares in the nights to follow.
But that was neither here, nor now. The creature was twice as tall as her, but she was pretty sure that if worse came to worse she and Bonbon could take it head on.
“I promise I’ll be careful, but I have to do this.” she finally said.
Bonbon looked deep into her eyes, but she knew that look of determination. She hated it when Lyra became reckless like this, but then again, wasn’t it exactly this sheer amount of guts and determination that had drawn her to Lyra in the first place?
She sighed defeatedly.
“Okay, just be carefull.”
Lyra smiled and leaned in to kiss her, and they shared a small moment of intimacy.
A shadow fell over them, and a short polite cough could be heard.
The two ponies looked upwards, right into the face of the creature.
In a world with no giant’s Ch.11 “The two side of Athena”
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!” The two creatures screamed.
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!” Angelo screamed.
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!” The creatures screamed.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!” Angelo screamed.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!” The creatures screamed.
“AAAAAAAAAA-unfh” Angelo tried to scream when a hoof buried itself into his face.
The hit was a thing of beauty, perfectly executed; the cream coloured creature turned on it’s forelegs preserving as much momentum as possible, rearing up it’s hindlegs, coiling them up until the last second, when they suddenly exploded outwards, with a little bit of torque. All of this Angelo noticed with a kind of serene detachment as he felt a few of his teeth giving way. Then the world turned black.
...
When he came to, he was tied to a tree. Or at least he suspected that he was tied to a tree. The feeling of bark against his back, and the fact that his hand couldn’t move would indicate so, but his eyes only showed him darkness and the slightest hint of movements as if he had been blindfolded with a piece of cloth.
When his ears finally caught up with the rest of his body and started reporting their findings to the brain, he was treated to a symphony of strange noises. He could hear a sound almost like a stalling car, well, a stalling car that had been submerged in cooking oil. The sound came again and Angelo remedied his assessment, it sounded more like a sharp cry which rose and faded in tone. As he gathered his faculties, a second sound peeled out of audiosensational mist that surrounded him. This one sounded like someone was flicking his tongue but with a strangely rhythmic quality to it. More and more sounds assaulted his ears, each of them sounded foreign and yet strangely familiar, as if he already knew them but was failing to make a proper connection.
He tried to recall what he had done prior to blacking out...
There had been a picnic basket!
And then he had waited until...
Until what?
As much as he struggled he couldn’t remember anything after he had sat down in the grass.
Seeing how this train of thought didn’t lead nowhere, he concentrated on the noises in his surroundings again. He could still hear the wind, and the birds that had grown so familiar to him, so at least he hadn’t been taken far, by whoever captured him. More and more it became clear that the “screams” and the clicking noises didn’t come from one creature, or if so, that the creature had quite an impressive range of voice.
Was he listening to a conversation?
Given the fact that he currently was tied up and blindfolded, it was safe to assume that he had stumbled across intelligent beings. What should he do? Should he keep still and pretend to not be awake? Should he try to get their attention? But what would he do then?
They choice was taken from him when the blindfold was suddenly lifted away, and he found himself blinking at the bright light before him. For a moment he believed himself to be stuck in some kind of cheesy detective movie, a spotlight shining into his face, but only moments later he realized that it was only the evening sun that had temporarily robbed him of his sight.
Frantically he tried to analyze his situation. Before him stood two creatures, both of which at first reminded him of dogs. Their heads were large with short snouts, and pointed ears that stood above their round faces. Their bodies were stout and, just like the head, covered in brightly coloured fur, that while short hid all the skin underneath; One was mint green, the other was cream coloured. Their legs showed the typical combination of straight forelegs and swayed hindlegs that was so common among the digitrades of earth. When he spotted the hooves at the ends of their legs, for some reason a shiver ran down his spine.
Then he looked at the blindfold, and all thoughts stopped.
…
“Is that blindfold flying?!” he asked out loud, earning confused looks from his captors. For a moment his captors, the strange world around him, and even the pain in his mouth were forgotten as he stared at the physics defying piece of cloth.
“Okay, just keep calm. You already know that this world has it’s own set of rules, so you really shouldn’t be that surprised,” his voice of reason whispered.
“Yeah, you’re probably ri....FOR FUCKS SAKE THE STUPID BLINDFOLD IS FLYING THROUGH THE AIR!!!” the rest of his brain replied.
Slowly the blindfold levitated over to the mint coloured being. Only now he noticed the horn on her head which was surrounded by a golden aura, which was barely visible in the light of the evening sun. Only when he squinted he could see the same aura around the cloth piece.
His inner scientist screamed bloody murder at this sight, but another part of his brain, that part which had once motivated a young Angelo to spend all of his allowance on the newest Perry Rhodan novels, was jubilating at what could only be a manifestation of psychic powers.
Angelos eyes followed the piece of cloth as the creature waved it left and right.
He shook his head, at the same time shaking his reverie and once again focussing on the creatures before him, this time trying to actively analyze them. Their faces while weirdly shaped, but still had all the normal elements one would expect from a mammal; two eyes, that while slightly to the side of the head, still allowed frontal vision; a nose, or snout as was more appropriate in this case; two ears that flicked around like tiny radar dishes, and a mouth that at the moment was slightly opened.
He felt tempted to just assign human emotions to the those features, especially since a lot of the creatures reactions seemed to match those of humans, but even back on earth it was a, at times fatal, mistake to do so. What was a smile for human, could very well be bared teeth to another race.
His eyes still wandered between the two creatures, who seemed content to watch him for the moment.
“First, stop seeming like you’re panicked.” Angelo reprimanded himself. He took a deep breath and forced his muscles to relax, with mixed results. Just as he calmed himself down, one of the creatures opened it’s mouth and let out another chain of tones. Angelo watched it’s mouth as it articulated what he believed, no, hoped to be words. Quite frankly it was a dazzling display to see the lips contort in ways that would have been impossible for humans, forming tones which were wide outside the realm of human capability.
Not that all this did anything to make him understand them better.
“Come on Angelo, this might be your only chance to meet some sapient beings in this place, how can you show that you understand them?” he asked himself, while he looked around searching for anything that could serve as a means of communication.
Of course!
If he had a free hand he would have facepalmed. How could he have forgotten about something so simple.
He tapped his foot against the ground, not threatening, but strong enough to get the creatures attention.
Tap.Tap.
Tap.Tap.Tap.
Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.
Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.
Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.
The mint coloured creature cocked its head, the cream coloured one took a step backwards, it’s ears pressed flat against it’s head. Angelo started once again.
Tap.Tap.
Tap.Tap.Tap.
Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap
Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.
Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.
He hesitated for a moment, furrowing his brow in concentration. It had been quite a while since he had to do this.
The cream coloured creature gave of a sound like a flick of tongue, slightly shaking her head, but the mint coloured creature stepped between it and Angelo, giving of a few sounds at it, before turning back to Angelo.
He started again.
Tap.Tap.
Tap.Tap.Tap.
Expectantly he stared at the creature before him. Slowly it raised it’s hoof and brought it down on the ground.
Clop.Clop.Clop.Clop.Clop.
Angelo was ecstatic, only barely managing to suppress a smile.
Angelo had to laugh loudly, obviously scaring the creatures but he just couldn’t suppress his glee anymore. The creatures knew what prime numbers were.
---
It had been quite some time since their little exchange, but Angelo was still tied to a tree, much to his annoyance. The two creatures had stepped away from him and begun what seemed to be a heated discussion. While he didn’t understand what they were talking about, in his mind it was relatively clear what they were discussing.
He had done everything he could do, and right now his life was in the hands, erh hooves of those two beings. In order to fight the sense of helplessness and his growing impatience he once again scanned his captors. The only thing he could add to his prior assessment was that both of them had tattoos on their backsides, depicting a Lyre and Bonbon’s wrapped in colorful papers respectively.
“More parallels to earth...” Angelo mused. Or maybe it was just a case of parallel evolution? Weren’t there a lot of cases were several scientist developed the same inventions at the same time, simply because of similar outside factors? Or maybe he was just associating his own memories to objects that actually had a different purpose altogether, for all he knew that could’ve been religious symbols that had been tattooed onto their sides.
“Argh, I had enough difficulties finding out the relative density of the minerals around here, I think I’m gonna go crazy trying to figure out all this stuff,” he moaned internally, only a sigh breaking through to the outside world.
The two creatures shortly interrupted their discussion to look at him, but when he showed no further signs of movement they quickly returned to their conversation.
Before Angelo could fall back into contemplation however he felt something touching his hand. It was the warm and wet sensation, of something squirming against his palm. For a short moment Angelo panicked, squirming and twisting his neck, trying to see around the tree. Out of the corner of his eyes he caught a glimpse of white fur.
Quickly he calmed himself and stared straight ahead.
The two creatures were once again looking at him. Suspiciously? Maybe... he hoped not.
“Quick, chew through the ropes!” Angelo whispered through clenched teeth, hoping that the hare would understand what he wanted from her.
The hint of white disappeared from his vision.
He gave his two captors a grin, remembering that he hadn’t done so before just a second too late. The mint coloured creature trotted over to him with a look that he assumed to be curiosity. Maybe, if Empress hurried with the ropes they could still make it.
The white hare shot past him, and tackled the foreign being.
Terrified he looked at the spectacle that was unfolding before him. It was brutal. Never had he deemed a being capable of such cruelty, and sheer destructive power. After only a few seconds the fight was over, and the mint coloured creature screamed in pain, as Empress held her tightly in an arm-lock (foreleg-lock?). At least until the cream coloured being trotted over, rolled its eyes and picked Empress up at the neck.
The white hare flailed powerlessly, as the creature with the Lyre tattoo got back up again, tears and fear still visible in its eyes.
Somehow Angelo didn’t believe that he would be untied soon...
---
After Empress had been secured in a makeshift cage (aka the picnic basket) and the turquoise creature had calmed down, it once again sat down in front of Angelo.
It raised one of it’s hoofs until Angelo showed that he had noticed by following it with his eyes.
It brought it’s hoof to the ground, but stopped before actually hitting it.
Then it raised it again, only to bring it down once more.
It raised its hoof and let it fall to the ground two more times. After that came four times.
“Square numbers,” Angelo deducted. “Maybe it wants to test if the first time wasn’t just a fluke.”
Once again the mint coloured creature raised its hoof until Angelo payed attention to it.
One tap. Two taps. Three taps. Five Taps.
“Let’s see one, one plus one, one plus two, two plus three... er... three plus five.” he quickly analyzed the sequence. Now that he knew what was coming, it was relatively easy to recognize the patterns.
Eight taps, and then thirteen taps answered the clopps of the creatures hoof.
The man and the creature stared at each other. They both were intelligent, and they knew that the other was too, but it was up to the creature to decide what happened now...
Angelo rubbed his wrists where the rough rope had chafed against them. The two creatures stood a small distance away, the cream coloured one eying him carefully, and the mint coloured one looking equally tense.
Angelo took a moment to look around, giving them a chance to calm down, and himself a chance to find out where exactly the two had taken him. As far as he could tell they were still in the vicinity of The Burrow, maybe half an hour on foot away. A few trees formed a natural wall, that while not thick enough to shield from the wind, kept out most sunlight, allowing for a small clearing to form.
Aside from himself and the two beings there was little of interest, except for a turned over wicker basket, which shook and tumbled, only staying in place because of a heavy stone placed on top of it.
“Err, I’m just gonna go over there and free my friend, if that’s alright with you.” Angelo said, subconsciously falling back on the tactic tourists and white man have ever since used when they were faced by a language barrier: Speaking very slowly and very loudly. For a moment he struggled with finding a way to convey his intentions, then he simply pointed at the basket while slowly walking towards it, keeping his eyes on the creatures and gauging their reactions.
The cream coloured one still seemed wary, it’s body tensed up, but it was the mint coloured one whose reaction was the most extreme: Her ears were suddenly pressed tight against her head, her eyes going wide, and her teeth bared. Interested, and a little shocked, Angelo took her reaction in. It reminded him of the way dogs and cats reacted when threatened. The cream coloured creature got closer to the other, and lay an arm, no, an foreleg around it, until it calmed down.
Carefully Angelo lifted the basket, jumped out of the way when an white blur shot out from under it, and then grabbed the battle ready Empress before the scene from before could repeat itself.
“Calm down! Calm down! I’m fine, see?” he said, while the hare struggled in it’s arms. After a few moments Empress had calmed down enough that Angelo could put her down again, but from the way she and the mint coloured creature eyed each other, it became clear that those two wouldn’t become friends anytime soon.
Angelo sat down across from the two creatures his legs folded and his arms outstretched. Empress lay next to him.
“Now to get the formalities out of the way.” he mumbled to himself. “Let’s start with something easy.”
He pointed towards himself and said, “Angelo.”
Then he repeated the gesture and carefully intonated the syllables, “Annn....gelll...ooooo.”
Then he pointed towards the white hare besides him, “Empress.”
And once again, “Empp...resss.”
The creatures stared at him, their ears perked up, swishing around like little radar dishes.
Once again Angelo pointed towards himself.
“Angelo.”
The mint coloured one made a few steps towards him, pointed and foreleg towards him and said, “anGggelo.”
Angelo didn’t trust his ears at first. The creature had made and sound, which he could only describe as an rolling G. Before he lost himself in amazement however, he reminded himself that there was something more important to do first.
He nodded emphatically, and once again pointed towards himself.
“Angelo.”
His finger wandered towards the white hare.
“Empress.”
The creature mimic his movements, “anGgglo, Embrrrez.”
Then it pointed towards itself and let out something that sounded like a sneeze mixed with a snore, but lacking the dissonance of both.
Angelo struggled for a moment while he tried to mimic the creatures tone, “Prrreha.”
It sounded nothing like what the mint coloured one had said, but the creature nodded nonetheless. It pointed towards the other one and said something which Angelo could only repeat as, “Iehehiehe.”
He had to grimace himself when he heard how he mangled the pronunciation. He tried again, taking his time to form each syllable, “I’eihe-I’eihe.” It still didn’t sound like what the mint coloured one, Prreha, had said, but at the very least he now had something to call them aside from “creatures”, and as far as Angelo was concerned that was already a pretty huge step forward.
“Now what to do next?” he asked himself, only for his rumbling stomach to provide a very definite answer. While he couldn’t be entirely sure of the time he had spent unconscious, he could see that the sun had already passed it’s the zenith which meant that his last meal had been yesterday evening.
Luckily enough for him, the two creatures seemed to know what a rumbling stomach meant, sparing him the embarrassment of yet another round of pantomime. A bit of rummaging and Prreha presented a sandwich. Angelo did his best not to grimace, but the memory of eating grass was one of the more unpleasant ones (of course there had been several things which were worse, nearly being eaten by timberwolves for example, but most humans have the rather weird, and really usefull, tendency to shrug off terrible things. A broken arm? No problem, just let me swallow a few painkillers. A stubbed toe? QUICK CALL AN AMBULANCE!).
What the experience did reveal however was that apparently humans and… whatever those being were called shared the same expression when it came to disgust.
“Yes sure, let’s insult our only contact with civilisation,” Angelo muttered. Quickly he gestured at the grass and flower around them, followed by another hand covering his mouth. He only received puzzled looks at his attempted sign language. Somehow he doubted that he would get something to eat any time soon…
...
Angelo was pretty sure he knew a saying which fit the situation perfectly, something about “circles in the sand”, but aside from being hungry, in pain, and still a bit dizzy from getting knocked out, it had been quite some time since he had led any conversation that hadn’t had a mute white hare as one part of it. He simply had forgotten a lot of things which didn’t help him gather food, water, or find shelter.
Once again he pointed at the tree in front of him. “Ppit… tree.”
I sounded more like a stutter than the alien rolling sound that the creatures could produce, but Preha nodded nonetheless.
“t’Rie, Pppit,” she intonated her part of the exchange, like they had done for the past two hours or so. Aside from just getting the pronunciation right and memorizing the new vocabulary they had spent most of the time making sure that they actually were talking about the same thing; even now Angelo wasn’t sure if ‘Haeia’ meant sky, upwards, or maybe apfelstrudel.
He dreaded the moment when they would run out of things to point at and have to start with the verbs and adjectives…
A salvo of words in Preha’s alien sounding language assaulted Angelo, making him struggle to identify the different sounds, only for him to realize that it wasn’t him who was being talked to. Preha had turned to IehIeh, who was busy trying to feed, or maybe bribe, Empress. The white hare’s stare was focussed on the bag of carrots, which was held in IehIeh’s hooves just outside of her reach.
More words were exchanged between the two, but apparently they were neither talking about the local flora, nor any of the appendages any of the present people sported, leaving Angelo to guess what was being discussed. Only until IehIeh stood up and turned towards the pair’s bags, which they had brought onto the clearing as soon as it became clear that they would be talking for a while.
A almost girlish squeal, escaped Angelos lips, seeing what IehIeh had produced from the confines of the camping bags; a scroll, complete with wooden handles, hung from her mouth, one end tightly gripped between her teeth.
IehIeh and Preha stared at him, eyes wide, and ears pressed flat against their heads, but Angelo didn’t pay any attention to that. He had fallen back on the only gesture which they had been able to establish so far, simply pointing at the scroll. He felt somewhat like an infant, unable to properly express himself, but it conveyed his intent clearly enough.
Empress meanwhile took the chance to drag away the bag of carrots that lay forgotten on the ground.
Angelo sighed as he watched Preha and IehIeh disappear into the thicket. Angelo couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that Preha gladly would have shared a camplace with him, but upon IehIeh’s concerned words, they had spent several hours trying to convey that they would be here again tomorrow. Preha turned around one last time before he lost sight of her. He counted to ten.
1…
2…
3…
4…
5…
6…
7…
8…
9…
10…
*Thud*
His body hit the mossy ground beneath him, a curse escaping his lips as he was unpleasantly reminded of his dislocated shoulder. Albeit the pain was only a momentary distraction from what really had send him to his knees in the first place. His breath came quick and infrequent, and for a short moment he feared that he might pass out. He could feel the warmth of empress body pressed up against his, but not even her reassuring presence was enough to fight down the panic that had gripped his body tightly. His mind and heart beat in a frantic fashion while his vision threatened to disappear.
He robbed onto his belly, and picked up the inkwell and feather that the pair had left him. With trembling hands he unrolled the scroll, dipped the feather into the black liquid, and with the unsteady hand of someone who was used to writing with a ballpen he wrote only one word.
“Aliens…”
There! He had written the it down, and somehow this made it ‘official’. He wasn’t just some madman in a forest, he had met honest to god aliens! Although, part of his mind corrected him, technically speaking, he was the alien… probably.
He once again dipped the feather, a blue one, into the ink, the simple act helping him to cope with all the strange new experiences which had threatened to drown him, moments ago. For a moment the feather became his way to put the world back into focus. He wrote down what had happened to him so far…
---
Eventually the sun passing over the horizon and Empress insistence, had forced him to return to the Burrow. He had only stopped long enough to pass Empress some berries, and to get a fire going, before he had turned towards the rough sheet of paper again. He took it between two fingers and felt the texture for a moment; it was rougher than the printer paper that he was used to but far less so than he had expected. Before he could follow this thought however, the flow of words drew him back:
I met Aliens…
After some thinking he struck the words through and began again:
Today I made contact with two intelligent beings. They captured me when I caught them observing me, but upon revealing that I was sapient, they released me and tried to establish contact.
As far as I could discern the two beings are named Preha, and IehIeh (simplified, their language has a few different sounds compared to mine ours). They both are about waist high, when compared to me.
They seem similar to a few earth species, but unlike the other animals which I have encountered so far they don’t seem to have a direct counterpart in an earth species. They are quadrupeds, with cloven hooves, with a stronger pair of hind legs, a slightly curved back, and a pointed head which sits on a neck, slightly above the rest of the body. Their heads are particularly puzzling, since they are far rounder and bigger than anything seen in earth species. Maybe that’s to accommodate for a bigger brain, similar to the changes in human skulls.
They have pointy ears, which sit almost atop of the head and are highly mobile, often responding to the owners emotional state. I’m not yet sure whether this is subconscious or intentional. They also sport blunt muzzles, similar to those of cows, or some dog breeds. Their eyes are fairly big, and cover almost forty percent of their faces, which gives them quite a bizarre appearance.
Their fur is brightly coloured (Preha bright blue, IehIeh bright brown), but I’m not sure whether this is natural, since they also have tattoos where their hind legs meet their bodies.
Aside from those shared characteristics, Preha sports a spun horn in the middle of her forehead, which IehIeh is missing. This horn seems to enable her of magic telekinetic manipulation of her surroundings (symbiote? might explain the blue ‘cloud’ which covers objects she manipulates. Would also explain why IehIeh hasn’t got a horn.).
During my exchange with the two creatures, we were able to establish some basic vocabulary, even though it seems that their vocal chords are fundamentally different from mine.
Whenever Angelo had left a bit of space on the sides of the scroll he had written down the few words which they had been able to translate so far.
RR = rolling R sound (sigh an R over a floppy lip) PP = rolling P sound (unable to produce, double p instead)
Brrehet - Leaf (possibly plant or food) Brrehette - Tree (possibly plant, or plural of Brrehet) Vaheera - Ground/earth/mud/dirt NOT grass Trrava - bunny/hare/animal (possibly a curse word, have to keep Empress away from Preha) PPrroh - Foreleg/forehoove or maybe hand/manipulator since it also seems to apply to my arms (sign of contact with other species?) PPrrah - Hindleg/hoove/feet (see above) Mit - Bag Gort - grain/ food might be a specific sort of grain Buturrtu - Ear Fialan - Teeth?Mouth?
Their language is fast flowing more like the japanese or italian language, and so far I couldn’t get a grasp of syntax or grammar.
Their bags and other equipment seem to indicate a pretty high form of civilizations, but so far I haven’t seen any plastics or other synthetic materials (may just be because there don’t exist any on this world, I have to remember that most of my chemical knowledge is probably useless).
I hope I can convince them to take me along to their home sometimes during our next meetings…
He lowered the feather, this time for good. With a smile he noticed the sleeping form of Empress rolled up against his thigh. It was hard to believe that the innocent face of the hare lying next to him was the same mischievous creature he spent his days with.
With a groan he uprighted himself, careful not to disturb the sleeper, as his spine told him what it thought of spending a good part of the day hunched over a scroll. He grimaced as he was once again reminded of the state his body was in. Though he had adjusted relatively well, the harsh fight against nature had nonetheless been taxing. For a short moment he allowed himself to dream of all the necessities civilization would have to offer. Oh god, he could kill for a bath right now…
“One thing after the other,” he said silently to himself.
First he would have to earn Preha’s and IehIeh’s trust. And even if he could convince them to take him along, just a pair of bags and a bit of paper wasn’t enough to judge just what he could expect from their civilization. For all he knew the paper could be some kind of natural material; he hadn’t inspected the paper closer yet, and he felt hesitant about destroying part of what could be the only writing material he’d get anytime soon only to sate his curiosity.
No, he just would have to wait and see… after all what could be worse that could happen?
