The Unique: Chapter One
Daria and related characters and situations are the property of Viacom / MTV Networks. This work is strictly for the entertainment of Daria fans and not for any monetary or material gain whatsoever. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. This disclaimer applies equally to all chapters of this story.
The Unique was inspired by the Daria multiverse stories. You can find a few in (Judith Strikes!, for instance) but you don't need to read any to understand this story.
Daria stumbled on the jagged reddish-brown scoria, thankful for her heavy black boots. For lengths of several hundred yards the trail had occasionally narrowed with sharp rocks in ankle-high chunks and sheets scraping against her black jeans and boots on both sides.
"Someone is expecting me. Not surprised really." Daria said out loud deciding that talking to herself in a situation like this was not such a bad habit. She picked up the evidence from a waist high shelf of rock. She appreciated the reassuring feel of the Hungarian style bow in her hand, so like her bow on some other world far away or long ago or some description of time and space that did not apply to her anymore.
She inspected the dozen arrows, ugly things but functional. The shafts were of some smooth dark waxed wood. The arrows were flu-flus, fletched with four fluffy wide dull-black feathers set at right angles and sporting blunt points meant for small game in trees or on the wing. She slung the leather quiver over her right shoulder and practiced drawing and nocking arrows. She preferred hip quivers but she could get used to this.
The leather belt she strapped around her waist was soft and supple. Two sheathed knives hung from it, one long and one short. One square snap-closed holster held two butane lighters. She opened the other square holster to find a Hohner Echo 32 harmonica. A good standard mouth organ, she reflected, commensurate with her skill level.
After she had learned the rudiments of harmonica to annoy her parents and thereby shorten her groundings she discovered she actually liked the instrument and actively practiced. Jane had encouraged her to play outside during lunch at school and Jane had speculated on taking up the bagpipes to form a duo. Jane was serious only in a desire to annoy their schoolmates but Daria kept up her practice if somewhat secretly.
So at least hundreds of students and school staff knew she played. And many in Lawndale and Boston knew her archery preferences. Daria, therefore, still had no clue about who was directing her and watching and providing the equipment or if all those agents were the same entity. Then again, it did not have to be anyone she knew; any entity capable of sending her through time and space should be able to figure out the draw weight on her bow.
"Thanks, I guess, for everything," Daria said to the air. "If you think you want to hear me play, I'm going to need a drink soon."
She had been walking for over half a day without food or water, her last meal having been a salty, spicy sausage and cabbage dish over twelve hours past. Mild hunger, she could deal with but her dry mouth was getting annoying and worrisome.
There was nothing more then but to keep walking under the overcast sky through still air that was neither hot nor cold. "Onward and upward," Daria said as she set off although at this point the trail and surrounding ground were flat. There had been only one way to go since she had emerged into this world at the end of a box canyon of scoria cliffs that morning.
Daria trudged along heading for a bend in the trail where it disappeared between red rocky hills on either side. She entered the rocks happy that the trail was wider there. She had had enough of scraping her boots and tearing her jeans. She found herself gently gaining elevation. After a couple miles of plodding her ears perked up as thin gurgling sounds caught her lagging attention.
"Water?!"
Her steps quickened; her five-foot, two-inch frame took longer strides. She darted up a steeper run of rock and rounded a sharp curve. The trail slanted down and more importantly paralleled a yard-wide stream coursing down the reddish rocks.
Daria knelt and resisted an urge to plunge her face into the stream. The water was clear and absent of plant or animal life. Deep breaths detected no smell. She dipped her shorter knife and dripped a couple drops on her bare forearm. Cold and smooth. She watched the drops slowly evaporate leaving no sensation on her skin.
She dipped a finger into the water and put it into her parched mouth. No taste, no sensation other than cold, wet water. She waited a few minutes for some reaction, her throat feeling dryer and tighter by the second in the presence of drink.
"If I get sick it will be more entertaining than just walking along waiting for something to happen."
Daria cupped and filled her hands and lifted the water to her mouth.
"I'll never drink Ultra Cola again," she declared after several satisfying hand-fulls. Her tummy gurgled as loudly as the stream as it adjusted to its load of water. She splashed water on her face and head and drenched her arms.
"Sorry, no wet tee-shirt contest today," she said keeping the water mostly off her tight black top.
She felt much better but the full weight of her loneliness fell on her then. Daria sat on a smooth rock, took off her glasses and buried her face in her hands. Much of the water must have gone quickly to her eyes as they ran over and she sobbed and cried quietly.
Images of Quinn serving her the sausage and cabbage meal with small beer came to her. Quinn had looked at her with compassion and, of course, no recognition at all. Quinn appeared to be some high official of the charity where Daria had received the free meal. Daria had not been surprised to see everyone treating the just-as-cute analogue of her sister with deference and some awe as she dished out meals to ragged looking people. Quinn's superior, entitled look and bearing were present in full force, tempered by a projection of understanding, acceptance and compassion without pity.
The people of that Lawndale spoke what to Daria sounded like German. Nearly everyone looked at her with suspicion and even disgust and fear when she spoke English. No one showed the slightest recognition of that language.
She had pointed to herself and said "Morgendorffer" hoping that oh so German name would get her by. A few of the kinder people had their eyes light up at the name. They talked with each other and one then hauled her straight to Quinn in her bright, overwhelmingly pink office.
Daria had learned not to hope for recognition from any Quinn she met and in that sense she was not disappointed. She had identified herself as "Morgendorffer" to Quinn but she could see Quinn did not believe her, probably having heard similar scams from the down and out before Daria came along. But she had gotten a good meal and a bed off the streets from the encounter.
Quinn had not been there the next morning when she and the other homeless women were turned out into the grey dawn. Everyone had been given a small sandwich, an apple and a granola bar like package, Daria's given begrudgingly. A block from the shelter two women stood in her way and she gave up that meager meal without protest. By then in her wanderings she had developed a sixth sense for when and where the next portal would be so a few blocks later she stepped through a solid brick wall in an alley and into a narrow box canyon.
After Daria's eyes had cried their fill, she washed her face and stood.
"Onward and upward," she called to the empty air although the path now led down gently.
"Please don't desert me," she said to the little stream which was going the same way, at least for the time being. "I promise I'm loads of fun to be with. I'll play some Sonny Boy Williamson later for us. Your gurgles are great accompaniment to my empty tummy."
"Okay, get a grip, Morgendorffer. You can take a little tummy rumbling. Someone or something just gave you a bow you know how to handle. You must be near some kind of end to all this."
What she did not seem to be near was an end to the red jagged hills she was hiking through. The trail wound slowly down for more miles than she had hiked up. When the sun seemed to be overhead Daria noticed a brighter spot ahead on the trail. She hoped she would be coming out of the oppressive red rocky hills to flat, open land again.
"Trees! I've never been happier to see a tree grow in Lawndale." she exclaimed. The trail opened out of the hills into a wide plain, the rock beginning to be broken by patches of grass. Ahead she could see green leafy trees growing besides the widening stream.
She had taken to calling wherever she appeared in a new world "Lawndale" and despite this area's blasted, volcanic look the designation seemed reasonable to her sense of humor and general pessimism.
A couple miles later the trail now ran between low, scrubby hardwoods springing up on both sides of the path and stream. Daria paused as she heard rustling in trees
"Too bad Dad's not here to rant and hunt you furry little guys," she said as she and a group of branch hopping gray squirrels regarded each other with mild interest. Daria's interest became more personal as her tummy complained and the squirrels turned their bushy tails on her.
"Yep, too bad Dad's not here to see daughter Daria the Huntress about to take down her first piece of big game."
"I hope that's not bragging." She nocked a flu-flu and took a slow bead on a curious squirrel sitting on a wide branch.
Whap! The blunt point hit the branch under the animal. She could swear she saw its eyes get wider in a startled moment before it turned tail. The blunt point performed its major function by not sticking in the wood. The arrow deflected and then dropped almost straight down guided by its four wide feathers.
"Dammit. Dammit. Dammit." She collected the arrow and continued on the path.
The squirrel warning system was not very advanced she thought as more animals checked her out from high branches.
"Maybe being hunted by mighty Huntress Daria is totally new to you little vermin", she considered.
Daria recalled talking with hunters at Lawndale's archery range; men and women who said they weren't superstitious but when they hunted they would start to turn their caps inside out or always wear a certain item of underwear. She wished she had the more superstitious Quinn along to perform some little ceremony or something. On a whim she nocked an arrow and turned three times counter-clockwise.
"Widdershins."
"Dammit," Daria said again a moment later as the arrow thwacked a branch and landed on the ground. This squirrel, however, was either braver or dumber as it simply twitched and watched her warily. Daria sighed and nocked for another shot.
"Saint Nicholas, please, I'm hungry," she breathed as she drew and loosed.
A dull thud. The blunt point knocked an especially fat squirrel in the chest and off its perch. Heart-racing Daria approached the gray bunch lying on the grass just under the tree. She was hoping she would not have to brain the poor thing to death with the heavy stick she had picked up.
The little bundle of gray lay still however. Daria bit her lip and considered what she had just done and what she needed to do next.
"You're scrawny, not enough for one decent meal," she said delaying. She picked up the lucky or blessed flu-flu and scanned the branches again.
Ten minutes later she was faced with the inevitable: how to render two furry squirrels into something she could cook and eat.
"Where's an ax murderer when you need one or at least Ms. Barch? Okay, I've dissected frogs in biology and this can't be any worse. Squirrels don't smell of formaldehyde at least."
It wasn't pretty but in a half-hour Daria looked down at her bloody hands, a pile of fur and offal and two irregular shapes that could be recognized as having once been mammalian. And she'd managed to do it without hacking her own flesh to slivers.
She washed the little carcasses then her knives and hands in the stream. Putting her meat on a rock she considered how to cook without microwaves and lasagna around. There was plenty of dry wood to gather. She looked around and thought a few minutes, her mind replaying campfire scenes from movies and her tummy complaining even louder now that the promise of a meal lay in front of it.
In short order she stuck a couple of Y-shaped sticks over a fire. She spitted the squirrels on a sharpened branch and was turning them over the fire.
"How would you like your steak, Ma'am? Rare, medium, well-done? I think well-done for wild squirrel. Perhaps a nice sear to hold in the juices."
"Over-done is more like it." She bit into the lightly burned meat and reflected that it actually tasted pretty good. "Not like chicken but it'll do." She gnawed the bones and licked her fingers.
Daria threw the left overs into the fire and looked around. She could probably get another couple hours of walking in before the sun went down but why bother? She was worn down, tummy-full but exhausted. She washed up and drank her fill careful to go a bit upstream from where she had cleaned her catch.
She put more wood on the fire. The remaining squirrels then were treated to as much as she could recall and perform of Sonny Boy Williamson's I'm A Lonely Man. Daria managed to get through it and other blues pieces without crying.
"Smokey says only you can prevent forest fires," she said after catching herself nodding off a couple times. A few handfuls of water quenched the fire and moments later she was dozing off with empty quiver and boots for a pillow.