Summer was at its height on that strange aberrant world now. And if Ben had found it ridiculously humid there in the mid-afternoons before then, that now seemed like nothing to speak of. But he'd come to find, however gradual the process of growing used to the greenhouse-like world was, that he didn't mind it all that much by now. And with his bruises mostly healed and the worst of the pain from his beating injuries mostly just steady aches now, he was just glad to be fully useful again. He stood, chopping a downed tree into smaller sections out behind the base, to begin the task of moving it away from the bottom of the steps that lead up to the back entrance.
"The quakes on this... place, always seemed pretty harmless," Johnny said, his tone so clearly uneasy. "Or at least until... this..." he paused in helping Ben to shift the downed tree – its meter wide mushroom-shaped top thankfully clear of having entirely wedged under the fifth step up – just enough to finish cutting through the bottom section of the massive thing without further damaging the staircase.
"It's a good job this tree fell where it did," Ben answered, seriously. He gestured a bit with his hands to make his point as he continued speaking. "Nothing much down here to be damaged aside from the steps."
His sturdy metal ax with its hard wooden handle made short work of the tree trunk from there – even if it was certainly still difficult work and more so in the sticky summer humidity. And Johnny grabbed the large pieces as they were chopped through, tossing them to the side of the steps with a surprising lack of effort.
The boy certainly didn't look like much when it came to any real strength. He was thinner than he should have been surely – and he could certainly have stood to be taller. But it was impressive just how much he could left and carry... how far he could run... how high he could jump. Ben, along with others in the tribe by then, had seen him more than push the limits in all of those things more than once by then. And for as utterly terrified as he'd been his first nights in that place, he'd more than proven himself already.
Ben drank from his water jar, enjoying the simple taste - and far more so – the coolness – of the fresh water, as he watched Johnny immediately begin to split the logs into firewood almost expertly with his own ax. He took another quick drink before he tucked the small jar back into the little bag tied to his belt. And quickly he set back to work himself.
"I don't think I can ever get used to almost daily earthquakes..." Johnny said slowly. He stopped, right in the middle of chopping up a log – his ax paused in the air for a second before he simply lowered it hesitantly – and just stood silently and thinking.
The boy, who had shown himself to be so good at laughing and smiling – at happily exploring his new home, and learning to ride tame creatures with such obvious enthusiasm for it all – he suddenly looked so close to terrified again, not unlike his first few days, as he stood thinking of the shaking ground that morning over breakfast. Ben lowered his own ax. And he tossed an arm over the boy's shoulder in a gesture of support.
"That quake this morning was the worst one I've ever seen here so far," he said, only hoping somewhat doubtfully that would be enough to assure the poor frightened boy that it might not get much worse.
"It... always just starts up out of nowhere," Johnny said, piecing his thoughts together out loud, and shaking his head a little as if to shake away his inner terror. It may well have worked, at least somewhat, and along with Ben's support of course. Because when he shook his head again, it was slower, and he was laughing just a little under his breath, his face filled with a look of disbelief.
"Tell me I didn't really scream out loud in the dining room this morning," he mumbled. And he looked down at the pile of wood and his own feet – just like any other embarrassed young person anywhere surely would have.
"No worse than a twelve-year-old girl might have done," Ellie said, speaking for the first time in a while.
Ben heard her laughter as she spoke. And he turned to look at her for a moment, while she sat on the ground - busy with the much lighter task of chopping the smallest of the fire logs into kindling with a small hatchet, and grinning as she laughed while working.
"I'm not so sure that's really all that funny, Ellie," Johnny protested. But he smiled now himself, clearly distracted from his terror by his tribe-mate and friend's attempted humor. The boy so obviously knew very little of what Ellie had survived so far – just how bad she was truly struggling just simply existing by now. But the look of amusement he shared with Ben - acknowledged with a hint of a smile and a nod between them - showed that he knew as well as anyone in that place, how great it was just to hear her truly laughing.
"Seriously though, it wasn't half that bad," Ellie said. She smiled then, with an assuring look at the boy she so clearly cared about.
She sat still for a moment pausing in her work – they all did – and she was clearly thinking about what to say next to the boy, when the sudden noise of human shouts and running feet on the rocky path beside the building made all three of them listen closely, all of them on alert at once. The distinctive roar of a raptor that mixed with the shouting, made them all listen much closer still.
A man of considerable size – barefoot and dressed only in some crude undergarments – came into view in the next second. And he gasped and panted hard as he ran – his arms waving madly in a clear mix of threat and panic – with a raptor close behind him.
Ben questioned himself for a second, as time appeared to run in slow motion, as to how the fellow was possibly alive at all, still outrunning the dinosaur, even if barely. And then he saw the creature's foot – the left one, twisted and bleeding. The devastating injury slowed the still determined dinosaur down greatly. Still, the beast was closing the gap with every struggling step it managed to take down the path. And the poor man clearly couldn't go much further at his near sprinting pace. He stumbled once, clearly not even seeing the large rock that jutted up from the ground in front of him. And the man barely managed to catch himself, still visibly gasping as the raptor took a snarling nip at him, which just barely missed his waving arm.
The nameless had not yet surfaced, despite more than enough noise and thumping of feet against the ground to spur them up from their burrows below. But when the poor fellow had reached halfway down the path – a place that veered sharply to the right and dropped off hard at its edge over the aberrant lake still far below – the first of the dreadful things jumped up, already shrieking wildly.
The man - recovering by some great stroke of luck, from a second near fall over the hazard-laden ground – gave a loud and terrible cry of horror at the sight of first one and then a dozen of the small-clawed and snarling humanoid creatures. And somehow he managed to run faster than before. But the nameless were clearly not interested in him, at least not yet. And the whole pack of them was instantly busy with tearing the raptor into bloodied shreds, while they all just screeched and growled and jumped all over the ground in their hellish excitement.
Time seemed to slow to nearly a stop as Ben watched exactly what unfolded next. And though he was sure he might have yelled out a horrified shout of his own he would never be sure – as the whole large pack of nameless turned in almost one single instant to leap at the man. The unfortunate fellow however had gained distance, managing to run a ways down the path while nothing chased after him. And when he was targeted again – this time by something worse than any hungry dinosaur - he took the time to turn and watch behind him as he ran, clumsy as he tired, and nearly tripping himself up another time on the uneven ground under his bare feet. The path turned sharply again directly ahead of him. But he ran straight even as the path curved... this time to the left.
Nine nameless at the very least followed the poor soul as he plummeted from the sharp edge of the narrow pathway, and splashed into the lake far below. The nameless would drown quickly. Ben recalled at once that nameless was all but incapable of swimming. But the unfortunate man was drowning too. Ben understood that with heart stopping dread when he didn't see him surface in the lake below after too many long moments.
"I'm on it," He exclaimed, running across the wide expanse of rocky hard packed dirt to the edge of a lower section of the pathway system before anyone could even think of arguing against it. He ran along a path that crossed above the growing blue lake, and for a moment he just stood there, watching for any sign of motion below the water. He saw a splash somewhere below the narrow land bridge. And he knew at once that was all he might find to go on, in deciding so quickly where to jump.
The water was dangerous – he knew that full well. Certainly more than deep enough to reach above a man's head. But still too shallow to dive, at least from that height. The chance was very real that he would hit the bottom hard, as he feared the poor confused man had done. And the lake itself was fed by the huge deadly waterfall, created by a sudden end to the river, where it dropped off the edge of the level overhead. The lake churned horribly in places from the falling water. But he jumped anyway, without another second's thought about it.
His feet hit the water first, just as he'd hoped for in his haste. And he nearly impacted with the rocky bottom, before he managed to stop his descent. Without wasting a second more, he broke for the surface and took in a breath, looking about frantically as he did, before diving back under again in search of any single sign of a still-living person. He surfaced again for a breath, lightheaded from too long under the water already. And a sense of dread filled panic overtook him. But suddenly he saw him... the unfortunate man, not fully submerged at all, but instead face-down in the shallows. Ben swam just as quickly as his hide boots – weighted down and filled with water – would allow, to reach the poor fellow, Barely ten meters away.
"Someone run and find Stella," Ben called out quickly, yelling to be heard over the rushing of the waterfall, as he dragged the man – limp against him and leaving an alarming trail of blood in the water around him – onto the rocks beside the lake.
"I'll go," Johnny answered, already turning away from where he'd been standing – watching the scene unfold with growing terror in his eyes again – and bolting for the catwalk toward Stella's cabin.
"Keep your hands beside his head. We don't want him to move. A fall like that... worst case he broke his neck..." Ellie said, kneeling on the rocks, and already half drenched with water herself before Ben had noticed her approaching so quickly. He nodded mutely at her instruction because it made sense. His heart dropped fast at the blood that had begun to pool on the rocks under the still unconscious man's head. He was most certainly in a state worth of alarm. That was obvious even to Ben, in his lack of any more than basic common sense about such things. The bloody pool was spreading fast under his upper body as he lay flat on his back. And he was banged up and bruised and trembling from cold besides. Ben allowed himself the feeling of hope and relief, that washed over him at once when the stranger's eyes suddenly opened. But any hint of that relief was replaced with shock and panic when the man shoved him backward with both arms easily, and before it had ever looked like he might wish to move at all.
"I'll damn well kill you!" the stranger shouted. And before Ben could back himself up further, while still half sprawled awkwardly on the ground exactly where he'd landed, the man – much bigger than himself - grabbed for his arm and yanked it forward, hard enough to make him both stumble and gasp with pain. "I'll bloody destroy you!"
Ben was fully taken aback – and understandably so of course – at being screamed at and so violently threatened. And he sat for a long moment, just gasping a little for a breath on the ground, while he watched the man now so nervously. Ellie though was so oddly calm and collected, showing confidence despite her more than obvious vulnerability. She grabbed for the stranger's stiff and flying arm at once, in the middle of his next swing in her tribe-mate's direction, and just held it firmly by the wrist as she studied him intently.
"We are not going to be killing anyone," she said, firm but kindly. "We have some far better help on the way, but I need to figure out where this blood is coming from..." Ellie was so amazingly calm still, as her eyes met the injured stranger's. And she questioned slowly, "are you going to stay still and stop threatening my friend if I let go of you?" The man said nothing at all in reply, but Ellie let go of him regardless. Her look showed trust somehow, and she moved slowly feeling under his upper body with her hands clearly trying her best to check him over.
"Do you know your name?" she asked slowly, but urgently. Her right hand was bloody now as she felt under the man's head, and Ben – for his utter lack of any real knowledge beyond his very basic common sense, knew that was a bad sign.
"Nice work," Stella said. She'd arrived almost out of nowhere it seemed because she was already sitting on the ground nearby with her supply sack beside her before Ben had heard any noise of her running footsteps. She handed Ellie a clean scrap rag from her sack, and her eyes met those of the now clearly shaky younger woman with assurance.
"Hold that as tightly as you can," she ordered firmly. "We've got to try to get the bleeding slowed down so I can see exactly how bad this guy might have bashed his head." Ellie just nodded, already moving to follow directions before she was done with receiving them at all. However shaken and doubtful she might well have been, Ellie so obviously know somehow exactly what to do anyway. The rag was quickly soaked through with blood. But still, she didn't move her hands, pressing firmly, as Stella gently moved the man onto one side.
The stranger began screaming then. Incoherent noise at first – sounds of panic and confusion so unlike his earlier threats formed perfectly well into sentences. And the screaming turned quickly into mumbling, as he began to move again, now so obviously uncoordinated and clumsy as he fought to sit up, and could not even come close to it.
"Get your hands off me you damn stupid bitch!" he yelled, so suddenly coherent again and his words directed right at Ellie, who blinked in more than obvious hurt shock. She managed, however, though barely so it seemed, to keep a hold of the blood-soaked rag over the back of his head.
"You're so confused, I know," Stella said, speaking to the man calmly despite his shouting insults, her hands resting firmly on his shoulders. "And you probably have no idea where you or how you got here. Please just stay calm and let us help you. We'll explain it all later, alright?" Though even she was so clearly cautious now, her eyes never leaving the injured and furious man for a second as she spoke. Every bit of her attention stayed just as trained on him as she shifted positions a little on the ground, and reached for a radio carried in the back pocket of her cloth pants.
"Is he... okay?" Johnny asked slowly. His voice was low and quiet. So clearly the poor boy was halfway to truly terrified all over again. And Ben watched as he tapped lightly on Stella's shoulder, just as a much younger person might have in the panic of the unknown. The injured stranger was mumbling incoherent nonsense again – actual words this time at least, but nothing close to sensible. Something about an elevator, a pint of strawberries, and calling in to work that day... something about a place called 'Aspen.' Or was that the name of some person somewhere?
Stella barely even looked up as she shook her head, uncertain at the boy. And when Johnny stepped back slowly, Ben put an arm over his shoulder again sure he was just as nervous as his younger tribe-mate by now and just as surely out of his league entirely in even trying to help anyone.
"Tell us about Aspen," Ellie said to the man slowly. And her face showed unmistakable relief when Stella nodded at her in approval. "Just keep talking to us."
The stranger looked for a long moment like he would answer her calmly. He appeared to think intently, just as if he was struggling either to remember something or to form a thought properly into words. But in the very next second, and before Ben – who was watching him so carefully – could utter a word of warning, his face was filled again with utter rage.
"I'll smash your damn bloody face in, girl," he screamed, hands clenched into fists and his eyes staring ahead unblinking. "I hope you die. I hope you die!"
He would surely have managed to smash his head against the rocks in his blind rage, if Ellie – amazingly holding it together through goodness only knew what manner of miracle of willpower and determination by then – hadn't managed to hold him in place firmly enough to prevent it. And he may well have hit Ellie, and certainly done so hard enough to badly injure her considering his size, if Stella hadn't grabbed both his arms, which she held pinned against the rocks with a deceptively strong grip, as his words of absolute and utter violence turned back into wordless screams of rage.
"Something is... very wrong," said Johnny, looking around from one of the group to the next while his voice shook with his unease, just as soon as the man's screaming had died down. The stranger had fallen still and silent again, his eyes staring up at nothing, hazy and unfocused. "No one... no acts like that..."
"Something is definitely very wrong," Stella said. She spoke without even looking up, her eyes fixed on the stranger – though it was unclear now if she hoped he would move and speak again or if she hoped he wouldn't. Her hands let go of his wrists, with some clear hesitation. And finally, she just shook her head, almost hopelessly.
"His head trauma could be devastating," she muttered, so sadly defeated. "That would explain his behavior..." She finally looked up then, her eyes on Ellie now and a look of assurance on her face. "I don't think he meant a word of his horrible threats to you..."
"So... what do we do now?" Ellie's question was asked in a voice so determined, so strangely understanding and so... hopelessly sad too. And again Stella just shook her head slightly.
"Not much to be done I fear," she said, her tone quiet as she looked up toward the base, obviously waiting for help she'd called for at some point over the radio. "He'll go to my cabin of course, but unless he gets better on his own, I'm afraid he'll die within a day or two..."
Ben felt Johnny shift his weight a little under the grip of his arm – and it was only then that he returned to his awareness of his arm around the boy's shoulder at all. He saw the boy brush a hand across his eyes quickly – a so clearly desperate attempt to rid himself of any stray tears that might have escaped him. And Ben respectively pretended, straight faced as he could force himself to be, that he simply hadn't noticed. He couldn't deny though that he certainly understood his young bunkmate's despair entirely... the first new arrival he would ever see, after his own arrival in that place, and the man was quite literally facing death before he'd ever had a chance in their world.
'This place doesn't give the slightest care who makes it here and who doesn't'
Those were the words that echoed through Ben's head then, and certainly not for the first time either. And at first, he wanted to say exactly that to the boy who stood beside him, trembling now. But he thought better of it at once and just shook his head a little to chase away the thought of it. And instead, he just stood, staring off in the same direction that Johnny was looking now, out over the lake and the waterfall and the path that lead far down into the darkness in the depths of their world.
Night had fallen on the strange aberrant world – though it would be a short night indeed, lasting only a few hours that time of the year. And Stella shivered a little from the chill in the air and remembered only then that she was still dressed only in thin cloth clothing. Jessie, standing close to her on the small porch of her cabin, pulled her against him at once, before she could even deny her chill. And he warmed her easily with his strong arms wrapped around her much smaller body.
"Any word on..." Jessie looked past the cabin door, in the direction of the bunk where he must have known the new arrival lay. But he didn't finish the question at all, and instead just fell silent again, his expression unsure.
"I'm sorry," he said after another short moment. And he still looked uncertain. "I don't know his name..."
"No one knows his name," Stella answered, suddenly sad despite herself. She leaned on the wooden railing of the porch and sighed. "He's woken up twice already since he's been with me. I asked him what I should call him. I... wanted to know if he could answer. No luck. And I wasn't exactly expecting any..."
"He's been awake?" Jessie asked. His tone was hesitantly hopeful, and he sighed a little in thought. "That's a good sign... isn't it?"
"It is." Stella rested her head against Jessie's arm, and fought back her growing despair, despite the seemingly decent condition of the new arrival. "And I haven't seen any outward signs of his brain swelling fatally inside his head... So far though he's only either babbled utter nonsense or just stared blankly just as though he's seeing without any real understanding of what he's looking at. But at least he's not screaming rage anymore like he was beside the lake..." Jessie looked down at her, his eyes curious, and concerned. And she sighed a little, still close against him.
"May I see him?" Jessie asked. And Stella only stood for a moment, silent.
"He'll truly be a person to you if you do that," she said, with a sigh and considering her words carefully. "I know you all too well, you know. You'll only be crushed right along with me if he dies..."
Still, she stepped through the door into her cluttered cabin, as soon as Jessie had let go of her. And she was not the least bit surprised at all when he followed behind her, and all of that despite his look telling her that he knew full well she was right about him entirely.
"Where do you suppose this fellow came from?" the tribe leader mused. His tone was one of surprised relief, clearly, at seeing how aside from the obvious damage to the man's head – still seeping blood just a little through loose cloth wrappings Stella had tied around it – and a few simple scrapes, the new arrival looked almost okay. "Or... when for that matter?"
"Never any way to say really," Stella answered, with a sigh. "You know I can't even start to guess any more than you could." She looked the man over, and for the first time, she truly tried to notice anything that could have given even a hint of his origins. His skin was tanned and she could only assume he worked in the sun. He was tall and certainly strong – she'd felt a good hint of his strength, even injured, when she'd been forced to struggle with him in his confusion. She remembered that his hair, under the blood and cloth bandages, was dark. And she thought for sure his eyes were brown. None of that told her anything really, and that was all she had to go on. She shrugged and sighed again in her helplessness to even guess – just as she was hopeless to guess much about anyone in that world.
"I understand it was Ben that saved this guy from possibly drowning," Jessie said. The pride behind his words was unmistakable. And Stella couldn't help but smile, despite the seriousness of the day and their conversation itself. She knew full well, though he never said a word, just much he had come to quickly value and respect that young man in the short time he'd been with them.
"That's what I later heard from Johnny yeah," Stella nodded slowly. Then she frowned, her disbelief catching up to her now that she'd given herself a chance to think about it. "Though... from what I hear he could easily have killed himself just up and diving from the pathway like that. He's damn reckless and impulsive. We all know that." A slight stoic nod and a hint of a chuckle from the tribe leader were his only reply.
"Stella," Jessie's vice, speaking again after they had both stood for several long moments in comfortable silence both thinking their own thoughts, got her attention at once. And she glanced around quickly, to see him gesturing toward the bunk with a hesitant and hopeful smile on his face. The stranger was awake again – his eyes open, and looking around him a bit, even if he otherwise remained unmoving. She hurried closer to the bunk at once. And she smiled down at the still unnamed stranger, wondering all the while if he recalled anything of the last time he'd been awake, at least an hour before.
"Can you grab me some water please?" she asked, waving toward a tap across the cabin and near the still wide-open door, and smiled approval when Jessie fetched a water jar from its place on the closest shelf and filled it from the tap before he brought it to her.
"Where's my damn keys, Betsy?" the man muttered. And Stella smiled brighter in his direction. Because while nothing he said made the slightest hint of sense, of course, it was certainly at least a full and fully coherent sentence nonetheless.
"My name is Stella," she said slowly. And she watched his eyes blink, slowly and almost thoughtfully as he appeared to almost remember that he's heard her name the last time he'd woken up. She let the hope that he might answer back with a name of his own linger in her mind for a moment. But then his eyes blinked again, and all recognition and true awareness appeared to leave him again to the now too familiar blank stare at nothing.
"Damn fool right busted the mower..." he mumbled – still another full sentence at least, but hardly a sensible one now in the least as Stella worked to help him sit up just a bit on the bunk. She offered her calm assurance, with a firm hold on him when his eyes blinked now in utter confusion and a sudden look of terror flashed across his face.
"Drink this," Stella ordered, not unkindly, while she held the jar to his mouth carefully and tipped a small amount of its contents in. To her relief, the man drank the water, and instantly he managed more while she held the jar, and him, up. Another decent sign. And Stella let herself nod her approval at that slowly.
"You look so much better now," she said to the stranger, barely needing to remind herself to speak so calmly as she was. She nodded approval when he drank again from the jar, without any prompting at all, and appearing to want to drink on his own, after another moment. When he stopped drinking again, this time turning his head away just a little and refusing more, she gently shifted his weight back onto the bunk again.
"Perhaps..." she mused cautiously – and she took that moment to hold one of his arms by the wrist, before letting it go carefully. She remembered to smile her encouragement at him – convinced he surely comprehended kindness, even if his reality made little sense at all – when he held his arm up on his own for a good moment, before lowering it to the bunk as though he was truly trying now. "I can get you cleaned up a bit."
She crossed the cabin quickly, to fill a large bowl with water from her tap by the door. Then she grabbed a small washing rag she'd left hung to dry near the door and hurried back to sit carefully, perched on the edge of the bunk, after setting the bowl on a rickety table beside her. Then she set to work, gently lifting one of his arms from the bunk again, and wiping away at a thin coating of dirt that covered it, before moving on, quickly as she could to the other arm. The stranger's eyes stayed open, so obviously watching her as she sat beside him, with the rag in her hand. And he blinked so slowly now and then.
"He's just as entitled as anyone to the simple dignity of being clean," she said firmly, when she caught Jessie watching her too, his face curious – as she worked. She saw the tribe leader smile then, and felt the welcome warmth of his hand, as it rested on her shoulder.
"It looks to me like he might just be alright," Jessie said. And he smiled with true confidence now. Stella, gently wiping at the stranger's upper arm with the now dirty rag, shook her head though, still doubtful despite the progress of the injured man. He was so still, as she went on gently wiping at the dirt that covered him in a thin grimy film - certainly not resisting her efforts, and even holding his arm up just a little on his own as he had before.
"I do think he'll certainly live," she said, hesitant and cautious. "He'll most certainly be capable of.. something. But just how much, I don't know." Stella shook her head for a moment, silent and thinking thoughts she knew she couldn't brush off any longer. "This world of ours is just not the place for someone who I fear will never be the same again..."
"No one is ever turned away," Jessie answered, speaking slowly as her words fully registered and he appeared to fully understand the implications of everything she'd said. He picked up the bowl of water, now clearly too dirty to be useful, carried it across the cabin to dump it out the door, and filled it again from the tap before he carried it back quickly.
"We'll find a place for him among us," he promised, gesturing with his eyes toward the injured new arrival on the bunk. "He will be cared for, fed, and sheltered, not unlike anyone that stumbles upon the Lighted Dwelling. He's a survivor of this place, the same as anyone."
"Some people in this place would leave him to the nameless..." Stella muttered, sudden sadness creeping up from somewhere in the back of her mind. And she shook her head, fighting to forget the harsh and sad reality of people fighting for their own survival, at the cost of the weakest and the helpless.
"We are not 'some people,'" Jessie reminded her, confidant and smiling sadly beside her, as she sat wiping slowly over the stranger's upper body with her rag. And she knew full well he spoke of the tribe as a whole in his statement.
She watched, surprised and daring to be hopeful – the rag in her hand and paused in the air again – when the man blinked slower and seemingly deliberate, at her. She smiled at him again, silently assuring, when his eyes followed her movement as she dropped the rag back into the bowl beside her.
"Who are you?" he asked slowly. His voice was quiet, but the words were logical. He stiffened in what was surely terror at a hundred unknowns, as his eyes suddenly darted around the little cabin. "Where am I? What is this place?"
Stella paused at his questions, not prepared to have heard him speak and question with such deliberate awareness, and a true need to know anything at all. She wondered for a moment just how to explain the wheres and whys of anything to something so confused when she could barely do so for anyone not in the state he was in. And she almost shook her head, helpless and struggling, when Jessie only looked at her blankly and unsure himself over where to even begin. But the seconds were ticking away all the same, even as she struggled with complex explanations. And the man was no less agitated in the way he looked from one wall to the next and formed his hand gradually back into its tight fist again.
"You're inside my little cabin," Stella said, once utter desperation had made her decide to start with simple basics, and work from there as needed. Her free hand waved toward the cabin door, while the other held his in assurance. "There's... a whole world out there. But it won't be anything like the one you might remember. It is certainly pretty though at least. And so very different it's fascinating. There are... creatures here like nothing you've ever seen. Some have learned to be our friends..."
"A different... world?" the man's voice was shaky in his still growing fright as he thought about the implications. But he was certainly thinking all the same. And comprehending at least as well as anyone might do. The baffled and denying expression that covered his face now, was little different from that of anyone that had first been found washed up in that world. And he just blinked his eyes in shock for a moment as he tried to move to sit up all on his own. Stella stopped him from that with a firm hand on his shoulder only because she still couldn't fully trust that the fellow's sense of balance would let him do much aside from trembling onto the floor.
"A world like none you could ever imagine," she said. And she made herself smile at him as she spoke – remembered not to mention a thing about the endless dangers yet. He gestured toward Jessie, who now stood behind her, silent and observing with interest.
"This is our amazing leader, Jessie" she continued. "He's usually a quiet man. But he truly does love his people...
"My... my head..." the stranger muttered. And Stella saw the panic in his eyes as he fully began to register his pain right along with what had to have surely been a dozen emotions at once – from curious, to lost, to petrified with terror and so many in between.
"You cracked it pretty good," she told him, honestly. She explained the fall into the lake, speaking slowly so that he could follow her words. And he certainly seemed to listen, comprehending.
"What should we call you?" she asked him, cautiously hopeful as she waited while he lay still and appeared to think for a moment, so trying hard just to remember having once had a name.
"Don't panic if you can't remember," Jessie said, speaking to the new arrival himself for the first time. His tone was so calm and collected, filled with the patience in which he'd addressed so many baffled and shocked newly washed up arrivals before. "It should come back to you soon enough."
The still unnamed stranger however was probably not fully listening anymore. And if he was, then he certainly wasn't fully understanding. His eyes turned hazy again, and he glanced around the cabin, once again in an all to clear daze. And any sign of interest or awareness of anything around him faded in an instant. Soon, he'd fallen unconscious again. And Stella, done with cleaning up up the very best she could manage, stood up from the edge of the bunk to pull the hide cover over him carefully.
"So," Jessie said, his tone serious but far from unloving, as held his hands out to her, invitingly. "Now that we've fully established that it doesn't fully matter, how bad could this be?"
Stella, wrapped in his arms now, looked back toward the injured stranger. And she saw that Jessie was watching him too with concern in his eyes. She shook her head with a dozen unknowns.
"It's entirely impossible to say," she said, slowly. And she watched Jessie nod, with understanding – however uneasy his fleeting look might well have been.
Stella freed herself from Jessie's firm but of course, still gentle hold on her picked up the bowl of water and crossed the cabin to dump it out the door. He trailed behind her, and soon they found themselves standing together on the porch again, herself leaning on the railing and wondering, with oddly passive lack of concern for the stability of the rickety thing, as he leaned lightly against her, crushing her gently between the rail and himself.
"Thank you for your help with Ellie yesterday..." she said, mumbling into his shirt again.
"It was no trouble at all," Jessie answered. He smiled, the usual smile of confidant assurance that Stella had come to love some much about him. "I didn't even need to do much."
"I know... but still. It's hardly your job..."
"Stella, I hardly think my job description can ever be so easily determined," Jessie said, laughing slightly.
"Ellie jumped right in and helped me with this man, you know," Stella muttered. "She didn't seem to have a second thought about it, and just knew exactly what to do. It's as though... as though she was remembering that she always knew. She was obviously still learning, but..." Stella fell silent then, thinking too many thoughts at once as she watched the sleeping injured man on the bunk, and then stared back up at the tribe leader who she loved.
"Perhaps you could teach her," Jessie mused. He smiled, hopeful and so obviously pleased with his suggestion. "It might be good for you to have some help. Someone who can deal with day-to-day minor injuries and such at the least..."
Stella recalled earlier days in that place – after the tribe had started to grow faster and faster, and she became so truly needed by the people of the Lightened Dwelling. She recalled the months that had fast turned to years of her hoping for a new arrival with some basic knowledge – anything really – of healing or first aid, of medicinal plants, of anatomy... someone who at the very bare minimum at least possessed enough drive or interest to watch her and learn... to ask questions because they wanted to know. She had since given up on any hope of that by then. A cruel show of that dark world's twisted irony that Ellie, of anyone, might well have been the person she'd once wished she could meet in that place. And she reflected on that thought with sudden sadness.
'If only I didn't think I'd soon be forced to declare her time of death...' The terrible thought screamed in Stella's head. But she couldn't make herself say a word of it out loud. Because she knew by then that despite herself, she'd come to care for the girl as much as Jessie cared for Ben.
"Hey. We don't know she won't survive," Jessie said, clearly guessing at the thoughts that echoed through her head... as though he'd read her mind entirely. He hugged her tightly again, and it was only then that she felt the hints of tears in her eyes, which must have been the thing that gave her sad thoughts away.
"No, you're right," Stella said, working harder now to fight back her threatening tears, and quickly feeling herself losing that battle. "But... it's unlikely, Jessie. You've seen enough to know as well as I do, that girl barely has a chance..."
She stood back again, leaning on the railing, and watched for a long and passing moment as he stood silently and with a thoughtful look on his face. The look slowly turned to one of his own sadness, and then finally to something close to dread. And he looked around a little, probably at nothing of any great significance, before he stood, staring past her like she had just simply disappeared from his vision entirely.
"Katie told me perhaps we should have dropped her into the hazard zone and yanked her boots off or something before she even woke up..." he mumbled, in a voice of despair. "I thought that was flat out horrible and wrong because Ellie couldn't agree to risk it... I said we'd likely just have killed her anyway. I fear I may well have made the wrong call after all..."
Stella shook her head pointedly, just soon as he'd finished speaking. And she tried hard to sweep away his doubt and guilt with an assuring smile, which she knew would do so little.
"You were right," she said firmly. "I'd have been well beyond amazed if you somehow hadn't killed her doing that." She looked him in the eyes, determined and serious. And despite her own sadness and despair, her relief was immediate, when he sighed a little in his obvious understanding that he had decided against a tragic and horrible mistake.
"We need to get away together sometime," Jessie said, his despair fading slowly but steadily as he mused slowly and smiled a little. "We can surely find some adventure in this place. We ride far enough and it will more than surely find us..." Stella just stood, shaking her head in disbelief as she searched for some acceptable reply to the absurdity.
"You should know full well by now I'm hardly the adventuring type," she muttered, half amused even as he stood staring at her with a hopeful expression.
"You were always the adventurous one," she said, still shaking her head as he hugged her close to him again. "You were made for this life, here in this place. As for me, I'm just lucky to have found a place to be protected from the madness out there..." Jessie, to Stella's disbelief, gave a loud and genuine laugh at this, before he grinned at her so proudly.
"Says someone that survived this place, alone for months in the wilderness... a lady who knew only the big city, who taught herself to build so she could have the safety of a shelter, who taught herself to single-handedly hunt dinosaurs, to hide in bushes, and fight for her life.."
"I got by on sheer luck." Stella heard her own voice go quiet as she spoke again. And she shuddered a little, against Jessie's strong body, just recalling those early months in that world. She wondered then why she'd never thought to tell him exactly how strongly she felt about just being allowed to forget all about it. He smiled though – she could see that when she dared to look up at him again, sure her eyes showed her terror now. And he hugged her tighter, obviously noticing at once.
"I think you underestimate yourself out there," he said, serious and assuring at the same moment. He took her hand in his and held it tight, while his eyes looked into hers intently, holding her attention. "Remember, you saved my life once." He stood for a while, just looking down into the blackness below and thinking until finally, he looked up again with a serious, and reflecting look on his face.
"That whole incident was... blurry, yes." He laughed just a little then, despite the seriousness of the subject. "But, I can't forget the way you just stood glaring down my armed men, before you told 'em all to make themselves useful and help you."
Stella however didn't share his laughter. Instead, she only pressed her body tight against his again and shivered not just from the chill of night.
"Will you... stay with me tonight?" she asked, relieved when Jessie, unsurprisingly nodded his agreement.