Chapter 13: Playground (II)

They walked along a forest trail towards their destination.

Beside them Sonic had fallen into a routine, leaping across every obstacle in his path and then trotting along for a while, stretching and catching (and cursing under) his breath. He was either too stubborn to realize that those minor stunts weren't contributing to his healing process, or simply too stupid, and Allan was torn between being annoyed by his ignorance, and the fact that he thought Sonic's display of agility was strangely mesmerizing. Also, Sonic had a talent for disappearing just in time when they came across someone else on the way, so he had to at least give him that.

The situation before had sprouted a shit ton of questions, and Allan hadn't managed to ask even one of them so far. What made it worse was that Jen hadn't cared about questioning Sonic either. So they'd spent the rest of the drive and the first part of the hike without any talk whatsoever.

"Maybe it's like with Superman," Allan blurted when the pile of questions in his head eventually toppled over.

It sounded better before he'd said it out loud.

Jen knitted her brows in skepticism. "You mean staying on Earth gave him superpowers?"

Her tone made a guy doing somersaults with a bruised rib suddenly appear like they were the most reasonable person around.

"Well…" Allan shrugged, now feeling somewhat flushed.

"…Kinda expected you'd question him about it first thing," she said.

"Why didn't you?" he returned.

Jen opened her mouth, then closed it again. She sighed. "It seemed like a chance for you to be a little more friendly with him. He's not that weird."

"That's exactly what's unnerving me." Allan threw his hands into the air. "I mean, he's supposed to be an alien for god's sake. Can't he be at least a little bit different from us. He doesn't even have a lisp from those pointy teeth. I bet if you had him on the phone, you wouldn't even notice." He briefly checked whether Sonic had picked up on his outburst, but Sonic just skipped over a pile of logs like he wanted to win a contest.

Jen frowned. "That's your problem of all things?"

Allan stopped, watching her trod away for a few steps before he caught up again.

It was silly. But it was definitely part of his problem. If Sonic wasn't ultimately so… inoffensive to be around, Jen would've thought twice to take him in. If any of his other friends had decided to house an alien, Allan couldn't have cared less, but the fact that it had to be her of all people…

"Why did it have to be you?" He almost stumbled over his tongue.

"W-what?" She gave him an odd look. Did her cheeks look rosy?

Allan shifted his eyes so that Jen followed his gaze. Sonic was pacing along, taking one of his 'breathers'.

"Oh."

He wasn't sure if he'd caught a hint of disappointment there, but it didn't come back again.

"Because he helped me, I guess," she said. "And when he appeared at my place he just seemed so… lost. What would you've done?"

"I don't know," he admitted. But he was sure he would've sent him off the same night.

…Probably.

"I mean," Jen said. "I kind of thought I'd send him away the next day, but then I got curious, and then—" She paused, biting her lip. "He's a kid. He's, like, fourteen."

Allan was stunned for a moment. Sonic had struck him as young-ish but 'fourteen' seemed a little off. Even if Mobius' shorter days would technically amount to them having more days in a year, the elapsed time would still be the same, wouldn't it?

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Maybe they don't count in years?"

"Unless he's from a different place entirely, anything else doesn't make much sense, does it?"

Allan nodded slowly. "Fourteen," he mused. Did that change anything? It definitely made the idea of Sonic ending up on Earth because of a massive screw-up (instead of some kind of conspiracy) more plausible, but was it enough to put him at ease? Who knew what 'fourteen' meant for their kind anyway? The idea that this one could have a pair of worried parents out there somewhere seemed about as outlandish to him as picking up a degree in music.

"No wonder he's crappy at housekeeping," Allan said instead. Then another thought struck him. "Noticed any shortage of tissues yet?"

"What does that have to do with any—?"

Allan watched Jen's face gradually go from confusion to realization then indignation. Her mouth dropped open. Allan barely swallowed a grin.

"I did not need that mental image, thank you," Jen cried. But the laugh that followed betrayed her flustered expression.

"Worth it," he chuckled.

Sonic had stopped, ears pricked up like those of a stalking cat. At least there was something not unsettlingly human about him (aside from the 'going commando' part, which was unsettling in an entirely different way).

"It's here," Sonic said, sounding a bit surprised.

"Huh? Nah, we're not close enough yet." Jen grabbed the map pieces sticking out from Allan's backpack and tried to align the path they were on with their supposed destination.

"No. I'm sure." Sonic pointed into the woods somewhere ahead. "Like, here."

Allan frowned, following his gaze. There was actually a small trail leading off some ways ahead, but no sign of a colored pole anywhere.

"Alright," Jen said doubtfully, rolling the sheets up again. "Lead the way, then."

"Uh, no. You first. There's people."

"What, are you a psychic now?" Allan muttered.

"At least he's being careful?" Jen shrugged.

#

"Well, shit," Allan concluded.

The Star Post was in fact only a couple of meters away from the path. It was also, however, part of a forest playground, standing right in the middle of a large sandpit.

About half a dozen families leisured about, not paying the thing any unusual attention. It was obviously inconspicuous enough to pass off as proper playground decoration. Some kid made a clumsy attempt at climbing the tip, then lost his grip and tumbled into the sand below. He decided to climb the side of the slide next.

"I guess that answers the question about 'seeing images'," Jen said. "Otherwise everyone would be freaking out by now."

"What now?" Allan asked. "Are we going to wait?"

Jen hummed, then shook her head. She stepped into the sandpit, weaved past the kids and their toys and planted herself in front of the post, putting several parents on alert.

Allan acknowledged them with a nod and the most soothing look he could manage. "Uh, university project," he said, then carefully went after Jen. It seemed to be enough to defuse the sudden tension, but some of them still looked as if his words had marked the start of a timer ticking down.

The Star Post was about Jen's height and a few inches below Allan's. It also looked perfectly useless, but now that he stood so close to it, it actually felt a little bit out of place. Could this thing really be able to open a portal? What would happen to his head if it did? Would he just suddenly be in two places at once, or would the portal shear his head right off?

He swallowed, crouching down beside Jen who'd already begun inspecting the lower part.

"He said there'd be some sort of cage at the bottom," she mused.

Instead, the lower end of the Post was shaped like a solid, slightly hourglass-shaped, cylinder, only broken up by three silvery hoops that gleamed as if they'd been restored recently. They almost seamlessly fit into the rest of the shape. Jen ran a finger along their smooth looking surface.

"Maybe it's a different model or something?" Allan suggested.

"Well, I know at least someone who should know about this," she said.

Jen let her gaze wander across the playground before rising to her feet again and prompting Allan to do the same. "Looks like it's gonna be a while 'til we find out, though."

Allan nodded, scanning the area as well. "Are we grown-up enough to check out the ropeway back there?" he asked.

"We are," she sang.

Sonic had watched the playground from the crown of a nearby tree, still somewhat satisfied with today's exercise. Now though, he wouldn't mind if the people down there finally decided to get lost.

That Star Post was actually there.

The people were clearly the reason Sonic hadn't bothered with the place before. What wasn't so clear, though, was how he'd managed to somehow 'sense' the Star Post earlier. For a brief moment he'd just felt something, then it was gone again. Was he just getting more… receptive all of a sudden, or was there actually something different about this particular Post? There weren't too many people left, but until they were gone, he wouldn't find out for sure.

Meanwhile he'd pretty much hung around the area and done nothing aside from trying to find something to eat—a task that had seemed much more exciting and adventurous before he'd known what it meant to have to rely on it. He wasn't exactly under pressure anymore (well, most of the time anyway…), but watching Jen and Allan snack on the stuff they'd brought didn't make waiting any easier.

Sonic could picture Jen trying to look for him out here, sharing something, but he could just as well picture Allan trying to talk her out of it. It was fine either way—even though she did have a tendency to overdo it—but in the end Sonic had no idea what the guy's deal was anyway. He was perfectly aware that Jen helped him out without getting anything in return—something Sonic would do himself without thinking—and he felt more than strange being on the receiving end of it, but he had no idea what he could be doing wrong that made the guy so… skittish most of the time.

The last of the people were packing up now. Finally.

Underneath Sonic's tree a kid appeared. It was probably a girl, but kids were a lot harder to determine than adults, so he wasn't entirely sure. She at least didn't seem to be taller than him, so that was something. A gray-ish brown bird came hopping past and she chased after it. The girl probably belonged to the people packing up, but no one seemed to be freaking out yet. Maybe he could get her to head back before she got lost and the guys began roaming the place for the rest of the night…

Sonic slid to a branch below, suppressing a grunt when the motion tugged at his ribs. Why did resting always have to make pain worse for a while? He knew why he kind of skimped on that most of the time.

He brushed past a bunch of leaves as he dropped to the next level, then froze. A woman had come after the kid, pausing below. She looked right at him, eyes wide. Sonic grimaced.

A moment passed, then she seemed to realize she was letting her kid get out of sight. She tried to scan the area while at the same time trying not to let Sonic out of her sight.

"She's there," Sonic said, thumbing sideways.

She started, looking at him, then her gaze followed his thumb. The girl kneeled a few paces off, trying to feed the bird some kind of nut.

The woman faced him again, posture relaxed now but face frowning. "You can talk?" she said.

Sonic made a vague gesture. »Yeaah, I'm kinda good at it actually. 'S just no one seems to notice around here.« He gave a lopsided grin.

She blinked, looking puzzled for a moment but with a faint smile spreading on her face, then she hurried after her kid.

Sonic felt strangely relaxed. At this point he didn't even have a word to describe the current state of his vocabulary, but apparently it was already enough to lower people's freak-out level to somewhere around 'mild confusion'. Enough reason to get this stuff into his head even faster from now on.

…Or maybe he just needed to finally get home. There was a Star Post supposed to do the job right around the corner after all. Sonic slipped off the tree and out of the woman's sight.

#

The playground was finally empty. The late rays of the sun gleamed past the trees that surrounded it and the air was crisp despite the warm light underneath a clear but dimming sky.

Sonic hopped on top of one of the logs separating the sandpit from the rest of the area. The Star Post stood in the sandpit's center as if someone had put it there on purpose. It even had the same color scheme as the nearby slide. But it must've been the other way around. You didn't just move a Star Post somewhere else. Wherever they stood, they'd been standing there for pretty much forever.

At least that's what he knew.

Which reminded him that he didn't know much at all.

He was close enough now to feel something though. Like a kind of hum that he heard with his chest instead of his ears—as if he'd stepped into a zone of concentrated Chaos energy that surrounded the Post, sending a faint prickle across his skin. It felt as if the Star Post was supercharged or something—whatever sense that made.

Had the others felt anything when they stood so close? Sonic had watched Jen and Allan when they'd stepped into the sandpit, but neither they, nor anyone else had seemed fazed whatsoever. So either this had started to happen right this moment, or neither of them had noticed. Whatever was going on, it had better be a good sign. He was ready for a show.

Sonic was about to jump into the sandpit, then hesitated. Where were Jen and Allan, anyway? They'd been roaming around the place all day, only to disappear now with everyone else? Even Allan had seemed faintly interested, so that couldn't be right.

He glanced at the Star Post again, licking his lips.

If the thing worked now, should he maybe just leave? It was what he'd do if Jen and Allan weren't around just now. The potential 'goodbye' was implied each time he set out from her place, after all. Sonic took a breath, then couldn't bring his feet to carry him closer to the Star Post.

Nope. For all he couldn't do to pay her back, he could at least give her that.

He paced along the top of the logs, keeping his distance and looking out for the two humans in question. Then he spotted Jen and Allan on a bench halfway hidden behind a bush that was still covered in autumnal leaves. Sonic leaped off the logs, stepping closer, then paused.

They… kissed.

That was new.

A couple of things did make a lot more sense now, though.

Jen parted from Allan as if she'd somehow sensed Sonic standing there, then gaped anyway. Allan slouched, lips forming a line. He hesitantly removed his hands from her hips.

"Dude!" Jen cried in a mix of laughter and despair, grabbing something from the bench and throwing it at Sonic.

He snatched it out of the air at the last moment, recognizing it as the crumpled remnants of one of the pastry bags Jen had brought. Did they have to eat it all?

"See, this is what I'm talking about," Allan said, gesturing a hand at Sonic.

"Oh please, you could've caught that," Jen said.

"No, not that!"

...Maybe it wasn't so bad Sonic didn't understand everything yet.

#

"Alright," Allan said, crossing his arms and planting himself at the edge of the sandpit. "Impress me."

Sonic leapt on top of the array of logs, feeling engulfed in static again. Before he could take another step though, Jen came after him.

"Wait," she said. Sonic turned.

"You—" She bit her lip. "This is gonna be it, right? If this works, you'll leave."

Allan watched her curiously.

Sonic nodded. He hadn't understood exactly, but he'd definitely gotten better at reading expressions.

Jen gave a nod as well, then extended a hand, eventually just grabbing Sonic's and taking it into both of her own, holding it close. "Just in case. I mean—" She looked at him with restless eyes for a moment, then her grip tightened briefly and she let go again.

Man, he hated that part.

He smiled anyway.

"Thanks, Jen," he said, then jumped into the sandpit.

The moment his feet hit the ground a deep hum rose from the Star Post, ending abruptly in the sound of pressured air bursting free. Puffs of sand shot out of the silvery hoops and hinges of the Post, softly floating towards the ground.

Allan called out in surprise.

Then Sonic's vision went blank.

He started. This wasn't supposed to happen now. He needed to see whether that stupid Post was only doing the same clean-up stuff the one in the mountains had done or whether an actual portal opened. The only time he'd ever seen one, it had been open so briefly, he would completely miss it if he had to sit out a vision again. He needed to get out!

Sonic floated again, this time above a clearing surrounded by tall broadleaves. Their crowns swayed softly in a breeze he couldn't feel, green leaves gleaming in the rays of the sun. A bunch of gauges appeared at the edge of his vision, one of them a bright green bar again. This time it clearly looked like a frickin' battery bar. How had he missed that before?

Now, if he just tried to do stuff, it would end again, right?

Sonic twisted in the air on sheer intuition. A 'virtual version' of the Star Post was right beneath him, but Jen and Allan were nowhere to be seen. Before him, where tall trees stood in the 'real world', the clearing opened up to a wide, shallow lake of brilliant water, its smooth shimmering surface only disturbed by—

Were that chao playing in it?

This was the first time something 'alive' was in these visions—not counting walrus-dude, anyway. Ever since that time he'd never had any of those 'grainy' visions again either, and seeing some other creature with him in one of the colored, floaty ones, was clearly new. Could there be people in here, too? Someone to talk to?

Beside the lake, a tall pedestal stood there like a landmark. One of its sides seemed to have a word and some sort of relief on it, sharp shadows making it stand out against the surface.

Sonic imagined his view zooming in on the pedestal and he instantly surged towards it with unexpected speed. The moment he got close enough to decipher anything, a glaring red font smacked into his view, and the image distorted before his eyes. Sonic stumbled as he popped back into reality.

The Star Post stood there as quietly as before.

Sonic glanced back into the bemused faces of Jen and Allan. They looked just the way he'd left them.

"…Did you see?" Sonic asked a lot less eloquently than he would've liked. He pointed towards the Post.

Jen frowned, exchanging a glance with Allan.

"It spun for a second," she said, gesturing. "But that's it."

Sonic turned back towards the Star Post, rubbing his face. Alright, so he hadn't missed anything. Great, and crap. And how was this one going to work anyway? It didn't even have one of those cages at the bottom.

He stepped closer, running his finger along one of the smooth, silvery hoops. It budged slightly, like a perfectly supported, recently maintained wheel. It could move for about a finger's width or so in both directions, then stopped with a solid chunk in pretty much the same way the other Post's cages had before. Sonic didn't need to try any further to know that he wasn't going to make this one work for him either. It actually now even seemed as if those Star Posts were actively locking him out. But then why had they let him 'in' in the first place? Had there, back on Mobius, been someone else who'd actually activated it and Sonic had gotten in before them?

If that was the case, they could really come and fetch him now, please.

#

Jen watched Sonic inspect the shiny hoops at the bottom of the pole, which, for some reason, now seemed to be able to pivot to some degree. When she'd looked at them earlier, they'd definitely been stuck fast. But that strange gust from before must've managed to clean them out—whatever it was that had caused it.

"It actually looked like he 'saw' something just there," Allan mused.

"I guess so," she said absently, starting to cross the logs and walk towards the center of the sandpit.

When Sonic had approached the Star Post, she'd for a tiny moment hoped that it wouldn't work, only to instantly feel horrible about it. The kid was supposed to go home, not hang out here forever trying to get a new language into his head. And the crumpled expression he'd had when examining the hoops didn't help calm her conscience either. But there were just so many questions left. It seemed too early to—"Hey!"

Sonic abruptly took off towards the edge of the playground, disappearing between the trees.

"I guess that's that," Allan said, following her into the sandpit.

Jen knelt down with a groan, inspecting the hoop once more. It really was kind of loose now.

Allan crouched down across from her. "Not going after him?" he asked.

"Not today." She smiled.

A moment later, Sonic returned to the clearing, calling, »Hey, could you help me out here?«

"Did you understand—"

"No," Jen said. "But now I'm going after him."

Sonic was easy to spot a couple of steps into the woods, pacing between trees and apparently looking for something. When he noticed them approach, he beckoned them over, then gestured towards the general area away from the playground.

"Do you know when there is, uh, was…?" he shook his head, interrupting himself, then crouched down and picked a twig to draw a kidney-like shape into the dirt, along with a few markers that seemed to depict the playground and the Star Post. "Here," he said, pointing sideways again, twig in hand. "Water."

Jen practically felt Allan crease his brows behind her back. She took a moment to inspect the drawing, then walked a few steps to follow the direction Sonic had indicated. She had no idea where Sonic could've gotten the idea of a body of water being around here, but she vaguely remembered hearing about changes in landscape during the past centuries (millennia?) or so. She just wasn't sure whether she was thinking about the right area. She went back to pull the rolled-up map fragments out of Allan's half-open backpack.

"You're taking everything he says seriously, aren't you?" Allan said.

She shrugged. "I guess I'm just overly curious. Do you know something about a lake being around here?"

"A lake? How did you get from a single word and a scribble that he's talking about a lake?"

"Eh, you get used to it," she shrugged again.

"Right…"

Jen picked out the sheet marking the playground location. It was part of a hiking map with accurate information on elevations in the area. One part looked indeed like one half of a large, kidney-shaped depression. She aligned it with the rest of the map.

Allan bent over above her. "Are you kidding me? How's he supposed to know something like this?"

Jen snorted. "I'm waiting for the day when he can explain."

"Well, I'm not." Allan mumbled.

Sonic took a peek at the map himself, crouching across from Jen. He seemed surprised, thinking for a moment, then sprang to his feet again, briefly surveying the area as if measuring it up. He began darting from one tree to the other, inspecting fallen trunks, heaps of leaves and overgrown stones.

"Alright," Allan said, crossing his arms but still watching Sonic. "I hope you're finding this about as weird as I do. Because the only valid explanation I have for his behavior that doesn't involve a major conspiracy, is that he really 'saw' something earlier. And even that gives me way too much room for ideas."

Jen met his eyes. "How can a single person worry as much as you do?" she asked.

Allan opened his mouth in protest then closed it again, adjusting his already crossed arms. He looked away.

She couldn't really blame him. It wasn't easy for her to simply dismiss the things she didn't know about Sonic: Maybe he wasn't as amiable as she thought he was. Maybe he hadn't told her the truth. Maybe he did have an agenda. And what would she do if someone found him at her place? Her gut told her that everything was going to work out okay, but it was clearly easier to just roll with it when your worries weren't spoken out aloud by someone else…

Allan hung his shoulders with a sigh, then seemed to catch sight of Sonic again, who'd managed to climb the lower part of a tree in the meantime. It had a broad, bulging trunk that spread into two as it grew tall, with a moss-laden cleft in the middle. Sonic lowered himself down between the two parts of the trunk, one knee perched on the edge of what appeared to be an opening. He reached inside and began throwing out handfuls of dirt and leaves.

Jen made her way to the tree, looking up. Cocking her head seemed to be a sufficient enough question, but she spoke the words anyway. "What are you doing?"

Sonic seemed to be trying to prod something free inside. "I, uh, look," he said, straightening and gesturing into the hole.

Allan came up beside her. A comment felt imminent.

"Say nothing," she said.

He shut his mouth with a quiet plop, lips pursing.

Jen stepped forward, grabbing the ledge of the opening. She jumped, trying to pull herself up while at the same time trying not to put too much weight on her still somewhat tender shoulder. Her feet slipped from the bark each time she was close to getting her nose above the ledge.

Sonic steadied himself and extended a hand as she regained her footing on the ground.

"Are you kidding me?" Jen said. "You have a bruised rib and I'm way too heavy!" She pointed at his side.

»And you shouldn't try this on your own with your shoulder.« His gesture was clear enough. Sonic shrugged.

"He might be right…? For once," Allan said slowly, as if doubting the words at the same moment.

Allan glanced around the area, then strode over to a bleached, cut log lying around. He kicked it loose until he could roll it over to Sonic's tree where he uprighted the log and checked its stability.

"Milady." Allan made a slight bow and extended a hand.

Jen snorted. "Why thank you, my lord." She firmly grabbed his hand and made one large step on to the top of the log, steadying herself. Sonic gave her some space to peer inside.

"What is it?" Allan asked.

She hummed. "Some kind of stone. I think I'm seeing the upper part of it, as if it tipped over when the tree grew around it. It's probably what makes the trunk bulge over there… You didn't happen to bring a flashlight?"

Allan pulled a pen-sized torch out of one of his coat's chest pockets. "At your service," he said.

Jen chuckled, taking it from his fingers.

Aside from the stuff Sonic had already scratched off, the stone was caked in the dirt that had accumulated from the decaying leaves. She could still recognize engravings, starting with what appeared to be a text at the top, to some kind of picture of roughly drop-shaped objects too covered to make out. She reached inside to scratch at the dirt around the lines she thought were letters.

"Can you read that," she asked, looking at Sonic.

"No…," he shook his head. "But I know?" He sounded dissatisfied with his answer, but for once it didn't seem to be because he couldn't properly express himself.

Jen frowned. "This is from your home?"

"Yeah," he said. »I hope so anyway, because if it isn't, everything's gonna be major confusing.« A shrug.

Allan tapped her thigh. "Let me take a look."

She let him climb up, handing over the flashlight. He peered into the opening, apparently trying to keep as much of a distance as possible from Sonic who by now sat on the opening's edge, feet dangling inside. He looked pensive—in a way she thought he would normally try not to carry outward. Jen struggled not to ask the obvious, 'are you okay?'.

She decided on, "we're going to help," instead.

Sonic looked at her, putting on a smile that could've been convincing in another situation. »I know,« he said, using a phrase she'd picked up during their sessions. Jen couldn't help but smile as well.

Allan still mulled over the carvings, occasionally reaching inside to pry something free. He hummed in thought.

"I think we should show this to someone else," he said eventually, voice muffled from looking into the opening.

"Like, who?" Jen asked, genuinely curious.

He uprighted himself, adjusting his glasses with his index finger and staring into the distance for a moment. "Do you think there's a connection between this slab and the 'Star Post' back there?" he asked.

"Well, if anything, it's both connected to him," she said.

"Right," he nodded as if affirming his own thought. "I think we should try to get in contact with the person who did the research for the museum—you know, the images I brought."

Jen arched an eyebrow. "What?"

"I'd guess they have more information behind the stuff they put out for the public. Or, if they don't, they should at least be able to tell us whether this has already been deciphered someplace else. I'd say we free the stone up some more, take a couple of pictures and go ask."

Jen blinked. "That actually sounds reasonable."

"Well, I do have a reputation to live up to."