AN: And now chapter 2 . . .
Chapter 2: Second Step
Step . . . Step . . . Step . . . Step . . .
Every silent footfall carried me further forward.
Step . . . Step . . . Step . . . Step . . .
Ever closer to my destination.
Step . . . Step . . . Step . . . Step . . .
Or so I'd like to believe. The Truth was, I had no idea where I was going. Only that it was a place in a dark cavern, with large white pillars. Like the one I was in. But . . . different, somehow? Not "here". "Here" felt wrong.
Step . . . Step . . . Step . . . Step . . .
. . . it was tiring, walking endlessly. Searching for some place I only half remembered. For some place I . . . wasn't even fully sure existed. That I hadn't made up. That I didn't even know my relationship with. But . . . there was an itch in the back of my mind, telling me I needed to be there. Than I needed to get back to that place. And I wanted to know why.
There was something I needed to do, somewhere I needed to be. I just didn't remember where. So I walked, and walked, and walked.
. . . how long had I been walking? How long had it been since I last truly stopped? Not for the sake of sleeping, but for the sake of stopping itself? . . . a silly question. I only seemed to sleep when I wanted to. Any time I stopped to sleep was solely for my own sake.
I took a deep breath, inhaling slowly enough to make minimal noise.
I was tired, to be blunt. That was nothing new, though. Recently, I was always tired. Sometimes more tired than other times, but always tired. And always hungry. I suppose that's why I had started taking the time to sleep. Searching for a brief release from that tiredness. Not to mention the gnawing hunger than never seemed to go away.
And so, I slept. Sometimes stopping, finding a dark corner where I felt I was unlikely to be found, and leaning against a wall, and others . . . I simply let my consciousness fade away even as I continued walking. Only to wake up again when I inevitably walked into something. I knew it was dangerous, letting my body shut down like that, but I didn't really care. I was to tired to care when it happened.
Not that I didn't beat myself up over it as soon as I woke up again.
'Clack . . . Clack . . . Clack . . . Clack . . .
The sound of bone striking rock began to echo in from the left, heralding the slow, steady approach of something else. I sighed. 'Another cling on.'
Without even looking, I knew that another figure had come creeping out of the darkness to my left. A black robed being in a bone white mask, with a comically long, pointed nose, and glowing red eyes.
These things had been stalking me on and off for an age at this point, for seemingly no reason whatsoever. At first I'd thought that they were trying to hunt me, but no. Their approach was to loud and sloppy for that, and if I stopped moving to wait for an attack, they'd simply come to a stop some three or four paces away. It seemed that all they wanted to do was follow me around.
A couple of times, I'd decided to humour the dumb things, letting them crowd around behind me like I was the leader of some sort of crude conga-line. But eventually I'd find myself getting to tired, and wanting to sleep. I wasn't willing to trust them around me when my eye's were closed, of course, so I'd ran away, leaving them in the dust. Fortunately, it seemed the dumb creatures(and they were creatures, showing no sign of higher thought) could not run the way I could. Or at the very least felt no reason to.
Eventually, I'd decided to try eating one of them. That had only reinforced the idea that they were ridiculously dumb creatures, as once I'd killed one, and the others just sat back and watched until I'd eaten the whole thing. Only seemed to realize they were in danger when they were attacked themselves.
I'd given up on that once I'd realized that even eating a creature the same size as myself only gave a few seconds of relief. If it didn't cure my hunger, then there was little point to eating unless I felt low on energy.
I glanced back at my latest stalker, taking it it's appearance. I looked it up and down, from it's mask, to the ring of spikes around it's neck, to the hole through it's stomach. Perfectly average in every way. Just a normal shambler.
My eye's drifted down to it's fingers, which were long and pointed. Almost like mine, if perhaps a bit shorter and thicker. And their feet, bony and pointed . . . those were certainly a mirror image of my own. I too, had a hole in my stomach, and a black robe. And so, a simple question needed to be asked.
Was I one of these shamblers? Or at least closely related to them? It was a question I had asked myself many times before, and even now, the question remained unanswered.
On one hand, I had plenty of things in common with them, as stated. On the other, there were several subtle differences. Were a smaller hole, a differently shaped mask, and a lack of the neck spikes reason enough to say I wasn't? Their apparent inability to run the way I could? To speak? I didn't know, and so I assumed I was not, but reasoned I might be. In the end, did it matter? I didn't think it did. They were them. I was me.
And I kept walking.
Were I more tired, I would, of course, start running. Try and ditch the shambler. And I was tired. I was always tired. But I wasn't tired enough. So, I decided to let it trail me for a while. Not like they ever tried anything.
As I walked, I wondered, as I had many a time before, why they followed me. The first time it had happened, I'd assumed they meant to attack me. But, as I said, that theory had long been proven false. Perhaps they sought safety in numbers? Or simple companionship? If that was the case, then how would I ever know?
And for that matter, where did they come from? Did they just materialize? Spring out of the ground like the mosses I occasionally saw growing in corners of the caves? Maybe they reproduced through fragmentation?
I shook my head. That was a silly idea. And quite pointless Even if they did fragment, then there would still have to be an original I had to wonder about the origins of. Not that that proved the idea false . . .
' . . . Where did I come from? What are my origins?'
I slowed my pace for the briefest of moments, mind more abuzz than it had been since my fight(could it be called that) with the cat-thing.
Where had I come from? I was me, yes, but where did "I" come from? What was "I"?
I came to a stop, the shambler following suit some three paces behind me.
I remembered a place much like where I was. With a high roof and white pillars. Wanted to get back there. So I must have been there before. Right? But what about before that? How had I gotten to that place buried in my memories in the first place? Before the before?
I took a tentative step forward, slowly building back up to my former pace. I could think as I moved.
My memory was, to be put simply, a mess. Most of the things I had thus far remembered were either the result of hours upon hours of struggling to remember . . . anything, really . . . or something that came to me in a metaphor. Like how I had once seen a thick layer of moss covering the ground and remembered what carpets were. Or how I'd seen smooth, shiny stone and thought it looked wet, thus remembering what water was.
But things like that didn't tell me much. I must have seen water before. I must have seen carpets before. I must have seen moss before. But what did that actually ' . . . one of those things is not like the others.
Moss and water were . . . natural, I felt. I didn't know how, but the idea felt right. Moss and water were natural, they existed on their own. Carpets . . . carpets were . . . artificial. They needed to be made. Someone had to make carpets.
I dug into that idea.
Carpets needed to be made. How? What was a carpet made of? Something . . . soft? Not necessarily. With a lot of give? Yes, but more than that? . . . it was . . . a kind of cloth?
. . . What was cloth? I knew that was what I believed my robes to be made out of, but what actually was it? I pictured "cloth" in my mind. It's look, it's feel, it's texture. Cloth was . . . something made from something else. Something long, and thin, mixed . . . woven. Something woven together. Criss-crossed over and over again in a pattern until it could support itself.
What was it woven of? . . . String. What was string? I dug through my mind, trying to recall string. What was string? What did it look like? What came to mind was . . . purple. A purple line of a thin material, wrapped around a spool. In my minds eye, I unravelled it from the spool, and then, unravelled it more, revealing that the string was itself woven of long thin lines of . . .
' . . . hair?'
String was hair? Or at least something like it. What was hair? It was like fur, but . . . long. Hair must come from the same place, then. Right? Fur came from living creatures. Hair must come from living creatures . . . that felt right. Living creatures with thick "hair".
I must, then, come from a place with lots of creatures with long hair.
Where was a place with lot's of creatures with long hair? . . . I didn't know.
I clenched my hand into a fist, the pointed tips almost piercing their way through the bony palm.
Was I back to square one? . . . no. I wasn't. Creatures with long hair . . . no matter how long, the image of "carpet" in my mind was to vast to be made from one creatures hair, right? Or it felt like it. And hair, it didn't grow very fast, did it? So, there must be lot's of creatures with long hair, so that lots of carpers could be made. Right?
Creatures . . . needed to eat. What would they eat? Surely they must eat something? Did they eat other creatures, the way I did?
. . . no, that felt wrong. They didn't eat . . . meat. What wasn't meat but could still be eaten? . . . what was meat? The flesh, the skin and muscle, of something alive. Did something you ate . . . food, did food need to be something alive?
. . . that felt both right and wrong. But it felt more right then wrong, so I assumed it was right.
So, food came from things that were alive. Creatures ate food. Food that was not meat. Food was meat that came from creatures. Therefor, they ate something that was not a creature, but was alive. Right?
. . . That felt right. Very right. So, what was alive, but not a creature? What made "alive" alive?
' . . . things that are alive can grow.'
What grew? A lot of things?
. . . what makes a creature a creature?
' . . . they can move under their own power?' That seemed right . . . so, what grew, but could not move under it's own power? I wracked my mind for the answer, until it hit me like a lightning bolt. ' . . . moss.'
I'd known the moss for what it was the moment I first laid eye's on it. There for, I had seen moss before. I must have.
Did the creatures with the long hair eat moss? . . . that didn't feel quite right.
"What do creatures with long fur eat?" I spoke out loud. The shambler behind me didn't answer. Not that I expected it to.
. . . the moss . . . what was like the moss . . . what was moss like? It was green and covered the ground. What else was green and covered the ground?
. . .
"Grass." The word felt sacred as it left my mouth.
Grass covered the ground. Like a blanket of green fur, sticking up from the ground(What was a blanket? Large thick layer of cloth, nor relevant.)
. . . did the creatures with the long hair eat grass? ' . . . yes.' Yes they did. They ate grass. Did I come from a place with lots of grass?
' . . . yes.' Yes. I did. I came from a place with lot's of grass. So where would I find grass? Out in the open. I must have come from a place out in the open. What did grass need? Grass needed water. I came from a place with water. Where did water come from?
. . .
. . .
I looked up, at the cavern's roof, a smile creeping unto the lips under my mask.
Water fell from The Sky.
AN: This chapter has an overall lack of focus, but unlike usual, I actually like that here. Feels intentional, at least to me. What do you guys think? Anything I could improve on?