Chapter 7: In the Wake of Snowy Forest
The distance that could be progressed by automobile had vanished, thus Gneiss and Conkenu in their slim snug winter attire carried their white bags under their cloaks (Conkenu had a white cloak like the snow and Gneiss wore a green one) on their backs along a narrow path of the Snowy Forest. The provisional food they needed on this excursion, which only researchers and tall-tale hermits have taken in the past, were in discs that were designed by the lost empire of Conkenu's, the Red Ribbon Army, to combat the capsule device of their rival company, the Capsule Corporations. The Red Ribbon Army in its last effort it commenced on to devastate the monopoly held by Capsule Corp with its sole advantage on condensed technology that employed so fantastically proficient to inexplicably seize a one level living quarter into a thumb size pill. The most vanguard compacting utensils the Red Ribbon Army discharged could stow in the palm size discs the proportion of a full meal in the variety of breakfast, lunch, and dinner with appropriate temperature and beverage including plastic glass, plate and utensils. If released onto the market, it could have been surpassed by a Capsule Corp replica, but it never had come to that because of the discs could not store food that was pleasurable, but holding an opposite reaction.
The cool breeze carried the aroma of the needles on the trees, which was stronger and more pleasing to Conkenu than he imagined of the subtleness of the pine back at his estate that belonged to him now with the passing of his father, Icicil.
Icicil, a man who was slender all throughout his body, but never skeletal had passed away unknown to his children. In his old age, he never exhausted his youthful appearance with retaining his toneless blonde hair and keeping his natural slight smile that might have hid any wrinkles, but his eyes brightened up to his death and not once stared or peered and had focus and direction. On the bed, his body rested as if it could have been aroused up from silence, but too serene to be disturbed. His servants looked upon him, and sometimes had conversations with in the room or about him.
A long trip from the mansion, the new master tracked behind his guardian with a rope connecting them, for he had no scheme of following her once when he walked with his head down to notice no footprints at the forefront and had startled to a point of not agreeing to one side farther until a lifeline span across them.
And after the fright of being lost with only a compass and map in his small bag to get him back, he questioned her on the skill to depart without stirring the light snow; he felt well heeled at the mystery that was unraveling with her, and asked many more questions. At this moment, after a long day of questioning and the sun going down, there was no exception to his curiosity. "Why am I here?" Conkenu said quickening his wit and pace half a step after stiffness in the rope stroke. "Do you know my journey?"
"I'm positive the longer unmistakable explanation is in the letter your father wrote, but it must be thorny to not know every single detail that is revealed in the letter." Gneiss said. "If you like, you can describe your quest as preparing for any future tribulations, which time will only show. What stolen glimpse you have of time can explain what you have to do now to better yourself. It's a sacrifice as you prefer one decision over another and wish your path helps others."
"Did I hear something?" Conkenu said taking a look around the snow covered trees. "I think someone said, they don't know."
Gneiss drew back the green wool hood to expose her ears to the environment. The line did not halt, but slowed down to absorb more than the birdcalls and fluttering wings of black birds, hawks and eagles. They had entered a new part of the forest; the trees were not dense, but replaced by rock formations of boulders, hills, and worn down faces from the long ages the plundering of the waterfalls that came from rivulets and rested in ponds or more brooks. The place was more warm, but lacking in lively color.
Without a question to answer, Gneiss felt comfortable in imparting an answer. "I haven't changed from my youth, but I blanket the former early girl with the experiences of the years. I would have to say, I try to protect people from spoiling what I once was to take succor in bringing back what I once was."
Conkenu had the question: "What were you like when you were my age?"
"Every bit like you, I was. I idled in the art of music taking up the flute and singing as a young girl like you with your painting. And together, we follow in our mothers' interests. Snowda, your mother, reminded me of my mother; she was caring and saw me very much like a daughter she would have loved to raise. She taught me songs and stories to give to you, when you were uneasy or scared. If you would tolerate it, I would enjoy performing a song I wrote in my youth about the place I lived. It is the best medium I have for nature." Gneiss said. She smiled and tied the rope to her hand. In her open voice, she sung a high seamless octave that was loud without abstracting the serenity of her voice. After fishing her flute out of her pocket, she went into a song, which underscored the landscape with its more peaceful qualities, but not to take for granted the risk she sensed, and the forest responded in low growing moans:
"My fondness of the forever forest
In comfort, I amble away
When many go in heavy steps
I alone call this home if I may
Call upon the within
Restoration is wearing thin
The water will fill my hourglass
And my time would persist
Meaning of the stones
Gives me a place to be midst"
The shadows extended in the forest as the gloomy grey clouds deterred the sun. Conkenu hiked closer to Gneiss who played more on her flute causing echoes of moans, and the rope between them crawled along the ground behind them. He set his white hood over his hair that did succumb to his hair like a tissue on the bristles of an uncared for paintbrush that had bright yellow paint ubiquitously clustering and dividing the bristles. The fresh snow falling spiraled with lightness and he scarcely saw them higher than the tallest trees with their ends hard to see in the growing mist.
"Stop it, you're hurting me?" A deep tone bellowed from above.
Conkenu ineptly crawled directly behind Gneiss. She grasped him and took off from the enclosure to behind a tree. Then she scaled up a tree with the nimbleness a water bug in its element with Conkenu in her arms and without disturbing the snow on the long bulky branches. Half way up, she stopped with Conkenu between her and the tree, and veiled herself in her green cloak. "My cloak will blend with the snow." She whispered into his ears.
"Gneiss…" he curiously posed that she interrupted.
"Not now," she responded. The green misplacement bounded over to infect the next tree. It then disappeared. Conkenu had rolled Gneiss over and held her back to the tree. "What are you thinking Conkenu?"
With her legs bent, they buried themselves within Conkenu's cape. There was no response, as they resided silently in an uncomfortable position to heed to the gush of wind below them.
"I'm not here to hurt you." Piccolo shouted unpersuasively. The threat flew around the tree, in his tall humanoid body in shape with a reptilian skin covering of green. On his limbs, his muscles were amplified with pink strings and borders. He dressed in purple, with brown shoes. And under his shoulder pad pinned down his long white cape, which alerted the two snowbound travelers with beats and thrashes in the wind, and a white tunic with a purple dome. Not that they saw that; if they would have been able to see the real searcher, then they would have held no surprise their shock at his bald head, demonic eyes, and antennas over his broad hairless brows. "Reveal yourself to me!"
Under the disguise, the fear of Conkenu manifested in thin lines of tears, which Gneiss could not handle watching so close to the one who she had to protect imperiled himself for reasons she could not have guessed. Conkenu felt her hand come off from around his shoulder, and disappear in front of him. The flute appear in her hand, and with a look into her eyes, he knew what he had to do. She placed the flute up to her lips with her breath encircling the flute and muddling the metal. Her grasp released on him, and she started playing with the fiend two meters away from her. The beautiful mournful song pierced in Piccolo's long cavernous pointed ears, and he twisted and turned viciously with his drawn out clawed hands over his ears.
Conkenu, who was pushed off from Gneiss almost hit Piccolo's large feet, but missed. He descended fast save from the bottom branches that extended out grandly. He tumbled once on the stretched spike limbs, and cut his face many times. In heaviness and hurt from the lofty fall, he looked up with terror at the roaring beast whose snarls did not prohibit the sound of the music that was an awful sight to see such reaction to a pleasing song. On the ground, he questioned to stay with his eyes and ears in dismay, but his ears prevailing with hope. The monster was succumbing, which then filled him with pleasure, but he knew this was a fleeting chance, so rolling over he got up with a struggle and ran.
In his flight, he lost track of time. He had not stopped yet, but slowed down even with no intuition of closing to safety for the root that he developed a hobble in his right leg. No other sense but pain apart from some sight in the night registered with him. He jumped over some bushes, and discovered the land was not equal on the other side from what side he jumped; the land was far below from what he launched from in his tiredness in his mind and strength; and he felt like he was sinking into the ground with no wit left in his sight. The illusion revoked with the searing pain ignited in his right ankle. He collapsed forward and felt the shallow icy water of a long rivulet.
He pushed himself up with his arms and suffered cuts and bruises on the offhand rocks of the bottom with a screech. The water calmed down and flowed in silence, in constancy that no longer altered the onlooker's face anymore in kindliness. No, the benevolence of falsehood straightened to give him a glare on a portion of his pain, and his body responded to his circumstance to give him palpable vision. He shook his head and looked with absorbed eyes to see cuts from cheek to cheek, on his forehead, and water heading to the heights of his round face trickling to the bitter rivulet with the stigma of blood mixing with it. He backed away from his sight.
"Is my quest to stop the demon of these woods?" He thought with his back to the jagged face of the cliff three meters away from water. On his front, he scaled the rocks of the ground to enter a large cave and rested near the mouth. The smell was horrible; it was more horrible than the rustle of the water. His thoughts of the demon developed to Gneiss, who epitomized splendor against the ghastly hobgoblin in a stance of antagonism. "Had I run when I should have stayed? I am too little to face that monster! Why am I here, my father should be here, not me or Gneiss. My father sends me, coward. Could he send some son, not me? Not me."
Buzzing surrounding him, and he traced the smell he paid little attention to once entering the cave. A dead eagle with flies set out to pester him. He backed away and swung them making his way out of the cave until a stroke in the wind perked his recently practical sense. "Gneiss has failed, and again she would fail if I get caught. I must go into the cave."
He rolled into the cave then crawled into the shadows, with the smell coming behind him; he only had touch to guide him in the dirty cavern that did not give him much to predict. "I believe nothing would want to live in this cold hole. Its walls are burnt black."
And he continued on to conclude aloofness to what roamed outside to bring out a lantern. The walls indeed were black, and the cave steeped down. Ahead of the wonderer, a grimy oval metal door with boulders at the base came into view. The height was about two meters. His tension to what waited behind the door vanished with his hunger increasing. He took out the compressed meal in his pack and placed it in his hand. He dug up an idea to gain access to the building.
The boulders at the base were too heavy for him in even a pleasant condition to remove, but with vigilant management of the discs, he had a way to use them more than just for food. The vital operation to this is that he did not lose the disc's food no matter the awful taste of the contents that sprung out from it, and that was the key; the decompression of the metal container that enclosed the food would have the force to push the rocks away from the base. The plan was set, and with the lamp on a natural ledge on the side, he looked for the best place to put the first explosion. "This door looks unused. Behind the rocks, on the door, there is dust, and dust has not been falling in this cave other than my own kick ups from the floor. I could really use any items in there, and this chore will keep me busy until I dry. There, that should do it."
The disc was placed between the two larges rocks; they themselves did not come up to Conkenu's knees. He pressed a button in the centre of the disc and rolled away since he had no confidence yet in his legs. The success was well ahead of his anticipation. All of the boulders along the bottom width of the door, which was no more than arm's length to Conkenu, were expelled from the door. He ate his meal in satisfaction of his achievement then pulling on his bag, he walked to the door. It had a wheel at the centre, which he reached up and turned counter clock wise and pushed. His plan having worked did encumber him from entering the door, for the stones could have substituted for steps to reach the door easier and did not keep him from opening the astonishingly weightless door. The room pass the door was clean and lighted, with the white floors were made from smooth material. The whole room was white except for a large computer to the left of the door taking up the whole wall. Conkenu tripped in and looked around. The floor was easy on his hands, and it was warm with the rest of the room. The air was clean and he closed his eyes to doze off in comfort.
He was uneasily swayed out of sleep, and when he opened his eyes, a woman with short blue hair shook him looking at him with worry. She was shocked at the glimpse of his green right eye and brown left eye, but she quickly disregarded that and breathed a sight of relief, and after his own jump, he felt the same way for the moment, because in an unlikely pair, she was next to the demon of his fleeting journey, Piccolo, who held his arms crossed at his chest and stood behind Bulma glaring down. Conkenu pounced to his bad legs, and backed up. Bulma looked where his eyes were riveted. "I told you to leave before I woke him." She yelled at Piccolo. Her attention attracted back to Conkenu who stepped backwards slowly and let out long breaths of anger and soreness. With a smile, Bulma had a reached out hand and approached Conkenu allowing him to out pace her. When Conkenu got to the middle of the room, a circle of delicate blue came down from the ceiling and surrounded him in the focus. Bulma stood amazed standing back from the growing intensity of the cobalt. And around Conkenu's eyes released tension of a burden. He looked at the two on watchers. "Without much coincidence I do not doubt."
The blue light disappeared along with Conkenu.
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Bulma had acquired the location of the message from which the mysterious computer communicator was transmitted. She fixed a device to locate this place closer after seeing that it was in an isolated area. When she had decided to bring Vegeta along with her, he refused and she decided finally not to take Vegeta. By the time she had convinced herself she no longer wanted Vegeta to come, she arrived at the cliff of Snowy Forest to find Piccolo who was looking for someone.
She decided that long ago, she had really wanted Piccolo to come with her, and she guided Piccolo down the cave, by this time, Conkenu had been asleep for a while. The answer both of them looking for only posed more questions.
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"I knew I should have brought Vegeta! Why didn't you catch him?" Bulma shouted at Piccolo who looked at the expertise that had constructed this room. Bulma was engaged in complaining, but still found herself tied up with connecting the computer in the room with the Capsule Corporation server. "I wonder where that kid went off to? He seemed to know that he was going to disappear. He sure phrased it in a weird way. Was that the other person you were looking for?"
"Yes," Piccolo said. He closed his eyes for a while following an unsolicited reminiscence of the noise that Gneiss played. "In fact, I did not detain the other wonderer. It was a woman, very agile on her feet. I'm going out to the look out and see if I can't detect the other with out getting to close."
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Conkenu stood in a blue funnel encased in front with darkness. He did not whimper, for he had more confidence in what Gneiss saw in Icicil. He did not feel the pain he had before appearing here, or in just a likely a case, before everything else disappearing. He rested back and continued with his sleep.
He woke up in his father's dojo, but there were no stairs where they should have been. The grey mats smelled clean like in the basement, and other than the stairway, he could not have told the difference other than doubt that filled his mind. He had only been in jeopardy from when he could not have recalled but not long enough to be where he would have thought if the stairs remained the same. He got up with ease, and recognized a refreshing liveliness he had never thought he could have experienced again, which felt like watching the fish swim in the pond during the summer time with Gneiss singing a little ditty about not any fish, but the ones in the pond, that he fantasized about bringing them back to their tropical pool.
He looked once more along the room, and saw sliding doors, glass walls, what he remembered from the first room of where his father trained. The ceiling was the same colour, white. The next difference he noticed was there were no lights to be found anywhere. Conkenu could not determine the source of the brightness, and indeed, it was also brighter than the dojo in his mansion.
"Hello," a passive voice said, "what else I can do to help you?"
Conkenu had no luck with the voice either as with the location of the illumination. "I don't know?"
"I can help you with that." The voice replied. "Do you wish to have some rational requests to what I can do for you?"
"Yes, please." Conkenu sat down to the ground but he was interrupted when he felt a chair with no armrests underneath him he did not notice.
"I could compile the best guide for you using a thorough survey of your needs." The voice stated. "Would you like that?"
"Who is my best guide?" He asked rubbing his hair and putting down his forearm on an armrest he did not notice.
"Your best guide is a compilation of what is found in you." The voice responded.
"I would like that."