The sun was below the horizon and a small fire was burning in the woods.
A young man was trying to control the burn of the branches he'd tossed in, while an older man busy eating a handful of unidentified berries.
"You sure you don't know the name of these things?" asked Tim.
"For the last time, no." replied Franz in a beleaguered tone.
"Just wondering." said Tim. "I don't want to hear the name Pokeberries come up right after I eat a dozen of these."
"I don't know what their damn name is, I just know that Iv'e eaten them before and I'm still alive." said Franz in a frustrated mutter.
After a moment of silence Franz broke it up with yet another question.
"And what the fuck is a Pokeberry anyway?"
"Poisonous" replied Tim.
"Yeah I guessed that much...but poisonous how?"
"They make you vomit your guts out."
"What...like actual guts, with blood and everything?"
"What? No...no they just make you puke." replied Tim.
"Gotta be sure...you know...little bit of alchemy can go a long way." said Franz with an imperceivable almost grin.
"Right" replied Tim. "So you can add serial poisoner to your list of job titles."
Franz shot Tim another look before absentmindedly tossing another stick onto the fire. A long flame shot up at the introduction of a new branch. Franz winced at that and quickly pulled the branch out before the flames fanned higher.
"What are you doing anyway? I thought we both wanted to warm ourselves up?"
"Other people can see it you idiot." hissed Franz. "Maybe you haven't noticed but we're not in a friendly place. There's all sorts of bandits and refugees around here who will kill us if they see us."
"You maybe." replied Tim casually. "A bunch of starved raiders really don't bother me, so they really shouldn't be bothering you.".
"I wonder how long you can keep that cavalier attitude when a swarm arseholes armed with farming equipment come at us from every angle."
"That a statement of an actual question?" asked Tim.
Franz of course declined to answer.
Tim and Franz continued on with idle chatter for a little while longer. The conversation never went very far and both of them seemed to be fine with that. The sun eventually went below the horizon and Tim decided that he was going to lay down on his back and try to relax a moment.
Not fall asleep, of course.
Timothy was taking a shower. Not one of those cold ones that they had outside of Vault City. This one was hot, and it wasn't thirty seconds long. This was from a new one some rich water merchant had installed on the outer limits of the Hub. He'd let the courier who'd arrived that day to try it out. Tim had walked south from Necropolis almost non-stop and had managed to beat his projected arrival by two days, so the man decided to be a little generous and add this on in way of a thank you.
Tim had taken baths before, but something about this just felt...better. It was one of those memories that he already knew would just stick with him.
Tim blinked his eyes twice and "woke up" from that dream. Or more like transferred to act two of whatever strange dream logic his mind was creating tonight.
He was curled up and on the ground. His thoughts came through slow and the world seemed to be tilting back and forth.
The memory of being jumped outside of Goodsprings suddenly seemed to shock him out of the confusion. A few people had tackled him and beat him into the ground just as he was walking up on Goodsprings source.
The last rational thought he had before somebody stomped on his head (knocking him out cold) was something comforting.
They're no raiders. These are just some thieves, probably from the town. They aren't going to kill you. They are NOT going to kill you. They are going to beat your ass and then take whatever you have on you. But they will not k-
Coming to, Tim felt a wave of nausea hit him. It took a few seconds before the urge to vomit passed. He tried to move only to notice that his wrists had been tied together. That sent a wave of fear through him.
They weren't after the package.
Slavers...had to be.
Timothy started twisting his hands against the thin looking rope around his wrists.
Maybe, if he could just break this thing he could run for it. Wherever they were it couldn't be far from Goodsprings if he just ran he might-
"Guess who's waking up over there?"
That gravely little voice sent a wave of fear through Timothy. He couldn't help but instantly snap his head up at the person who had said that.
And there they were. Three strangers gawking at Tim. Two bent up looking thugs and some man in a checkered suit. That small sense of panic was starting to become overwhelming. Tim knew, knew that this wasn't right.
What are they doing, why am I here?
A second passed before Tim noticed that the checkered man had been speaking to him. The world felt like it was tilting back and forth. Everything around him wavered as if he was caught in a drunken stupor.
Then he saw the gun. The platinum plated, pretty little thing that the bastard had pointed straight at his face.
He smelled it then. Tim remembered, staring at that gun, he'd gone and shit his pants.
The world seemed to be spinning now. He shut his eyes as tightly as he possibly could, while clenching his fists in a white knuckle grip. He couldn't think, he was to afraid. He just wanted this all to end.
He didn't spring up, he didn't scream. Timothy Cot just blandly opened his eyes and then did his own little mental check to make sure he was really awake this time.
It seemed real enough. Tim took a moment to remember where he was.
In a...forest...next to a kid...Franz.
He looked over. Across from him, near the remains of a dead fire lay Franz.
Kid from the village. The one those people almost beat him to death.
The cobwebs finally seemed to clear after that. Timothy sat up and stretched. The sky was just starting to light up and the air was still damp and chilly. Beyond there was not much else to note. That thought gave him pause.
I'm still...still here. This is not a chem trip, not even a dream.
Reality, that was something that Timothy had been trying to fend off since he escaped the Witch's hut. He wasn't home, he was here. Alone in a completely foreign place. And he didn't know how to get home.
The combination of the early morning funk and the sheer unpleasantness of that thought kept Tim rooted in his spot. It wasn't until he heard the crackling of foliage nearby that he snapped out of it.
Franz suddenly woke up out of his short nap. Or at least it seemed short.
The fire was out, so apparently he hadn't just nodded off. The sun hadn't really come up yet, but the sky wasn't dark anymore, more like a pale grey looking blue.
He sat up, feeling stiff from the cold.
Franz looked back at the dead pile of ashes then over to where Timothy, the killer stranger had passed out.
He was gone.
There was a brief moment of cold fear as Franz started to get up. He glanced left and right trying to find where exactly that weirdo had gone.
A second later he heard an answer.
Several feet away he heard some kind of odd noise. He turned around and found Timothy crouching in the grass and stroking the neck of a small deer.
Timothy seemed to be enjoying it more than the deer. He had a look of childlike wonder on his face as he ran his fingers across the animal's neck. A moment later he seemed to sense that someone was staring at him, and looked over to see the bewildered stare Franz was shooting him.
Tim returned the gaze with a smile and a slight shrug.
"Sorry. I...uh...I've just always been kind of an animal friend."
Alright, I didn't update for a year, I didn't make the next chapter 4,000+ pages long and I didn't really advance the plot.
I wrote a short filler chapter (in two hours thank you very much) just to prove that I'm not dead.
It's been a long 12 months procrastinating. I got a lot of things done. I painted my house, read some new books, caught covid and daydreamed about how this whole story is going to play out.
I ended coming up with a rough story. Something that I can follow and add onto over time. In other words I know *what* I have to write. I can't use writers block as an excuse. From this point on it's just laziness holding me back. So if you are a fan then please, PLEASE feel free to send me a message every now and then. Just try and shame me into updating this fucking thing on some kind of a regular basis. Otherwise this whole filler chapter every year of so might become something of a habit.
Well...that's all for now. If I do update again, then it will at the very least be more interesting than this. There'll be some violence and drama and all that other good stuff.
Hopefully anyway.