"Hey, look, look at this thing I found!" Lyza said excitedly, having removed much of the contents of her delving bag and scattered them around her in a big mess, along with several empty bottles lying around the neat pile Andrew had put them in for her.
She had dragged out what appeared to be an egg about the size of an ostrich's, a mottled brown and green in coloration as she held it up to the firelight, grinning stupidly as she shook slightly where she sat, disoriented from the sheer amount of alcohol she'd consumed in the last hour. How she could fit all of it in her lightweight body, he had no idea.
"Isn't it pretty? I found it on the 4th Layer. Poor thing must have fallen from somewhere above, I have no idea how it survived though...I've been taking care of it since I got it, but I don't even know what species it is."
Most of the hour up until now had consisted of her dancing around like an idiot, so the fact that she was suddenly lucid and making sense now that she'd hit the peak of her drunkenness caught Andrew's attention, and he hummed as he crossed his arms, leaning forward to look at the egg more closely. "Do you often grab random eggs you find? It might be dead anyway, you know."
The woman frowned, holding it tighter to her chest. "Don't say that with such a creepy grin, I don't want you cooking my baby!" she complained, sticking her tongue out like a child.
He laughed, leaning back to his normal sitting position. At first, Lyza had been wary of him, but after showing her his stash of various alcoholic drinks he'd found around the city, she had quickly warmed up to his presence, though it came at the cost of much of the contents. The woman was immature to be sure, but he was experienced enough to tell that, even in this unguarded state, she was still a force to be reckoned with. Had he any interest in ambushing her, he'd have a very hard time succeeding even with the strength granted by his Pins, not that he wanted to hurt the one person who'd given him company in such a long time.
"Do you have family on the surface?" he asked the woman, who tilted her head. "You've got a strong motherly instinct, so I was just wondering. Then again, you don't look old enough to have kids…"
She blinked, before grinning again, setting the egg down carefully in her bag before standing up, waving her arms in the air to get his attention, not that there was anything else to look at besides her right now. "Actually, you're right! I've got a little daughter up on the surface! Little Riko, she was two when I decided to go on my Last Dive." She frowned again, sitting down as she sighed and stared at the ground between her legs. "I didn't really want to leave her behind, but delvers can't stick with their families very often, and especially not me as a White Whistle…"
The boy nodded, reaching forward to pat her knee reassuringly. "That seems to be a trait common to both of our time periods. My parents were the same way, they never had much chance to see me."
The woman sighed, grabbing another bottle and biting it to pop the cap with her teeth, spitting it aside as she sighed, her grin lowering. "The Abyss calls to everyone, and certainly I am no exception. I love Riko, of course, but I couldn't raise her. So many miracles had to happen for her to see her first sunrise, I couldn't get in the way and force her to stick to the surface."
Even if he had the ability to lower his grin, he wouldn't have at the statement, his eyes glinting as he took a swig from his own drink, some form of extremely flat soda that he'd found during the day's exploration prior to meeting Lyza. "And you didn't want to end up a housewife, I bet. Looking at you, you remind me of a man I considered my surrogate father. Obsessed with the netherworld and unable to defy the call."
Lyza laughed, turning the bottle upside-down over her mouth and downing half the liquid in one long gulp before exhaling heavily, her frown washed away by the alcohol. "Riko's the same way. As soon as she was able to crawl, her first steps were towards the center. I knew that I couldn't get in her way, and I didn't want to lose my own penchant for adventure either. So, I left her. It helped that her father was long dead by then." She briefly frowned, before laughing, a high-pitched noise punctuated by a loud burp that didn't fit her appearance at all. "Torka was always a runt, he was even shorter than my pupil Jiruo. But that guy had some serious guts, and he became a Black Whistle faster than even I did. Always said he was going to surpass me, always wanted to become a White Whistle before I could get the chance."
Andrew hesitated, looking at the ground briefly before nodding. "I...I knew someone like that too. My best friend back when I was primarily in the 2nd Layer. And did, Torka-"
"The idiot got killed by foreign delvers." Lyza stated, cutting him off as she laughed again, waving her free hand in the air. "I mean, seriously. He wanted to surpass me, yet he gets taken down by a bunch of humans! What White Whistle falls to anything other than the Curse or some ultra-powerful monster? Pathetic, really." She frowned, clenching both hands around the body of her bottle. "But he made me what I wanted to be. It was him that my Whistle was made from, you know. A physical reminder that he was always with me."
The boy gave her a few seconds to silently think about her past, before continuing on. "Where is your whistle now? Were you going to get it when you went back up?"
The woman blinked, looking up at him. "Back up? I've already left the 6th Layer, there's no chance of returning for me. It's one of the few absolute truths of the Abyss…" She smiled sadly, setting the bottle aside so she could lean back on her arms and look up at the dark stone done that made up the ceiling of this massive former city. "I sent Torka up along with my more recent field notes back when I entered the 7th Layer. I'm not interested in risking death to return, so I'm just going to sit here and wait for Riko to come. She's bound to eventually."
Andrew nodded, understanding her mentality. "Time moves much more slowly here than on the surface. You're expecting her to arrive at any moment, aren't you?"
Her smile morphed back into a grin rivalling his own. "Yeah! I bet she'll be here by the time I wake up tomorrow. In the 5th Layer, a few weeks turns to a few months. Imagine how far a day or so goes down here near the bottom?"
"I've been down here a full year, and you're the first person I've seen. I wonder how much things have changed…" The boy hummed to himself, before grunting as he pushed down on the ground to stand up, laughing. "I'll give you a gift. You have no intention of leaving, so I'll pass on all the maps I've made to you. They'll let you navigate around the city tiers and find food pretty easily. There's a lot of farms that still are functional, and window gardens in some of the residential areas. I haven't gone everywhere, but it's a start. I'll give you some of my notes on the wildlife here too. There's no monsters, but there are some plants and animals that you have to be careful of handling."
The woman stared at him, confused by the sudden display of excitement. "Why give me that stuff? We can share, I'll give you my notes as well." She smiled, standing up to face him and crossing her arms. "I don't want you to tell me anything about the truth of the Abyss though. I don't care if you know everything, I want to figure it all out myself, even if you have an edge with being able to read the language and all."
The boy shook his head, and she stepped back, her smile dropping as, even without his grin fading and his eyes poorly illuminated by the fire at this angle, she recognized what he was about to say. "Hey, I just got here. You're not going to go on some suicide quest and abandon me right after we met, right?"
Andrew sighed, tapping the ground with the point of his shoe. "I'll give you the information I know on how to survive down here. I didn't realize that the term 'White Whistle' meant anything different in the current time than mine, but you sound like you know what you're doing. And it's been my intention to make a full journey from the beginning. I never meant to be down here so long, time just sort of slipped by for me. Besides, now that I've seen another person...It's best to leave before I get too attached to you. Otherwise, I'll never want to return."
The woman stared silently, then sighed as she sat down again, reaching for a pile of clothes that rested in a pile alongside various other junk that she'd pulled out of her bag. "Then if you're going to do that, take one of my spare outfits. You're not going to get very far in hand-me-down clothes from generations ago like you've got on now, and I wager you wear a similar size as me. It's the least I can do for you giving me access to this new place, because I want to stick around a while."
The boy blinked, before sitting down in front of her, and reached a hand out to accept the clothing, setting it next to his sleeping bag. "Then I'll accept your generous offer. I have most of the tools I need already lined up, but this will be useful, I didn't have a real delving outfit. I'll hand over my notes to you tomorrow morning. I'll leave later, when the light returns. There's no point leaving at night after all."
"You're going to wait that long? Why not use a glowstone? I have spare helmets if you need-"
"No need. My eyesight is pretty sharp, and I have my own methods of creating light. I've found a bunch of flashlights around here, and there's surprisingly many batteries that still are functioning." At the confused expression on her face, he waved his hand. "Relics that produce light, and the things that power them. Glowstones seem to be more for people who went up the layers and couldn't afford to waste valuable storage on power supplies. But I have strength to spare, I'll just take a really big backpack with me full of everything I need."
The woman picked up her bottle again, staring into the opening as she mused over his statement, before shrugging and tipping it over the fire, leaving the liquid inside to splash against the flaming wood with several loud pops before dropping the empty glass on the ground near the others. "I really don't need to be too hungover tomorrow. The time to celebrate reaching the bottom is over, now I'm interested." Her voice had lowered, her tone more serious as she laced her fingers and rested her elbows on her knees to lean forward, staring at the boy with an intense expression in her slightly creepy purple eyes. "Alright, I am massively drunk right now, so before I pass out, tell me your plan. I want to hear exactly how you intend to avoid the Curse and get to the surface all on your own. And beyond that, how you're going to get away from that thing in the 7th Layer."
He tilted his head, before chuckling. "You saw it, didn't you? That sludge that flows around all over the layer. It's pretty horrifying to witness, and even worse if you know what it really is."
"What are you going to do about it? I steered clear, but I saw what happens when some poor wild animals touched its surface. It doesn't seem possible to defend against."
"Oh, it isn't. There isn't anything you can do if you get caught inside it, it's just game over then. You just need to avoid it, that's really all you can do. As for avoiding the Curse…" He raised his index finger to his mouth. "I won't tell you. Suffice it to say that won't be an issue. You said you wanted to learn the truth yourself, you can start with being left in the dark about my tricks. I may not look it, but I'm an experienced delver. I have my ways."
Without giving her time to respond, he turned around to crawl into his sleeping bag, zipping it up and around his head and burying himself in the warmth as his voice came out muffled but still audible. "Go to sleep. We've got a long day tomorrow, and I'd rather the goodbye not be too sad since we've just met."