Jacob openly stared at him, his jaw slack and his mouth hanging slightly open in an expression of shock. He was having a hard time reconciling the stoic man before him with the full-of-emotion man from Vincents' story. Vincents' past must have been truly horrific to have changed him so much.
"What is past is past. It was a very long time ago." Vincent left it at that, standing and striding purposefully into the tree line. He hadn't come back by the time the sun fully set. Left to his own devices for who-knows-how-long, Jacob tended the fire, building it up and banking it so that it would provide light and warmth all night long. Stretching languorously, he moved to the drying racks, checking on the drying meat and fruit. The majority of the fruit was finished drying, so he removed the pieces, neatly filling the hand-woven baskets and carrying them back to the fire. He also moved the racks of meat closer to the fire to ward off scavenging bugs during the night. Satisfied with how he had arranged the racks, he fed the fire, took the pot of rendered fat off and covered it, and retired to the bed Vincent had made for him.
'I wonder when he'll be back? Did I do something wrong? I didn't mean to force him into telling me.' With those thoughts on his mind, Jacob fell asleep. In the forest, Vincent gathered more deadfall with a single-minded intensity, seeking something that would free his mind from the sudden onslaught of crushing sorrow remembering his past had brought on. Gathering sticks wasn't helping much. Stacking the wood in a haphazard pile, he went deeper into the forest in search of- what? He didn't know. It felt good to be away from the oppressive feeling of being near another person, even if Jacob was trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Being accustomed to solitude for so long had its' drawbacks. Vincent kept walking, letting his feet take him wherever they wanted to go. Blazing light brought him out of his thoughts. In his mindless wandering, he had passed through the entire oasis forest and come out the other side. The stark white light of the rising moon burned his sensitive, dark-accustomed eyes. He blinked away the sudden tears, rubbing his eyes with his right hand, as he turned back to face the forest. This side of the oasis was bathed in moonlight, starkly outlining every tree. The scent of decay he had smelled earlier was stronger here, lingering in the air and filling his lungs with every breath he took. Suppressing a cough at the cloying fragrance, he made his way to a tree that looked as though it had been struck by lightning. The bark of the tree was sloughing off in long strips, its' leaves drown and brittle, the ground around its' roots littered with fallen branches. There were patches of darkness on the trunk and exposed roots that looked slick. Against a deep-seated instinct that told him not to touch it, Vincent knelt at the base of the tree, removed the glove from his right hand and gingerly touched one of the patches. His fingertips came away coated in a thick, slimy, viscous substance, not unlike phlegm. Bringing his fingers close to his nose, he inhaled deeply, letting his mind try to sort out the different scents. The sickly-sweet scent of rotting flesh covered another scent, one that he could only describe as emcold. /emIt was akin to the scent he had come across earlier in the day when gathering fruit, though it had a slightly different tone to it. His fingertips started to tingle and he hastily wiped the goo off onto the tree, scrubbing his whole hand with clean sand before slipping his glove back on.
'There is something wrong with this oasis, though I know not what.' Vincent started walking back through the forest, keeping his keen eyes peeled for any more signs of whatever-it-was that was affecting the plants. It seemed everywhere he looked he saw some evidence of it, whether it was a brown-leaved bush or the jagged stump of a tree turning to black sludge. The sight of such widespread disease disturbed him, reminding him uncomfortably of GeooStigma.
'The GeoStigma was the Planets' way of getting rid of all of Jenovas' cells. The Stigma only affected those who had been exposed to Jenova. I never saw it affect plants or animals. Could this be something similar? If it is, what is causing it? ShinRa is no more, the last power plant fell into ruin a millennia ago There is nothing drawing from the LifeStream anymore, mankind doesn't have the technology for it anymore. What's causing it?!' Vincent stopped in his tracks, confronted by a gigantic crater that seemingly opened up out of nowhere. He was sure he been heading back along the same path he come on earlier. There was no way he could have missed something of that size, so he must have gone off course. The sloping sides of the crater were littered with the desiccated remains of plants and animals alike. The very bottom of the crater was a pool of the same sludge clinging to the still living trees. From his position at the rim, Vincent could barely catch the smell of decay, though he imagined it was quite horrid further down. Furrowing his brow, and cursing his natural-born inquisitiveness, he started picking his way slowly down one side of the crater, aiming for the large, partially buried skeleton of what looked like a behemoth. When he finally got close to it, he saw that the flesh had been stripped away from the bones as though by acid, the bones themselves pitted and etched in a way he was intimately familiar with. Given how his fingertips still tingled from their brief contact with the slime earlier, he was willing to bet the behemoth had stumbled upon the crater, fallen into the pool at the bottom, then died from the acid as it had tried to climb out. Vincent scrutinized the other skeletons nearby; all showed signs of acid corrosion, the skulls pointing towards the rim. Gingerly, he touched a rib on the closest skeleton with the index finger of his gauntlet, expecting the solid bone to resist. The bone caved inwards at his touch, turning to dust at an alarming rate. His curiosity piqued, he tapped another bone, and another, with the same results. With care to his footing, he moved to the next closest skeleton and repeated the experiment. This one too, crumbled into dust. A quiet hiss drew his attention downward, to the pool of sludge. Tiny bubbles had started appearing on the surface, bursting, releasing tiny wisps of vapor. That deep-seated fight-or-flight instinct told him, in no uncertain terms, to get the hell out of there.
Taking far less care than he had in getting down, Vincent hastened up the slope, sliding in the soft dirt. It seemed almost as if the crater were growing, making it harder and harder to get back up to the rim. With something akin to shock, he realized that the pool at the bottom was getting bigger, pulling the loose soil of the slope down in a miniature avalanche. Realizing too late that going into the crater had been a grave mistake on his part, Vincent doubled his efforts, though it seemed hopeless. He looked behind him and immediately regretted it. The sludge was even closer than before, hissing vehemently, sending up plumes of vapor from a surface that looked for all the world like it was boiling. Setting his gaze firmly on the lip of the crater, he tripled his efforts, trying to squeeze every last bit of strength from his legs to drive himself upwards. The harrowing climb out of the mouth of death felt like it took hours, though in reality, it only took a few minutes. The sludge dogged his heels, catching the tips of his hair as it threatened to wrap around his legs and trip him. Just when he felt like he wouldn't be able to get away, his hand encountered empty air. The rim of the caldera disappeared beneath him as he vaulted over it, stumbling to his knees a few feet from the edge as his legs gave out. He watched in morbid fascination as the sludge reached the edge, and stopped. It was like it had come up against a barrier. Vincent stayed kneeling, trying to catch his breath, watching as the sludge slowly, grudgingly even, retreated. He waited until it had receded back to the small pool at the very bottom and its' surface was still once again. Heaving a final shaky breath, he climbed to his feet, sweeping his mass of braids over his right shoulder to examine the tips. The hair was singed, some of the tar-like substance still clinging to a few of the braids. Frowning, he watched as the tar seemed to creep up his hair, dissolving the black strands. Taking a firm grip on a section of the mass of hair, he slashed the razor-sharp serrated digits of his gauntlet through the pleats above his hand. With a seemingly careless motion, he threw the bundle into the crater. Taking another portion in hand, he repeated his previous actions. He kept at it until his once ankle-length hair had been chopped just short of shoulder length. Vincent watched with a strange feeling as the hanks of black hair were dissolved by the sludge.