The mist closes in on them as they walk through the trees. It's only really when it gets so thick that he and the girl have to walk closer together that Takeru remembers it was a perfectly clear morning while they were by the lake. He adds fast-changing weather to the list of things which have been different since the girl arrived.
Hunger, too, is something of a new experience for him. At least, hunger of this sort is. Last night's chocolate bars are proving a poor foundation for a morning's walk through the forest. The girl doesn't complain and nor does Poyomon, so Takeru keeps quiet, but he's fairly sure that this is the worst day ever.
After a lot too long for his liking, the girl points out some strange fruits growing in the trees. They are high up, out of reach, so they leave Poyomon to guard Takeru's bag and start to climb. The girl goes first, although she seems to find climbing rather tricky. Takeru notices that she reaches for branches which are too far away at times. It's odd. Still, before long there is a pile of fruit gathered at the base of the tree - only a little bruised - and they sit down to have a late breakfast.
For a while, they eat in silence. That much at least is familiar to Takeru, even if the food isn't. The kitchen in the cottage has fruit, but he usually prefers to eat sweets or cakes. Sometimes Poyomon manages to convince him to eat some of the more boring things on offer, but he's pretty good at ignoring that imploring look his companion uses on him. And fruit is annoying. It's all juicy and messy, and mostly it has pips or stones in the middle. Still. It's better than being hungry.
Halfway through their meal, the girl sighs.
"Takeru, are you okay? You're so quiet."
He looks up, surprised. "I'm fine."
"Is it…is it because of that nightmare you had?"
The question makes him flinch. All of a sudden his head is filled with cold, clear dream memories, of burning and freezing at the same time. With the screams of the strange, alien voice which is somehow his own. With the laughter of the shadowy figure who leans over him.
He drops his food, and presses his palms to the sides of his head, trying to squeeze the thoughts away. This isn't right. Dreams only happen at night. Dreams aren't real; they shouldn't be here, bothering him now he's awake.
"Poyo! Poyo!"
The voice cuts through the burning and the screaming, and Takeru opens eyes he doesn't even remember closing. Poyomon has leapt onto his lap and stares up at him. It's okay. He has Poyomon. Nothing bad can happen all the while he has Poyomon with him.
Takeru clings to Poyomon for a while, only half aware that he's crying. When he calms down, he realises that the girl is staring at him. Her eyes are red and puffy, and he can see tear tracks on her cheeks. The shock of seeing someone else weeping startles him out of his own tears.
"Oh, Takeru, I'm so sorry," she says. "I didn't- I shouldn't have said anything."
He frowns. "You're crying? But friends don't cry." Only the crying boy does, he wants to say, but the words are too hard to shape aloud.
The girl wipes the tears from her cheeks, although it doesn't stop her eyes from being red and puffy.
"What are you talking about?" she says. "Everyone cries, if something makes them sad enough."
Takeru shakes his head. "None of my friends ever cried," he says. "Crying's just what happens after a dream…" He falls silent, thinking. It's the middle of the day, so he can't have been asleep. And there's no denying that the girl was crying too, even if she seems to have stopped now.
He's never really thought about friends having feelings before. Friends just come and visit to play with him, after all. It's yet another strange thing, but it's been almost a whole day since he left the cottage, so strange things are starting to feel a little less strange than they had back then. And maybe things are different out here to how they are at home. Besides, the girl is most certainly different to his other friends. She talks, after all. And has ideas, and feelings of her own-
Takeru frowns as something occurs to him. "You said people cry when they're sad," he says. "Why are you sad?"
The girl stays silent a moment, looking at her hands. Poyomon hops over, and nudges against her knee. For a split second, Takeru feels a spark of irritation that his companion is paying attention to the girl and not himself, but then it fades. All he's left with is his curiosity.
She looks up, her brow furrowed as though she's thinking really hard about something.
"I'm sad because you are," she says at last. "Because you're my friend, and friends…well, friends want each other to be happy, not sad. It's hard, knowing that a friend is sad, or unhappy, or…lost."
He blinks, remembering the boy. Takeru isn't sure he really feels sad that the boy is lost. Then again, he's not entirely sure he knows what sadness is. It's not something he's ever thought about before. He's always been happy enough at the cottage, after all, with Poyomon by his side and his friends to play with when they visit. Still. He's certainly been less happy since the boy disappeared. Could that be sadness? Not enough to make him cry - but all the same, the loneliness hasn't been a feeling he's liked.
Takeru nods. "I think I understand," he says, holding out his arms for Poyomon to hop back into. His companion bounds over and lands on his outstretched palms.
The girl gets to her feet, dusting off her shorts. She doesn't look all that convinced, really. Takeru cuddles Poyomon, feeling the last prickles of irritation fade away, and stands up as well.
"We should take some of the fruit with us," the girl says. "Is there much space in your bag?"
Takeru blinks, and reaches for his backpack. He's not entirely sure why they can't simply find more fruit - or hopefully something better - later on, but the girl seems pretty certain, so he takes a look.
There's not much inside, really. They ate the chocolate last night, so now it holds only the things he grabbed from his room: his hat; a pebble from the lake; a few bits of sting, now hopelessly tangled; one last bar of chocolate which they somehow missed the night before. And two things - gadgets which Takeru has never seen the point of, but which he's always kept in his bag anyway. A grey rectangular one with, a front that flips up to reveal some buttons and a dark shiny square, and a more rounded object, which also has a shiny panel and buttons. The sides of the latter are green, made of a rubbery material, and the centre is an ugly, mottled dark grey. Something about it bothers Takeru, but he can't work out what exactly, or why.
There's plenty of room in the bag though, so he simply nods to the girl. They spend a minute or two packing his rucksack with the fruits which look least likely to get squashed or make a mess.
"Which way?" Takeru asks, as they look at the woods around them. The mist seems to have gone away again, and they can see quite a distance into the trees in every direction. It all looks the same, no matter which way they turn.
The girl shrugs. "I don't suppose it really matters," she says. "We might as well just pick a direction and see where we end up. It's not as though anything in this place seems to stay still for all that long anyway."
Something about her tone of voice prickles in his mind, sparking his curiosity. It's as though she's not used to a world which changes all the time. And if she isn't, what does that mean? Is there somewhere else like that? A world which is all the same every day? Takeru has never thought about where his friends come from, or where they go to at the end of the days they visit. It's hard to wonder things like that about people who never talk or have ideas, after all. They're just…there. But the longer he's with the girl, the more he realises that she has to have come from somewhere. She knows the boy, after all. And she has the other friends, the ones whose names he can't quite remember. Not to mention the fact that she seems to find it really strange for friends to go away. Does that mean friends stay there all the time where the girl comes from? As they set out into the forest, Takeru can't help wondering what it would be like to live somewhere like that.
He cuddles Poyomon, following the girl along a rough track through the trees. Maybe, he thinks, after they find the boy he'll ask her if it's okay for him to visit sometimes. Then he'll be the friend. The thought makes him smile.
A.N.: Phew! At last, this chapter is finished. Writing in present tense is turning out to be a lot harder than past tense, particularly when you are writing present tense through the eyes of an eight year old with a really screwey memory. (Which isn't intended to be a spoiler at this point, by the way. Anything more than a few days ago is blurry to him.) I'm also surprising myself with how much of this story there actually is. When I initially envisaged it in my head, it was only about...maybe twenty or so chapters long. I have a feeling it's going to push past that by a bit now.
Part of that is due to the chapters being shorter, but keeping them short was a conscious decision on my part, and I really want to stick with this sort of pacing. It's a lot more immediate and "present" than long chapters, which is kinda the whole point of the story.