Bec was getting sick of waking up with a piece of gravel sticking in her back. Bec was also getting sick of waking up in a pool of her own blood. It was new to wake up with a stinking fish as a pillow, but she hated that almost as much as the other two things.

“You’re up! It was touch and go there but I managed to stop the bleeding with your impromptu dinner. I got to say that I wish I didn’t have a very clear recollection of what it’s like to bite into raw fish gut, but I suppose you do, too, now so I shouldn’t really complain. Bec? Bec?”

Bec grabbed fish from the pile and started eating it. “I need… more energy.” She said between shallow breaths and laborious chews. She wasn’t healed and she wasn’t fine. Tears rolled down her face. “I need… power…” The chunks of meat and viscera that she pulled indiscriminately from hours old, room temperature fish made her gag, but she kept chewing.

“You sure you want to do that? You know you might get sick.”

Sick of nearly dying. Sick of this damn planet. Sick of being on the back foot. “NO,” Bec said, chewing angrily. “I need this… I deserve my plunder. I beat… the fish. THE FISH… DID NOT… BEAT ME.” She coughed and what looked like coffee grounds splatter the fish she was eating, she wiped it off and started pulling stray meat from the ribs with her fingers. “Give me this!”

Bec didn’t know how long she gulped on pools of blood cupped in fish cavities, chewed on flexible fish bones, and even gobbled a smaller fish she found inside one of the bigger fish, but she could be sure that she would have traumatized anyone to stumble on this scene from a horror movie.

Al had to admit, Bec was a mess. What could he do, though? He could try to reason with her, but, if he were being honest, this was advantageous. The food, questionable food safety aside, was going to help him replenish her blood with some nutrients to spare. Al thought Bec knew this. Her mind is a jumble of frustration but, eventually, hopefully, she’d gather herself. Al did not know what it would be like to be paired with an insane person, but he would only need to know the answer if it actually happened. For now, Bec was being strong even if it manifested in her discovering how eyeballs could be both juicy and chewy at the same time. Honestly, it was a bit reassuring.

Bec called off her feast when Al demanded she not throw up to make room for more. He was right, Bec thought as the haze started to lift. She did go a little nuts. Just a little. She would hope to never speak of this again to anyone. Bec picked up the panel and the last fish that she couldn’t eat and returned to the trailer. She had to take her time, taking multiple breaks to cough up more black blood. She realized this fish was going to be a stink bomb if she didn’t jam it the fridge fast. She ran the sink for an hour, hand cleaning herself from head to toe. Today, she was busting out the good stuff! Shampoo and conditioner made her feel a little more stable and less like a blood-soaked hag from some Hans Christian Andersen story. Bec assessed the day in her mind. Last time, she returned to the trailer covered in blood, but this time, she was covered in blood AND the guts of her enemies. I’m gonna mark this as a win for Bec.

“As you should,” Al interjected. “Your voracious eating and blood drinking were spectacularly good at replenishing your iron and protein supplies. It almost definitely saved your life.”

“Hmph, yes. That’s why I did it. Definitely not because I was hoping to absorb the fish’s powers. Yeah.” Bec winced. She really needed to learn how to think clearly when low on blood. This seemed like it was going to be a thing, even if Bec tried to avoid it. She still thanked her lucky stars that her body seemed equipped to survive some pretty harrowing injuries. Bec yawned as she scraped red gunk out of her hair. Unsurprisingly, Bec was learning that blood-loss induced unconsciousness was not an adequate substitute for sleep. When she deemed herself clean enough to not outright ruin her bed, she crawled under the covers and fell asleep.

~~~

When Bec awoke, she was disappointed to find that her standards for bed ruining was a bit lower than she originally thought as she found a stringy meat thing still in her hair, a faint rust colored stain on the covers, and a dried pool of blood on the floor around the sink. Her room was turning into a pigsty and she was notably deprived of a mop.

When washing her face in the mirror, she noticed her arm was bulgy, but in a good way.

“Al, am I packing on muscle? That was fast!”

“Well, your activities have been strenuous as of late, but I’ve actually been stimulating your muscles and encouraging growth in your sleep. I figured you’d appreciate the free cardio and strength.”

“You were right, but doesn’t this mean I’ll need to eat more? I nearly died when I went out for food.”

“Actually, you very much did die the first time that you looked for food!” Al corrected, trying to distract from the point.

“Thanks for reminding me.” Bec’s flexing in front of the mirror lost its enthusiasm. “That also reminds me, I’m getting close to a checkpoint, yeah? The Timelet is gonna show me the future soon?” How many days had it been? It felt like forever since she saw the text on the Timelet telling her how she died in the river.

“You have about 2 ½ days left. Little over half the time has elapsed.”

“Shit. That’s not good.” Bec thought about how she would have to do all this stuff over again if she died. Well, not her, specifically, but she knew the Bec who would be doing it and it’d not be a fun activity for her. “I’m going to use the rest of the time to work on this Word thing,” Bec declared to Al and herself. Bec wanted to eat that fish in her fridge fairly badly, but the idea of going to town on raw fish made her a little too queasy, for the moment. She had some time to figure out a fire. Bec grabbed one of the three chairs and brought it outside. Just because I’m training, doesn’t mean I have to be uncomfortable. Bec sat the chair down and sat on it so that she could stare at the chair and her shadows. “If I can manipulate existing light, I’ll be able to see that in the way I cast a shadow, and I won’t have to look at the sun to do it.” She stared at the lines of her hand cast on the ground.

Bec focused on trying to make the light around her hand brighter as it passed through her fingers. She stared at the shadow hand and flexed a nonexistent muscle. Is something happening? Bec ditched the chair and laid on her stomach looking intently at her hand shadow. I can’t tell. She started making a shadow puppet. Flapping her fingers, the puppet said in a condescending high-pitched tone, “you’re such a failure, Bec! You lost two fights against a fish!” Bec wanted to correct the damn thing, to remind it that they were tied but before she could, she saw the shadows warp as it mocked her. How to describe it? It was trembling and wobbly. Bec looked at her hand puppet and it looked at her, with its mouth hanging open. Like a mirage on a hot day in C-attle, the hand was shaky and enshrouded in shimmery air.

“Whaou, magic is real,” Bec gaped at the blurry thing attached to her arm. She stopped everything, even breathing, to look at it. The shimmering died down to a barely noticeable hazy aura revealing the puppet hand. Bec let out a breath of exasperation. What did she do? She didn’t feel like she did anything different. Her hand was about to call Bec a failure again when it dawned on her. She did do something different. She stopped moving. “I need to move to make this work?” She started waving her hand and her hand started to WAVE. “Is this based on my power? A dumb pun?” No. Please say it isn’t so. She kicked off her shoe and started to shake her foot while focusing. It also started to shimmer to an extent. “Can you wave a foot? Does that count? Is it movement or the act of waving that triggers it?” Bec realized that she sensed the changes when she was on the riverside because she was shaking, clenching, and wiggling her fingers. “None of those things are waving, per se. Ok. What if I tried to coat my whole body?”

Bec started walking and, while she had assumed that she couldn’t get motion sickness living on the ocean her whole life, she was quickly and conclusively proven wrong. The whole world warped and twisted around her and she stumbled dumbly, feeling her stomach turn. She tried to ease the power off, but it was too late, her footing failed her, and she collapsed onto her side like a sack of rice. She felt a cracking in her neck. “ARRGH.” She clutched at her right shoulder.

“Ah, damn. It seems like you broke your clavicle again. Minor bleeding as well but that’s an easy fix.” Al said. “You were doing so well! I’m eager to see what you do after you get some rest for a few hours.”