Morning came and as I groggily woke up, I saw most of everyone else already awake. Mels was the last to get up, and seemed to be favoring one of her arms, which by the looks of it, needed some healing. There were a few deep gashes in her forearm, but one of them looked like it had partially healed, but only enough to not bleed. Yet another conversation I'd have to have.

But first things first! Since Mels went and got my attention like that, I couldn't help but remember the wax ball I had found before that she ate. I could really use more of that, especially if I could find a way to add it into my traits and be able to generate it in some way. There were enough tall baobab trees around, and since their branches were so far apart from each other, I could easily see between them from a distance for investigative purposes.

A few of the scalewolf bodies had fallen to the ground, and Djraine offered to help me put the dead animals back on everyone's backs once she saw what I was doing, and I couldn't be more appreciative. I did want to hurry back home to put everything away and check on Sting and the captive in person, but I hadn't scoped out any new clay or wax deposits, so we'd just have to deal with wandering around for a bit.

...

More than half the day went by, and I still hadn't found what I was looking for. Maybe I'd find it some other time. However, I did learn something really valuable. The entire forest, from each direction, all seemed to have perfectly cut horizontal lines separating the land from the forest edges. The outside of the forest fit to each other, but the forest itself really didn't fit at all. There was no gradient. It wasn't grass that got less dense and then became beach sand, it was thick, tall, grass followed by mossy ground and baobab trees, and on the other side, thick, tall, grass that became less dense as it mixed with sand, and then sand.

I had already thought it before, but it couldn't possibly be natural. It was a guarantee now. I just had to talk to the jumi to be sure. The one I caught should be good enough, and if not, it was food, and the ones we made friends with would be better informants. Probably.

Feeling through our joined emotional states, I could tell that Sting wasn't very happy. He was lonely. That was my fault- it was necessary for someone to stay back, but I guess the big scorpion wanted to be part of what he must have seen us doing. It also made me think of those other spiders that I put in the cave- how big were they now? They were probably the same size they were before, since I wasn't really sure on all the details of how my abilities worked. If they had to die and be absorbed, then new spiderlings of those species get chosen, then so be it. But it was kind of sad since I wouldn't be able to get to know them beyond how I learned my pet/child personalities from my previous life.

Well, one of my previous lives.

There were other spiders I had met but not taken home. Very strange individuals! The big black tarantula-like spider who came in my bedroom, and there was a tarantula, a rose-hair, I think, who I met in the wild. Whether she was truly wild or someone's pet that was released in the mountains, I have no idea. While out camping, she had found me twice. If she was reborn here like I was, then maybe she'd find me again. Maybe that black one would, too.

They could have both been looking for their family, or lost family if the latter was a released pet. I knew what they were feeling. I had been in that position before, too.

I had gone to a cartoon-related world-famous theme park, and my family had forgotten they took me there to begin with. The staff had taken me to the lost-and-found, but made no effort to get me in touch with anyone. Only when the park began to close and the light show was over did they realize that they had taken me with them, since they saw some of my toys in the car.

In later years I thought back on this and wondered what happened to the other children who got abandoned, probably intentionally unlike me, by people visiting from other nations? I hadn't read anything about that on the internet, or heard of anyone in person that had it happen. I wondered if they became slaves of that movie company. It isn't like anyone would ever find out; not with a navy, billions of dollars, and private property designed with multiple dozen miles of intentionally impossible to comprehend mazes. Sure they say those mazes are so only one mascot of a certain kind is able to be seen at any given time, but who is to say?

It didn't matter anymore anyway- that was that world, this was this, and even if all the bad things I could imagine or implicate were true, there was nothing to do about it either here or now. There were other things to do, though.

...

It took just short of another day to finally get back home with our loot. We still didn't find anything I had wanted besides the scalewolves, and there didn't seem to be any more of them. I did have that nice book with the coffee seeds, though, so that was something we'd have to work on as fast as possible.

Along the way I had the chance to talk to Malas, who was surprisingly... not as oblivious as usual. It took hours to get actual answers out of him while he kept wandering off and forgetting what was going on, but he did at least answer.

Apparently he reincarnated before I even had him as a pet spider! He had gained some sort of ability in his first life but forgot what that life even was. He had tried to advance it further during the life he spent with me, but it didn't work. While he kept ignoring me and his brothers and sisters and even surroundings in this world, it did work. He didn't know how he started the ability either, or what it was called, because he wasn't paying attention whenever he was notified about it. Willful ignorance of everything made his skill grow, but he couldn't do anything directly anymore, either.

There was clearly more to learn, but he probably wasn't paying attention and the message probably decayed since. I remember seeing a show on television that had someone with a total lack of magical power, and wasn't bound to it because of that. A mage casting a fireball at her would just be some weird guy yelling at her and making funny hand gestures. A magical barrier would be nothing but easily passable open space, and magically invisible stuff was just as visible as anything else. I figured Malas' ability was something like that, but for physical attacks and biological needs.