Chapter 5:

A Child's Snow Globe

Going outside was inevitable, but Adi found she was almost as reluctant as Eurias the next morning when it came time to move on.

"Why do I have to go too?" he whined as she pulled him towards the door.

"I can watch your back while you look for rocks," she said. "And I'm so not going out there alone. Besides, we already decided we're leaving today."

"You decided we're leaving today—"

She lightly shoved him through the door, following after as she shifted the pack on her shoulder. No sense in leaving it behind, given how many things could go wrong at any second. As she stepped to the outside, she pulled out the hatchet she'd exchanged for a knife in negotiations.

Eurias had his hands clasped in front of his chest while looking wide-eyed at the scenery around them, ears down and back. He looked at her with those big eyes. "Do we have to? We have food for days, don't we?"

"We should find food on the move," she asserted firmly. "And save our non-perishables for backup."

[Authority Issues leveled up to Rank 2!] Adi rolled her eyes. Didn't Eurias need to be an authority for that?

"What kind of food is out here?"

"If I'm right, we're in the Pacific Northwest," Adi said, walking over to a tree with low branches. "So like... salmon?" She knew with the lush greenery surrounding them, there had to be edible vegetation somewhere.

"Fish? That's... what are you doing?"

Adi looked up from where she was removing small needle-laden twigs from the tree. What was she doing? "I'm... gathering pine needles?" She looked down at the greenery in her hand. "For... tea. Good source of Vitamin C." She paused. "Why do I know that?" It certainly didn't fall in her areas of interest.

"A skill?" Eurias offered.

"Huh. I guess [Woodland Survival] doesn't give a warning before it kicks in." She chopped off a few more twigs, shoving them in the bag. "At least it's working. Come on, let's get to the beach."

Though Adi remained wary, the two of them made it to the beach without incident.

Eurias wobbled on one foot as he struggled to place his hoof down among the rocks of the beach. Adi caught him by the elbow for the third time and he straightened with a huff. "Walking shouldn't be this hard."

Adi just hoped they didn't need to run from anything while on the beach. If they stayed closer to the trees, maybe the threat of seagulls would keep the crabs at bay. The tide was closer, today, too. The sun was out and nice. The pleasantness of the day seemed suspicious.

"It almost seems like evolution took you in the wrong direction," Adi said. "Four legs is a lot more stable than two. Then again, opposable thumbs were a big evolutionary advantage for humans, but I'm sure a prehensile tail could do for grabbing things."

"Almost all intelligent species are humanoid," Eurias said. "It's the superior form, obviously."

Adi frowned, pausing for a moment. She took Eurias' hand to look at it.

"What are you—?"

"You have five digits: an opposable thumb and four fingers. Each finger has three bones, and the thumb has two. Your fingernails are dark but pretty similar."

"Similar to what?" he wanted to know, retrieving his hand from her when she let go.

"Humans," she said, wiggling her own fingers at him. "They were gone from here before you ever evolved, but it sure looks like you're based off of Earth DNA. Maybe the System has a bias towards the human shape, because I'm pretty sure bipedalism isn't inherently superior."

Eurias looked conflicted about the information. He stepped forward while thinking about it, and promptly went down. "Ow!"

Adi jumped after him. "Are you alright?"

"My knees—aha!" He plucked something off the ground and held it up triumphantly. "This will make a fine candidate."

Adi helped him back up, observing the rock—pebble, really—when he placed it in her hand. It was translucent and had ribbon-like cracks throughout. She held it up to the sky, rolling it between her fingers. "Quartz?"

"Yes," he said, eyes on the ground again. "It's somewhat occluded but I believe it will suffice."

"Nice." She stuck it in the bag. "One more to go."

The two of them spent a few more minutes bent over rocks on the beach. Eurias found a couple more, but they were pretty cloudy, so they kept looking. Adi got the growing sense of something wrong in the back of her mind, but she couldn't see anything dangerous. More and more, she watched the forest line, the sound of the ocean fading.

Then Eurias remarked, "We'd find more polished rocks that way, with the water so far out."

Adi's attention snapped to the horizon. The water was gone.

"Shit," she swore, grabbing his arm and yanking him towards the forest. He gave a bleated objection, dropping a rock.

"What is it?! I don't see anything!" He stumbled, banging his knees on a piece of driftwood.

"When did the water pull away?!"

"The water?!"

A thunderous sound started behind them. Adi would berate herself for it later, but she stopped, looking at the horizon. A towering wave hurtled towards them.

"The—the water!" Eurias spluttered.

"We have to get to the sanctuary," Adi said, renewing her efforts to get them both to the forest line.

"Adi!" Eurias said, barely managing to keep his feet under him with her frantically trundling him along. "We can't—I can't outrun that!"

"The trees, maybe they'll break the inertia—!"

"Adi, listen to me! That's too big, it's going to break the trees, and we can't make it to the sanctuary in time!"

"We can! Stop looking at it and run!"

"Adi, stop!"

The force of his command slammed into her chest and Adi staggered to a halt, turning wide eyes on Eurias.

"Give me the journal and pen," he said.

"What—"

"Now, Adi!" he snapped, shaking her arm. "Quickly!"

Bewildered, she retrieved the items. Eurias tore them out of her shaking hands, kneeling down on the ground with the journal open to an empty page, pen already flying. "The spellbook! Page 384!"

Adi knelt with the book. The pages stuck together. She rubbed them apart, hands shaking. "There." She looked up at the brown-and-blue wave as she set the book down. It was about to break land. There was nothing in between them. They were going to die.

With one hand in the book and the other flying, Eurias demanded without looking up, "The quartz!"

Adi reached into the bag.

The wave broke land.

Paper ripped.

Fingers grasping the rock, she pulled it out.

The wave was incomprehensibly huge.

Eurias' hand clasped over hers as soon as her hand was free of the bag, taking the rock in the paper. "Hold on to me!" he yelled over the sound, pressing against her with the spellbook and journal in between them.

Adi wrapped her arms tightly around him, shutting her eyes just before the water crashed into them.

The sensation of being ping-ponged in an invisible ball as a massive wave crashed into them was unfamiliar to Adi up until that very moment. She was thrown back and Eurias landed on top of her with an 'oof!' Darkness closed in on them. Up or down quickly became meaningless as the two of them were shaken around as if in a child's snow globe, elbows and hooves and antlers going everywhere. She couldn't keep a hold on him, but they were never not touching.

"I'm gonna puke," Adi said at some point.

"You better not!" Eurias retorted. The two of them were tossed again. Something made a snapping sound. "Fornication!"

"The word is 'fuck!'"

It seemed like an eternity, but eventually, thankfully, the water spat them out. They laid on the bottom of the globe, spinning around and pinging in between trees.

[Congratulations on surviving your first natural disaster!]

[Leveled up x9!]

"Nooo, my beautiful antler," Eurias was whining.

"That was pretty sick," Adi said, watching the canopy up above swirl around. "I didn't know you could do that."

"The blood's ruining my clothes again..."

Adi sat up as best she could in alarm. Red blood streamed down Eurias' face and onto his white clothes, stemming from a broken antler. His eyes had a sort of glassy look to them.

"Antlers can bleed?!" she said in alarm, pulling the pack from beneath herself. She shoved the journal and spellbook, a little crumpled and worse for wear, back into the pack while rifling around for her first aid items. "I didn't ask for styptic powder or anything! Will gauze stem it?"

"The water is so dirty," he said, focused elsewhere.

The small globe they were in was inconvenient for trying to get to his side. Adi scooted around until she was able to reach his antler, blood smearing on her shirt as she grasped the broken appendage with a hand full of gauze. "Eurias, focus on me." There was so much blood. Why did it bleed so much?

"Am I ugly now?" he asked, wincing noticeably.

"I have no idea about serthyen standards of beauty," she said, remembering her [Field Aid]. She triggered a dialog box above his antler.

[FIIELD AID: BROKEN VELVET ANTLER]

Remove at pedicle (open sore, trigger regrowth) Gauze wrap (may cause club antler) (UNAVAILABLE) Staunch bleeding [Components: starch powder, gauze]

"Are antlers just a vanity thing?" she asked, trying to keep him talking. The gauze was soaked beneath her hand. Was she supposed to remove it and get a new one, or leave the old one on and add new bandages? She couldn't remember.

"No mate will want me now," he lamented. "They were so symmetrical."

Adi shook her head, not pointing out she was the only one around and mating was the last thing on her mind. "I'm going to wrap it, okay?"

She selected the gauze option, and beneath her hand immediately formed a fresh wrapping of gauze on the antler. It was pretty bulky.

As soon as she removed her hand, the two of them dropped into the water.

Adi yelped as gravity took hold, ending up on her knees. It was maybe a foot deep, here. Eurias came up drenched and spluttering.

"Dammit!" she said while lifting the pack out of the water, seeing his bandage now soaked through. She got to her feet, slogging over to help him upright. He was woozy.

"I told you it was dirty," he complained with a bit of a slur, picking at his mud-and-blood stained robes. As he leaned heavily on her, he blinked a few times. "I think I used too much mana."

"And you've lost a lot of blood," Adi said, getting his arm over her shoulders. Fortunately, he was taller than her, so that wasn't hard. "We have to find someplace to rest."

"The water," he complained. "'S'everywhere."

The watery forest landscape was extremely abnormal and felt more like a marshland. Behind them, branches and trees laid in a mess everywhere. There was likely more water to come, since tsunamis typically had more than one wave after all. Hopefully it wouldn't crash into them this far out.

How far had it thrown them? Which direction? There was no way to know. At least Eurias' quick thinking had gotten them through alive. Now it was up to her to get them somewhere dry and safe.

Inland, then. East. Adi slogged through the water to a tree, letting Eurias lean against it while she fetched a compass from her pack. She was lucky the System had a comprehensive knowledge of 'survival gear' and 'first aid shit,' because both this and the gauze were things she wouldn't have thought to ask for.

Now with the compass in hand, Adi got them back to walking in the right direction. The water, the hidden roots of the trees and plants on the ground, and the forest debris made everything difficult to traverse. The area was hilly, but even so, everything was still wet. She kept talking about anything and everything, trying to keep Eurias engaged. But he had gone quiet, answering with only noncommittal grunts here and there. It was concerning and as if he was putting all of his effort into simply putting one foot in front of the other. His bandage leaked red-colored water.

Finally, it seemed they had exited the water. Adi got them up to the top of the nearest hill, and then set Eurias down against a tree.

"Wet clothes come off," she told him. Between the layers of clothes and his fur, there was no way anything on him was remotely dry. She pulled her boots off, dumping water out of them and setting them aside. Looking over, she saw Eurias had closed his eyes.

"Hey." She leaned over, shaking his shoulder gently. He opened his golden eyes just enough to look at her. "You can sleep after your clothes are off and you've eaten something."

With a great sigh, he sat upright, starting to shrug out of his clothes. Assured he wasn't going to drop right then and there, Adi turned her attention to the pack.

She hadn't been sure what would happen if loose water got inside the pocket dimension. Fortunately, it either didn't make everything wet, or there was none inside. That was a relief. She didn't know what they would have done if all their gear was also wet, because a fire was impossible at the moment.

Laying out the first blanket, Adi set a canteen and some ration bars on it like a little Eurias trap. Once he had managed to get out of his clothes, she handed him the second blanket to cover himself. Swaddled up, he drank and ate and then laid down on the little spot of dry. Though Adi had promised that was all, she quickly redressed his wound before letting him sleep. She wrung out and hung his clothes over a branch.

As tired as Adi was, she needed to keep lookout and monitor Eurias' condition—though she didn't know what the hell she'd do if he like, went into heart failure or something. CPR, she guessed. Hopefully [Field Aid] could walk her through that.

So to make herself useful and busy, she started gathering long sticks and leaning them against one of the trees on the hill to let excess water drip off. With her hatchet, she broke off small branches and pokey bits. When she found some Y-shaped sticks, she hammered one next to the tree Eurias was at, then wedged one of the larger boughs in the crease and against the tree, using rocks to shore up both ends.

Eurias slept through her work, almost appearing dead. Adi checked the pulse on his neck obsessively (after finding it). Her work, at least, had dried everything but her feet off.

She cleared the area around her sleeping companion of the largest debris before placing sticks along the large bough above Eurias. A little lean-to shelter began forming. It was, in Adi's estimation, pretty shitty, but she didn't know how to improve it without a tarp and with all the natural material soaked through. At least it would block some wind.

Exhaustion pulled at her after a couple hours of the work. She sat down on an edge of the blanket next to Eurias, drinking and eating.

But once her hands were unoccupied, Adi's thoughts took hold. If only she hadn't made the decision to leave the sanctuary today, they would still be safe inside. It was her fault Eurias got hurt. Was there an earthquake she had missed, something she could have caught to warn them of the impending wave?

Was there anyone else in this spot of the world that had been caught up in it too? How many people had died in natural disasters while she had been comfortable in the sanctuary?

Adi sought refuge with their only reading material. Cracking to the first page of the spellbook, she started in on the basics of magic.

***

The basics of magic gave Adi a run around. Eurias apparently had a natural aptitude for magic, because whatever he had done was not basic. At least by the time he'd woken up, she had managed to figure out a fire rune and get a fire going with it. The exertion of magic in her chest was a strange sensation.

Sitting up, Eurias groaned and rubbed his eyes. His good antler bumped up against sticks on the lean-to, and he ducked, looking upward.

"How are you feeling?" Adi asked from where she stoked the fire. She had a fence of sticks around the fire to both protect it from wind and dry the wood out for additional fuel.

The serthyen groaned again in answer, blearily looking at the fire, then up again at the lean-to. "What is this?"

"Shelter," she said.

"Shelter," he echoed dubiously, poking up at one of the sticks.

Adi rolled her eyes while standing up. "Are you dry?"

"Yes," he said with a yawn.

"Good. Here." Taking his clothes down, she tossed them over. The clothes hit the unprepared serthyen in the face and he spluttered for a second. Though laughing, Adi said, "Sorry."

He just looked tired as he took the clothes in hand and started pulling them on. His nose scrunched and ears went back. "They smell like smoke." His ears fell after he got them on, touching the bloodstains. It was clear what he was thinking: those would probably never come out now.

"Better than being wet." Bringing with her a nice stick and her hatchet, Adi came to sit by him on one of the blankets. "What was that thing you did with your voice? Where you made me listen?"

"[Power of Command]," he said, scratching the back of his head. "It's a serthyen thing. It seemed prudent." He sounded and appeared apologetic, though she wasn't 100% confident about her ability to read his body language.

"I'm not complaining," Adi assured him. "You saved our lives. That orb thing was amazing, too."

He brightened considerably, chest puffing. "It was simply a modification on a basic force shield."

"'Simply'?" Gesturing at the fire, she said, "It took me like three hours to figure out how to make that. Do you have an eidetic memory or something?"

"I may have had a working understanding of several magical languages already."

"Oh my god, you are a nerd," she laughed. "Thank god for that. Why did you learn magic if you couldn't use it?"

He tucked his legs up against his chest. "In... old stories, the System would grant extraordinary abilities to individuals for accomplishing feats. When I was younger, I had hoped that if I merely exerted enough effort..." His ears were slowly drooping as he spoke and trailed off, gazing into the fire. The flickering flames reflected in the gold of his eyes looked like molten gold. "So I learned all I could of any magic I could read, until mother said I was too obsessed and took my books away."

"Oh." How was it that every time she asked him questions, she came out feeling bad and awkward? She carefully scraped a bit of bark off her soon-to-be-staff stick with the hatchet. "I'm sorry."

"They were only stories. It was time for me to grow up," he said, ears deliberately returning to a neutral position. "To have realistic expectations and work to expand the family's interests."

Adi considered how to respond, frowning. The more she heard about Eurias' mother, the less she liked the lady. "That was kind of shitty of your mom. It sounds like you really had a passion for magic."

"The delusions of a child," he said, ears back.

Letting the subject drop, Adi pulled the pack over and let him dig out some food so they could have some dinner. After finding that they had lost the quartz when the orb broke, Eurias lamented the loss briefly before burying himself once more in the spellbook. The two of them worked next to each other in quiet until an hour or two after nightfall. Adi gained [Woodworking].

Fairly confident nothing could cause a forest fire right now, Adi put more wood on to burn. With any luck, the fire would keep creatures at bay. Eurias was awake for now, but neither of them were in condition to sit watch for the whole night.

With that tended, Adi claimed one of the blankets and wrapped up in it, laying down. Eventually, despite the dampness, smell of the fire, and hard ground, she fell asleep.