Chapter 2

It was as though he was awakening from a long slumber. However, instead of the lethargic feeling one would expect, Herring felt nothing but fear and adrenaline as he girlishly screamed.

After crossing between worlds, he’d came to in the middle of the sky, his insides feeling like they’d been tossed about on the world’s most extreme rollercoaster. He was falling—albeit slowly. This was not apparent to him, though, as he uselessly flailed his arms about in pure terror, desperately trying to slow his deceivingly gentle descent.

I knew I shouldn’t have trusted those rusty pieces of crap! Herring berated himself in his mind while his body accelerated to a normal amount of speed. It seemed gravity was finally doing its job properly.

And then all at once, it stopped. His body struck water and he sank.

The next time he came to, Redlette was standing over him with a wry smile on her face. “So… Maybe I should’ve taken a bit better care of those scissors…”

“You think?!” Herring’s mind told him to leap up and deliver a ‘friendly’ punch to Redlette’s arm. But as he began to stand, his body wailed in a dull pain and fought against him.

—He found himself back on the ground in an instant, staring up at the sky and the canopy of lush trees above him… and at Redlette’s smug face contorting into an expression of amusement.

“Pfft…! You’re real lucky I’m here. You mighta drowned just then.” Redlette averted her gaze, trying her hardest not to chuckle as Herring’s own gaze shot accusatory yet pathetic glares at her. He was getting far too used to being saved by her in situations that she’d caused. And worse yet, she always laughed at him after causing them! “Anyways, we can’t just lay around all day. Let’s get going. Our adventure starts here, my friend!”

As Redlette finished teasing Herring, she reached out a hand and helped him off the ground... much to his reluctance. Once he was standing, Herring took a moment more to look around at his surroundings.

The two of them were in a dense jungle with all sorts of colorful flora stemming in every direction and vines drooping down from massive salad-canopied trees. In their vicinity was a large lake at the end of a fast flowing stream, surrounded by an array of even more unreal looking plants trying to win its nutrients.

Redlette and Herring were located in the only clearing on the lake’s lush coastline—a small rocky section which must’ve been unfit for most plants to thrive in. Herring’s backpack laid on the rocky shore where he’d awakened, just as soaked as he was. Any electronics and perishables he’d brought were without a doubt ruined.

A strong musk of water hung in the air, too, giving it a truly heavy feeling. That coupled with the unfitting silence of the jungle gave off a vibe that they were the only living creatures in the area. Not a single bird call sounded nor bug buzzed. It was just them. Though, it was impossible that was true.

Taking everything in, Herring realized a sharp pain in his back. Although, he couldn’t decide if the pain was from laying on the rocks or from dealing with Redlette.

“You say our adventure starts here…” Herring drew a deep breath, preparing a sigh and finally accepting their situation. “But where even is here? I thought we were meant to end up in a cave.”

Redlette groaned as though she was anticipating Herring’s sour response. “...Lay off, man! Do I look like some ultra-experienced cross dimensional traveler or something?”

“No,” Herring admitted, “You just look like the fool who claimed to be some ‘ultra-experienced cross dimensional traveler’.”

“Well, your eyes must still be cloudy from your dip in the lake, cause I think I did pretty well. Look! We made it!” Redlette puffed out her chest in pride of their successful voyage and then slapped Herring on his back, ushering him to move forwards. “Now, c’mon! You lead the way, Herring!”

“...But why? ...Shouldn’t you—”

“I said… You lead the way, Herring!” Redlette echoed, not giving Herring time to protest. “Because I’ve no idea where we are!”

“W-Wait! Didn’t you live here, for like, a crazy amount of time?! How can you have no idea where we are?!”

“It’s a jungle, ain’t it?” Redlette shrugged. “Your intuition’s just as good as mine. I could give you a guess where we are, but then you’d be relying on my memory… Although, I’d feel pretty damn cool if I could guess the exact lake we’re at outta the dozens upon dozens on the island. So, if you insist...”

This response prompted yet another sigh from Herring as he recalled his friend’s many intellectual deficiencies. However, the sigh soon faded, and with it so did his doubts.

“Yeah that’s not happening. I’ll lead the way. If I get lost, we’ll just be at square one, right? ...I mean, it’s not like we can get more lost than we already are.”

“Thatta boy! I knew you’d come around. ” Redlette plucked Herring’s soppy backpack off the shore and gave him a smile of appreciation. “I’ll do the grunt work, so you just focus on navigating us towards civilization!”

“Uh… The only thing I can really do is keep us from going in circles but…” Herring meekly smiled back at Redlette, “I suppose that’s still better than what you’d be doing, huh?”

“For sure! I’ve been known to be quite dumb and distractible.” Redlette agreed, unperturbed.

Her admission of her ineptitude, while not surprising him, concerned Herring about the future of things to come. But he didn’t dwell on it. He was too excited.

“Alright then. Let’s go, Redlette! Let’s have the time of our lives!”

So, for the first time in this new world— Creation—Herring held his head up high with intrigue and took the first step forward on their otherworldly adventure. Not a step that was begrudgingly taken as just another chore in the day’s events, but a step he was excited to take. A step he felt would lead him to his new tomorrow.

...And then it began to rain.

It downpoured so hard that it brought life to the otherwise silent jungle. There was only one thing that could be heard through the water’s roar—the sound of a young man shouting a single word as it poured out of his soul:

“Really?!”

»»»

“Ah… It’s going to rain…” As soon as the girl sensed the change in the jungle’s atmosphere, she pulled out her excessively marked up map—an ever-evolving project of four years. Even though she’d lived in the jungle her whole life, with the rate at which the flora grew and receded, it was still hard for her to navigate without any help. Still, she could recognize the oncoming of rain through the dampening of the air and the retreat of the forest’s vigor. She had to take cover, and quickly.

“Okay…! That’s the nearest shelter. ...I hope.” The girl took a mental note of a small building she’d circled then set off running full sprint.

She hated the rain. It weighed down on her already heavy head of hair, making it hard for her to keep her head up. Plus, the ground became all muddy, further damaging her poor sense of balance and mucking up her clothes. After all, mud was as good as ice when running around, anybody accustomed to nature would know that. So, the higher chance she had of escaping the rain, the better.

The girl’s long legs just barely managed to carry her to her destination without being tripped up. A straggling root or misplaced foot on her hair would’ve sent her tumbling. Her destination was a worn-down house—well, more of an abandoned shack that’d been taken in by the jungle.

The girl delicately knocked on the building’s door before letting herself in. She knew it wasn’t a necessary effort, but she made the conscious decision to knock anyway.

Once inside, her lungs finally gave in, and she slumped herself onto a nearby bed to catch her breath. The literal fruits of the girl’s labor spilled over the floor as she weakly dropped a basket she’d been carrying to her side. She heard the rain begin to pound on the earth outside and felt blessed that she’d made it to shelter in time. The rain in the jungle was notoriously vicious and came with little warning.

The shack was clearly once somebody’s home, long abandoned along with many others. It was quaint, but it had all of the essentials—a fire pit, a bed, a dining area, and some shelves that’d long been cleared out. The girl figured its owner must’ve moved to the capital along with everyone else. It was rare to see anybody able to venture on the jungle floor anymore. She was an exception. This caused the severity of her privilege to weigh on her even greater.

“I wonder if one day people will be able to live here again...” The girl muttered to herself in an airy breath. This was a frequent, almost daily, thought that would intrude her mind as she went about her duties. Everytime she came across a place like the one she was in, it depressed her.

Even though she’d always lived in the capital, she was well accustomed to the jungle floor. And as precarious as it could be, she also found it to be beautiful and teeming with life. It made her sad to think it’d stay abandoned along with the shack.

When her breath was fully recovered, the girl went about picking up the spilled fruit, sneezing as she bent down to snatch them from the shack’s dusty floor and sending a thick cloud of dust flying across the premises. Her face screwed itself up as it got coated in grime, and then it screwed itself up again as she heard a strange sound come from outside the shack.

The sound, she thought, was akin to a banshee’s shriek, and was loud enough to penetrate through the racket caused by the rain’s barrage on the roof. It made the girl wonder what weird animal it could’ve come from. She’d traversed the jungle long enough for an odd sound to be instantly recognizable, so she found her total loss both curious and suspicious.

But, given it was raining, she just shook her head, discounting it. Heavy rains could distort even the most common of sounds after all. She had no real worries. The sound was nothing like that of the thunderous trampling that signaled imminent danger.

So, instead of thinking about it further, the girl continued to collect her fruit and investigate the house.

It wasn’t until she heard the bang of the shack’s door swinging open and the panting of breaths that the girl started paying attention to her ears again—ears that she at first thought were betraying her.

She turned around to face the commotion, and when she did, she saw two figures stumbling into the shack, naive to her existence.

“I forgot just how bad the rains were… Woo! That brings back some nasty memories!” A smaller red haired wolven marveled as she peeled back her water-weighed hair and examined welts left in her arm from the rain. She eyed the welts with more intrigue and nostalgia than distaste, like she was smelling an old home-cooked meal and was eager to see how it’d changed.

Given that the girl knew just how badly those welts hurt, this behavior somewhat disturbed her. She couldn’t imagine experiencing that bone-numbing stinging and being excited about it. Plus, she was bursting with life, even though she’d undoubtedly been sprinting for a while—sprinting with a huge, soggy rucksack on her back, no less.

The wolven’s companion, on the other hand, looked as though he’d been through the ringer. He was hunched within the doorway, using its frame to support himself as he desperately tried to regain his breath. He was caked in mud, covered in even more welts than the wolven, and had a small stream of blood leaking from a gash in his forehead.

The girl was impressed that the boy still had the energy to stand—especially since he looked incredibly frail in figure.

She wanted to go welcome the duo and invite them inside of the shack, but her words caught in her throat. She was at a total loss of what to say, and she was frightened by the pair’s demeanor. Both of them were dressed in strange attire, and they were wandering the jungle floor, too. She had no idea of what type of people she was dealing with.

When she at last worked up an iota of resolve, all she could muster out was an irrelevant question, “Umm… Did you two… Did you hear that sound earlier?”

Hearing the girl’s soft voice, the wolven looked up with a blank expression, did a double take as she saw the girl, and then prompted her male companion to also look up with a nudge to his side. There was once again an excitable expression upon her face.

The wolven’s companion struggled to lift his head, but when he did, his face also went blank as he stared at the girl. It was as if he was taking a second to understand what exactly he was looking at.

This caused the girl to avert her eyes in embarrassment. She didn’t enjoy being the center of attention.

Then the wolven’s companion jumped back in a fashion of fright crudely mixed with bewilderment. He pointed a slender finger at the girl with an abundance of energy and vigor that he’d lacked just moments prior.

“Wh-What the hell?! It’s a giant!”