#VRbutnolikethat

[linssikeittomies]

VR Chapter 3 - 17 hours

Masterpost <-Chapter 2 Chapter 4->

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The next morning I woke up at 7. Not because I wanted to, but because some arse wouldn’t stop banging on the door.

Of course it was that grumbling tailor from last night. Accompanied by the overly gleeful servant beaming at me like I was his sole reason for living. Jesus.

“Emahem”, they said, and I mumbled back something resembling “morning”, but I’m not too sure how it turned out.

Anyway, that tailor had with him a high stool and the most exquisite dress my bleary eyes had ever seen, even in pictures of renaissance royalty. The base was turquoise silk, like, imagine the smoothest kind you possibly can, and then make it even smoother, really go overboard with the smoothness and it won’t even come close. Okay, well, maybe close, but what I’m saying is “baby butt smooth” did not do right by this cloth. Just that base alone would have made the most wonderful dress, but it was also embroidered all over, with the tiniest damn stitches of the finest thread in existence. The whole piece from the high collar to floor-dragging hem was decorated in flowers and songbirds. Well, at least there weren’t gemstones. The thing must have cost a year’s worth of salary as it was. I can admit liking nice clothes, but this thing could have fed a family in Africa for God knows how long.

Oh, right, they probably wanted me to put it on, that’s why he was pushing it towards me. Right. So I took it. The men didn’t turn around. So I glared at them and shooed them out. They didn’t get why, but at least didn’t try to come back in. I ran the fabric through my fingers, it was heavy but slippery, like trying to hold water. The thing must drape like a dream. Not that there much to drape, it was a figure hugging piece, thanks probably to extraterrestrial price. Wonder where you could even get fabric like this. Bet you have to order it straight from the spiders and have it blessed by a priestess of the moon or something. I’d like a pillow case made from this. So soft…

Oh, right, put it on. Had they been taking the measures for this? Obviously it was pre-made, stuff like this doesn’t get made overnight even in fictional 24/7 tailor shops. They probably meant to fine-tune it to fit me. Why was beyond me, but – oh damnit, again I just stared at it instead of dressing. God, I need more sleep.

Okay, so this was why they had stayed in the room. The buttons were in the back. I could only do the three lowest on my own. Why not put the damn things on the side, like in qipaos? It already looked qipao enough, this one little change would let you get dressed by yourself and not feel like a baby.

“Okay guys, you can come in now”, I called. They did, and the servant was again overjoyed from seeing me. The tailor was less than impressed and grumbled again, circled behind me to get the rest of the buttons and then gesturing me to climb on the stool. A struggle in and of itself in this dress. There was barely room to walk! Yeah, it saved a fortune to use as little fabric as possible, but a fat lot of good that would do if I ripped it! I couldn’t even hike it up properly so I had to perform some very awkward moves the get up there. I looked ridiculous.

The hem was a bit long, but it also wasn’t heavily embroidered so it shouldn’t be too difficult to shorten. The top was more of a problem, as my boobs were a little too big. They pondered for a long time, and finally decided to just pop open some of the top buttons, get some string in there to hold it together and cover the back with a vest held closed with a wide sash. What it couldn’t hide was the fact that my hips were too wide and stretched the fabric dangerously. The tailor pondered about this even longer, grumbling to himself and tapping his feet. He did come to some kind of solution at long last, as he gestured for me to come down and opened my buttons. Again I had to shoo them out. Once dressed, I got out the door and saw Ritideea talking animatedly with the tailor. She, too, said “Emahem”, and I tried mimicking her. I doubt I was very successful, but she smiled and clapped anyway. Her servant was with her today, too, I guess they worked around the clock. So they lived somewhere in the manor? Wonder where their quarters were. Could be in the locked wing? That was the only place I hadn’t gotten a look at yesterday.

I didn’t even know their names. I turned to my servant, ever smiling, pointed at myself and said “Mimi. Name Mimi”, then pointed at him and asked “Name?”.

His face lit up like I had just gifted him a million pounds.

“Asahana!” he shout-whispered and bowed deep. I bowed too, to be polite, and I swear he almost started crying. What was up with these people? Would the girl servant be better?

She was. She smiled widely too, and bowed, but nowhere near as deep and didn’t get teary-eyed. Her name was Keeka. They separated from us again to go do their work.

When Ritideea finished her talk with the tailor, we all went down for breakfast. Just as much greens as in the evening, but more bread. There was also omelette and something that resembled the gross cabbage soup they serve in Chinese restaurants. I didn’t taste it to make sure. I stuffed myself with bread and fruit juice.

Breakfast was much less noisy than dinner, possibly because of whatever decision had been made last evening. Everyone looked either worried or determined. Ritideea was among the determined ones, and talked with me. Well, at me, mostly. She talked slower than yesterday, maybe she thought I would be staying long enough to learn her language.

...would I be staying long enough to learn it? I had no way of returning home. Humans hadn’t made it to Mars, they wouldn’t make it to Jupiter during my lifetime. And where was I? Somewhere astronomically far away from the Milky way, possibly. At least one would assume so. Was I even in space? Maybe this was a different dimension altogether. I’d read enough sci-fi and fantasy to consider that a possibility. Could I get back the way I came? How had I come here? I had just walked into town, and then the forest was gone. There had been no portal, or star gate. Just air. How would I even explain that? Was it a common occurrence here? Hopefully not unheard of. But in that case wouldn’t the man from yesterday have considered that when he tried to find out where I was from? He was a mage, right, he should be the expert in these things. A rich family like this wouldn’t hire a third-rate mage who didn’t know his stuff.

What did this family deal in, anyway? Jewels? That should generate enough money for a super fancy manor like this. And all these paintings and murals. Last night I had concentrated on the table because I had been hungry, but now that my belly was full I took a closer look at the walls. They were absolutely filled to the brim with portraits of several sizes. There were an equal amount of women and men and indeterminates. Skin colours of every imaginable hue – white, yellow, brown, black, pink, green, blue, violet, rainbow – but everyone’s features were Caucasian. Except in the more stylized or abstract ones, of course. Who were all these people? And who were the ones dominating the ceiling? The paper-white woman with white hair in a clear blue dress, the faintly yellow fat woman with long curls and the pitch-black ladyboy?

Ritideea noticed my stare and smiled brightly. She started pointing at each figure.

“Alimagotsat”, the white woman, “Umube”, the fat woman, “Sibaja”, the black man. Didn’t tell me anything. Then she got up and started pointing out the portraits. “Kao, Sooi, Ailum, Kiolo, Linten, Suginak, Daslej, Kanun, Heliko, Tunuhe, Naumuok, Reksee, Anesan, Kahokisa...” she just went on and on and on and on and on, for an eternity. Frankly, I was impressed that she could remember them all by heart. There had to be well more than a hundred in all.

And then she pointed to the floor. I hadn’t even noticed that was painted, too. The green-blue woman with a mermaid dress taking up most of the floor was Klipikt(try saying that fast three times in a row), the boring, tan brunette was Bellekrig, and the brown woman with green hair was Malisale. Then Ritideea went back to the wall to tell more about “Mede”, of inditerminate gender. It didn’t matter to her I didn’t catch a word of it, she just liked talking about them. The rest of the family made themselves scarce about five minutes into the speech, and one of the maids reminded Ritideea that she had some things to do as well. The two of us went back to the third floor, where Ritideea dragged me into her room, the one next to the guest room I was staying in. Keeka and Asahana were already waiting for us in the big room, and they came in, too.

Ritideea was a painter. There was an easel with an unfinished work on it next to the window, a shelf filled with pencils, paints and brushes, and a stained apron hanging on the dresser door. Her walls were almost as crammed with artwork as the dining room, but at least their subjects were more varied. Only a few portraits(one of her mother, and two others of the same unknown young lady), mostly landscapes(one of a night sky with the moon shining behind a deer of some sort, it was very pretty), some still-lifes(flowers and fruit were as popular in this place as they were on Earth). She was good, I had to admit, she had probably started painting at a very young age. I was never a creative person, I only liked camping. I really envied the people who could pour untold hours into drawing something lifelike. Dancers, too, they can make movement look so easy and light. I don’t have the patience to endure practice.

But Ritideea hadn’t brought me there to show her paintings, she pulled out something from her dresser. A bright yellow gown, like the one her favourite painting subject was wearing. Loose and billowing, probably made from super fine tulle. She started talking excitedly, then suddenly soured and turned serious. Without any warning she started pulling her clothes off, and appeared just as confused by my reaction as the two men. I think she asked if I was okay. So I said yeah, turned a bit to reassure her, and noticed she had been wearing a tight, black top under her cream tunic. Her trousers came up almost to her armpits and were secured with laces. She didn’t shy in the least, evidenced by how she pulled them off with me standing right there, revealing black boxer briefs. She slipped on the yellow gown, and nearly drowned in it. If it hadn’t been tulle, I would have wagered the dress weighed more than the girl. She just looked so funny! I was sorry I offended her, but she looked so much like a little kid playing with her mum’s clothes! Just throw some oversized shoes in there while you’re at it!

She started on some lecture where the name Mede was repeated often. Again, I don’t speak your language, girl. I don’t know, maybe she just wanted me to get used to it. She at least was expecting me to stay a long time. In any case, I could respect her ability to keep up a lengthy conversation by herself.

While she talked, I checked out her bookshelf. Everything was in an alphabet I had never run into before, of course. They used letters, the characters repeated often. Mostly curved lines, every now and then a straight one. I picked out one book at random, and it turned out to be art history or something. At least there were a lot of pictures of paintings and a bunch of text in tiny font. Looked a little advanced for a 14-year-old. Then again, she was nearly a professional artist already. Ritideea smiled wide and shoved another book in my hands. That one was about a single artist, it looked like. Their style was very… airy, I suppose would describe it pretty well. Mostly watercolours and light hues, impressionistic. Not like Ritideea’s, who did realistic oils. She had bookmarked several pages with colourful paperclips. Good to see some inventions made it to other dimensions, would make adapting a lot easier.

What the hell was I talking about? I wasn’t staying! No need to adapt when I’m just going to leave soon.

Asahana suddenly piped up, and the atmosphere in the room turned nervous. Both looked at me with pitying eyes as Asahana guided me to the bathroom. For some reason the guestroom shared its bathroom with Ritideea. At least it looked fairly normal – a modest bath against the wall, faucet, toilet paper… although the toilet itself was the traditional hole-in-the-floor model. What kind of manor doesn’t have toilet seats? Was I supposed to throw the toilet paper in the hole or the bin? How was it flushed? Asahana fiddled with the bath’s faucets, then called me to come look how to work them. He left me in peace, to figure out the mysteries of plumbing by myself. I took a quick bath, using most of the toiletries I found in the rack on the wall, not knowing which of them was shampoo and which was soap. Then I realized I had no clothes to change in to. Hopefully the dresser would have something. I looked for a towel, but could only find a large square cloth that wasn’t terrycloth or cotton. At least it absorbed water well, despite being pretty coarse. Wrapping that around me I walked out to -

“GODDAMN, get out!”

Asahana and the grumbling tailor were standing there like they belonged! What the hell!? And they had the guts to look confused! I had to practically push them out! The one thing that lifted my spirits somewhat was getting new underwear – this would have been the third day with these panties. The only option was the same type of black boxer briefs as Ritideea’s but I wasn’t about to complain. I did opt to leave my own bra on rather than brave the t-shirt without underwires. As for clothes, pickings were slim – one dark green bathrobe dress, one cream tunic, one pair of cream pants. Ritideea’s outfit from earlier. Well, better than my sweaty button-up and jeans. And I could go without socks inside the house. No one else was wearing anything on their feet, after all.

I opened the door to glare at the two men, who still couldn’t understand why I was mad. Hopeless! They came back in and showed the gorgeous dress from this morning. I had to shoo them out again to put it on. I don’t know what kind of magic the tailor had worked on it, because it fit almost perfectly on the hips now. He had also substituted the vest with another, deep green one with some basic embroidery running along the neckline, must have been to match it better with the elaborate and extensive decoration of the dress. But the sash was still the same solid, banana peel yellow piece as earlier. What was it with these people and bright yellow? Ritideea looked like a huge ball of cheese in her dress. Who in their right mind makes a whole dress from bright yellow tulle? It might work as a detail, but jeez, no one looks good in banana.

And the dress wasn’t even enough. After they made me throw it on Asahana braided my hair around my head, like that one Russian politician lady, can’t remember her name right now. Except of course he had to make it a French version, since my hair was nowhere near long enough. Once he was done, he led me all the way downstairs to the front door, where he gave me white sandals to wear, and creaked the huge double doors open to let us out.

At the gate there was a horse buggy looking carriage, but without the horses. Three people were standing in front of it – Ritideea, a young woman with two braids carrying a long metal bar, and a tall man in his mid-thirties with a long ponytail. Long hair was most apparently in fashion. Both the woman and the man bowed to me, and Ritideea introduced them. The woman, Famfarrah, looked like she wouldn’t recognize a joke if it slipped on a banana peel right in front of her.

Again with the bananas, I swear. Must have been Ritideea’s dress, it was just so in-your-face-yellow.

The man, Yotiry, was a bit more laid back. He even smiled a little. We all got in the buggy(me with considerable difficulty, thank to that gods-damned tight dress), and somehow it started moving. The buggy had windows, but they were covered with curtains, and Ritideea drew me back when I tried to peek out. I wondered why we had to keep this a secret, but I wasn’t about to anger her. Wouldn’t do to get kicked out on the street before learning how to say “alms for the poor”.

The new faces whispered nervously with each other while Ritideea tried to meditate, I think. She was doing those breathing exercise thingies, in the mouth out the nose, and mumbled to herself. Bit by bit her back straightened further and her chin lifted. She started looking scarily much like her mother. Impressive how such a gleeful and innocent-looking little girl can turn so regal. I just wondered why she needed to steel herself like that. Was she really that nervous about wherever we were going? The other two sure were. The longer we rode the more fidgety they got. When Ritideea drew back the curtain on her side, they didn’t calm down at all.

We were outside the city, on the countryside. Fields almost far as the eye could see, a grand forest in the distance, and mountains in the horizon. Such a pretty view, but Yotirry in particular avoided looking at it. Though as we went further, his worry was replaced with anger. Ritideea tried to calm him, first with reason, then with sympathy, and finally with authority. That last one worked the best, surprisingly. That little girl could really demand respect when she wanted to.

Eventually the road turned towards the forest, and the fields were only things visible. It must have been spring or early summer, since everything was still green. I only saw a few cows, or maybe horses, difficult to say from this far away. Too big to be sheep, in any case. Very few trees. Five in total could be seen on my side, and Ritideea’s side had even fewer. You could easily see the undulation of the ground, plus really far. There wasn’t much even ground, mostly slight hills.

I hadn’t taken my watch, so I couldn’t say how long we rode. It felt like it had been an hour, give or take some, when we got off the road and maybe half an hour after that. The only thing I could say for sure was that my butt was numb. This dress wasn’t exactly helping my circulation, and I was scared it would rip if I tried to fix my position. The first thing I did after getting out of the buggy was wiggle my toes vigorously, as if that would have helped. Famfarrah got a large, decorated wooden chest from a compartment on the back of the buggy. The chest itself must have weighed over 5 kilos, but whatever was inside was light since she carried it like it was nothing, then set it down on the ground by the treeline. Yotiry laid a blanket behind it, and Ritideea kneeled down on it. I wasn’t going to follow her, but Yotiry set his hand on my shoulder and firmly guided me next to her. Booooring. First sitting on my arse in the buggy, and now sitting in the ground? I needed to stretch my legs. Famfarrah and Yotiry got to stand, why not me? I looked over at Ritideea, and she could have been mistaken for a statue. She was so majestic and still, with her hands folded on her lap and looking proudly straight ahead. So damn regal. Even in that ludicrous dress.

For a while I did try to copy her, but got bored quickly. The fields weren’t very interesting, so I looked at the forest instead. It wasn’t that much more interesting… although, the more I looked at it, the more it felt like something was off about it. It was difficult to see what exactly, since it was so dark in there – oooh, well that for starters, it was too dark in there. It was a sunny day outside the forest, and the inside of the forest was like twilight. The foliage was so thick very little light could come through. And the reason the foliage was so thick was because every single tree was an ancient giant with a trunk as thick a small house, with an unbelievable amount of beard moss hanging from the branches. There wasn’t one sapling or youngling. There wasn’t any fallen down trees, either… How did this forest renew? Where were the animals? You’d think you’d see one bird or hear a little rustle now and then, but it was silent. Yeah, you read that right, silent, not quiet. Was this one of those cursed forests the fantasy genre loved? It didn’t feel cursed, a bit foreboding maybe now that I thought about it, but cursed? Hmm, maybe a tiny bit cursed, just subtly, like you wouldn’t die if you set foot in there, but get hurt a little, or be struck by minor bad luck. Were we here to see a witch? Was that what everyone was so worried about? Was this the decision no one had liked? Ask help from a witch since they couldn’t figure me out by themselves? What kind of an idiot makes deals with witches, those never turn out well! We’d all be lucky if we walked out of here with all our organs and firstborns intact. What do witches even do with all those firstborns? Eat them? Take them as apprentices? Or do you become a witch solely by selling your soul to the Devil? In this world, was the Devil real? Were we here to meet Devil? Who makes deals with the Devil? White people! Who were we? White people! We were so here to make a deal with the Devil. Well, not if I had anything do with it.

The Devil let us wait a good while. Still, Ritideea never made a move. If anything, she only looked more aloof. She barely stirred when a figure slowly emerged from the shadows and made a beeline for us. She only got up to bow once the two-meter figure was stood in front of right behind the foremost trees.

I… didn’t really know what to make of the figure. I would definitely call it a person, and male, but he had hyena ears on his head, furry paws for feet, and a long, fluffy tale. The others were scared shitless of him, but all I saw was anime cat person. Even his eyes fit the bill. Bloody huge hazel eyes, way too big for a real human, even bigger than Anne Hathaway’s. I wanted to shake my head at the display, even though he didn’t how he looked, anime probably didn’t even exist in this world. He couldn’t help how cringe-worthy he looked.

His voice was higher than his height had led me to believe, and had an odd growling quality to it despite the high pitch. Every word came out slow and forced. Sounded like talking was difficult for him. Still, he was laid-back and joking, leaned against a tree, as a total opposite to my companions, who all sat ramrod straight and kept their faces perfectly neutral. Ritideea considered her every word carefully and kept her voice even and respectful. It then hit me that the furry man hadn’t so much as acknowledged anyone else in the company. As far as he was concerned, Ritideea and him were the only ones here. Can you believe this guy?! How rude can you get?

Unfortunately I’m not the type to explode with righteous fury. Ritideea and the man talked for a while, then Ritideea asked Famfarrah to push the chest forward so the man could reach, and at that point he stopped pretending to care even about Ritideea. He opened the chest with glee and dug in. For the most part he didn’t care about the contents – he set the bundle of geometrically patterned fabric to the side, took one whiff of the perfume before flicking it over his shoulder, only looked at the musical instruments for a moment, but he did like the hairbrush. A real piece of work, that one, seemed to be made of red amber. He wasted no time in opening his thigh-length braid and trying it out, and was not disappointed. He kept lazily brushing his mane the whole time we stayed there.

So now that the bribe was out of the way, Ritideea brought me up. Finally, finally, the rude cat boy turned his goddamn eyes at someo

Oh, sorry, it just felt like the whole world stopped for a while, not in a good way. The instant his eyes met mine it was like being dunked into ice water. The shock made my heart skip several beats and breathing feel painful. The afterwaves of the hit still had me trembling.

I suddenly understood why everyone had been so reluctant to do this. He might have seemed harmless, but he damn near killed me with just a careless look. Wouldn’t have regretted it, either. The bastard smirked, supposedly subtly, but everyone could see he was howling with laughter. I was the weakest thing he had ever encountered.

He exchanged a few words with Ritideea again, letting me catch my breath. Dear God how I hated this guy! What a dickhead!

I would have given almost anything to never have him look at me again, but something Ritideea said raised his interest. He stared at me hard in disbelief, so hard it almost felt physical. Then he barked a laugh and called out to the forest, pointing at me and even forgetting about his stupid hair for a while. He was looking deeper into the forest, the darkness, like someone was there and he wanted them to come stare at the freak, too.

I didn’t want to die for disrespecting this douchebag so I stayed put.

There was someone in the forest. Almost noiseless rustles and cracks of branches breaking under feet started coming closer, until I could see some kind of black hyena. The man’s pet? Even for an animal with no facial expressions it managed to look annoyed. Its long tail twitched like a disturbed cat’s. It’s bright emerald eyes shone brilliantly against its coal black, sleek fur. A beautiful specimen, really… Such intelligent eyes, it was clearly no run of the mill beast. It sat down next to the dickhead, quickly glanced at the other humans and then set its gaze on me. Its nose twitched, it was sniffing me from the distance. As though reluctantly its head twisted sideways, like a confused dog’s, and it quickly acted like I was nothing special and turned its nose up. I couldn’t help the snort. The man barked to the hyena, actually sounding like a real animal, and made some other animal noises too – and he got a similar response. Like they were actually conversing. Just how intelligent was this animal? Was it magic?

I really shouldn’t be this surprised by magical animals, I had already met a wizard and an anime cat person. Fantasy is full of magic animals. Though they’re usually more horse-like. Sometimes big cats. Don’t think I ever ran into a magic hyena. Associated too heavily with carrion, not glamorous enough.

Jesus Christ, another one of those ice-water dunks! Cool it with the torture already! I’d rather not have a heart attack at sixteen! He didn’t care, yeah, but I did! I did my best to glare at him, but I… sort of got lost in his eyes, to my great shame. They were so pretty… Earlier I said they were hazel, but looking closer, it was more like maple syrup with fine gold glitter swirling in the mix…

He laughed, and I snapped out of it. My head was such a mess the only thing he could figure out was that I liked what I saw. What? Bullshit! Why would I even think that?

So there I sat, mortified, while Ritideea and the vile man talked some more. I’d look at anywhere but them, examine my nails, study the forest, twist around the check the expressions on Famfarrah and Yotiry(suspicious and containedly angry, respectively), fiddle with the edge of the blanket, shift my weight from one knee to the other… The hyena would shoot glances at me and then turn up his nose at me when I answered the look. So cute.

What was I doing here? Just playing with the hyena, it was like a proud cat, so cute. I wanted to pet it, but I guessed it would just run. Or maybe bite my hand off. How did I come here? What a weird question to answer myself, where did that come from? I knew how I came here. And I’m not one of those philosopher types who uses that question as a metaphor for something bigger. I’m a pretty literal gal. I was hopeless.

The vile man was looking at me again, aloof amusement all over his smug face. He was no help when I took zero interest in him. Hell yeah I took zero interest in him! I took negative interest in him! Maybe Marsohu would have better luck.

...the hell? Who was Marsohu? I don’t typically just come up with random names in my thoughts. Also I was way past imaginary friends.

There was a lull in the negotiations, Ritideea looking pleading, the man looking bored, and the hyena looking cautiously interested. Don’t ask me how an animal looks cautiously interested, there was very little in the situation that I understood. The man and the hyena  had another one of those animal conversations, and it ended with the hyena obviously grumbling to himself. It looked me straight in the eye, making me wax poetic about gemstones and crap. They were so pure green, you couldn’t get that kind of green with even photoshop. There was almost an inner glow to them. That’s not what I was here for, why was I here? What, again with the philosophy? Okay, brain, I came here by that buggy thing. Satisfied? I came because the family decided to ask help from a witch. Who turned out to be a dickhead anime cat person.

I swear the hyena snickered and said something catty to the dickhead. He responded with a faintly amused smirk. Where was my home?

What was with these thoughts? Usually they followed some kind of logic, but today they just transfer, ever heard of it?

What the heeeeellll. Now my thoughts were interrupting themselves. No, it was me. No wonder I was a mess.

…

Where was my home? Sheffield, of course, I knew that. Nether Edge Road. Not the nicest house on the road, but not the smallest, either. Just enough to fit me, Marie, mum and dad. More about Sheffield. Well, it was a big city, pretty far from London, uhh…  Yorkshire, middle England. England. A country in Europe. Great Britain here, France under there, all the other countries. Connected to Asia, cross the pacific and there’s North America, South America, keep going and you get to Africa. Oh And Australia’s in there somewhere, too. There, to be exact. My mental world map might have been less than spectacular, but I think I got most of it right. At least it showed enough to confirm that I wasn’t from around here. Uh-huh, it did – hold on a minute, I already knew I wasn’t from around here. There was nothing I needed to confirm to myself. That’s because I wasn’t confirming to myself, idiot.

Was someone screwing with my brain? A certain black hyena, mayhaps?

“Hey, you! Are you doing this?”

The hyena nodded.

Welp, that settled that. It was a telepathic magic animal. What an unorthodox kind of telepathy, just putting thoughts into my head like that. It could’ve at least made it sound like speech, like a normal telepath. This way was just too confusing.

Wait! Now that I knew it was telepathic, I could ask it to help me home! That was why the family had brought me here! They knew that the animal, and possibly the dickhead, were telepaths and could get around the language barrier by communicating directly by thought.

“Can you help me get home?”

Can you help me get home can you help me get home can you help me get home can you help me get home can you help me get home. That’s beyond me, even beyond Joyjaa. The dickhead is Joyjaa.

The hyena snickered again.

“So you’re Marsohu, I’m thinking?”

The hyena nodded, although my pronunciation fucking sucked.

“Sorry, I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to practice”, I complained. Seemed like I would have nothing but time to practice from here on out. If humans couldn’t help me home, and these people couldn’t help me home, I was stuck here for good.

“Can you at least contact my family? I need to tell them I’m fine.” How would I do that, I can barely talk with me.

Or would that be “How would I, Marsohu, do that, when I can barely communicate with you, Mimi”?

“Oh. That makes sense.”

My family would never know what had happened to me. Went for a walk, never came back, never answered her phone. Survived the woods as a baby but not as a teen. Couldn’t have been a bear, those tend to be pretty rare close to highways. No ravines, either. They’d think I had just walked out of their lives. Mum would be heartbroken. She was a self-blamer, she would be convinced she had done something wrong and I hated her for that. Nothing could be further from the truth, my mum was basically the greatest living person on the planet. Poor mum, first her sister and now her daughter. Seems our branch just kept abandoning her. Dad might suspect murder, but I had wandered off in the middle of the day in a place where not a lot of people congregated, no murderer would be searching for victims in there. Marie, I suspect, would fluctuate between feeling betrayed and hopeful. She was bratty enough to believe it was all about her, that I had walked out on her specifically, but also optimistic enough to believe I’d return regretful some day.

Ritideea called the meeting to an end, Yotiry bundled up the blanket, and we boarded the buggy. As it turned around, I took one last glance at the forest – the dickhead was nowhere to be seen, but the hyena was still sat on the ground before the treeline, looking intently at our buggy. As we headed back towards the road, the numbness wore off and I started crying.