#i don't know if i should tag pebbles because he's very background in this

[flecks-of-stardust]

The Reluctant Gift — A Rain World Short Story

i started this in... may? wrote most of it in one sitting, and then. never found the time to finish it rip. but i Just did, so lol. i was just thinking about how receiving the mark of communication would feel to something like a slugcat, and this was the result.

No formal content warnings for this piece of writing. Contains spoilers for mid-game Rain World; read at your own discretion.

The first sense it gets of something being out of the ordinary is when its hop carries it further than usual. It flails around in the air the short moment before it makes contact with the ground again, its landing softer than it is used to. Unsettled, it tries its best to dig its fingers into the rough floor, hesitating briefly in its travel. This seems to have been a mistake.

After an arduous climb up into the sky, dying numerous times to the salivating yellow lizards halfway up the climb in its attempts, it had thought to explore up this way just in case. It had expected nothing, optimistically a cache of fruit or another nest of batflies. This… is beyond anything it had expected.

It crawls across the ground, shimmying down the nearest pole cautiously. Its weight peels away from it with each slow motion it takes; it grips the pole harder as it continues down. At the bottom of the pole, it hangs from the tip, silently gauging the lack of… heaviness in itself. Normally this is a much more strenuous task, but now it barely strains to hold on. It is almost floating in place.

It prefers being heavy. This feels deeply unnatural. Its food would agree, it thinks.

It lets go of the pole anyway, holding its breath as it gently drifts down to the ground below. It bounces eerily high upon contact, and it flings its limbs out in momentary panic, spinning rapidly in the weightlessness. When the ground greets it again, it grabs onto the nearest crack in the floor it can find, clinging on for dear life. It all but slinks its way to the next pipe down.

It has no reason to explore this place. It will not yield food, and whatever shelter this location offers, it does not want it. But something, whether it is morbid curiosity or a beckoning it can only faintly sense, pushes it onwards. Not often does it explore an area for the sake of it; it does not typically have that luxury. Here, above the clouds, it does.

A paltry luxury it is, however, as it falls—or glides, more fittingly—into true weightlessness. It slips out of the pipe, and the minimal momentum it had before doing so takes it at an agonizingly slow pace through the new room. Spinning all its limbs and its tail wildly, it manages to gain a little more speed, crawling through the air ever so slightly faster towards the floor. It is like swimming, in a certain sense, but the air provides virtually no resistance. The instinctive paddling of its legs does little else besides waste its energy, and so it stops and submits itself to its slow drifting.

It makes a grab for the ground as it gets close, fingers grasping for any purchase they can find. They fail to find any, and it bounces off the ground, instantly flung back towards the ceiling. It flails, whirling clumsily towards the side wall, and grabs onto the first available chunk of material it can find. Its limbs start to shake as it painstakingly digs all of its fingers and toes into the wall, then crawls along it whisker by whisker, growling the whole way. Sometimes it wonders about the lives of the vultures, soaring around freely in the sky. If this is what flight is like, it prefers being grounded.

Many breaths later, it finally reaches the floor, and it slithers into the pipe, ears flicking in disdain. Leaving this area will be difficult and tedious. But it has already gotten so far, and so it will press on. It is a concern for later.

The air hums loudly, sharply, as it enters the room below, and it is immediately plagued with a multitude of blinking lights. It shuts its eyes and flattens its ears to no avail. The noise, the lights, they are omnipresent, and briefly it considers leaving.

But beyond the shrill humming of the structures around it, there is an additional… presence that it can feel. The energy, rumbling like thunder through the air, presses into its head, heavy and oppressive, but it drags itself forward, climbing down the pole and onto the floor, its fingers feeling for ledges as it continues onward. It feels important, relevant in a way beyond simple nutritional needs. If it has already come all this way, it can inspect the source of this energy. At worst, it will die, and it will wake up again in a shelter with more knowledge.

There are poles along the walls, some of them uncomfortably close to the lights; it closes its eyes and proceeds, its skin prickling with every motion. This whole structure—the weightlessness, the lights, the humming, this strange energy—is connected. For what reason, it does not understand. The only thing it can discern is that it should not be here.

The energy intensifies the further it goes, concentrating to a near unbearable degree as it clambers down a pipe. The room ahead is dim, illuminated only by small circles of light here and there, flickering in and out as they chase each other through the air. Pearls, shining in a multitude of hues, spin after them. It watches them whirl through the room, fingers flexing. It could do with an extra favor with the scavengers.

The dancing of the pearls guides its attention to the center of the room, where there is a strange creature affixed to the wall by a long, stone structure. Before it can inspect the oddity further, however, its weight abruptly returns, and it falls, landing hard on the floor of the room. The pearls clatter down along with it, a cacophony of noise that only aggravates its pain. Throbbing all over, it looks up at the creature helplessly as the creature spins in circles above it, observing it with a cold, blank stare. It should not have gone in here. If death should come—with the strange stone structure, it presumes—may it be quick, so it can return to its last slumber swiftly.

The creature, a garish pink with orange fur over part of its body, merely continues spinning in circles above it. It begins making a strange series of noises, hissing and groaning and clicking in rapid succession as it moves around, the strange stone fixture pulling it to various locations in the room. It pins its ears back, bunching itself together in a weak attempt to look more threatening. There are no weapons around, only pearls; perhaps if it threw a pearl hard enough, it could distract the creature long enough for it to climb the walls. But no, that wouldn’t work, as it is heavy again. It is trapped here, completely at the mercy of this creature. It squeezes its eyes shut, not willing to witness its death.

Instead, it is yanked into the air, an invisible force grasping it by the head and flinging it every which way. It cannot move its limbs, can barely feel them flapping uselessly as its body is flung around. It is thankful for having shut its eyes prior to this, as this is a worse death than it could have ever imagined. It can almost feel its neck cracking, snapping from the force it is being thrown around with, and any moment now it will wake up—

It falls again, this time landing on a bed of pearls, and it yips in pain. Its head aches, the pain much sharper than the dull throbbing in the rest of its body, as if its head is being compressed in the jaws of a lizard. It scratches at its ears, trying in vain to rid itself of the unpleasant sensation. It can feel the inside of its head trying its hardest to escape.

It covers its ears as an even sharper pain stabs through its head. “Is this reaching you?” The sounds sink into its mind like the claws of a vulture, unwanted knowledge searing itself deep into its memory. It digs its fingers into its head. “A little animal, on the floor of my chamber. I think I know what you are looking for.” Each word, each fragment of information pounding its way into its skull—skull? What is a skull? Why does it possess such information?—like the rain thundering down on it, ripping its mind open and putting it back together again, over and over and over again in the fractions—fractions?—of a heartbeat. It keeps its hands clasped over its head as the pink creature drones on.

Through a constant haze of pain that, thankfully, fades little by little as the pink creature speaks, it is given instructions: go west, then down. It retains little else still, as each word enters its mind like a spear through its head; all the talk about ‘cycles’ and ‘rituals’ becomes a dizzying blur of information it wishes it had never received. It cares minimally about such things, beyond the fact that perpetually, if it dies, it will wake up, greeted again by the grinding sound of the shelter doors opening. But it listens regardless. It does not have a choice in the matter.

The pink creature concludes its speech, coldly wishing it luck, and with the sudden dusk in the room its weight vanishes again. Head still pounding, it kicks off the ground, shooting straight up towards the same pipe it had entered through, and it eagerly clambers up. It wastes no time backtracking, its heart beating more steadily as its steps grow progressively heavier. When the familiarity of its own weight fully returns, it slumps onto the ground with a sigh, scratching its head. It is a relief it never thought it would ever need to feel.

It pats briefly all around its head and neck, searching for any indication of the encounter it had just had. Its neck is intact, though sore, and its head is unharmed, though it aches mightily. Its tail is unaltered, its limbs are still strong, its fingers are still nimble. It is, by all definitions, still itself. And yet, it cannot help but feel as if a fundamental aspect of it has been rewritten, a rearrangement of its very being that it had not asked for.

A gift, the pink creature had said. This was a gift. It puts its hands over its nose, sighing through its fingers. Time will, perhaps, tell whether it believes the same.

There is a shelter down below, it remembers, that it passed by before deciding to explore a little further. Too exhausted to stand up, it crawls its way towards the ruined ladder, pausing briefly at the edge to peer down at the dilapidated structure. The metal is corroded, the stone platforms crumbling, and—its ears twitch in displeasure as it catches the sound—there is a faint creaking as it carefully puts its weight onto the structure. But it proceeds, climbing down, even as the metal rattles ominously.

It has barely set its feet on solid ground when the distinctive clanking of metal catches its attention. It turns to see a rusted piece of the ladder on the ground. Instinctively, it leaps back, just in time to dodge a second piece that lands right where it was standing. Ears flattening against its skull, it bounds to the shelter and dives into it amid the cacophony of the ladder crumpling in on itself. It instantly regrets the decision, as the small metal chamber only causes the sound to reverberate, and it covers its ears with its hands and buries its face under its tail as it waits for the sounds to stop and for the world to stop shaking.

What feels like minutes later, it lifts its head, ears flicking warily. It is quiet now. It carefully climbs up out of the shelter, nose wrinkling at the dust in the air. The ladder is no more, reduced to a pile of rubble. It creeps up to the pile, surveying it, then slowly pulls out one of the smallest remaining fragments of the ladder. It will serve as a decent spear.

Opening the strange popping plants next to the shelter, chewing on the kernels, then sliding back into the shelter is almost mechanical as it ponders its next move. It cannot return to the strange pink creature’s chamber, now that the ladder is ruined. Its only viable route is down, but down where? The west path does not sound appealing just yet. Where else can it go now?

As the shelter doors slam shut above it, it remembers: the blue creature, sitting on a pile of rubble. It had made sounds similar to those emitted by the pink creature. Perhaps they are related? But the blue one was kind, gentle. Now, it will be able to understand the blue one.

It curls up tighter, gripping its tail. Perhaps this was a gift after all.