Chapter 11 - A Worm and a Worm

“It’s settled!”

Ame pulled out a glass bottle with a red-purple liquid in it, before smiling and shouting to Dominic, who was already getting into his tent.

“You’re the only one old enough! Drink with me! Tonight’s the last night we can!”

He yelled back at him before throwing his sleeping bag on the floor.

“You’re right. I am the only one old enough. Put that bottle away. Your alcohol tolerance is at the level of a toddler. We’ve been through this. You’re already drunk and it hasn’t even been a minute.”

Ame frowned, and then turned to me.

“Hey Nellllll, are you old enough? How old even are you? You, like, came out of the heart prison, but you had to have been older before, right?”

I had to think for a couple seconds. I was asleep at the hospital for five days, and then the next day I met Ame. The day after that, we were travelling to the base. The next day we left, which was today. It felt like an eternity, but it was only eight days, which was very short for human standards.

“A week.”

Ame spat out his drink.

“A WEEEEEEK?! You don’t act like a newborn…!”

That was most likely because I inherited some of my nature and knowledge from my creator, who I didn’t know the age of.

From inside the tent, Dominic sharply turned his head and looked at me. I looked back at him and tilted my head curiously, but he immediately turned his head back and put it down.

Ame stared up at the stars before he spoke again, seemingly even more affected by the alcohol. Dominic was right.

“Hmmm…”

I looked over and titled my head in confusion.

“The stars… they're watching me.”

He squinted his eyes at the stars, seemingly trying to speak to them.

“I don’t like you. Go away!”

Dominic unzipped his tent and yelled over to Ame.

“You’re drunk! Go to sleep!”

“Fiiineeeee. Nelll!”

“Yes?”

“Sy is keeping watch. You can get the tent over there with Kaya… That was his spot, but he said he wanted to keep watch… Okay?!”

I silently nodded my head and reluctantly walked over to the tent. Tomorrow would be another day, and we would keep moving forward. I had Ame, Dominic, Kaya, and Sy. I was supposed to feel content. But I felt something was missing. I didn’t know anything about them. Ame already told me about his past, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to know more about everybody. To learn about somebody, I had to ask. But I had to be normal about it. People don’t usually ask about people's pasts, right? Kaya, Sy and Dominic haven’t asked me about mine and Ame already knew more about mine than I did. So I had to come up with a way to ask inconspicuously.

I thought for a moment, but then something came to mind. I had the perfect question.

I walked inside the tent, mustered up my courage, hid my proud smile and spoke.

“Kaya, w-”

She wasn’t there. She was probably on guard with Sy. At least I had more room to sleep.

I laid down in the sleeping bag, put my head on an extra blanket and closed my eyes. The pillows got blown up along with the car, but this worked just as well. It was some new knowledge. I wish I could’ve told Ame about this. Sleeping felt like such a waste, but it felt nice. The idea of taking a break made me not want to do it, but when I actually did it, it wasn't all that bad. Humans have to sleep, after all.

…

This train of thought continued until I woke up, without ever realizing I was asleep. But I wasn’t in the tent.

…

I was back in my internal world, with the usual person there to greet me.

“Hey, Nell.”

Her long white hair flew behind her as she elegantly floated down onto the non-existent floor.

“What do you want?”

I may have sounded a little hostile, but I was just woken up, and it wasn’t even by any of the members.

“Just checking up on you. Am I not allowed to see how you’re doing?”

She seemed slightly hurt. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t be hostile anymore.

“No… it's not that. Sorry.”

She smiled.

“It’s okay. I can always talk to you whenever, but it’s nicer to do it here. It wouldn’t want to bother you by talking to you in the middle of traveling. That’s why I woke you up.”

It actually bothered me more when she took me here instead of just speaking to me whenever. But, of course, I didn’t say that.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

It was a little hard to speak to her. I wanted to believe that I would normally be able to talk with people non-stop, but with the God of Time it’s rather awkward. I just didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know if she had a name either.

Thankfully, before the silence killed me and set me back to eternity, she spoke up again.

“A-Anyways, I’m glad to see you’re doing well. Just be careful. You’re never truly safe. You’re still inexperienced.”

She stared at me and smiled, before sending me back to the tent.

“Don’t let the flame go out!”

It was still nighttime. She woke me up after I fell asleep for 30 minutes. I could sense her shame in my head.

‘You could’ve at least waited a couple hours.’

She responded to my thoughts with no words, and a guilty smile in their place.

______________________________________________________________________________

As Nell tried his best to fall back asleep, Kaya, who was supposedly on guard with Sy, was in the forest. Rain pounded down onto her hair while she laid on the ground. The scent of moist wood wafted through the air. In front of Kaya sat a worm, crawling through the wet soil. It burrowed back into the dirt, only to be picked up and put in the cold rain yet again. This repeated for a couple times, until she spoke.

“Stay here.”

The worm, obviously unable to understand, crawled back into the soil. Kaya mechanically picked it back up and put it above ground.

“You did nothing wrong. Don’t run.”

No response from the worm, of course. It just continued to burrow. Kaya took it out of the floor.

“I know how you feel. Come with me. Please.”

She didn’t know what she expected. The worm couldn’t do what she asked, no matter how many times she tried. It just dug back into the ground. Kaya began to laugh for a reason that even she didn’t understand. The worm was no longer visible in the dirt, for it had already found its new home. Tears began to flow down Kaya’s face as the laughter dissipated. This continued for twenty minutes. Every time her tears dried up, another thought came into her head that replenished its stock. This was until she heard footsteps squishing in a puddle of mud nearby. Her head turned instinctively.

“Sy?”

Sy was standing next to a tree looking at Kaya.

“I was looking for you! What the hell are you doing out here?!”

Sy then looked at her face. Mud was spread across her cheek, with only her tears stopping it from drying.

His frustrated demeanor changed to a concerned one.

“S-Sorry.”

He didn’t know what else to say. Kaya didn’t either.

“I…The-...”

Her eyes stayed wide as she tried to come up with the right words to spit out, but only one phrase was able to escape.

“Get out.”

Sy, still standing there, was concerned. But he never picked up on how to show concern if he was on the defensive, despite Dominic and Ame being more than qualified to teach him.

At this moment, Sy wanted to show concern for Kaya. But inside his internal world, something cracked. It wasn’t the mirror. It was him. His ego and his concern were weighed subconsciously, and only one came out on top.

“Did I do something wrong?!”

He was certain that he didn’t do anything, but he couldn’t go without checking despite Kaya’s situation.

Kaya didn’t have enough of anything at this moment to think about Sy.

When a human is in a tense situation, a fight or flight response occurs to solve a threat to their survival. Kaya’s brain processed this situation as a threat to her survival due to reasons she may not have even known. Without the capacity to think about Sy, her brain went on autopilot and blurted out the thing that was deemed by nature to benefit her the most in that moment.

“Leave me alone! I never want to see you again!”

Kaya was in no condition to reflect on what she just responded with.

Sy couldn’t say anything. Neither of them were able to reflect. Sy was stuck in the moment. The shattering, painful moment. But he wasn’t mature enough to realize that Kaya wasn’t mad with him. It didn’t change much though. All he could do was walk off and go back to camp.

After Sy left, Kaya laid there, mud in hair. The crying stopped as she stared at the sky and thought to herself.

‘I need to take a fucking shower.’

______________________________________________________________________________

After waking up for a second time thanks to the God of Time, it was now morning. Unzipping my tent and walking out felt different from walking out of Ame’s house. It wasn’t bad though.

I spotted Kaya talking to Dominic from across the burnt out campfire. Her hair seemed less messed up than normal with one of her longer strands resting resting on her shoulder. She seemed to be worried about something. If possible, I would have liked to help.

“Kaya. Where were you?”

She turned to me.

“That doesn't matter right now! Tell Dominic that Sy needs to stop avoiding me!”

I didn’t say anything. How was telling Dominic that supposed to help? There was only one clear solution to whatever was happening.

“Why don’t you just tell Sy that?”

“I can’t!”

Dominic spoke to Kaya.

“Nell is right. Telling me won’t do anything. Talk to Sy.”

Kaya turned her head away and ignored him. Dominic sighed before speaking.

“We’re leaving camp tomorrow. We need surplus meat for the road because you and Kaya will eat most of it.”

Kaya still ignored him, but I couldn’t let this lie go unchecked.

“Me? I would never!”

Dominic looked at me with disbelief. I only ate half of the stuff he hunted. That left half for everybody else too, so it was even.

He continued speaking.

“Anyway, I understand the situation. You can’t speak with Sy for some reason. Nell doesn’t have experience handling people, so he’ll give you unbiased answers. You can help him learn about communication too. Ame told m- never mind. Anyway, we’ll all do it on a hunting trip. Knocking out three birds with one stone.”

Kaya smiled and laughed.

“Okay. Let’s go!”

Ame and Sy, walking together, came over. Ame looked to Sy and spoke.

“Talk to her, Sy.”

He looked back at Ame in a mix of fear and anger. Sy and Kaya stood in front of each other, avoiding eye contact. They didn’t seem to be enjoying this, so it would be better to stop it. Nobody else was trying to, so it had to be my job.

“Let’s go gather food!”

Ame and Dominic looked at me in shock.

Kaya immediately agreed and dragged Dominic and I into the forest. After a bit of running, we stopped and Dominic spoke to me.

“Why did you stop it, Nell? They were about t-”

Kaya interrupted him.

“Good job Nell!”

“Did I do something wrong?”

Dominic shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. We’re already here. Kaya, get out your dagger. Nell, you can… I’ll just teach you today.”

I nodded my head only for him to continue speaking. He looked down at the floor.

“You and Kaya aren't the only ones who need to learn how to communicate.”

I tilted my head towards him.

“I do too, Nell.”

I was still confused. He didn’t seem to have any problems nor anything he needed to say. He breathed in.

“I’m sorry. I freaked out at you after what happened to Kaya. It was hard to view you as a kid, but you started crying when I grabbed your collar. You’ve only been alive for about a week. Kid or not, I was unaware of the vulnerability you had. You’re strong, Nell. As strong as Kaya and Sy. So keep moving forward.”

His solemn tone shifted as he smiled at me.

“I’ll keep moving too. I’ll do everything in my power to help you kids, just as you all did for me. We’ll start right now. Let's hunt. Just the three of us. Got it?”

He didn’t seem to have much of a problem if he could get all of that out. I wouldn’t be able to do that as I was.

I nodded and Kaya happily agreed.

Kaya took out her dagger, completely forgot about the problem with Sy, and rushed after a large snake-like creature with one leg.

Her forgetting about Sy didn’t make me any less worried, so I had to make sure of something. I turned to Dominic.

“Will she be able to talk to Sy?”

He smiled and looked down at me.

“She’s been able to. All she needed was a little momentum. And you gave it to her with this excursion.”