Chapter 8:
Reborn alone in a Pristine World
I was being kept here, wasn’t I?
I wasn’t sure if my presence was to sate some sadistic desire of the entity, if I was placed here to serve as atonement for my indignation and ungratefulness towards what I had in life, if this was some kind of test I had to overcome to earn the right to heaven, or even if this was just a realm between realms, a holding cell if heaven (or hell) was currently unavailable.
Whatever was the case, I was here. And I was alive. Well, I didn’t know that, but I felt alive. It all felt real. My exhaustion, my hunger, the pain in my hand, the grassy smell surrounding me. It couldn’t be fake. But I didn’t know how to carry on. Was it worth striving to survive? The spite that gave me a reason to carry on just moments ago now seemed like I was playing straight into the hand of whatever was keeping me here.
I should probably give that thing a name. I really don’t want to call it a god, since I feel like that will somehow give it more control over me. Why should a little human like me be able to go against a god? More like a force of nature, as it is quite human to go against nature and make it bend to our own will. “Force of Nature… Unkown…” I begin to think out loud.
“Taking the first letters of each… Fonu…combines it quite well.” Or more so lazily, but I was never the type to be creative with names.
So Fonu is keeping me here, for what purpose I do not know. Would it be right for me to continue to survive, or does that just play into Fonu’s hands? Even if I decide I don’t want to continue this, I don’t think that dying is a particularly pleasant experience. After all I might be immortal in this world, but I still feel pain, hunger and thirst. Nothing I could think of would just give me an easy way out of here. Granted most of the things around me could be highly poisonous, but it still wouldn’t guarantee a painless exit.
Although I perhaps will do exactly as Fonu wants, right now surviving seems like the best choice.
And for that I still needed fire. Not that it was guaranteed to ever work. But I couldn’t do much besides give it another try. As the sun was beginning to set, I didn’t have much time to conjure up another campfire. Me mulling over my situation also didn’t help with the amount of time I still had in daylight. I scratched my head. “Maybe I should just not worry about shelter today…”. After all, the weather was still clear, even more so than yesterday evening.
After a bit more sitting around, gathering courage to once again go into the forest to collect some gassing spruce bark. As my lungs hadn’t disintegrated yet, I assumed the smoke couldn’t be that bad for me. So, I once again armed myself with a trusty rock and I went to grab my rope, only to realize I didn’t bring it with me. I must have dropped it during my flight from the forest creature. Just another thing to keep an eye out for I guess.
Since I didn’t get far before, I soon found the spot where I had turned around. My feet moved enough of the leaf litter as I ran to clearly mark where I was before. However there was something odd: The rope was nowhere around. Not at the spot where I froze, not on the way I ran. Something must have taken it. Only what? Was it the creature stalking me? Or a harmless herbivore, which was happy to find a de-thorned snack?
As much as I wanted to figure out the answer to that question, I still had a mission to complete for today and made my way to the nearest gassing spruce, the same one I had hacked before. When I arrived, there was another surprise waiting for me: Resin. The places where I had chopped a bit too deeply and wounded the wood had begun to leak a bit of resin. Resin allowed me to do a couple new things. It could be used as glue, especially to glue together the stands of any rope I made again, to fill in gaps and seal up small wooden containers and to act as an additional fuel source for my tinder. Sadly, once again, for the tinder it needed to be dried out, which was easiest with a fire, which I didn’t have yet. Another one for the circle.
Be that as it may, I started to beat up on the bark again, filled all of my pockets and grabbed whatever sticks I could still find along the way. Once I was at my fireplace again, I removed the waterlogged rocks. Thankfully the heat from the little flame that I ignited before was enough to dry out the grass below it. Now I didn’t have to run the risk of my seemingly dry foundation exploding again, while also providing a dry bed for my tinder. For yet another time I started my routine of firemaking. A bit more successful than the last two times. I had never made fire this way before, so every little bit of improvement helped me. Just slightly changing the pressure on the sticks, the speed of rotation and how long you go between pauses could be the difference between getting a fire going or once again sleeping in the cold.
Only a little while later, I had a small ember going. I again gassed myself by throwing in the bark, the essential oils both burning my lungs and the firewood I placed atop it. The bark was irritating to work with, but for the limited amount of things I have already tried to burn, it was the best.
This time I only ever made small trips to the edge of the forest to gather additional plant material to burn. I couldn’t get the highest quality firewood, having to make do with picking up twigs from the ground and beating off fresh branches with my trusty rock. But I didn’t want to chance another disaster like last time. The small trips allowed me to regularly check on the fire, which seemed quite happy to smolder along, despite the low quality fuels I brought to it. No divine intervention yet. Even so, it was only large enough to slowly chew through whatever I brought to it, not actually producing any large flames or substantial amount of heat. But right now the most important thing was to keep it going. If the coals managed to stay hot all throughout the night, I could use the residual heat to dry more tinder and if I’m lucky to restart the fire completely.
So until sundown my routine was quite simple: Go to the forest, get everything that looks vaguely flammable, return to the fire, put some more onto it whilst making sure not to suffocate it, put the rest aside, repeat. The sun disappeared completely behind the horizon, stopping my efforts. The fire was not large enough to function as a light source, much less to fashion one of the sticks into a torch. Still, I was happy with the amount of combustible plants I had collected.
The evening went on, some clouds came in over the horizons. They trapped the day’s heat and it was remarkably more mild than last night. I did have a little flame, but it didn’t warm me as much as the emotional warmth I felt. It might not have been much, but after watching over it like a hawk, even in the face of Fonu’s machinations, there was hope. Not much, but it was there.
I grew tired, the soft crackling of the coals at my feet giving off a cozy atmosphere. Together with the wind rustling in the trees behind me, the water gurgling in front of me and the sounds of chirping insects all around me, it really felt like an outdoor camping trip. Almost as serene as the dream that brought me here. Steadily the exhaustion overcame me, my eyes closing more often and for longer.
I finally drifted off to soft slumber…
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