Up and awake again

I remember only two times I’d gotten unconscious back on Earth. The first time was as a kid, playing soccer with some schoolmates and getting hit by the ball too hard on my head. I didn't know at that time you have to take the ball with the upper portion of your forehead, not the lower part just above your brow.

The second time was as a teenager when I was ill and running a high fever. I wanted to go to the kitchen for something to drink, got up too fast, my blood pressure plummeted, my knees buckled and I collapsed onto the floor.

It has been two weeks now since I arrived on Liyúra and I lost consciousness here as often as on Earth in twenty five years. What does that say about my new environment? Let alone about myself?

Lily certainly seemed not amused when I woke up and called me a ‘pitiful, fellible prick’ amongst other not very nice things like ‘presumptuous fool’ or ‘asinine dork’. Immediately she shoved a fresh yfood bottle with a straw into my hand and left without another word. I think she was just worried.

I was lying in my seat in the cabin of my Munchie and could see on the screen that I had been out for just a few minutes. And it was already long past midnight!

I yawned, stretched my arms, looked behind me …and gasped! Reeza and Yára still lied motionless in their seats, barely alive, their breathing almost undetectable. Yára’s naturally very pale skin was now a shade of alabaster or white marble, and Reeza’s usually crimson red skin had also paled to a shade of grey pink I’ve never ever seen in my life.

Alarmed I took both of their wrists and searched for a pulse, having a hard time finding even the faintest one!

“Lily!” I shouted.

“What?” exclaimed the beastess, poking her head through the opening of the supply chamber.

“Help me, we have to revive them!”

The beast girl tilted her head and shot me a look as if I'd completely lost my mind.

“Don’t worry, they’ll come around, you’ll see.” she finally grumbled and attempted to go back to whatever she was doing.

“How can you say that? Have you seen the state they are in?” I gasped, shocked by her callousness.

Lily slowly turned back.

“Yes! And be assured, I’ve seen them in much worse condition! The best you can do right now is come back onto your own feet, have two bottles of your drinking food ready when they’ll wake up and prepare a nice warm stew with lots of meat in it. I’ll move the supplies in the meantime.”

“Don’t you need a pause for yourself?”

“Trust me, I know when I need a rest!” she snarled and finally went back into the supply chamber.

A nice warm stew, very funny! The battery charge of my Munchie was at five percent, that meant only three quarters of a kilowatt hour were left for use. And that was just too little to prepare a meal…

I listened and could hear the howling of the storm from the outside and the roar of thunder. It is almost impossible for a thunderstorm like this to form in an arctic environment - warm, moist air and sharp temperature contrasts are highly unlikely here! - but it seemed the eruption had changed the rules. Volcanic ash is highly conductive and can easily trigger lightning or even thunderstorms, and the amount of steam the fissure was blowing up high into the cold and dry skîbærean skies must’ve been enough to trigger snowfall and vertical convection. Maybe a weak front system also came into the mix to form this dangerous, highly unusual ‘thunder-blizzard’ in the end.

I couldn’t even dare to let my ‘enerchute’ fly to recharge the batteries, not just because of the lightning and the snow. Since the air here was thicker than on Earth, the wind generated much more force, and for that the chute simply wasn’t designed. I simply had to wait for better conditions!

I cursed at myself now that I hadn’t taken this small, portable wood stove for emergencies with me on this trip, but what can I say? At that time it seemed just unnecessary dead weight!

I wasn’t hungry, so I put the yfood bottle aside, left my Munchie and went after Lily to tell her the bad news.

She took it surprisingly well and just shrugged. One more coffin nail seemed to be just that: a nail, nothing more!

“Well, dry meat it is then.” she said dryly and tossed me a bundle, wrapped in thick cloth. Well, beggars can’t be choosers! Not long and we were sitting together and found ourselves in what seemed to be a chewing contest. Despite having drunk a full bottle of yfood Lily was still hungry (or hungry again) and I too found myself with quite a hole in my stomach.

From time to time we looked after the two unconscious girls, but neither seemed willing to wake up.

“They’ll come around, just give them time.” Lily grumbled in a surprisingly tender voice when she saw how I glanced anxiously at the two motionless figures.

“We can’t go anywhere right now, so we take our time to regenerate and get back our strength.”

Well, seemed reasonable enough!

“How long do you think we’ll be stuck here?” I asked.

“I’m no psychic, so how should I know?” she bit back, but it seemed to lack the edge I was used to.

“Do you have a guess?”

She sighed.

“You should know by now I’m not the guessing type, but since you are in such dire need: at least a whole sideh. The eruption is producing so much steam it may sustain the storm for quite a while.”

“So that means: hunkering down and just hoping for the best?”

Lily’s hairy snout lit up in a grim smile.

“Clever boy! There seems to be some hope for you at least!” she laughed and struck my shoulder hard enough to send me almost to the ground.