what in the longdark spitting-pit is that

[inourhead]

This was a bad idea this was a bad idea this was a bad idea.

Holly runs as fast as she can but the demon's faster. She has no idea where Lightning's gotten to; maybe he found a tree to climb. She on the other hand has been diverted into a treeless hill and she's careening down a slope, trying very hard not to trip.

And the demon's gaining on her.

She's never seen anything like it and neither has Crystal; maybe Book knows what it is but Book's asleep. It's mostly mouth - it looks like a cross between a floorlength mirror of a mouth and a snake to propel the mouth along.

And Holly's not fast enough.

The mouth catches her.





But it doesn't hurt.

Where are we?

----


with Minus (kappa)

with Mark (kappa)

with Max (Benedict)

in Terraria (kappa)

with Emma (Marri)

with Erin (Rockeye)

Comments

[inourhead]

She looks over her shoulder. Uncomprehending, but paying attention to him instead of ways out the window.

[unblinkered]

Okay, so, language barrier. How does one get around those? ...Pantomime, probably. Pointing and gesturing, and such. He can't necessarily assume she knows common sorts of gestures like nodding and shaking one's head- can he? How universal are those sorts of things?

He stands up and points at her- "You!" He walks over and points at the floor where she appeared- "Here?"- and repeats this inquiry a couple of times.

[inourhead]

"Pyay," she says, pointing at herself. "Ruum, Sohng. Tlaa."

[unblinkered]

Oh! Names! Names are easy. He has no idea what the rest of that means, but... he points at himself, "Max," and at her- "You, Pyay?"

This is probably a necessary first step, although there's the part of him that's annoyed by how her name has nothing to do with how she magically appeared in the middle of his classroom. He tells that part to sit down and be patient, if it can.

[inourhead]

"Sin, Mahks," she approximates, pointing at him. "Mri, Pyay." She points at herself again.

[unblinkered]

"Sin, you... mri, me." He pauses. "Or possibly mri, I. Or- it's first person, it doesn't matter. Or- thinking out loud is probably going to confuse things..."

He gestures in a circle at the spot on the floor where she was standing. "You... sin, Pyay..." He makes a confused, interrogative sound that she hopefully won't confuse for a word.

[inourhead]

"Mri Pyay," she says agreeably.

[unblinkered]

"No! No- I meant- specifically- you-" he gestures more emphatically at the ground. It doesn't seem to be working- he throws in a few different sorts of peekaboo-type charades, to try to convey something appearing and disappearing.

[inourhead]

Pyay spreads her hands. "Mripuumhinehutple tlir!"

[unblinkered]

She... doesn't know? Or he could be misreading her gesture, or... she could be confused about why he's asking, and expressing confusion about his confusion... but more likely the first thing, and that's not okay. She did this, she has to know.

"Hold on, I'm gonna check..."

He drags over a chair and stands on top of it, then inspects the ceiling above the spot closely. There's nothing- and nothing obvious behind the ceiling panels, either.

His close inspection of the ceiling and precarious balance leaves the path to the door quite unobstructed.

[inourhead]

She edges towards the door, apparently not interested in being shut up in a room with him whether he's still shouting at her or not.

[unblinkered]

"Hey! Where are you-" He tries to step down from the chair, but trips and crashes into another desk.

[inourhead]

She's going out the door, apparently, tentatively but not slowly once she no longer expects him to be able to obstruct her.

[unblinkered]

The hallway is spartan and dim- the lights aren't on, although sunlight comes through the window at one end of the hall. It's lined mainly with lockers, with various posters and notices covering un-lockered wall space. There are plenty of doors like Max's classroom door, spaced at regular intervals.

"Hey! Come back here! Where are you...!"

Hm, no, she is not listening to him, it seems. He disentangles himself from the desk and gets up.

[inourhead]

She looks over her shoulder at him, but continues down the hall. "Tiim tupuumhitaoneniuple Nlaaki?" she calls.

[unblinkered]

He scrambles out of the classroom- and manages not to slip on the spilled joe from Brenda's. He congratulates himself on a bullet dodged, and goes after the perpetrator(?).

"Hold up! I didn't catch a word of that- plain locky? What's plain loggy?"

[inourhead]

She looks over her shoulder at him again, with a look of utmost "you have got to be fucking kidding me" on her face, unaccompanied by any further gibberish. She moves on, apparently looking for someone or something. "Tiim tupuumhikueniuple Nlaaki, raa?"

[unblinkered]

"There's that plain loggy again. Or- naloggy? Nloggy?" He plays around with the "nl" sound.

Near the end of the hallway is a large map of the United States.

[inourhead]

"Sinpuumhineniuple Nlaaki, soo nlul. Tiim tu-"

She pauses at the map. She stares at it. She reaches out and touches it.

She rummages in her bag again.

[unblinkered]

"...She's some kind of delinquent geography nut...?"

How the heck does this connect to the un-vanishing act, or the mice, or the weird language? Max is failing to think of any possibilities.

[inourhead]

She finds what she was looking for. If he comes up behind her close enough to see and not close enough to prompt her to scurry away from him, he can see that she is also holding a map. The page she's trying to compare to the United States on the wall is also a map, complete with flocks of triangular mountains and blue-painted bodies of water. There is a big black blotch in the middle of it, and cities and political boundaries marked out around that. The United States is... not on it.

[unblinkered]

He does maintain this distance, and sees... what's that, again? He won a geography bee once, he should know this... the ink spill there, it might be blocking... the mountains must be...

...It just doesn't line up with anything he remembers, no matter how he looks at it. Add another thing to the confusing-and-unaccounted-for pile.

[inourhead]

The girl is now peering at the insets of Alaska and Hawaii to see if she can find those. Nope.

[unblinkered]

He quietly walks up to the other side of the map, on the right, and points at the US.

"America," he says. Maybe he can get her to name the place on her map?

[inourhead]

"A-me-ri-ka," she says slowly. She starts pointing at things on the map. "Kuigao?" A little political unit, south of the blotch. "Kloofmuur?" The blotch itself, apparently.