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]

"I suppose we could give her a note to show to anyone who bothers her? 'I don't speak English and am waiting here for my friends from the university'. With phone numbers. But first we'd need to be able to tell her to stay put overnight. Trevor, does your watch have a second hand...?"

[unblinkered]

Trevor checks his wrist. "Yeah, it does. What's that got to do with anything? We going to teach her time?"

Max retrieves his phone.

[inourhead]

"Yes, so we can say 'sit there for ten hours' - let her see your wrist."

Sohng is presently acquainted with the concept of seconds, minutes, and, through further numerical extrapolation, hours. She learns that twenty-four hours is one day. She writes all this down.

[unblinkered]

Trevor, towards the end of this crash course in time, attempts to ask Sohng about Kuigao time. "Kweengow time? Kweengow, Nloggy, seconds, minutes, hours?"

[inourhead]

"Kuigao - maa." She does a little mathematical scratchwork. "Mmmm... two maaso three hour."

[unblinkered]

"And- how many- day- uh, hm..." Trevor begins consulting Sohng's glossary for words that might help him ask how long Kuigao days are.

Max pulls away the piece of paper Trevor is looking over. "They don't have days, actually. Her world- she mentioned there's more than one sun, and we couldn't get her to understand the concept of day and night, until-"

He stops, noticing Trevor's death glare. He lets go of the glossary paper, which Trevor slowly pulls back. "Thhhank you," he forces out, with the restraint audible in his voice.

Max backs up a little.

[inourhead]

"No days. Huh," says Victoria. "...I'm going to go ahead and call my girlfriend and ask if I can take her home. If not we can go with the overnight loitering with a note option." Victoria produces her own phone.

[unblinkered]

"If it helps, as far as I know she keeps the mice caged and asleep. Haven't seen her let them out for anything."

Max checks his email quickly. Liu hasn't responded to the materials question yet- Max sends him a followup email with- he looks up, quickly- Trevor and Victoria's university contact information, informing him that they'll know where the wizard is being kept.

[inourhead]

"Hiiii baby," Victoria says, when her girlfriend picks up the phone. "Uuuum, I have a favor to ask. There's this kid who basically dropped in my lap at school, and she speaks this totally unprecedented language, and - yes, but I'm your nerd - anyway - she doesn't have anywhere to go, she has only a few words of English, she looks about seventeen and she's black and I don't want her to spend the night on a park bench. Trevor can't take her, the fellow who brought her in doesn't seem to want to do it - I know, baby, the problem is she's got mice. I know, baby. ...Maybe. I'll see if I can get that across and get back to you? Okay. Love you too, baby."

Victoria hangs up. "She suggests that the mice could just stay in the office overnight. Now we get to figure out how to tell Sohng that..."

[unblinkered]

"Well... hm. I already told her that the man-eating clowns that devour people in their sleep such that everyone in her world is forced to magic their sleep into mice... don't exist here, but she still didn't seem too thrilled about the idea of sleeping. Had to go buy her these mice, earlier today, since a bunch of hers died for some reason."

Trevor stares.

"...I'm not making that up, by the way. She might be?"

[inourhead]

"Clowns?" says Victoria, first incredulously to Max, then, to Sohng, "Clowns?"

"Klaonso," says Sohng. "Person sleep, klaon eat sleep person."

"...Well, that's disturbing."

[unblinkered]

"And clowns are a type of... 'tlaa', which are... I don't know exactly, they're... monsters? Snake things? She claims that she got sent here when one of them... ate her, or something, I think. Not the clowns, a different thing."

[inourhead]

"Tlaa eat Sohng?" asks Victoria.

Sohng nods. "Tlaa eat Sohng and Pyay - and -" Words fail her, she makes a helpless gesture.

"This is so surreal," murmurs Victoria.

[unblinkered]

"The clowns are, as far as I know, not literal clowns. It's just, the word sounds the same. So... I don't know if that makes it any less surreal, actually."

Max turns to Sohng. It's worth asking again. "Song- Song and Pyay, Earth no clowns, Earth no tlaa- Song and Pyay sleep?"

[inourhead]

"No. Sleep! Hour hour hour sleep - no!"

[unblinkered]

"How old did you say she was, again?" Trevor asks.

"I don't know, she- we don't know." Max rubs at his temples. "Song- if no hour hour hour sleep... hour hour hour what? Max sleep, Victoria sleep, Victoria's girlfriend sleep... Earth people sleep hour hour hour. What Song and Pyay do hour hour hour?"

[inourhead]

"English," she says, swatting the stack of notes. "Eat. Sohng and Pyay - ah - talk."

[unblinkered]

"Max sleep. People sleep. People not teach English, Song and Pyay... alone? Alone, alone, alone means..." He reaches for a piece of paper, and thinks about how to draw "alone".

[inourhead]

She picks up the notes and waves them around. "English, English, Sohng write English."

[unblinkered]

"Practice...? I guess that makes sense..."

Trevor groans. "Look, we're going to have to teach her 'fear', or something, obviously. I mean, the word fear, we don't want to scare her. Explain to her why she can't bring the mice."

[inourhead]

"We could leave her in the office, maybe," says Victoria. "If she's not going to sleep the fact that there's nowhere to sleep doesn't matter, does it?"

[unblinkered]

"Does that have the same problem as the library? How late does this building close, are there night guards, is it safe to leave her here?"

[inourhead]

"It closes, in a if-you-leave-the-door-locks-behind-you sense, but I've crashed in the office before overnight, nobody gave me any trouble. We can put a sign on the door, studying late, do not disturb."

[unblinkered]

"Well! That, uh... solves that, until we can line up something more permanent." Max smiles.

"It doesn't solve that. Not yet. She's gonna have to eat, right? Who's buying her food?"

Max pats his wallet reflexively. He can afford it tonight, but... he doesn't want to set a precedent, since it'd be a strain to be the one buying her food on a regular basis...

"Well... see, the first time she got hungry, I started digging through my pockets for food, and she... that's when I discovered the magic thing, since she just took an apple core and turned it edible using a tiny chunk of... something that looked like a peanut. But... she did ask me for food, which implies that she couldn't just food-ify anything she wanted."

"So we learn her words for food, then ask how doing mweelsrow on food works. That sound right?" Trevor responds.

[inourhead]

"Do you expect to be able to understand a technical explanation of magic...?" wonders Victoria. "No, no, it's worth a try - if I turned things into food, though, I'd want to be sure they were worthless. Maybe she can identify an apple core as trash it's okay to repurpose and is confused by everything else?"