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 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.

[unblinkered]

"No, I don't..."

His eyes light up. He holds up one finger, and runs into a nearby classroom. "Wait just a second!"

He comes out wheeling a globe on a tall stand. He gives it a spin, points at it, and asks "Kweengow?"

[inourhead]

...The girl seems absolutely bewildered by the globe. She spins it. She finds America, and murmurs "...A-me-ri-ka." Eventually she locates Hawaii and Alaska too. Apparently there is no Kuigao here, and no kloofmuur either.

[unblinkered]

"What? You..." He points at her map, and then to the globe. "No Kweengow?" She must... have trouble finding...

[inourhead]

"Amerika." She points. "Raotfkiol." She pats the ball of the globe with both hands, describes a sphere in a separate gesture. "Kunue Kuigao." She points at her own map. "Kuigao. Kloofmuur. Slasmuug -" She smooths her hand over the map, then over the floor for good measure.

[unblinkered]

"...no. Look, I don't know where you're from, but the world is not-"

Wait. No. She doesn't understand what he's saying. Right.

"Rowt- rowtufk- rowt-f-kyole... sphere." He mimics the sphere gesture. "Flat... coonway?" He copies the smoothing on the floor thing, and repeats "coonway?"

[inourhead]

"Slasmuug," she corrects, smoothing the floor and the map and the wall too.

[unblinkered]

"Slasmoog. Flat. Kweengow flat. Earth-" he taps the globe- "Earth not flat. Earth not slasmoog. Earth... rowt-fik-yole?"

The part of him that's demanding he ask questions is quieting down some, seeing the progress, but he's annoyed by how slow the process of learning languages seems to be.

[inourhead]

"Ert," she says, "raotfkiol..." She looks dubiously at the floor under her feet. Then she mimes writing.

[unblinkered]

Oh, that part is easy. They're in a school. He steps into the globe classroom- that'd be, what, Lansa's social studies?- and starts looking for looseleaf in the cabinets.

[inourhead]

When she is presented with paper and a writing implement she starts making careful notes in an unfamiliar alphabet, in two columns. She narrates helpfully - her transliteration of "flat" and "slasmuug" share a line, for instance - but other vocabulary isn't so directly translated (America has what looks like a short sentence in the column beside it).

[unblinkered]

Max glances at a wall clock. Class starts at 7:30, so the kids will be here in just under an hour, and the rest of the staff should be showing up any minute. There's probably someone better equipped to deal with her, but... he has to find out how she materialized in his classroom.

He sees her notes- she's learning some English words, okay, but... he needs to give her a vocabulary she can use to explain how she got here. What words take priority, which can be most easily communicated... how to get an intelligible explanation from her in under an hour?

Movement words, place words, prepositions...

Or take a more primitive approach. Cave paintings. Drawing. He grabs a piece of paper, draws... a circle, with a crudely-rendered America, next to a parallelogram, a plane. On the plane, he places a stick figure with curly hair, and atop the globe he places an unadorned stick figure. He then draws a curved arrow from the girl to America, with a question mark.

Actually, she probably won't understand the question mark. Maybe not the stick figures, either? He leaves the question mark, and draws tiny smiley faces on the stick figures.

[inourhead]

Whether it's the quality of the drawing or some unexamined assumption, she doesn't have an answer for him.

[unblinkered]

He grumbles something and adds some more detail to the drawing- the big black spot from the map, some continents to match the globe, and... maybe it's the arrow? Wherever she's from doesn't use that shape to indicate direction? Or maybe she just assumed he was pointing out the obvious- how do you get across the concept of "how?" without words? He might have to use other words.

He draws another stick Pyay at the end of the arrow, then points to the first Pyay with his pencil. "Pyay Kweengow..." he traces the arrow to the other Pyay, "then Pyay Earth?"

[inourhead]

She spreads her hands. "Tlaa?"

[unblinkered]

What's she- is she? That's it. "You can't not know!! You-"

Or, wait, maybe that was an explanation. Just, a brief and vague one, asking for more information from him? He could...

"...I draw Earth." He flips the paper over and draws a crude globe. "I draw Pyay." He adds a- not a stick figure this time, a more detailed rendering. His sense of proportion is all wrong, but it's recognizable.

He hands the paper and pencil to Pyay. "Pyay draw 'tlaa'?"

[inourhead]

She makes a dubious face, but makes a drawing of - a monster. A snake with a big eyeless face. Chasing a stick figure Pyay.

[unblinkered]

What's...

This connects even less to the whole materializing/no English/mice/flat world situation.

Ohhhhhh. She's crazy. She's- no, wait, the appearing, that's not a thing that her being some escaped mental patient would explain. That's not a thing anything explains. There's got to be connections, between something, and something else, anything else... the tlaa is a snake, snakes eat mice, what is with the mice...

He points at the mouse cage. "...Mice?"

[inourhead]

She looks at her mice. "Mais," she repeats obligingly, and she writes this down.

[unblinkered]

"Yeah, mice, I mean- why do you have- don't understand English, never-"

He is interrupted by a humming noise. It's 6:45- the hallway lights click on in unison, and the air conditioning turns on. Various quiet whirrs and hums sound from all directions.

The front doors downstairs ought to be open, now. It'll be a while yet until things start, but they could be interrupted at any time. He's going to have to find a way to accelerate this, or else cut class to deal with this mystery girl.

[inourhead]

She startles when the lights and air conditioning change.