Day 51

I woke up with a start, sitting up from my 45-degree angle, “shit, Lupe?”

“Bark?”

“Good boy,” I reached over and scratched his head, and slowly got to my feet, feeling relaxed and rested, I was already feeling tense in this place, with all the memories of coming up flooding me. But, I had to keep telling myself, I'm not lost, I'm just gathering materials, and bringing my car to the top, since the path up was pretty much clear and two car lengths wide most of the way up, my biggest problem was going to be driving in reverse until the fork in the road or the crossroads since those were the only places with enough space to turn around at. I ate a couple of handfuls meat-bone-broth paste stew and fed Lupe, who was drinking up water from the stream.

That was another thing I had to examine and look into, what was up with the stream, was it connected higher up the mountain and some sort of internal runoff, or was there some sort of internal caldera lake or something. I tasted the water, it had a somewhat brackish taste to it, similar to the snow, but not nearly as bad. I placed the Manaphage in and absorbed it, wondering if I could taste anything else or feel something different. It was to no avail, but I did feel full now and decided that in addition to getting my car out, I was going to have to fully scale this fucking mountain, and see if there was a volcanic top or something.

I peeked through the hole, not seeing anything and pulled myself through, quickly passing and getting to my feet on the other side, looking around expectantly. I didn't see anything and whistled for Lupe, who came barreling out, “BARK!” he loudly barked, startling me, “sh, we're trying to be quiet here.”

“bur?” he responded in a questioning manner, “no loud barking.”

“bu,” he responded quietly, a little dejected, “you can be loud as soon as we get where we're going”

“Bur!” he responded in a quiet excitement, I chuckled and led the way, jogging and running, Lupe following along splendidly, and it took several hours, but before long we made it to my car. It seemed to be in generally good shape, a couple of scratch marks, and no popped tires, but honestly better than I could have hoped, even the wood was in the same spot as before, and as I un-chucked the tires, I found they were all about the same pressure, and unlocked it and climbed in, I opened the passenger side door and motioned for Lupe to hop in. He looked confused for a second, before jumping in, and immediately looked at home sitting on the seat, and I closed the door. I checked the dashboard, and put the key in, and turned it over.

At first, nothing worried I turned it back then again, hearing a clicking, then one more time, gripping the steering wheel with the Manaphage, willing it to work, and it sparked to life. With a roar the headlights flashed, the engine rumbled and the gauges lit up, the tank of gas was three-quarters full, and everything seemed kosher, I held the brake, threw it in reverse, smiled at Lupe, and started backward, the car moving smoothly, and Lupe panting excitedly.

lokiandcoded

Sorry if you don't like the shorter chapters, I felt that I was kind of missing the spirit of the whole story which was that this is supposed to be a daily diary, and not every day does something super interesting happen, sometimes it's just walking to your car and driving home, other times it will be long, like fighting a dragon or tripping balls or something epic and I'll be writing a couple of thousand words for those, so thank you for understanding.