‘I’m fucking sick of doing this’, Was my first thought when coming too.

I could somewhat remember things that happened after passing out, but only in short glimpses, but far too fuzzy for me to visualise anything. 

‘And my god am I hungry’.

Sliding my eyes open, I was surprised by the sky swaying above me, something that shouldn’t happen. 

My sense of touch returned, allowing my muscles to inform me of their exhaustion. But accompanying that, I could also feel a slight swaying. 

‘Shows how screwed everything is when the idea of the sky swinging is more obvious than me being swung.

As I opened my eyes further, I could see the source of this swaying at the edge of my vision. The underside of a boy's face was standing above me, and by tilting my head up, I could see his arms stretched down close to my head holding onto a Stretcher. Obviously, the one I was on.

I purposefully didn’t make him aware that I had woken up, not wanting the hassle of talking at that moment. 

Seeing as the sky was slowly going dark I had probably been out for about a day.

As I continued to lie down, I started to wonder why this kept happening. Collapsing like that isn’t normal is it, even when getting injured right? Well, I did lose a lot of blood. But the regenerator skill should also replenish that thought, so that can’t be it. Unless it's the replenishment that causes it. That was the best guess I had. 

The skill also seemed to have another downside when healing any extreme injuries. I became extremely dehydrated. 

Doesn’t that lead to brain damage or something?

‘Isn’t that juuuust great’.

My thoughts started turning towards a different focus, the lingering unrest that hovered over me. I had been attempting to ignore it, but it continued to persist.

Though It took a while, I realised that it wasn’t my restlessness, but the spiders. This brought up another question, why was it still in my head? 

I continued to lie down for probably around an hour, pondering questions like that, before I finally felt like getting up. 

I faked a groan while stretching slightly. I didn’t want my carriers to know I had been awake for a while, after waking up mentally I started to feel guilty. 

“ehar, you're up, finally” the kid groaned relieved. The other guy holding the stretcher, who I’d only seen the back of, also let out a sigh of relief. 

He turned his head back to face me before asking me if I could stand. 

“I think so,” I said, giving a slight smile, which he returned. But it didn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“Ren,”  he said to the kid, probably his name. 

“Finally,” he muttered, as the two stopped moving, allowing me to step off. 

I could stand, though my legs felt like they might fold. 

After I had stabilised myself, the guy started to talk to me, “Glad to see you awake, I was getting worried after the second night”.

Second night?

“Wait, Second night!?” Was he saying I had been unconscious for over 2 days? I looked around at our surroundings, an empty sandplain with few patches of plant life. The city wasn’t even on the horizon. 

“Yes, since… since the ants,” he answered, his face couldn’t quite decide what to show. 

“What, what happened with the ants, I was out before the attack ended?” I hesitated to ask, but it felt somewhat important to ask.

“Shortly after your spider thing came, they stopped being reinforced, but I don’t know why. As you can probably tell, we decided to leave for a small village along the road,” his tone only got more tired as he talked, and not wanting to push him further, I refrained from asking him more questions. Though a ‘voice’ soon pulled me away from it anyway. This ‘voice’ came from my head. 

*You finally decided to get up from that thing,* the voice declared, startling me. But it was pretty easy to figure out where it came from. How it was doing it was a different story. 

*... Are you going to ‘say’ anything?*

I had no idea how it was talking to me, neither how nor if I could respond, so I just resorted to talking out loud. 

“Can you, can you hear me?” I asked the disembodied voice of the spider.

I felt hesitant but did get an answer.

 “yes?” she responded, as though it was the most obvious thing. I don’t know how I picked up on that since there was no ‘hearing’ the tone of something in your head, but I chalked it up to weird magic stuff. 

“Does everything confuse you?” she asked me, which reminded me of another odd part of this conversation, both of us could feel what the other person was feeling, emotionally obviously. 

“Where are you?” I asked her. I assumed she had run off, which might make sharing thoughts awkward. 

*We’re at the back of the line. Your kind didn’t seem to like me much,* She replied, A lot of emotion came with it, but It felt… complicated, so I couldn’t really differentiate any of them. 

I couldn’t hold back longer, with the absurdity of everything, I ended up letting out a snort of laughter, which I immediately regretted. I had been so in my head, I hadn’t put much thought into the people walking past. The atmosphere was drenched in emptiness. Barely anyone was talking, and if they were, only in hushed whispers. Taking note of this, I immediately sobered up and tucked my head somewhat. 

Wanting to leave the silent crowd, I started to walk to the side of the dirt road, so I could make my way to the spider's position. 

*You very… odd, you know, can’t you just make up your mind?* the spider asked, though the question was more rhetorical.

I was about to start talking, but realising that to people around I was talking to myself, so I   quieted my words further. 

“What do you mean?”

*I mean, you get frustrated for no reason, jump to being sorry, then to laughing, before getting… scared?* her explanation trailed off by the end, she said the word scared, but It was more out of not knowing the right word. But we’re not speaking in words? 

“Embarrassed?” I filled in, assuming that was what she was trying to say. 

*yes?*

I had to think about this for a while before it set in. She hadn’t been embarrassed before. Which I guess made sense, she was a spider, I doubt there would be a need fro a spider to get embarrassed. 

Getting closer to the end of the line, I could see a black blob with 8 small red blobs on it, making itself along the road, a fair distance away from people. Continuing to walk forwards, I noticed the lack of presence that it had before, along with that, the sight of her felt a lot less ominous than it had done before. Even more confusing than that, she nearly felt like an old acquaintance, like someone who had been a school friend 4 years ago or something.

I wonder why. maybe it was her she thought of me? I don’t know, I’ve been having a hard enough time differentiating which of the fainter feelings are mine, but it seems the stronger the feeling, the harder it is to tell. The one stronger feeling I could tell wasn’t mine was her curiosity because even though I couldn’t really feel the difference, I was able to tell I wasn’t the one confused by clothes. 

‘Wait, I can not only tell what she’s feeling but also what they are directed towards?’

At least it seemed like that, but trying to spend time on things in my head was hurting my head. 

As I continued to walk towards her, I could start to make out a second figure walking beside the enormous spider, a hunched guy trudging along in a black cloak. 

Why was Eric there?

*You took a while to get here, does it hurt your kind to move fast?* the enormous spider asked me. It outstanded me how much it told you, being able to feel something's feelings, how much it told you about it/them. 

A sudden jolt of realisation shook me, but before I could speak it, she started to ask, *you were confused about the white ‘your kind’ with the black thing over it? I don’t know about them, they came here a bit after they woke, not stood up, but I don’t know why.*

‘White your kind with the black thing’. The greatest description.

“We’re called humans, since you're wondering,” I said, though I was wondering how nouns like that even work communicating like this. 

Getting pretty close to the pair now, I moved to talk to Eric. 

“Hey. How come you're here and not further up?” jogging to walk next to him. 

He turned his head to face me, his cloak covering his face like usual. It was then I realised that the reason he had been covering his face was related to his vampire-esk features. 

“I… “ he hesitated before finishing, “I don’t know.”

I didn’t know why he wasn’t answering, but I decided to leave it at that for the time being. 

We stood in silence for a second, I wasn’t sure how to continue, but that silence was broken, sort of, by the spider behind us. 

*What are the sounds you're making? Are they like this?* she asked, the ‘this’ was referring to how we were communicating. 

“Yeah, I guess so, but like… more roundabout?” she seemed to understand, thankfully.

Eric gave me a questioning glance, so I told him “I’m talking to the spider,”

He held his tongue for a second, as though unsure of whether or not to say anything before his curiosity got the better of him. “It’s talking?”. 

“Yeah, like telepathy,” 

He took in a deep breath with a ‘ah’, before facing back towards the road. 

I decided to leave him be, he clearly wanted some space, probably the reason he retreated here in the first place. But I was a little worried anyway. 

I… the spider got confused, but it ignored whatever it was, and instead continued to ask me questions. 

*The stuff around your bodies, humans seem to be able to put it on and off, what is it?* She asked another question that left me a little lost. How do you describe clothes?

“Their clothes,” I said before attempting to grab the words, “it’s… we make it to keep us warm” was the best I could come up with. But apparently, it wasn’t good enough for her. 

*So, if you weren’t wearing that right now, you’d be cold? I haven’t seen people putting more on at night, why?*

Her line of questioning surprised me,’ Had she been… studying people for, oh yeah it has been 2 days and her impatience pulled me away from my contemplation, demanding me to answer. 

“Ehh, not really, at the very least I’m very hot right now, so I guess that’s only through winter. It’s erm, it’s also because it looks nice? And it's usually embarrassing for us not having any.”.

*Embarrassing, like how you felt before? Do you always feel like that without clothes?* 

It seemed like every answer I gave only spurs more questions

“It's more if someone else sees you without clothes?”

*why?*

“I, I don’t know, it’s like a culture thing”

After answering, I got confused, ‘Is that wrong, was there another re- it's not me is it’ I was starting to realise how annoying not being able to tell what was feeling was going to be. 

After a bit of deliberation, she moved to a different line of questioning, realising I couldn’t go much further on clothes. *you ‘said’ something about winter, what is that?*  

The question had caught me off guard, I had expected her not to know things about people, but something basic like seasons? This led me to question her age, she felt old, mentally that is, but there was an obvious issue with that. “How old are you?”

*How old? 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, nearly 11 days,* The question confused her slightly (as to its reasoning, but she answered it anyway). 

11 days! I had expected something like that, but it still shocked me. So she’s practically a toddler, well she's a spider soo, when do spiders stop being children? She’s also the size of a truck so does that…?

*so, how old are you then?* She interrupted my thoughts. 

“I’m… 23 years,” somehow forgetting my age for a second. 

*years?* once again a word she didn’t know, well it's not like we were speaking but. We weren’t speaking, and yet somehow there was a language problem.

My thoughts once again returned to the conversation with the help of an impatient spider.

I started to calculate under my breath “365 times 23… 6140 plus 1095 equals 7135. Then plus 5 for leap years, and wh-” I cut myself off, there was no need to be so specific. I gave her my estimate my answer to her

“a bit over 7140 days”

A jump of shock leapt up, which was obviously not from me. 

*you're over 600 times as old as me? What. well, oh*. The idea was hilarious. A loud chatter-like sound burst from behind me, which was from the spider. 

A.. a laugh?

*Are all of you that old?*

“No, not, the smaller people are usually like half that age, and there are some people here that are over 4 times that,” are there still? That thought made any enjoyment I was having plummet. The… how many people died from that attack? 

*What's wrong? What happened?* the spider, picking up on my mood change, grew concerned.

“Ye… yeah, I was just- what happened with the ants?”

*the ants? From 2 days ago, I don’t know. They just stopped coming shortly after you went to sleep* 

Why did they stop? Did they give up or something? Maybe there weren’t enough of them, it seemed as though they weren’t just going towards us, so maybe something distracted them.

*so, what's winter?* once again pulling back to the conversation, she asked me again.

“Well, it's like a time of the year when-” just for her to get pulled from the conversation. There was something out there, coming towards us. The thought of another fight excited me. It nearly felt more destructive than before. The spider then suddenly picked up her pace before leaping over a group of people, rushing to move to the enemy. Though I couldn’t properly make out the form of the monsters, I could tell they were green. 

As she jumped onto one of the things, a sense of relish formed. I would have started running there as well, but remembered how my fight with her had gone. If she needed help, it definitely wouldn’t be from me. Yet.

After her fight with the bugs, she came back towards the back, and her questions continued as though there had been no interruption, I answered as best I could.

…

…

We talked like that until it became dark. The group had stopped to eat and sleep, and she needed to as well. But I didn’t feel like sleeping at all. Now that there was nothing to distract me, I was left alone in my own thoughts, and the image of the guy with a striped shirt came up. Obviously, other people had died during that fight, but… I don’t know. 

I took a deep sigh while looking up into the sky. Hundreds of stars lit up the sky, brighter than you’d ever see in a city. It was one of the reasons I had travelled here. It was a somewhat remote town/city, so It would be easy to find places with little light pollution. But staring at them felt more empty than beautiful. 

“You still up?” a surprise question from Eric, he had been so quiet I had nearly forgotten he was there. Turning to look at the direction his voice was coming from, multiple things surprised me. Not only had he managed to sneak up to right beside me, he also didn’t have the hood on like he usually did. With the glow of the fire I had help in building, I could properly see the pointed grey-white ears on the sides of his head, and the red eyes on his eyes. 

“Yes, yes sorry, head was in another place,” 

“I get that, I’ve been... In my head quite a bit as well,” his speech was slower and more methodical than it usually was, as though bearing the weight of the world. We continued to sit in silence for a while, just staring out into the night sky. 

Eric took it upon himself to start talking again. “So… talking to a monster, what's that like?” he asked.

“It’s, actually really, normal. Or not normal but, It doesn’t feel forced,”

“Talking to a monster is normal, huh, so are you hearing the words or something?”

“No, not really, it's like, I don’t know actually, like words that also have feelings connected to them.” then after thinking continued, “Like, If she says-”

“She?” He interjected. “Yeah, she, though don’t ask me how I know,”

“Is that a warning?”

I just continued my explanation, leaving it to his imagination, “Well, if she says something like ‘it is annoying’ I also know who/what ‘it’ is,” I felt like it wasn’t a complete answer, but there was no way he was going to get a better one from me. 

Building myself up, I decided to ask the question that had been festering in my mind, “So, your… eyes?” After opening my mouth, I lost confidence. 

“And the ears and the skin and the teeth?” 

“Ye- yeah,”

“Well your guess was probably correct, I’m, I’m a vam, vampire,” he said, before realising that an explanation would be good. “it’s a- a special skill,” he waited a second as though trying to hold himself back. “why the fuck did I think that was the best choice?” he broke through, his voice pained and angry.

…

I gave him a second before asking him why.

He took a breath and looked up to the sky. Then after giving a gulp, he answered, voice trembling “I, I I bit someone. I bit someone! I wasn’t even- I wasn’t fucking trying to,” as he finished, he folded himself forward, leaning his elbows on his legs, face in hands.

“He just- I lost control… like I wasn’t even moving my own body,” he said through sporadic breaths. 

“It terrified me, what if, what if that happens again? Will I just keep losing control of myself?” 

I was unsure of whether I should attempt to console him, or hold back and simply be present. I decided the latter, I felt saying anything would feel a bit hollow. 

So we stayed in silence, both deep in thought. I had that fear if only for a second, the fear of losing myself. Has he been having that since the room? I couldn’t even imagine how scary that would be. We listened to the crackling of the fire for some time.

The silence was eventually broken by Eric.

“Sorry, I-... My parents weren’t at home when the room happened. My mom’s a doctor eh, something related to the brain, she left for a conference or something a week before, and my dad also had a meeting. I never had a close relationship, It was always… distant. Even when I moved back in with them. It wasn’t like I was a dead beat, I worked a full-time- nearly full-time job, paid for my food, and electricity and everything,” 

he stopped talking for a second, rubbed his eyes and straightened his back before, and with more life, jumped to something else, “You know, Immediately after the room, I got so excited, like ‘oh, this is my chance to prove myself’ or something. Fuck if I know what I was going to prove. But I just jumped at the first chance to kill a monster.” he stopped himself, and gave himself a second to think, “fuck, what am I even trying to say?... What about you?”

I had no idea what the question was, I doubted he knew either, so I just latched onto something.

“Ha, I had something similar, the moment I got out, I heard someone scream and in my head, all I thought was ‘I need to help’ like I was some superhero or something. And then immediately got half killed by an ant thing.” 

I gave a moment, and something I had been ignoring reawakened, 

“I’m worried about my brother. My parents always seem to handle things, but Michal, I don’t know, I’m just worried,” I let my own words sink in. Is he still alive? Even if he was, would I ever even see him again, I doubt engine boats work, so how would I get over there?

We held a conversation for a while, talking about life in general. We eventually slowed down and slept on the thin blankets that had been brought with us, keeping the fire alive so that guards could see.