Surviving was a mistake, well not really but sometimes it felt like that. Turns out, Jeff had a good idea where he was, but man did he regret knowing. Well not really but surviving meant walking and walking after running away twice in a day, scrambling up a rockface and then walking out a café, meant hurt legs. So yeah, it sucked realizing you had to walk at least 3 hours back to your camp.
“Don’t go crying now Jeff, just because something gets hard doesn’t mean it’s worth complaining about somethings just need to be done.”, the voice of his father rang in Jeff’s ears. Sure, his old man had talked about something else, still the message still held true. So no longer complaining and just get it over with, well complaining was a good way to relieve some stress so why not complain internally?
As Jeff walked the strange sun in the sky began as always here, just to darken. Which was weird even by zone standards. Jeff of course knew the stories about how the sun set behind a “horizon” a nebulous term apparently no longer usable since the Pandemonium happened. But in most zones the sun, or whatever weird light source they had, still went past the edge of the zone and slowly receded, the truly old folk still compared that to a “sunset”. But in this zone? Nah the sun just went out, slowly sure but it just went out. It wasn’t the weirdest sun Jeff had heard about, apparently in one zone, the sun was the iris of a huge titanic man or thing no one really knew, that just unblinkingly looked at the zone. Apparently the iris could kill people when it looked right at you, which was hard to notice until too late.
Weird sunsets aside the aching slowly dulled and grew more manageable as the body acclimated to the constant pain and just accepted it. So Jeff also started to make some headway, if things progressed like this he would be at his camp just before the sun went completely dark and would be able to make the trip to the other camp still today. Getting rid of the fruit today and buying something nice and warm to eat would be great. Though he had many talents, cooking wasn’t among them. So getting a hot meal would be nice. Last time he had something good must’ve been what, two weeks ago when Candy had invited him to the group house for the second time? That had been nice, sitting around talking with the others. Ah well it had still turned out to not be worth the trouble.
Jeff’s surroundings slowly grew from the rugged more stony terrain of the so-called stone flats, more soft and alive with small plants and even some animals, even some that were apparently not twisted, though the flying shrimp were apparently still weird to the older folk of this zone. They were also weird for Jeff and other visitors but each zone having weird shit well was not that weird to Jeff and most people born after the Pandemodium. Well at least for people like Jeff that actually left their birthzone.
As the live god more present and in your nose, so too did the many floating bubbles, most were quite small, which made Jeff think they probably weren’t created by the same sort of twisted object like in the caves, but he couldn’t be sure. Running into the very small once was basically impossible to prevent. It was still fascinating how the water went from flying back to normal water if the surface tension or whatever got broken. His first day here Jeff had played with these bubbles like a small child, until he tried a larger bubble and got drenched completely.
Turns out rain here wasn’t a thing instead something broke the surface of a large drop and you had a literal downpour on you. Most often it wasn’t too bad, the water slowed while falling for some reason, probably the same why it floated, but it wouldn’t hit you too badly. The real danger was if it was too much water, Jeff hadn’t seen a really big bubble pop but had heard trustworthy stories, from Kate a friend of Candy, how there had been an incident were three people drowned trying to get out of a huge popped bubble, it apparently tried to reform into smaller once that incased the three men right as it hit the ground.
So Jeff did look up regularly staying away from under the big bubbles. It was sometimes exhausting to avoid them all the time, but it was that or die drowning. His camp was for a similar reason under an overhang with convenient alleviation, meaning any falling water ran off immediately. The thing he would miss from the bubbles was the easy access to drinking water, bubble water was surprisingly pure, didn’t need to be boiled or anything and refreshing, catching a bubble where you could refill your waterskin was hard as most just splashed over you if you tried but since lakes and rivers were rare to non existent, Jeff was still unsure if the rivers were temporary or not, the bubbles were the best source available. It was still amazing, some zones Jeff had visited had nearly no drinkable water easily available, some didn’t have it all, so Jeff also didn’t stay long enough to need a refill.
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After roughly 2 hours Jeff was surprised to finally see his camp, he had apparently miscalculated or equally likely, misread the time from the state of the sun. laying down his fruits he overlooked his modest camp, it was one of the better once he had made, his second batch of clothes was neatly folded ready to use for civilized company, he had a pot over a nicely arrange cooking station with neatly arrange, what was the thing called? Ahh yes celp, the damn things grew overly large everywhere and high for being so wobbly. Didn’t burn as well as wood but good enough and surprisingly clean.
Then he had also his nick knacks, a lighter, a few old batteries that were hard to come by nowadays unless you are in one of the more organized zones. A pan, two good knives, his fork and two spoons, he even had a ladel, one knife for fighting even if he had not been practicing for a long time, a helmet, some rope, a bag, a sleeping bag, a smaller sleeping bag he kept more out of nostalgia, his mothers medallion was still there tucked into the smaller sleeping bag right with the cellphone which didn’t seem to work anymore, the Gameboy he bought two years ago that ran on sunlight, which meant the right kind of sunlight so here it was sadly useless and his father’s old camera for which he had no film left anymore. The pictures he had kept were also still there but like always again a bit more worn down. His two books, his backpack and other two travelling bags.
And his two twisted objects, the warming rock, a rock that held a constantly nice temperature and was perfect to keep warm without a fire especially in a sleeping bag and his trump card and what probably kept him alive more than most other things, his teddy of healing as he called it. It was a small stuffed teddy bear, very cute, which helped him recover faster, he still believed it was the reason he survived that event. Not to mention the amount of times it probably saved him from infections, diseases or lengthy recovering periods that might've eaten up his reserves of money and food. There were also a few other things but nothing noteworthy.
Regardless, since everything was in order, Jeff decided to change clothes, wash the outdoor clothes, take some of his cloth supplies and fix the tears where needed and then go to the camp with his fruits. After having a drink and going for a shit, he would be going to the camp, selling the fruit today was best in all cases. He could eat the fruits himself tonight but he really didn’t want to eat another fruit salad, well it would be mostly fruit he had no idea what spice he had to even use, not to mention quantities. He had planned on giving the spices to Candy and her friends as a gift but before he could Candy had gone and ruined it. He wasn’t angry about it at all and sure as day didn’t blame himself for any of the issues that happened. Not at all, it was coming regardless of what he did, it always came.
Having finished his preparations, and making sure with his pan that he looked at least somewhat presentable, his black hair tied into a, what did Kate call it? Ah yes Ponytail, weird name, what the hell were Ponys anyway?
Not that it mattered to Jeff, but his hair had the uncanny ability to always look disheveled unless he tied it into a pony tail, he could try keeping it shorter, but he had lost his last scissor and didn’t fancy cutting his hair with one of his kitchen knives. He also had to admit he liked his hair longer, Kate had said it looked better too, so had Butch, not that Butch had any taste if Kates other comments were to be believed. With his head freed and looking less disheveled already, Jeff’s eyes also stood out even more, they were a rare slight orange, apparently orange, yellow and purple hadn’t been normal eye colors before the Pandemodium, but nowadays they weren’t unnatural anymore. Not the worst mutation a human could have.
Seeing also how exhausted he looked in the uneven reflection of his frying pan, Jeff tried to smile, something people always told him he shouldn’t do. Butch had once said it looked like he was trying to eat or hunt them, like a wild predator. It was wild apparently because his eyes looked so intense in his pale face and with his black hair, the fact he had also extremely white teeth for how hard proper teeth hygiene had become just added to the unnerving feeling people got. His laughter apparently made it worse. Butch had teased Ken for at least a week when the young boy had hid after Jeff laughed the first time in the group. It wasn’t all bad, many thugs left Jeff in peace if he gave them a smile, though that was also probably because Jeff was blessed with a natural physique and a drilled diligence making him look though on top of unhinged. Still, it irked Jeff a bit that his smile apparently was considered unhinged, especially because his mother always said it was like fire warming and bright.
In any case, since smiling didn’t help Jeff gave up, he would look tired the people in the camp knew him now so they wouldn’t be too surprised, well aside from the haul Jeff would bring with him. He knew from Herk or Hank or whatever the leader called himself, that fruits were loved by the people but the last few brave enough to go into the stoneflat’s had broken a leg last time and dint want to risk it until the next season when the fruit would repeat their growth cycle. So they would appreciate any Jeff brought them, he brought enough so everyone could have one, if he got enough in exchange and while Jeff may not like the camp leader, he had traded in good faith until now.
Grabbing his bag of fruits Jeff sat out to the camp, with the hope of a nice fresh and warm meal as well as the itching feeling he forget to do something, he should really start doing a list of things he wanted to do, would help him remember.
