CoM AA-AA

 CoM = Chronicles of Monogea; Book 1/6: On the defeat of the bodysnatchers

Chapter 1: At the hour when thieves flee

A girl was sitting down crossed-legged on the floor of a forest while the sun had just started to enlighten the sky. She was tired and hopeless. She had been running for three days, she had slept very few hours, but her destination still eluded her. She was sleepy and demotivated. She was eating her last piece of food, a hardened small loaf of bread which had completely lost its flavours from when it was baked three days prior.

"Amicus [PHONETICS MISSING], I daresay that not sleeping this past night may not have been one of my most brilliant decisions" she managed to whisper. What was this Amicus she was talking to? At that time, the girl did not know yet exactly.

After their first interactions years prior, she concluded that Amicus was a benevolent entity which resided deep in her soul (or, at least, in what she thought to be a pure non-physical part of her). Amicus was like a gelatinous ball residing in the dense fluid of her soul, if a human soul were to be a dense fluid. It sensed her deepest emotions and thoughts, so she could speak to him with her mind or her mouth. It could manipulate her body if she was asleep or extremely relaxed. But most importantly, it could communicate with her.

At some point, she suggested using Morse code, and they kept using it ever since. Amicus could pulse all of its ball-self to signal a dot (which is the Morse short signal), it could ripple the surface of its ball-self to signal a dash (which is the Morse long signal) and it could create two spikes at opposites poles of its ball-self to signal a pause (comma or period). With some getting used to, the girl could now decrypt on the fly what Amicus was telling her via Morse. They also started abbreviating "Yes" and "No" with just "Y" and "N", and they had a whole bunch of conventions amongst themselves to simplify their lives a bit.

Amicus let the girl slowly munch the bread without encoding any letters to comment further on her all-nighter. It waited for her to drink a sip of water from her last quarter-full container before encoding "PAST RIGHT HILL".

The girl started whispering out of exasperation: "Amicus, I fret I cannot do this. My whole body is aching. My heart is aching, too. I fret that, beyond the hill, the forest still reigns, and Thalassa [PHONETICS MISSING] will not be in sight, and another hill shall have to be conquered. It already occurred so many times, so many times...". Amicus simply encoded: "YOU TIRED SO I SENSE, CITY NEAR". The girl turned her sight upwards to help herself think for a moment, and then said "Oh, I must be beyond tired for you to be sensing human souls far away...".

She now stared at a tree trunk nearby. She unconsciously hummed "Hm, hm, hmmm..." to give some moments for her mind, which was slowed down by her tiredness, to arrive to a sort of a conclusion. Amicus had not yet sensed any city in the last days. Yea she was tired, but the city ought to be near enough for Amicus to sense it anyway in the first place. The forest could not be ever-expanding. "Alright, I shall walk, but I will prepare myself for another disappointment just in case" she ended up thinking.

Up she went...

Scritto tra 00:49 e 02:38 AM di 14 Luglio 2024