LANGUAGE

"Fog, I remember a... thick fog of white all around... me. I remember being in extreme... cold. Cold, that made my fingers and nose... tingle. I think I remember the wind pushing... against my back, limbs, and head. I remember seeing the top of this... forest from a bird's eye view, and you're... right. Although I had such a great... angle to look at the forest, I couldn't see... from where it starts or where it ends. I remember fight—" Avery said, but then stopped himself from talking.

His eyes widened.

"You remember what? Fighting? Who or what were you fighting?" Centshuu asked.

Avery gulped, looking at all four men in front of him, and all he could see were their faces making it clear that they wanted answers. After a few seconds, he lowered his head and acted like he was trying to remember.

('I remember fighting or at least struggling with someone over something important, but I can't tell these guys that.') He thought, then looked at the blood on his torn shirt

('This blood, I don't know where it comes from, but what will these guys think if I told them that I was in a fight? Knowing them, they would say it belongs to whoever the other person is. They might even say I killed the other person and managed to escape capture by falling into a parallel stream, which I think is what they called brought me here. I don't remember much of the struggle, nor do I remember who the other person was or what the struggle was about. Simply put, I don't really know much— if anything at all— but what I do know is that I had better keep this to myself, at least, until my memory of the event comes back')

Avery cleared his throat and then continued "What I was trying to say... is that I remember fighting against the wind... on my back. I think I was... trying to face the direction it was coming from which might... have been how I was able to see the top of the forest's... canopy in the first place"

Ripply, who was very suspicious, grunted and Centshuu, who understood what that grunt meant, chuckled.

"Sounds to me like getting here took you through a rather 'interesting' journey", Centshuu commented.

"Yeah, interesting" Avery replied, rolling his eyes, but because he was looking downward, none of the people in front of him saw how disrespectful he just was.

"As I was saying, I remember a—" he said, but then paused and tilted his head.

"What is it?" Centshuu asked.

"I don't know. I think I remember seeing a... hum, device like a canister— I mean a container with confusing designs on it. I think it was falling through the clouds with me—" Avery said, but then quickly went silent.

He grimaced as he placed his palm on his face, covering his lower lip, chin, and a portion of his right side.

Centshuu creased his forehead as he turned to the guys behind him.

"De-vice? Ca-nis-ter? What the hell do those words mean?" He asked and Mosey shrugged, which relayed the thoughts of Kove and Ripply, whose expressions made it clear that they too didn't know the meaning of those words.

Centshuu grunted and then turned back to Avery. "Hey, pug— I mean Avery, those two words 'de-Vice' and 'can-is-ter' that you just mentioned, what do they mean?" He asked but noticed that Avery was thinking about something.

Centshuu snapped his fingers in front of Avery's face once again, pulling the tired young man's attention back to what they were doing.

"Sorry, I don't think... Scrimis has a translation for those... two words as they are things said in my... dialect. I'll do my best to translate. Umm, "device" just means an... object while "canister" is like a... cylindrical object used to... store things," Avery said, bridging the gap of confusion that stemmed from Centshuu and his group not understanding the English language, and they all nodded in understanding.

"You could have just used those words we understand instead of confusing us by sprinkling whatever dialect yours is in there. Speaking of the dialect you speak, what is it called anyway?" Centshuu asked, thinking that knowing the name of the language Avery naturally speaks is just as important as knowing what he remembers.

"The name of my... dialect is called The English Language but just calling it English... is fine," Avery said and Centshuu nodded.

"In-ga-leach. En-ga-litch. En-ga-lish. Eng-alish. English" Centshuu said, while Ripply and the rest silently mouthed their renditions of how the word is said.

Ripply was the first to get it and he did so after a third attempt. Centshuu followed with five tries, then Mosey and Kove, who both had equal attempts of five times before getting it on the sixth— thanks to Centshuu saying it out loud.

Meanwhile, Shieve, who was listening to everything they were talking about, but from a distance, tried three times before he gave up.

His difficulty was because he wasn't close enough to hear the accurate pronunciation from Avery and only when Centshuu said the right word did he hear it properly. He still didn't give any more tries but rather smacked his tongue as he folded his arms and looked away.

While they were all busy doing that, Avery descended to deep thought about something he found peculiar while recalling his memories. This was a question he asked himself when he realized that the white fog he remembered around him wasn't actually fog but rather clouds.

('How did I breathe while so high up in the sky?') The question he had asked himself.

Avery's memories were still shaky and he couldn't remember exactly where, but, just like his name, he instinctively knew that the higher up one goes in altitude, the lesser the oxygen in the air becomes. Go too high, and you get to the point where the oxygen in the air is way less than what the human body needs to survive.

There's a certain limit of oxygen deficiency the human body can adapt to, which, while thinking about it brought about another issue to what he remembers.

Normally, adapting to a lower amount of oxygen ingestion takes time, which is why mountain climbers wait at a certain point of their climb to have their body adjust to the oxygen level before ascending higher where the oxygen is even less.

Unfortunately, it gets to a point where the oxygen level is so low that no amount of adjusting can force the human body into adapting to that environment. The human in question would die of suffocation within seconds and minutes if they had a lung full of oxygen beforehand.

Avery, whose memory was still coming in bits and fragments, inherently knew this fact, which is why he wondered how he was able to survive falling from the clouds, a place that is way beyond the point of dangerous oxygen deficiency levels. He also didn't have any time to adjust— none that he remembers at least— and because of how high up he was, adjusting to such low levels of oxygen should have been impossible, Avery thought.

While thinking about that troubling question, Avery subconsciously took a deep breath and that was when the answer to his question started churning in his head.

('Huh? What's this?') Avery asked himself.

Once the spark had been ignited in his head, Avery took another— yet conscious— inhale of oxygen into his lungs, then exhaled and repeated the process a third time, which was when his answer completely formulated.

('The air here, it feels so good to breathe.') Avery thought, then did another cycle of breathing.

('No, not the air but the oxygen here, it feels so... pure. It feels like this is the best air I've breathed in my entire life. My lungs, they feel like they are working with less effort on each breath')

Avery placed his hand over where his left lung was and then thought ('I don't have a way of knowing for certain, but it feels like the oxygen around here is more concentrated— Wait...')

Avery quickly looked up at the sky through the opening in the canopy he had created, and then he asked himself:

('If the oxygen concentration here is this high, then with oxygen levels decreasing the higher one gets, that would mean that the oxygen level around the clouds isn't as low as I used to think it is. Wait, if what I think is true, does that mean that someone can really breathe in the sky around here?')

His eyes widened when the puzzle piece finally fit.

"So that's how I was able to survive being in the sky. The oxygen level there was high enough to breathe", Avery said at a very low volume, then looked at Centshuu and his guys who had just finished perfecting how to say "English", "Canister" and "Device"

('A different language from what I'm used to, strange movement of gravity and even stranger concentrations of oxygen in the air. I really am not in my world anymore') Avery thought, giving a concerned look at Centshuu and the rest.