1 What is Earth?

Between the rusty amber and jade of a large moon and the pale bone of its diminutive partner, the Watcher witnessed a new light growing.

On a sharp, craggy mountain that cut the sky, the Watcher turned all its many, many eyes upward as the new light grew startlingly large. Just as the Watched could see it all perfectly, the light began began to fall downward, growing ever larger and brighter, until it touched the sea—

Astringent saltiness and superheated steam permeated the air. The breeze fluttered sullenly, sweeping with a heavy mist that was almost rain.

The bare rock, now resolidified in the aftermath of the impact, grew slick as water slowly pooled up against the large meteorite in the center, cooling it with hissing plumes. The heavy outer rock layer of the meteorite, already ablated and fissured from the impact, fell away entirely in sections, revealing something perfect and grey.

And as the susurrations of falling dust petered out into the constancy of the tide, the wounded island sank back into its predictable rhythms for an unbelievably long time...

And the Watcher kept an eye on it, as it liked to do with the strange things it observed in the Shatterlands. And it kept watching, as the island became a volcano, and the volcano became a gigantic mushroom, and the gigantic mushroom became home to a civilization... And then it watched the civilization die.

But now, when the Watcher recalls all the winding, ancient histories of this place, they seem but a quiet prelude for the chaos to come.

***

All around her was the warmth of water. She had never noticed its steady rhythms before. In fact, how long had it been since she last thought a thought or sensed anything at all? Had she been deep asleep?

Wait, she couldn't remember anything at all!

In a panic, she struggled against the formless density around her, until her fist glanced off something hard. A crack began to form, webbing out continuously, until, suddenly, the perfect gray sphere shattered, and a girl spewed forth in a pool of crimson.

She spasmed and coughed up ruby red fluid before gradually working her way up from the ground, heaving with tremendous effort. After combing her slimy silver hair out of her face, she took a deep breath and tried to wipe away most of the gross red goop on her body. There was a dim light leaking from one direction, so she slowly began walking forward while squeezing goop out of her long hair, as if in a haze.

She groped towards the lights and awkwardly shambled along the damp, rough rock wall as she struggled onward, finally reaching a low opening. Through the opening, a light breeze blew, and she saw a vast cavern that stretched into the distance.

Hundreds of kilometers away from her, a massive skylight had opened in the apex of the cavern ceiling, from which light poured into the cave. In the distant circle of light, she could vividly see gigantic mushroom-like things mottled with murky cyan and faded tangerine that stretched upward, with rattan-like vines and stranglers of deep aubergine lacing up their trunks.

"An underground forest…? Oh shi--!!!" The girl said to herself before slapping her slimy little hand over her mouth, shocked to hear her own voice break the gentle hush of the cavern.

She quickly glanced around, and realized she was very high up, on top of a strange pyramidal building. Outside of the small cave she just left, there was an intricate altar of silver that dominated the square grey floor. She walked towards the altar while grimacing intensely, each step sinking her feet into many mucky layers of dust and dirt.

The altar and the area near her cave seemed completely abandoned and ancient; it too was caked in dust and grime. Beyond the altar, the girl found a long flight of worn, dusty stone stairs that led down the face of the building. As she descended the stairs, the girl discerned the presence of more structures below. The giant pyramid-like building she was descending certainly dwarfed the other buildings, to the point that she could barely discern their dilapidated structures from the forest.

As she was walking down the stairs, she came to a small level that had pathways leading both left and right. Instead of continuing along to the ruined city below, the girl decided to try going right to investigate more of the big building before she went off somewhere even more unknown.

The path eventually made a sharp right turn, which led to another cave entrance like the one she left earlier. She looked inside and saw a childishly small table and strangely shaped stools, ratty with age. Hesitantly, she walked into the little cave and let her eyes adjust to the almost nonexistent light. Rubbing her shoulders unconsciously, she walked further in, past the table and stools, towards another cave doorway on the other side of the room.

Inside, she found a large wardrobe, a locked chest, and an eight-armed statue holding many strange items in its hands. The statue was especially weird. Although the head and torso were vaguely human, the lower body was a giant snake! The snake appeared coiled up yet relaxed, with its head low to the ground and its tail lifted in the air, where it naturally merged into the human torso. Like everything else, it was all ridiculously old.

"I don't think anyone or anything had been here for a very long time… Look at the dust and grime here... No one should mind if I steal some clothes, right?…"

After running through it in her head, she decided to loot the room!

Opening the wardrobe somewhat sinisterly, she found a few workable pieces of clothing amongst the deteriorated rags. Quickly, she donned a large piece of gossamer black fabric, wrapping and draping in over herself as a warm, flowing robe. She took a murky wool cord and cinched it around her waist to keep the robe orderly. She took a look at the chest and the statue, but the lock was too strong and the statue too large; she could barely jump up to the statue's waist, even using its snake half as a launching platform.

"If I want to get a better look at what this weird old statue is holding onto, I'll have to get a ladder or stack some of this rickety old shit together…" The girl thought to herself, already fully immersed in her looter role.

Feeling deliriously exhausted and warm in her new clothing, the girl arranged the rags inside the wardrobe and fell asleep in her makeshift nest behind the doors.

***

When she woke up, she decided to explore the other passage on the left side of the stairs. She retraced her steps and followed this passage, moving like a subtle shadow in her dim black robes. At the end of the path, she found another cave entrance, but this time she could hear the sounds of water trickling around.

As she scuttled inside, she could make out a small fissure on the far wall, from which a small, crystal clear stream was gently flowing. The water pooled in a small but relatively deep depression before snaking across the floor and back through a different crack in the wall. Between the entrance and exit of the stream was a tunnel that went further into the cave.

"IS THAT WA—!!" She almost screamed as she sprinted toward the spring, stopping herself halfway before ducking down completely on the floor. After waiting like a scared black mouse for 15 minutes, she finally let out a sigh of relief and decided to really stop speaking out loud when she was in a quiet cave in a place she didn't understand! However, she was too excited to wash the dust, dried red goop, and grime off of her body and clothes, so she discarded her worries about predators or dangers and decided to wash up!

After getting her shit together, the girl bent down, washed her face, her body, and then her robes, wringing them out and then madly flapping them around like an idiot to dry them.

The cave off the left path was much larger than the rightward one. After successfully drying her robes by flailing them around, she decided to explore further down the left cave! The girl slowly made her way down the tunnel by the stream. Even as the scant light dimmed as she went further in, she felt as if she could still see everything in the cavern just fine… Suddenly, she reached a new chamber in the cavern!

There was a large dais in the back, upon which a pile of bones rested. The girl, now uneasy, looked more closely, and was relieved to see the bones were covered with just as much grime as everything else. They were also incredibly worn and fragile to the touch - definitely old, what a relief! No predators today! After anxiously crushing three or four bones in a row to really make sure they were all old and nothing was going to pop out and kill her, she carefully looked around the completely dark chamber.

Far to the left of the bones was a low entrance to a deeper room, which emitted a ghostly greenish glow.

"What kind of light is that? Looks kinda freaky..." The girl thought, but crouched and shuffled further in anyway��

The neon green glow painted the floor, walls, and ceiling of the cavern, but was especially bright in certain splotchy patches that looked like the backs of giant puffy hedgehogs. Hesitantly, she bent down took a closer look at one of the patches that protruded out of the ground.

Up close, she could see that the patch was actually made up of countless mosslike, wispy leaflets that were arranged in very tightly-packed circles, like the minute tentacles of coral polyps. They were waving gently in the breeze of the cavern, seemingly anchored together underground.

She reached out to touch one of the leaflets, but hesitated. The closer her finger got, the more wild the wriggling and waving of the of the little leaflets became, which seemed bizarre. She decided to take the edge of her robe and lowered this towards the leaves instead.

As her robe grazed the glowing patch — glowing plant, she now thought — the tiny forest of the patch seemed to flutter in shock, and the minute leaflets folded in on each other, each little circle of them wrapping together, turning into little spikes! In a flash, the little spikes shot up and down in little piercing motions, shredding the edge of her robe.

She quickly backed up from the patch and almost fell into the bone pile. What in the hell!!! Plants can't do shit like this!! She quickly began to panic. No memories, weird caves, mushroom forests, ruined buildings, creepy altars, bone piles, and now murderous spike plants?! Wherever she was, it wasn't Earth!

"Oh God, what in the hell is going on!!?? Uhhh, come on, think! I have to calm down, I have to stop panicking, I have to calm down, I have to stop PANICKING!!" She quickly ran back to the spring basin and dunked her head in, feeling the coolness and a little relief from her imminent breakdown.

After a little bit of failed deep breathing and a lot of intense hyperventilating, she began to slowly even out and think things through. "So wait, I know this place isn't familiar, and that life here isn't the same as on Earth… but what is Earth… is it a place?... How do I know what life on Earth looks like…. Am I from Earth?! What, shit, what does life on Earth look like… ugh… why is it so hard to think about think stuff, my brain feels broken hahaha…. uhhhhhhh..... TREES! Yeah, we didn't have giant mushroom things, we had big trees with leaves or sometimes needles I guess... but then only small mushrooms!!! Yeah! Small mushroom...."

Feeling victorious, the girl stood up, emphatically mumbling to herself about trees. Still mumbling, she walked back around the path to the wardrobe like a zombie, climbed in still mumbling, and even fell asleep mumbling about trees and mushrooms...