7 Refuge
Rie and Rai looked toward the object that had attracted Niu's attention.
It was a stone object, similar to a misshapen arch, but the space within was shaped like a door. It was overgrown with moss and vines, but at the top was a symbol.
This was the exact thing their mother had painted.
"Do you think she saw it in one of her dreams?" Rai asked his older brother, rubbing his head.
Rie was also massaging his forehead. He winced and groaned, but his eyes never left the stone object. What was especially mesmerizing to him was the symbol on it.
It reminded him of something, but he could not remember what.
"Father told us that Mama was having a walk in the astral world. Her body was there but her mind wasn't. It's possible that she could have seen this in one of her visions." Rie finally managed to look away. He wanted to get a look at where exactly they were.
Niu was doing the same thing, however he saw much farther and heard a lot more.
Rie saw multiple giant trees, large rocks and distant mountains. He noticed the overgrown weeds on the forest floor, but saw that there were multiple muddy puddles. They were like footsteps, leading off into the jungle.
His eyes narrowed and he made a mental note.
"There's water nearby."
Niu's words brought him and Rai out of their thoughts. "Well, let's go there. Keep an eye out though, Niu." Rie got up from the ground, dusted himself off and then helped Rai up.
After making sure Rai and Niu were fine, Rie sat Niu up on his shoulders and they departed.
Right when they left, the symbol on the gate morphed, changing from one shape to the next. However, when it assumed the other shape, the stone crumbled into dust.
It faded from existence.
The entire jungle felt stagnant. The stagnancy made it seem like there was no air and no temperature.
Niu was sniffing the air, confused.
"It smells sweet. It's so sweet." Rie looked up at him, wondering what he was smelling.
Suddenly, they heard a rustle from behind them. Looking back, they saw that Rai had broken off the stem of a plant that grew close to the trunk of a tree.
Smelling the juices that seeped out of it, he became delighted but also flabbergasted.
"This plant smells like sulfur." He even tasted it, then spat out the contaminated saliva.
"Yeah, definitely sulfur. Ptoo!" He spat and wiped his tongue in his sleeve, evoking laughter from his brothers.
He then did the same to another plant, this time even more excited.
"Black powder!"
Rai kept it up, testing random plants as they went along. Passing through the shrubbery, they arrived at a waterfall.
The pool was sizable, filled with clear water that they each felt a desire to dive into. It was incredibly alluring to say the least.
"Alright, we should rest here for a bit. We'll go look around later." Rie sat at the bank, where the water was flowing out from the pool.
"Is there any food left?" Niu joined his brother.
"Not much. I tried to make it last, so it should have enough for each of us to have a little." Rie took the cloth out from in his clothes, opening it up.
He broke the ball of rice into three pieces and gave two of them to his brothers.
Rai was busy inspecting the plants he had gathered, so he swiftly ate up the food and went back to work.
He was currently squeezing some of the juices out onto a leaf, then with a twig he would mush it around and then do the same to another leaf.
Finally, he had five blobs of plant juice. With five different twigs, he scooped up a little of each blob and put it onto another leaf.
He took from each blob at random, taking more from some blobs than he did from others.
Finally, he wrapped the leaf over and over until it was a thick square.
"Heh heh, check this out guys." Rai had a fiendish look in his eyes; his brothers knew all too well what was about to happen.
Silently, they drifted off to the side, far enough away.
"Behold!" Rai carefully took aim after gingerly picking up the folded leaf. He was treating it like some kind of delicate and fragile thing that would break if he applied even the slightest pressure.
His brothers, however, knew exactly why that was happening.
Finally, he tossed it out toward the waterfall. It flew through the water, connecting with the rock where it was being undercut by the water. When it hit the rock, there was an explosion so massive that it even blew apart the nearby trees.
Large amounts of water also flew out in every direction, soaking everything that was close enough.
The water that could have been said to be gushing over the rock, was now pouring down torrentially, like a never-ending flood.
The pool soon began to overflow as well.
Niu and Rie wore blank expression, then feigned surprise.
"Wow, so amazing." Rie blinked.
"This came from plants? That's actually cool." Niu was slightly more genuine. He was at first interested, but after seeing that it was just another explosive he lost interest.
Rai puffed up his chest, proud of himself and his work.
"I'll get to work. You guys don't mind me. Go ahead and do ... whatever it is you do." Rai was already being absorbed in his work.
Niu and Rie were all too familiar with his way of working. However, this time he had the freedom to go as far as he wanted. He could make them bigger and better.
Rie and Niu wordlessly excused themselves, then left him to his own devices.
"Whatever was around here must have been scared off by that, huh?" Rie asked as he looked around the jungle.
He and Niu were casually strolling, enjoying the sights. They had only ever seen forests of bamboo, so the trees were new to them.
"What are those things?" Rie spotted some reddish yellow fruits. They were shaped like chicken eggs, slightly larger.
"I don't know. They look tasty though." Niu had also never seen them before. He stared at them, noticing that they grew in clusters.
"There's some. They're really close. I bet I could reach them if I was on your shoulders."
Before long, Niu was standing on Rie's shoulders and grabbing fruits. As he picked them, he dropped them down for Rie to catch.
When he picked all that he could reach, he came down.
"Alright, let's try them." Without bothering to try to peel them, he and Rie bit into the fruit.
It was fibrous and sweet. Yellow juice ran down from their mouths as they hurriedly ate. After the first taste, they wanted more.
Before long, they ate all the ones that Niu had gotten.
"These things are so good!" Rie laid back, licking his lips and hands.
"That's it, I've got to have more." Rie jumped at Niu's suggestion.
He stood directly under the tree, helping Niu climb up his back.
"See there? You can climb up onto the tree from that branch." Niu did just that. He climbed up, this time not stopping until there were no more fruits in sight.
When he finally came down, the tree looked pitiful. Not only had all the fruit been taken, but even a large amount of leaves have fallen off.
Quite a few branches broke as well.
Rie gathered the fruits into a pile, waiting for Niu to come down and join him.
"Alright. These are yours..." Rie separated the pile into two piles, pushing a large number of fruit toward Niu.
"Let's eat!" Niu wasted no time, finding the fruit that looked the most appealing to him and biting into it.
Time passed in ecstasy for those two, however someone else was braving the heights of chemical and physical possibility.
Rai, with nothing but strange plants with questionable innards, was pushing the limits of his bomb making ability.
With a flat stone he laid the leaves and stems down. With a smaller, stubby stone, he crushed them up and separate the portions. He even scooped up some of the juice and let it fall on the mushed up plants.
When he was done, he would gather them up into leaves, carefully mixing the mushy ingredients.
However, just when he was about to wrap up the leaves, he had an idea.
"What if..." Suddenly, he ran over to the waterfall he had redesigned, returned with cupped fists.
"There was dust like this in that old cave too..." He put the dust on another flat stone.
Sprinkling that as a final ingredient, a sick, cruel smile surfaced on his face.
He was done. This time, he didn't bother wrapping the leaf up. He simple pulled the sides up, making a bowl.
However, that wasn't good enough for him.
"The material won't be able to stay in there. I'll have to let the air get in some other way."
He found vine, tied up the excess leaf and pierced it through and through. He did that a few times until the contents were surely aerated, then smiled.
"This is it!"
Rai looked around, noticing a tree that he could climb easily.
There were a lot of small protrusions on this tree, like thorns but thick and long.
He put the leaf bombs into his clothes with care, then started climbing.
Arriving at the top, he could see a tree shaking in the distance.
"They must be binging again. Those greedy bastards." Rai laughed to himself.
When he was close enough to the top, he reached into his clothes and produced one of the bombs.
"Certain combinations produce a bomb that explodes just by having it's components touched." He began to proudly monologue.
"With such craftsmanship I, Rai Iste, have produced conflict bombs! These elements conflict with one another, and only require a hard enough impact to have them all come into contact with each other."
"The result: an explosion beyond what minds can comprehend!"
He tossed the bomb out. All his hopes, his dreams and his pride would be directly affected by what happened next.
But, before the bomb could even vanish beyond the countless trees under the canopy of almost infinite leaves, the sky flashed a bright blue color.
It continued to dim, then flash again, causing the scene to be especially mind-boggling.
"Have this back." An ownerless voice spoke from above.
"I won't have you destroying this eutopia."
