5 - First Night

I took the first watch, sitting atop the leaning pillar. The others bedded down underneath me, and we had put out the fire, in case it made us stand out in a bad way. The white moon lit up the night in a way that the millions of stars never could. I looked up at the stars, seeing another starry expanse in my mind's eye.

Someone came up behind me. I turned to see Katie halfway up the pillar and climbing.

Once she had joined me at the top, I asked in a quiet voice, "Can't sleep?"

"No," she replied, looking to the sky and giving no explanation.

We sat in silence for several minutes. Or maybe it just felt like minutes because nothing was happening, and I couldn't help glancing at her awkwardly.

Katie broke the silence first. "You've told me about places I could never dream of, people and creatures I would dismiss as fantasy, but there is something that I want to know."

"What's that?"

"What is the place between like? Was it lonely? Dangerous? Do you even know what it's like?"

I took a second to organize my thoughts. Looking between her and the night sky. "The place between worlds is like standing in the night sky, black and filled with distant stars. If you get close enough to a star, you will find it is neither a ball of fire nor a planet, but a weapon. A sword, or an Axe, or some other weapon. It glows as if made of light, but its blade is a window into a universe like the one we grew up learning about in elementary school."

She set her head on my shoulder sometime while I talked.

What's going on with her? I wondered. But at the same time, I smiled gently. "And you are doing a very good job reminding me how lonely walking the Interplane really was."

She gave me no indication that she heard me.

I let her sleep as I scanned the sky. The voice called to me often, tone unchanging. Besides the repeated word, "come", I only heard leaves rustle in the wind.

After a few hours had passed - at about midnight - I got my arms under Katie and carried her princess-style down from the pillar. She must have been exhausted from her first day in a new world.

I set her on the bedding leaves and gently shook Silence awake. She opened her eyes casually.

"It's your turn."

She looked at the moon, then gave me a look of "that was longer than you were supposed to watch".

I shrugged, and went to an empty portion of leaves. The space was big enough that none of us had to sleep touching, but it still felt weird falling asleep in essentially the same bed as someone else. Even when I had a brother.

Maybe that was why Katie had joined me up top. Falling asleep on my shoulder, though... I rolled over, looking over at her. Maybe it was possible, and not just fiction, to fall in love with a person you met that day. I couldn't help but start wondering if... Nah, I probably just reminded her of her brother or something like that.

<*>

I woke up the next morning. That was a good sign. It meant I hadn't died. The fact that I hadn't woken up earlier meant that alert hadn't been sounded anyway. Katie had pulled a bundle of leaves under her head and a larger leaf over herself like a blanket. Thomas sat overhead. Juliana was trying to pry apart a claw by a rekindled fire. Silence was nowhere to be seen.

Juliana looked over as I got up and rustled the mess of a leaf pile that we had assembled. "Good morning, Marcus." she said.

"Good morning," I replied, "need help?"

"Yes, actually. This darn claw doesn't want to come apart."

"Does Silence have the sword?" I asked, coming closer

"Yeah... I was trying to split it here," she said, pointing to a pair of notches at the ends of the claw. One was about where the half-oval bowl shape had connected to the arm, the other opposite. If we got it separate, we would have two semicircle plates.

She handed it to me to try. I set it on the ground, stuck my foot in the middle, grabbed the top, and pulled up.

I groaned with the strain, and I felt it start to crack. I pulled, and pulled, my foot started coming up.

I let it go, and stretched my back. "It is a tough nut to crack."

"I heard it start to give, though."

"Yep, I'm just making sure I don't hurt myself trying to crack it. The last thing we need right now is someone to get injured." I put my feet back in the claw - both feet this time - squatted down, and pulled, like I was lifting a heavy box with my legs.

Pull.

Pull.

Crack.

I snapped upright, one piece in hand, other beneath my foot.

"What was the plan for this claw?" I asked.

"Here's our list. Be careful, it smudges." Juliana passed me a part of one of the large leaves we had used for bedding, with charcoal writing.

"Axe, knife, mallet, chisel, shovel, hatchet... That's a good list. We might want to add firestarter. We should save some for that."

"Good idea," she agreed, taking the leaf back with her sooty black hands. She picked up a piece of charcoal that had been taken from last night's fire and patiently spelled out "firestarter".

I sized up the claw bit. The length of my forearm, and twice the width of my arm. One edge was flat and serrated, and the rest of the half-elliptical shape curved toward where I had split it apart.

"Have the other claw pieces been split yer?"

"No, this was my first one."

"What if we didn't split that one, and used it as our shovel?"

She picked it up, confused. "What do you have in mind?"

I took it from her, grabbing the part where it had connected to the arm with one hand. I crouched and scooped from the ground, using my hand as an axis and pushing on the back with the other.

I showed Juliana the dirt I had scooped, then dumped it back on the ground.

She shook her head. "You come up with the strangest things."

"The only thing is that we'll have to cover the lip here," I said, showing her a red mark I had noticed on my edge-grabbing hand.