The Fear of Fear

"You know a place to just get a bunch of materials?"

"Yep."

Skeptical, I asked: "Like.. ACTUAL wood? AND other materials like rope? Maybe nails?"

"Uh-huh."

Rem "Uhm.. there was nothing in town though? Or anywhere we could see?"

Xetalona shook her head. "That's cause it's downstairs!"

"There's a downstairs? Where?"

I looked around for a second, well, Rem and I both looked around for any door that could lead to a downstairs.

Xetalona let out a small laugh and brought a hand to her chin.

"Oh, both of you are silly. And I thought you saw."

Rem and I took a short look at each other before I used observation to find this "downstairs". It was very obvious where it was.

Xetalona, posing while pointing down spoke "It's right under us."

"Yeah, um, it's in a.. mined out cave, right?"

The slightly gloating look of Xetalona washed away for a questioning look to appear, followed by a shrug and her arms in the air.

"How'd you know?"

"It's obvious once you actually know about it."

That was an unsatisfactory answer to her, but she just let it go, and shrugged once more before getting up. She walked around the side of the couch she was on, then walking behind the entirety of it and behind me, then over to the open floor where the Ark Valus was settled, all while watching Taki.

Following that, she jumped over the railing to the other side and then looked at me for a second.

"Aren'tcha coming?"

"Oh, right."

I got off the couch, and then watched as Xetalona jumped off the edge of the floor downward, surprisingly close to the hull of the Ark Valus.

I almost immediately followed, but stopped for a second before turning around and went to whisper to Rem "Can you just make sure nothing happens? Even if it's only gonna be a couple minutes, I don't want either of you to get hurt."

I waited for only a second before I got a nod in response. With that confirmation, I turned to notice Taki's ears twitching slightly.

"Taki, just relax. It's not gonna hurt if you don't do anything for a couple days. Besides, we'll know the answer then too, and then we can go from there. That sound good?"

"...Okay..."

"Buggy! Aren't you coming?"

I sighed for a second and then jumped directly down, landing on some stone. I looked up to see the Ark Valus looming indirectly over us, and turned to find a hole dug right into the rock face.

Xetalona was standing there, lighting a lantern to go down into the gaping, squared out, stone hallway shrouded in absolute darkness.

As soon as the lantern was lit, part of the man-made cave was lit up, and Xetalona just started walking after seeing me appear. I followed, and not but a few seconds of walking did some wood appear in the light, in the form of planks.

"This is some wood."

She then continued to walk, and what seemed to be a plethora of stacks of planks, many differing in length, started to appear in the light.

"This is some more."

"That's very obvious."

We walked just a couple steps more before the ends of some very long pieces of wood appeared.

"Those are spares."

"Of what? Masts?"

"Yeah."

"You just have a bunch of spare masts laying around?"

She turned her head around, still walking foward.

"There were other ships that crashed here. They were dismantled and then whatever wasn't used for up on the surface was put down here."

"Hm. So this is where my ship WOULD'VE ended up."

She put her hands up, defeated, turning back to face the long hall. "Probably? I mean, I guess they would've just put all the pieces here until they were needed..."

"Well, they've not even got a chance to do so now."

"I guess..."

We walked in silence for several minutes,. passing by piles and stacks of wooden planks cut to different lengths, decorative pieces, and then, we finally hit something different.

"This, if it wasn't obvious, is the 'other' stuff."

What we had entered from the long underground hallway was a round room with rope coiled and piled on top of each other, several crates, and a mound of seemingly random scrap metal.

"I guess you mean 'other parts of ships' that aren't wood?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Okay then. I should be able to do the scaffolding easily, and then rebuild the Royal Deck with all of this. Thanks. I can probably do all the moving of everything myself, so-"

"This isn't really... stuff you can use..."

"What, why?"

"It's cause this is for Ark Valus."

I turned and took note of everything that was in the hallway and the room.

"ALL of this... Is for that one ship?"

"The very one to get us all off the island.."

"Hm. So is there any that I can use?"

After hearing my question, her eyes darted around for a second, looking at everything.

"Well, here? I think it would be fine to just open that crate and use the nails.. maybe some of that metal? I mean, there is some wood you could use, but it's farther down."

She gave a weird, awkward smile.

"Oh-kay then."

Turning around, I then followed her down a longer, winding hall with beams holding up the ceiling, like what you would find in a mine. In fact, the beams had been throughout the entirety of the underground hallway we were in. This time around, following her, I would've assumed she would have said something at all, but she was quiet, and I noticed her slightly shaking.

"Lona?"

She stopped before it looked like her entire body shook in one quick burst. She turned around slowly, like she was ready for anything.

"Yes?"

"Is something... wrong?"

"N-no. Nothing. Nothing at all."

"Uh, something's very wrong, or it's a secret? I would assume it's something like that."

"Pfff! Why would you say that?"

"Because, despite everything, you were just fine talking to me. But, you do seem to have something going on in your head, which made you shake a little, and while it's not really cold, I'm fairly sure you are used to slightly colder. Especially from this altitude."

"O-oh..."

"Mhm."

"..."

"Are you willing to tell me, or no?"

".... I..."

She faced her head a little down, looking up, dropping her arm holding the lantern to a lower level.

"..Can I trust you.... to make sure.... those eyes won't come out?"

"What eye... Oh. You mean HIM. Well, I can't be sure about him not coming out, but that's because there's like, zero warning about it. Even some of the abilities that I have don't even allow me to tell. Actually, I should look into it later.."

My words did not instill much confidence into Xetalona, but she asked "Can I trust YOU to not do anything?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah. You can. Although, whether or not I actually do anything is dependent on what you say. I shouldn't really do anything though, probably because I do take in information slowly sometimes and not all the time."

I just smiled at her, taking in my own words.

'Well, seems like I have more of my old self coming out. Man, did I really overestimate how much I changed? I really did get put in the wrong world.'

"S-so.. you won't..."

Snapped out of my own thoughts, I caught the end of her words.

"Won't what?"

"You won't do anything?"

"Oh, no. Nothing should happen to you from me, hopefully nothing happens with HIM, so you should be good to.. ask? State? Talk about? Whatever you were wanting to say before."

She still hesitated because of my words, and so, we stood there for what felt like a couple minutes, but was in reality, only around 30 seconds.

"O-okay then... what I wanted to say.."

She took a quick, pleading look at me.

".. please don't do anything?"

"Okay? Go on.."

With a small nod, she started speaking.

"I... I do trust you.. I WANT to continue trusting you.. but I have a.. weird, nagging feeling that I just can't trust you..."

"..... Ah."

".. Ah?"

"Yeah, uh, give me a second to process... So, let me get this straight.. you shook because you had a feeling you couldn't trust me?"

She nodded her head slowly.

"And then dragged out a conversation? Although I'm more the one who did so.."

She nodded, and stopped mid-way to tilt her head, nodding again with a more concerned look.

"I mean, it could've been resolved quickly in retrospect... But, eh. Can't do much about that. Lemme think on this."

I put my hand on the back of my head, stretching slightly.

"I mean, technically, you can't."

"... What?"

"But you can't trust me simply because I don't have as much control as I thought over an entity you fear being a part of me. So, technically, you fear me, but not me specifically. More specifically, you fear me not being able to control the thing you fear taking over me, and all that.."

We then stood, both in thought. Myself thinking about implications, while Xetalona obviously thinking about my words.

".... So, I fear... fear?"

Caught off guard by the question, I replied the best I could.

"You could say that.."