Hop, Skip, and a Jump II
You end up swallowing your reservations and choose to follow this Erin person. She’s the only one you’ve met so far, and since she claims she has experience, you hope to learn a bit more from her about all this insanity. Plus, you’d rather be safe than sorry trying to be on your own right now. There’s also that.
The two of you bound your way through the trees, deeper and deeper into the forest. You wonder where it is she’s going, but, you get your answer when the ground begins to move upwards into a grassy hill that carries up and then on.
‘Does Australia have hills like this?’ you wonder. You honestly don’t know, but, you’re not in a place to dwell on this for very long. It probably does, you think.
Said hill then morphs into a raised portion of land, and you follow Erin up this, hopping at the same brisk pace she’s moving at. You find, after a few minutes of this, that you are more elevated now, on a large hill where the trees have continued to sprout and tower over the land. You see Erin is leading you deeper in, toward a lake area with a cave right above it.
She stops near the lake, and eyes you as you stop next to her.
“This little place is somewhere I come to when I need to hide out,” Erin says, nodding to the lake. “Get yourself a drink, mate. Water’s clean and cool.”
You blink a few times. Then, you lower your head down and use your furry hands to cup some of the water. It feels cool to the touch, and you bring it up to your mouth to sip it. It feels lovely running down your throat; and it tastes fresh and clear, just like Erin says. You drink a few times to ease yourself.
“Thank you,” you say to her.
Erin nods and grins. “Anytime, anytime.”
The howl ripples through the air, but it’s further away from you now, and lower. You can’t see where it may be coming from, however, due to the elevated land area you find yourself at now. Plus, the trees block most of your line of sight.
“Bloody shitheads,” Erin mutters. “You can never tell with those howls if it’s an actual dingo or someone like us, wearing a dingo costume.”
You pause at this. “Would someone like us… be a threat?”
She scratches her chin with one hand, thinking. “Honestly, it’s always the toss of a coin when it comes to that sorta rubbish. You might think ‘ah, well, no way is this bloke gonna try and off me’ and then suddenly he’s chasing your arse around with the goal of killing you for shits and giggles.” She shrugs. “Depends on the person, I’d wager. Some are real bloody arseholes about it.”
You stare at her, a little perplexed. The idea just doesn’t compute with you.
“You read the sign, right?” Erin asks.
You nod. “Yeah. I read…”
It dawns on you after a heartbeat. You recall the wording of the sign, and how it talked about ‘if you die.’ Then it clicks for real that in this context, death…
“Are you telling me we’re… we’re basically immortal?” you ask.
She laughs at this for a moment. “Ah… mate, no. We ain’t immortal.” She’s smiling wide. “I mean, I’d love if that were the case. It’s more…” She pauses and seems to mull over the words she wants to use. “It’s more like we’re in a video game, yeah? If you die, you respawn at an old checkpoint. Only thing is, you lose all the progress and all the shit you had on hand at the time. You gotta start over from scratch in a random body, if that makes sense?”
You nod. The sign got that across, but hearing it now helps you understand.
“Does that mean you…?” you trail off.
She snorts. “Aye, I’ve been whacked a couple times. Not proud of it, but, sometimes fate stinks something ripe, lemme tell you.” She smiles at you with a teasing look. “Fortunately, you learn a few things when you ‘lose’ at this game. Makes surviving easier so you can avoid dying like a fuckwit.”
You nod silently and muse over this.
You don’t really want to ‘die’ in any sense of the word, even if you end up back at the start again. The thought doesn’t sound pleasant whatsoever, so, you decide you want to be smart and as careful as you can be during this time.
“So what exactly is there to do?” you ask Erin. “Besides hop around, I mean.”
Erin chuckles. “You do what the creature does, honestly, there’s no other method to the madness. You live in the great outback in this case. Look for food and water, explore, basically, you survive and learn on the go. It’s the wilderness, mate. You basically got yourself into a long-standing camping trip, just with the added benefit of being stuck in a half-human body.”
You cock your head to the side. “Does being half-human do more for us?”
“Oho, mate, you bet your sweet arse it does,” Erin replies. “You’ve got the added strength of a human, plus the thinking prowess.” She taps the side of her head as she eyes you. “You can think better. You can reason and logic. Plus, you’ve got twice the physical abilities as a normal roo does.”
“Huh,” is all you say, and you look at your hands again.
You don’t FEEL any stronger than normal, but, you suppose you haven’t really had the time to explore any of that. You shelve this consideration for later on.
“Question becomes, what do you wanna do with yourself now, eh?” Erin asks.
You ponder this. “I don’t know. Honestly, I was in the midst of starting to explore when I ran into you, and then we fled from a dingo…”
Erin nods. “Well, there’s plenty of ground we can cover. We got that cave there,” she gestures to the cave, “we can chill here for a while, we can go back down to see if the dingo’s gone, or, we can go explore around the area.”
You frown.
These options aren’t necessarily bad options to consider, it isn’t that - what has you frowning is that, well, it seems like there are a lot of things without real end goals in sight. You don’t know if there’s a reason to go into a cave, or, if there’s a necessity to go roaming about beyond probably looking for food later.
‘Great, I forgot what kangaroos eat, too, now that I think about it,’ you muse.
“Or you can tell me to bugger off and do your own thing, that’s fine,” Erin replies, and she’s smirking as she says this. “Wouldn’t bother me if you did - I can be a right bitch when it boils down to it, and I don’t wanna drag down your enjoyment of this whole debacle. Choice comes down to you, mate, ‘cause I’m cool with whatever. Not gonna be sweating anything anytime soon.”
She leaves it at that, and now you get to decide what you want to do.
‘I have options,’ you think. ‘And yet, it feels like I don’t have options… hmm.’
You aren’t sure, but, you start to consider your next step. Do you stay with her? Do you go off on your own? And if you do either, then, what will you do next?
Written by Hollowpages on 17 August 2020