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“Okay so” You paused, trying to think about how to explain things to a local, and knelt down to draw in the dirt with your multitool. You drew a tree from its roots, then the branches going off. You circled the bulk of the tree and pointed out.
“Worlds are this middle part, here. They’re big. It’s not easy to draw, so imagine it looking down and it’s actually a way better picture of what’s going on. So, if the world is that part of the tree, it has parts of it that go up,from the top and parts of it that spread out and go down from the base.”
“Roots and Branches.” The observer commented idly.
“For our purposes, roots are the same as branches, though.” You waved your hand.
“Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter.” You picked one tall branch seemingly at random on your diagram and drew it going up and up and then connecting to its own tree that was upside down. That tree then had branches that came down and got close to the branches of the first tree, but did not intersect or connect, at all.
“So, you see sometimes there’s one, and sometimes there’s more, but from where I am here” You point to the tree itself.
“I don’t know if I’m travelling up or down through a ‘branch’ that will get me to where I need to go.”
“You need to go…” The observer trailed off.
“Up and down don’t matter, but for the purpose of explaining, you could say I need to go down.” You drew another root lengthening, then widening and connecting to its own tree with its own roots. Pointing to the circled tree you added.
“The trees themselves are like… Worlds. Bigger, I think? That doesn’t matter for now, though. Point is, the worlds are like the tree when looked at from above. On different points there are ‘branches’ that go up and each branch is something like a plane. Smaller than a world, but it can still feel pretty big.”
“What does that even mean?” The observer cocked her head to one side.
You slowed down, took a breath and backed up. “Okay… My dad and I thought at first that the worlds were the bulk of the ‘tree.’ But what we found” You grinned.
“is that branches can also be as big as ‘worlds’ or as small as a little plane like this one. What does that say?”
“I think it says that the actual size isn’t dependent on the land but the amount of space that’s all around?”
“That’s true! Yeah. So, that’s why we started to think that the bulk portion of the tree, that ‘world’ is actually much, much bigger. We just can’t interact with the vast majority of it since we’re stuck to our worlds by forces.”
“Gravity.”
“Sure.” You shrugged, scratching your head.
“But that means if I go ‘up’ or ‘down’ I can get back to where I want to be.”
You chuckled nervously. “Not quite. Because of what I said about size, sometimes the branches feel small and sometimes they feel like worlds, so we never actually know if we are going up or down, or simply moving up a branch of a branch towards a dead end.”
The observer curled up at that realisation. “I wanna go home…”
You nodded sympathetically. “Me too.”
“I’m dying before I see anything other than this stupid blue world, huh?” She asked.
You did not answer. The plane around you was alien even to you. You could not imagine what it looked like to her. The girl looked human, as most things tended to. Looking human was like its own tree. Various forms seemed to be like branches, as well, with most having four limbs and a head. The girl that seemed to be all but withering away was like you in appearance in her entirety, but with an important distinction.
“Look… You can’t get back. That’s probably just the truth. What happened is you ‘fell’ here from your ‘Tree’ so you’re in basically the same position I am… But worse.”
“You look fine…” She said jealousy.
“Some trees have differing properties, then those branches share those properties until they meet gradually the branch of another tree and go down and suddenly everything starts to look different. You have a strong Soul but absolutely nothing else. You’re made from something else, so you can’t live here. For me, when I was Travelling I knew to check the environment. One hint that I was going the wrong way is when things started to look too different. If it was like that I could go back. You didn’t know that, though.”
“I can’t go back?”
“You’re too weak, and you don’t know how you got here. You don’t know if you were going up or down. Plus… I…” You frowned.
She smiled. “You could help, but you aren’t going the same direction as me.” You nodded.
“So if I wanted to live”
You interjected. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ll help you out, as a fellow Traveller, but I honestly can’t afford to get any more lost than I already am. I feel so close right now to my own world…”
She nodded. “I get it.”
You rifled through your pack, pulling out various parts and pieces until you found a syringe. You slapped your arm a few times, flexed until you found the vein and cringed as you plunged the needle inside. You looked away as you drew blood until it was full.
“Your world has different building blocks than mine. In mine, Soma is what makes up most things you can touch. Mostly.” You smiled, not wanting to barrage her with too much unrelated information.
“My dad’s done work on Travellers similar to you before, but I’m not him so this is kind of risky.”
She shrugged. “If I’m gonna die anyway…”
You took a breath. “Got it.” You touched your lip and tried to think as you looked at her. She was skin and bones, so you could conveniently tell that most of the bones were actually in a similar spot to yours. The tricky part was “Okay… This may sound like a weird question but you have a heart that’s here and lungs here? Two?” You pointed to different spots as you asked that. She nodded curiously.
“Got it… Good. I need to get the right spots to make this as easy as possible for you. This” You gulped, hand shaking a bit.
“This isn’t easy so you need to try really, really hard and do everything I say, alright?”
“Go ahead.” She looked to be concentrating, so you felt satisfied.
You found the spot where her heart should be, poised the needle there, then slammed it down hard to break in. You plunged a quarter of the contents into the heart. The observer’s eyes shot open and she screamed.
“Concentrate! Think about blood pumping. Think about it really hard.” You gulped, waiting until you could feel your own blood moving through her veins. When you did, you injected a little more. If it was too much the thing could burst, so you were being careful.
“Good… Think very hard about blood pumping to your lungs and brain. Just focus on those right now.” She shut her eyes tight and nodded. You bit your lip as it did not seem like it was taking. Furrowing your brow you tried to think about what it was.
“This doesn’t make sense to you…” You thought out loud.
While in pain she nodded in the affirmative. “It… doesn’t…”
You nodded, nervously explaining. You knew she was going to die, but you did not want to be the reason. “Ookay. So… Soma is something that can be shaped. It can become like what’s around it, or become different. Usually, once Soma is in a state it needs an incredible amount of energy to change again, but blood is something we both have. All you need to do is have the will to make that blood yours. Make it pump through your heart and your veins.”
She nodded and started trying again. Your expression brightened as it seemed to be working. You injected another quarter. A third of the big plunger was inside her at that moment. You carefully injected the last bit and pulled the needle out carefully, then pressed down hard over the pinprick. She cringed. You could feel it was slowing down. Her heart rate was not increasing like it should.
“What’s wrong?” You questioned.
“II don’t know how to pump blood! My heart does it automatically!” She explained.
You rubbed your eyes. “It still doesn’t make sense… Okay what to do…” You muttered.
“CCPR!”
“Cee Pee… What?”
“Pump my chest!”
You blinked. “Of course!” Placing both hands over her chest you began to pump down rhythmically. Gradually you felt the beat increase, then as if a floodgate opened it started thumping. Her eyes shot open and she took in her first deep breath in a long time before hacking up a lung and sputtering and spitting. You patted her.
“That’s good, but… You still can’t exactly breathe here. Your lungs haven’t adapted yet. Probably better if you… Stop.”
“Stop breathing?” She rasped.
“Not completely. Just not deeply. Enough to speak. If you try hard, you can expand the Soma I gave you through the rest of your body. Your important organs. When that happens you’ll be able to live pretty normally.”
She nodded slowly, moving her body somewhat comfortably. “What if” She bit her lip, not wanting to ask.
You smiled. “What if you have more of my blood? It’ll get easier for you. But… Like I said, the trouble is that you and I aren’t going the same way. This may be enough for you to start out on your own to find your own home, so”
She stared at you seriously and interjected. “I’ll go the way you’re going.”
You paused. “Uhm… That’s not your home. It’s even more different for you there than it is here. You’d be going further, not closer.”
“If you help me I’ll be able to live, right?”
You understood her meaning. “You’d rather live for sure than die on the way home…”
“You said it’s a long shot to get where you want. I don’t know as much as you. Not even close. So… Take me where you’re going. I’d rather know for sure I’m headed to the wrong place than have false hope that I’ll stumble into the right place.”
“Got it.” You nodded, standing and offering her a hand up. The girl was about your height, light orange hair and freckles. She wore a pair of glasses with one lens broken at the corner and the middle part tied together with something. They were crumbling and hanging off of her cute, round face. She had dark green eyes.
“I guess I should know your name.”
She took your hand and pulled herself up with some effort. Her muscles ached from any sort of movement, but strangely they were feeling better.
“Maggie.” She offered, adjusting her glasses.
“I’m Fin. Nice to meet you, Maggie.” You offered brightly.
She smiled weakly and averted her gaze from your bright expression. “Where are we headed?”
“Turais. I’ve been gone for a long time. Since I was a kid, practically. I imagine things have changed quite a bit.”
ero
