An Age of Mysterious Memories

Drawing forth the last identification scroll from my inventory, I realize a problem. I can’t read the scroll. Looking through Lil’s vision, the scroll is just blank, or rather, shrouded in a white aura. I pinch the bridge of my nose and rub my eyelids and temples.

“Whatcha doin’ with that?” Te asks, full of curiosity as she leans forward, close enough that she gives me a peck on the cheek, interrupting a frown that was about to appear on my face, causing me to smile instead.

I start, “Well I was going to read it-”

Te snarkily, teasingly interrupts, “Tough job for someone whose eyes are closed.”

“Yes, thank you Te. Hahah.” I try to act annoyed but can’t help but to laugh. “I was going to read it, but looking through Lil’s vision, it’s shrouded in like a white aura.”

“Same here, yep me too, yep yep!” All three of them jumble replies simultaneously. I sigh, somewhat exasperated, not at my friends, but at my disability actually having consequences. I’ve gotten so lucky that there have been workarounds in this reality for all the difficulties I’ve come across. I hope I hadn’t been seeming like I was taking for granted how wonderful it is that magic has been supporting me and helping me through what would have been a devastating life change, but I still can’t help being disappointed.

Te and Lu bombard me with questions about the parchment, “So what were you going to read it for? Is it a map? Does it tell you where materials are, or where treasure is?”

“Naw, Reggie used one of those before when we fought Vampguppy, remember how Reg told you we got bunches of stuff then? The scroll let us know all the magic in the items!” Lil chimes in, before I end up needing to answer.

“Yeah, that’s exactly it, I was going to try to identify what we got from the mimic.” I pull out the long pair of ribbon looking fabric strands, they seem kind of like tape for martial arts or boxing, and as an item they go into and out of my inventory in a pair. I also pull out what appears to be, well I want to call it a vial, but it doesn’t have a stopper or opening, it’s a small metallic cartridge around a clear glass center that glows ever so slightly, it’s somewhat cylindrical, somewhat a rectangular prism. There’s also a small needle that looks to be dripping with venom or ink. The last object I pull out is a very simple ring, it’s an orangey bronze, and it’s warming to the touch.

“Well, maybe just try using the things, and your big brain will figure out what they do?” Te pokes me playfully in the noggin. “You do have magic of your own after all.”

“That’s… not the same at all, but it’s still worth a shot, thanks Te.” I do the only thing I can think of, placing the ring on one of my fingers, instantly my whole body feels slightly warmer, I can’t even feel the cooling breeze of the nearby swamp air while wearing it. I also notice that my thermal defense jumps by about fifty points while wearing it, which is probably pretty powerful, when I remove it, it drops back down. “This little thing is definitely some kind of temperature regulating ring, warming mostly, I think Luni should wear it, she has the lowest thermal protection of all of us. I’m not sure how she’d wear it though.”

Teuila teases, “Really, Luni, before moi? Didn’t I slay the beastly box after all?”

“Te, I have a feeling you could stand in Lil’s fire and bean Lil in the face, knocking them out before you had to back down, you’re incredibly strong, even if your thermal resistance is lower.” Lil grumbles something along the lines of fat chance but keeps it to themself while I state this.

“Awe shucks, you think so?” She plays at being mock bashful at the compliment, giving me a light punch in the shoulder while pretending to hide her face behind one pawed hand. Luni and Lil, however, bound over and snuggle my legs from both sides. Try as I might though I can’t figure out how to get a ring to stay on the little webbed paws that barely stick out from Luni’s spherical form. So instead, I wrap my arms in the bandage-like ribbons. Partway through the wrapping, the ribbons seem to finish wrapping themselves, and my awareness expands. My arms feel slightly more powerful, like I can feel a sort of extra sense coming from them, and I think they add about two hundred to my own reflexes. Remember proprioception? It feels like it’s in overdrive, I sense Te’s next playful punch and reflexively dodge it well before it arrives, sidestepping underneath and to the side of it, giving her arm a slight push that sends her off balance to the point that she spins around and falls into my arms, laughing. Her stats and skills page flashed into my mind’s eye too when my fingertips nudged her arm out of the way, a new value is highlighted in bold, something along the lines of threshold: 0.

“Haha, what, what just happened? How’d I end up down here?” She chuckles and snuggles into my embrace.

“Wow, these are amazing. They warned me of your attack, well I mean your goofing off, and like, directed my reflexes. I feel like I can feel everything around me within like thirty feet. I think there’s a stick on the ground about twenty five feet that way, without looking through Lil’s senses. A needle just dropped into the river over there. It’s almost information overload, but the information seems curated, like, just enough that it won’t overload me even if I’m focusing on it, and if I’m not focusing on it, it’ll only feed me dangerous incoming things. Like some sort of wraps of warning.”

“Dahling, keep those on, having a danger sense when you’re down a sense just makes sense, ya sense?” Te jokingly teases me, but she’s right, and I can’t help but laugh at her phrasing, and the silly accent she used.

“I’m worried about this thing though, it seems like it’s dripping something.” I hold the needle up for all of us to see, and though there appears to perpetually be some fluid about to drop from it, it never does. Curious, hoping my new warning wraps will warn me if it’s dangerous before I do so, I touch the fluid, then the needle and fluid both disappear. “What, what just happened?”

“Reg, Reggie, look, look through my eyes, look at yourself!” Lil exclaims, and I focus my attention through their eyes, it’s almost blindingly brilliant for a moment, with a mixture of several auras of color coming from various locations on my body. The wraps give off a brilliant white, my own aura is greens and blues and reds that undulate between and mix on occasion, while my left arm, including the hand I touched the needle’s ink with, is now covered in a swirling incredibly-dark purple aura. Not only is there an aura over my hand and arm, but there are tendril-like waves tattooed onto my skin, meshing and mingling with my burn scars in an almost hypnotic display. While focusing on the tattoos, they almost seem alive, in fact, they really seem alive, too alive. I start to get nervous looking through Lil’s eyes, and suddenly the tattoos spring to life, dark purple tendrils reach out and grasp Lil. “Hoi, hurk, oopf.” Comes Lil’s guttural utterances as they’re wrapped up by magical grasping tendrils and lifted into the air slightly.

“Eep, I’m so sorry Lil!” I exclaim, dropping my senses from Lils, focusing on trying to grab the tendrils and shake them away or stop them somehow. Instantly they fade away, I worry that they just became incorporeal to me, but I hear Lil plop to the ground and start laughing.

“Welp, I think we know what those do.” Te tries to state nonchalantly before everyone kind of nervously chuckles a bit, before slowly breaking into full on laughter. “I won’t lie, they look kind of beautiful on your skin, and, well, that was pretty cool, seeing Lil all tied up like that.”

“Hey, that’s mean.” Lil fumes with indignation.

“No it’s not, and you enjoyed it, you little dork.” Te teases Lil, she leans down quite far, giving Lil a flick on the snout before kissing their forehead, which gets a slight harumph from Luni. Lil also playfully harumphs, but I can feel the flutter of their heart and the embarrassment across our shared mental wavelength. That’s probably what actually caused Luni to harumph now that I think about it. Oh, me thinking these thoughts is making Lil blush even harder.

“Yeesh Reggie, shuddup will ya!? Cut a pal some slack!” Lil chimes across the mental wavelength, which sets Luni and myself to laughing, we both know there’s no reason to get jealous, we all love each other in different ways here.

Out loud, Lil responds to Teuila, “Well I mean getting flung up and down, sure, but not being tied up all of a sudden, plus they actually hurt pretty bad.”

“Sure sure, you know what I meant, sorry, I didn’t realize they hurt you.” Te picks up Lil and gives them a gentle rubbing and a once-over, smooching their forehead again in apology. “I think Reggie’s new magic could help them a lot. Reggie, can you use those viney things to move around?” Te sets Lil down, then traces my arms with her padded fingertips, I half smile feeling her curiosity bleed through her teasing. Lil bounds behind me, and thinks into our shared wavelength that Teuila is a menace, or a meanie, or both.

Amused by all that's happened, I ask, “What, like some kind of grappling hook? About how long did they look when they came out?”

Te shrugs in response, “I dunno, they didn’t look stretched very thin, just give it a try.”

Obliging, I point my left arm and focus on extending the magic concentrated on my arm and hand, as far as I can. I feel like an extension of my body whips out as far as about fifteen feet away. The length of the tendrils is not even enough to really wrap around a tree trunk near here, since their circumferences are pretty massive. I think the smallest trunks around here are something like eighteen feet in circumference, like six feet in diameter. Still, curious, I try to reach for a tree that is about ten feet away, and I hear my friends gasping. I can feel a limb that I don’t have. Well I can sense a bunch of limblike tendrils, wrapped tightly around a tree even though it’s over ten feet away, and over twenty feet around. I give a light tug, the tree doesn’t budge, but I do get yoinked in its general direction, colliding with the tree face-first.

“Oof.” I groan as my friends laugh slightly. At least using the wraps or the tattoos doesn’t seem to take any energy, or cause them to disappear. They seem more like the magical soapstone, or the orb of direction, permanently enchanted equipment. As I let go of my focus, the tendrils seem to disappear, and I trace my hand around the tree where my tattoo had grasped it. I feel a slight sense of dismay. The bark cracked heavily where the tendrils lassoed the tree, several grooves are basically smashed into the tree. The damage isn’t enough to fell the tree of course, but I didn’t actually mean to hurt the tree. I will have to be careful when using the tattoo so I don’t hurt someone, because it seems like even if I just want to be able to catch someone with them, it’s going to hurt them, like Lil said. I can’t tell if I’m more dismayed by the idea that I could hurt someone, and did hurt Lil, or that I recklessly tore into a tree that I won’t be using for timber.

I don’t know enough about this world to know what it’s like for these ancient-seeming trees, if harming or cultivating or using them will have wide ranging effects. I honestly don’t know much about my life or place in this world at all, it’s hard to make assumptions. I’ve got Lil, and Luni, and Te, and Agwai, and Laomati, even Mataali Manaia and Manamea. I share my life with them and they with me. I doubt they know much about forestry, or long term agriculture, not to disparage them, but it doesn’t seem like something they’d have studied. Still, thinking on my closest friends, I’ve got something for Lil. I keep getting these magic items, and it seems like I get to choose who they go to, which makes me feel guilty and greedy.

“Lil, I’ve got something for you, well, sort of. I don’t think it will actually work, but, well, you see Te’s wing-cape, it’s kind of like that, but it’s a glider, only I have no idea how you would use it unless you were falling off a cliff. I figure if you want to actually go for a glide, we can try to get you into Lilagnewt form.” I produce the haphazardly-constructed, rigid-framed glider from my inventory to show Lil.

“Awe, Reggie, you didn’t have to, and you don’t have to feel guilty buddy, you seem to pick the best places and people for the items, and you can really use the help. I’m a draaaaagon, I don’t need nothin’, but I won’t say no to presents!” Lil laughs and leaps into me, bowling me over, hugging me with their tail, before swiping up the glider and claiming it to their own inventory.

“Speaking of, well, of being a dragon, and evolving to new forms, um, I’ve been working on something, I could share it, if that’s okay?” Luni asks somewhat timidly. I’m surprised she felt the need to ask, she’s such a wonderful, kind, supportive person, I don’t imagine any of us would shun her for any reason.

Luni begins to hum, and bob a little bit, squishing downwards, then up to one side, then downwards, and back to the other side. All of us sit quietly, looking back and forth to one another, uncertain if this is what she wanted to share. Luni clears her throat for a moment, before beginning a song.

"Fighting and losing,

I fear I'd lose you

You-less, I'm not two" Luni looks tenderly at Lil, a mix of fear, admiration, love, and sadness in her eyes.

"Singing's my breakthrough,

Breaking away from breaking you

I'd break down and be broken too," Luni seems to be frozen in time, admitting her feelings for Lil out loud for all of us, she then turns to the rest of us,

"Change is something we all go through

Evolving now we've go to do" Suddenly Luni's tone changes from somber, to upbeat, as she bounces around, landing on each of our heads and singing a line, first mine, then Lil's, then Te's, after landing Te's she leaps straight up accentuating the last line.

"I need t'rise up 'n' become a little wiser" She bounces atop my head,

"Im all tied up, ‘n’ my bonds becoming tighter" Luni bounds from my head, to Lil's, and bounces off like Lil were a trampoline,

"I'm all fiy'd up, ‘n’ I'm y'number one fighter" Luni lands atop Te's head for a moment, Te looks like she's going to bat Luni off, when Luni leaps even higher,

"I'ma fly up, and go soarin' eva' higher" Luni seems to leap so high in the air that her figure stretches outwards and upwards, when she lands however, she lands on her paws, or maybe feet, as they're covered in leather boots, and takes a bow, or well a curtsy, as she's wearing an adorable white and green multi-layered dress with frills. The dress also has bronze-colored diamond accents. Luni appears to be holding a small harp in her left hand. Everyone was about to applaud, but I think we're all stunned.

I do a double-take, Luni appears to be a young woman, somewhere between the purely otter stage, and the humanoid stage of evolution, similar to Teuila, but with even more anthropomorphic characteristics. I stand there blinking hard several times, my mouth agape. I check both my ranged senses, and through Lil’s eyes, and the results are the same.

"What, but what?" Pretty much is the unanimous utterance from the rest of us as Luni giggles, twirling around, checking out her own new form.

"Wait, it's that easy? Let me try!" Lil tries to repeat Luni's performance to a tee, just replacing staring at themselves with staring at Luni, though they're entirely off key, out of tune, and definitely giving Te a big ol' faceful of scaley butt at the end of the song. When Lil leaps off of Te at the end, nothing special happens as they land in the soil, bouncing slightly.

"Okay, okay, okay okay okay, so, so, so what just happened? Is that how you evolved Te?" I manage to stammer out a question.

Te responds while shaking her head, "Uh, no, most definitely not. I was slamming rocks in the river with my tail, and face, and then I was punching them."

I try not to chuckle at her answer, "That’s kinda awesome. But, did you spontaneously spawn clothes or equipment?"

Teuila jibes, "Does it look like I'm wearing anything?"

I blush at my naivety while apologizing and asking, "No, no I guess not, sorry, is that normal?"

"Penina had her shell when she evolved from an egg, but usually not. I want a wristband like Luni's now, humph." Te harumphs a bit indignantly. Upon closer inspection, on the same arm that holds the harp, Luni is indeed wearing an adorable bracelet that looks like a cross between a wrist-warmer, and my own leaf-leather gear. She even has a hairband with a flower in it that looks suspiciously like the circlet I'd made for Teuila recently. She's even wearing leggings under the skirt, how in the how!?

I query, "Luni, how do you have leggings, and are they uncomfortable on your fur?"

She giggles and twirls, her hands are palm-faced-up, and her shoulders are in a shrug, "I have no idea!"

“I guess you can wear the ring now though, uh, wow. Well, way to go? I mean, you did great, you look great, you’re stunning, and adorable, at least through Lil’s eyes, I mean, not that I doubt you are adorable in general, just, you know, haven’t seen you in a few weeks. Ugh, not that me not personally seeing you means you got any less adorable.” Before I can keep rambling, Lil playfully swats my legs from behind with their tail, and Te shoves her hand in my face, bowling me over. My wraps warned me of the tail and palm, but I was too preoccupied trying not to insult Luni to dodge out of the way. I fall on my rear and just start laughing at myself.

“Stuff it!” Lil and Te both playfully exclaim to get me to shut up and stop making a fool of myself. There’s the tiniest tinge of jealousy in both of their voices, but they’re mostly laughing.

I roll across the ground out of the way of the various limbs being comically swung my way. When I’m out of the veritable minefield of flailing bodyparts, I find myself kneeling in front of Luni, so I can at least give her the ring now. “Here you go Lu, you can wear it now, I hope you never need it, but if you do, I hope it protects you.” I place the ring on Luni’s right hand, the bronzy-orange goes nicely with the diamond patterns along her skirt, or the leather coloration on her wristband on her left wrist.

Luni giggles, bends foreward and smooches my forehead. “Thanks Reggie, I love it.” She states after kissing my head. I can veritably feel Lil fuming behind me, as if steam were coming out their ears, and I just now realize how this would have probably looked amongst any other group of people, like someone dodged a bunch of attacks to propose to someone else.

In my mind Lil jokingly-angrily shouts “Gee, ya think!?” Lil and Luni, however, are both laughing uproariously across the shared mental wavelength.

“Haha, sorry fam, didn’t mean to get weird.” I think into the shared wavelength, chuckling as I do.

“Sure sure, I see how it is, now that she’s got legs and arms, you want Luni now too, you and your unstoppable twitterpation that is!” Jokes Lil, though I do flush with embarrassment when I think about how adorable Luni’s outfit is and how nicely it accentuates her already cute appearance. “Mhm, see? Told ya.'' Lil jibes in my mind.

“So, what, it’s going to take like two evolutions until you’re twitterpated with me pal? When I’m like a big dragon standing on two legs? Hm?” Lil keeps poking fun at me and I feel exceedingly flushed with embarrassment. My face burns red hot, and I probably look the same color as Lil at the moment. Everyone is laughing or chuckling or gasping for breath though, thankfully no one is seriously paying jealousy any mind. Te leaps from her current position to tackle me, and we end up doing a double somersault before coming to a halt, with Te hugging me from above as I’m pinned to the ground. Te laughs until she sighs contentedly, snuggling down atop me.

I realize I’ve been holding a breath for a while. Or rather, I haven’t inhaled in a while, and inhale a bit of a ragged breath out of surprise, then find myself sighing contentedly as well. Luni walks over and calmly sits next to us, once there she leans down to one side, cuddling against one of my arms and Te’s shoulder. Lil bounds over and smooshes between all of us, while Luni welcomes Lil, wrapping an arm around them when they arrive. I happily state, “I, I really love my life, I love you guys so much. Thank you for being my friends.”

“Sure, you’re our pal, and our confidant.” Lil replies, which almost causes my brain to do another one of those weird BSOD moments, as it triggers a vague memory. Lyrics from a song.