Mausoleum of Nature

Etinnei sat on a wooden seat near the window and looked at the views that opened out of it. The train was traveling along an icy road across the sea. In the distance, snow-capped mountains could be seen, which came closer and then moved away.

“Why is it winter there?” the arctic fox girl thought. “It was summer just recently.”

Etinnei noticed the white-blue sleeve of her clothes and realized that she was in a winter look. Instead of a gray-purple top with sleeves and a hood, the beast girl was wearing a white-blue fur jacket with a hood.

“Tuot, there...” Etinnei turned her head towards the middle of the car, but instead of her friend she found a white and blue penguin with an antenna in the shape of an ice cream cone on its forehead.

“Do you want ice cream?” a voice rang out in the head of the arctic fox girl.

“I don’t need ice cream,” Etinnei answered mentally. “Where are Tuot and the others? They disappeared”.

“Ice cream must be kept in the refrigerator so that it does not melt. Your mouth is best suited for this, refrigerator girl. That's why I live in your head.”

“I’ll eat ice cream later. Now I need Tuot.”

Etinnei got up from her seat and walked towards the wooden door at the end of the carriage, but was soon stopped by Minniges, who appeared right in front of her and almost touched the Arctic fox girl's mouth with his horn.

“Don’t go there,” a voice was heard in Etinnei’s head. “My ice cream will melt there. You don’t want the ice cream to disappear like your friends?”

“I don’t want to,” Etinnei answered. “I want ice cream, but I also want friends.”

“Choose ice cream. It tastes better.”

The light bulb on Minniges's antenna touched Etinnei's lips. The next moment, the “ice cream cone” entered the mouth of the arctic fox girl...

... Etinnei felt pain and found herself sitting on the floor in the middle of the carriage with a finger in her mouth.

Summer has come outside the window. Mixed forests grew on both sides of the train, and there was no more snow and ice. The arctic fox girl looked at the sleeve of her clothes and realized that she was in summer uniform.

“I need to find Tuot,” Etinnei thought. “He must be somewhere on the train.”

The arctic fox girl got up from the floor and walked to the wooden door at the end of the carriage. Unfortunately, the door was closed, and Etinnei did not know how to open it.

“There’s nothing here that could open the door,” the animal girl thought. “Maybe I should go to the other door?”

Etinnei turned around to go to the opposite end of the carriage, but saw there a white and blue penguin with an “ice cream cone” on its forehead.

“Minniges, I don’t want ice cream,” the arctic fox girl thought. “I want to open the door and get out of here.”

“You better not open this door,” the penguin’s voice said. “There’s someone there.”

“This is Tuot?”

“No, is not your friend. There is someone there who can take me from you.”

Etinnei felt horrified. The arctic fox girl fell to her knees, looked at the floor with bulging eyes and raised her tail.

“Is this the same person with the carrot nose?” Etinnei thought. “But how did he get here?”

“No, it’s not him,” Minniges replied. “But it also wants to take me away from you.”

The horror inside Etinnei gave way to a little anxiety. The arctic fox girl tried to get to her feet, but fell face down on the floor. Luckily, her large breasts and fur top saved her head from being hit.

“I wanted to get rid of you because I was afraid of the voices in my head,” Etinnei thought. “I don’t want a flying penguin suddenly appearing in front of me and offering me ice cream.”

“But you like my ice cream,” Minniges’s voice answered. “If I don't live in your brain, no one will feed you such tasty ice cream”.

“Somehow that ice cream always ends up being my finger.”

“That's because you eat it.”

Etinnei placed her hand on the nearest seat and then rose to her feet.

“It’s my fault that you appeared,” the arctic fox girl thought. “I thought about cute animals too often when I lived on the Southern Continent. I wanted to have such an animal. But instead of a normal animal, you appeared. I'm sorry.”

The light on Minniges' antenna turned yellow.

“Other animals don’t have ice cream, but I do. Other animals can't freeze you, but I can. Only ice can be beautiful. After all, ice is purity.”

“So you were the one who froze me on the island?” Etinnei asked mentally.

“No, it was something else. But I froze you while you slept in your coffin.”

Etinnei remembered waking up in a coffin on the hotel balcony. Then Minniges put her to sleep to reveal part of her memories.

“You keep part of my memories,” the animal girl noted.

“Yes,” Minniges replied. “I’m like a memory card. If you get rid of me, you will lose access to old memories.”

Etinnei sat down on the seat and looked out the window. The train was traveling across a large river on water without an energy bridge, like a ship.

“I can’t get rid of you,” the arctic fox girl remarked. “If I let you be extracted, I won’t be able to remember anything important. I also want to meet the creator and ask her why she created me. Without memories this is impossible. But I can't hear the voices in my head anymore. They appear suddenly and scare me. You also read my thoughts. I can't think like normal beings. I'm afraid to think, but I can't help but think. Thoughts appear in the head on their own and do what they want. And you read them. It is good for other creatures to live. Nobody reads their thoughts. What should I do?”

Minniges appeared in the reflection of the window.

“Get out of here, refrigerator girl,” the penguin’s voice was heard. “Together we will find your creator and ask why she created you.”

The train had passed the river and was now moving overland, through deciduous forests with tree and common ferns.

An icicle emerged from the sleeve of Etinnei's top, which was then surrounded by an electric aura. The arctic fox girl brought the weapon to the glass and began to cut a circle on it.

... The cut piece of glass fell out of the window. The wind hit Etinnei's face, knocking the hood off her head. The animal girl's hair now almost merged with the ears on the top of her head, making her look more like a human.

The forest became denser. The trees became taller and there were more ferns. Lianas and blue glowing mushrooms appeared and grew on the trunks.

Etinnei jumped into the hole, but only went halfway. The arctic fox girl's hips are stuck in the glass.

“I cut the hole too small again,” Etinnei thought. “I need to go back and cut more.”

“There’s no time, refrigerator girl,” the voice of Minniges said. “It’ll be here soon.”

“But I won’t get through any further.”

“Use lightning. You're a refrigerator girl. Refrigerators, in addition to cold, have electricity.”

Etinnei activated her electrical aura. Cracks ran along the glass from the hole to the edges, which broke it into many fragments...

***

Halankuo walked around the village and tried to remember something from her childhood. The girl was wearing only a long T-shirt that reached her upper thighs. In this form, Halankuo was afraid to appear in the city because she did not want to stand out. But here, in the abandoned village, there were no people which mean that only wild animals could pay attention to it.

“Mom, I can’t remember anything,” Halankuo thought. “Maybe you remember something?”

The voice that Halankuo heard at the station did not answer this time.

“Perhaps it was my imagination,” the girl decided. “I was so afraid of losing Kyotyoryon that I heard my mother’s voice.”

Halankuo felt that she had stepped on something hard. This item turned out to be a brown, unopened cone that lay under a coniferous tree on the site of a former fence.

“What if I check it out?” a thought appeared in Halankuo’s head.

The girl picked up the bump and then looked at it intently. The lump moved and then rose slightly above the palm.

Halankuo opened her mouth and opened her eyes wide, but did not notice how her pupils began to emit purple light.

The girl’s surprise was interrupted by a rustle in the bushes that grew in place of the rotted fence.

Halankuo stopped looking at the cone, and it fell on what was left of the paving stones. The pupils of her eyes turned black again.

A medium-sized animal ran out of the bushes and disappeared into the thickets on the opposite side of the former street.

“It’s just a hare,” Halankuo felt alarmed. “Someone scared him. Is there really anyone in the village besides me?”

The girl went home and looked around carefully. There were only trees and bushes around, barely noticeable beetles sometimes flew through the air, and birds shouted something in the trees.

Halankuo returned home and walked up the old stairs to the second floor, where her room was located. Without the cobwebs, the house seemed inhabited, and only the old creaking boards reminded that it was abandoned.

“I wonder how Kyotyoryon is.” Halankuo thought. “Is she still there, near the sea?”

The girl opened the door to her room, in which there was only a wooden bed, without a blanket or pillow, looking like a bench, and opened the “Mausoleum of Nature.”

On the map, on the southern coast of the Northern Continent, near the bay, there was no longer a red dot.

“She’s not there,” Halankuo thought. “But where is she?”

The girl began to carefully examine and zoom in on different parts of the map, but there was no red dot anywhere.

“She disappeared,” Halankuo felt alarmed. “Was she destroyed?”

The girl closed the card with a movement of her hand and entered the character window. In the place where Kyotyoryon stood in full-length, almost human form, there was now only a white silhouette.

“They didn’t destroy her,” Halankuo stopped feeling anxious. “But she is in some unusual state. Maybe this is the result of a mistake in her brain?”

Halankuo closed the program, then sat down on the bed and looked out the round window, which overlooked the mixed forest.

“I let her go myself,” the girl thought. “Why am I so worried about her? I was wrong. She left because of me. I can't follow her and disturb her. If I do this, she will consider me an enemy and will cut me.”

Halankuo lay down on the bed, looked at the ceiling and closed her eyes.

“Taikuron will find his other half,” a voice said in the girl’s head.

Halankuo opened her eyes and saw the head of a black and white penguin with two antennas hanging from the ceiling.

The girl immediately remembered him. It was the creature she saw on the day her parents disappeared, and then in the forest when she was looking for Kyotyoryon.

The penguin's head disappeared into the ceiling. Halankuo ran out of the room and went to the first floor to leave the house.

“Taikuron is looking for his memory card,” a voice was heard in Halankuo’s head. “Taikuron knows that my memory card is here somewhere.”

The penguin's head appeared from the wall near the exit of the house. A wrench appeared in Halankuo's hand.

“Why do you need this?” Halankuo pointed the weapon at the penguin.

“In order to find my other half,” Taikuron answered mentally. “The lightning must be together with the ice so that the ice cream does not melt.”

“I don’t know where the memory card is.”

“Then why do you want to attack Taikuron? Taikuron is not dangerous. It just extracts data from creatures and then transfers it to memory cards. Taikuron doesn't destroy anyone forever. He only needs his other half.”

“Mom, what should I do?” Halankuo thought. “Tell me please. It will kill me.”

Again there was no answer. Instead of her mother's voice, Halankuo heard the voice of a penguin:

“Are you talking to someone? Do you have someone in you? Taikuron wants to check it out.”

Halankuo took a few steps back, but continued to point the key at the penguin.

Taikuron has completely come out of the wall. The round lights on his antennas turned yellow, and then a current ran between them.

“Run,” Halankuo heard the voice she heard at the station.

At that same moment the girl ran to the kitchen, opened the window and jumped out...

... Halankuo found herself in the thickets of ferns that grew along the wall of the house.

“Don’t run away from Taikuron,” Halankuo heard a voice in her head. “He will find you anyway.”

Halankuo ran through the fern thickets and found herself in a dense mixed forest. One of the edges of the T-shirt, which covered one of the hips, caught on a bush branch and stopped the girl. But Halankuo did not notice this and continued to move through the forest.

Already near the river, where the forest was old and not dense, Halankuo noticed that one of her thighs was now open, and her T-shirt was torn from the side to the middle of her torso.

But such trifles did not bother the girl. She was interested in one thing - how to cross the stormy river that flowed along the outskirts of the village. There used to be a bridge here, but now only wooden supports on the banks remain.

“I went to the wrong place,” Halankuo thought in fear. “We have to somehow get to the other side. It will be here soon.”

Halankuo shot lightning from her hand into the lower part of the trunk of one of the trees, and it bent over the river with a loud crack. The girl climbed onto the trunk and walked along it to the other side.

“Taikuron told you that you would not leave him,” a voice sounded in Halankuo’s head.

The sudden appearance of a voice frightened the girl even more. She staggered on the log and almost fell into the water, but at the last moment she was able to maintain her balance, after which she looked around.

Right in front of her, above the river, a black and white penguin “hung” in the air. The round indicator lights on its antennas were red, and weak electrical discharges passed between them.

“Taikuron wants to know what’s inside you,” the penguin asked mentally.

“Why do you need this?” Halankuo asked mentally.

“Taikuron believes that what is inside you may be connected to the memory card he wants to find.”

“He shouldn’t know what’s inside me,” Halankuo thought. “What to do? I can't tell him and I can't fight him. Maybe you know, mom?”

“Taikuron has realized what is inside you,” the penguin’s voice said. “It’s even better than a memory card.”

Halankuo's heart rate increased and she staggered again. Fortunately, the girl was able to maintain her balance again and even pointed a wrench at her opponent.

“Can he read minds?” Halankuo guessed mentally. “That’s why he speaks to me through thoughts. I didn't think about it.”

“Yes, it is capable of this,” Halankuo heard a familiar voice that did not belong to the penguin. “I deliberately didn’t talk to you so that Taikuron wouldn’t find you.”

“What should I do?” Halankuo asked mentally.

Lightning began to coalesce between Taikuron's antennas. Halankuo tried to move the penguin, but instead she froze in place.

“I can’t give you advice,” mother’s voice answered. “Taikuron will read this quickly. Do what you think is necessary. Remember the new abilities you have.”

Halankuo remembered that she could move objects with her gaze. The girl looked carefully at Taikuron and tried to focus on his white chest.

The penguin's body moved a few steps back, and the electrical discharge between the antennas disappeared. Halankuo felt that she could move again, pointed a wrench at Taikuron and moved her hand to the side.

The penguin's body flew to the nearest tree that stood on the shore, passed through the trunk, and then disappeared.

“He has become intangible,” Halankuo thought. “I let him go.” I need to concentrate better.”

Taikuron appeared above the trees. Lightning began to accumulate between its antennas again. Halankuo concentrated her gaze on him, but nothing happened.

“Why isn’t anything happening to him?” Halankuo got angry. “Your skill doesn’t affect it.”

“He deliberately rose so high that you could not reach him,” the mother’s voice explained. “But in this position, he also cannot control you with his eyes.”

The clot of lightning increased and then turned into a ball from which an electric beam burst out...