I'm taking all these posts describing the cold weather as a personal attack. It’s so hot. I’m dying.
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Xaltwind,
teenangstlife,
Neziul,
Kronshi,
erikh
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1 yr ago
Current
Happy Halloween!
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1 yr ago
I used to love the holiday season as a kid, but these days I’m terrified that the strange man in red is going to break into my home again and leave another suspicious package under one of my plants.
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1 yr ago
Alright, that's it! I've had enough of this damn heat. Bring me my matches, it’s time to burn the sun down.
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2 yrs ago
If there are 3600 rats living in my bones and I eat one every second, how long will it take me to eat all the rats? Assume each rat undergoes binary fission exactly once every hour.
2 yrs ago
Adventurer, the rats in my basement have merged into a fractal entity! I will pay you 4 silver coins to slay the infinite rat(s) in my basement.
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Bio
I am me... I hope.
Most Recent Posts
Erin Williams
Erin couldn’t help but shiver slightly as she exited the dorms and was hit by the chilly outside air. Her choice of clothing today was little more than a simple t-shirt and trousers, the first things she’d managed to uncover from within the pile of cloth atop her dresser in her rush to get out that morning. She was pretty certain at least the clothes were clean enough to wear – though a particularly attentive observer might notice she’d worn the same shirt just a couple of days ago – but she had definitely underdressed for the weather.
As she suppressed another shiver, Erin briefly considered going back to grab a jacket at least before deciding against the idea. She’d already gotten distracted that morning, reading through an interesting article she’d found, and she was excited to meet with her friends before class, so for the time being she decided would just deal with being a little cold.
Shoving her hands into her trouser pockets for warmth, Erin set a brisk pace towards the table that had somehow become the de facto meeting spot for her and her friend group. The moment she spotted Damon and Fae already there and waiting, a wide grin spread across Erin’s face, the cold all but forgotten as she hurried to jog over to her friends.
Putting her bag down on the table, Erin didn’t bother to take a seat, instead continuing to jitter and pace around the table, lest the cold catch back up to her.
“Morning guys,” she chirped, beaming at the pair. “Anything interesting happen since yesterday?”
Alright guys! We're just waiting on a few responses from pms to get this thing going! I hope yall are as excited about this as I am!
I’m assuming some people sent their CSs through PMs? Out of curiosity, how many people do we currently have and how many are we waiting on?
Spots are filling quickly! Get your characters in guys!
There's a fine line that must be straddled between not wanting to be the first to post a sheet and actually managing to get it in on time.
Definitely interested.
Out of curiosity, are you able to give any examples of what a typical realm might look like without spoiling anything? Are we talking worlds that run on actual dream logic or fully realised worlds here? Also does the stay in these realms equate to actual time spent sleeping or is there some time fuckery at play?
Out of curiosity, are you able to give any examples of what a typical realm might look like without spoiling anything? Are we talking worlds that run on actual dream logic or fully realised worlds here? Also does the stay in these realms equate to actual time spent sleeping or is there some time fuckery at play?
Petra felt no small amount of relief when the giant poking her didn’t immediately start screaming about monsters or the like upon her attempt at introducing herself, nor gave any indication that particularly sounded as though they saw her as a potential meal.
Even better, she managed to get some good information out of the giant’s response – well, maybe not quite good information, per se, but certainly useful. From the sounds of things, this world either didn’t have other talking slimes like her, or if it did, they were sufficiently rare as to make encountering one an interesting event. Extrapolating from that, Petra felt more confident in the idea that whatever she was – at least regarding her apparent intelligence – was something fundamentally different from a normal slime, which would seem to match up pretty well with her observations of her own neuroanatomy.
Unfortunately for Petra, it seemed her relief was destined to only be short-lived, and she didn’t get the opportunity to ask for any further information or clarifications, before the giant decided to perform what was quickly becoming one of her least favourite interactions, and promptly scooped her off the floor.
“Your name was <Name: Self> right? My name's <Name: Giant>! Nice to meet you!” the giant babbled as Petra scrambled to make her body pull itself into a more stable shape, lest part of her simply slough off under its own weight. Even if she wanted to answer the giant – and honestly she was more inclined to start screaming at them to please put her back down – Petra wasn’t sure she could actually do so safely; the idea of trying to form a communication pseudopod seeming like a really bad idea given how roughly the giant was handling her.
For several long seconds, Petra managed to do little more than blindly panicking, before finally pulling herself together – in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Presented with yet another challenge that her life as a human had done absolutely nothing to prepare her for, Petra once again turned to one of her few lifelines in this world, and tried to will her magic to somehow solve the issue.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, simply trying to magic away all her problems didn’t achieve a whole lot, but she did get the sense at least that her Biomancy could target the giant, which, in hindsight, she probably should have expected. Compared to observing her own biology, Petra felt as though trying to do the same for the giant’s probably felt something along the lines of trying to pass through a brick wall by pushing against it really hard – was that because she was a simpler organism or because she had a Resistance of 1… a question for when she wasn’t at immediate risk of falling apart.
Petra pushed until she finally felt something give and her awareness was flooded with the overwhelming information that described a living organism. Ignoring most of it, she quickly set about filtering out everything she didn’t need, honing in on the parts that were close to her body, then specifically the nerves, and then even more specifically the mechanosensory nerves. Could she just command them to all fire at once?
Petra hesitated. If she could manage it, it would almost certainly hurt like a motherfucker and make the giant drop her, but she didn’t exactly want to hurt the giant, who thus far didn’t seem intentionally hostile… actually for that matter, would she even be able to survive being dropped from however high up she was?
Abandoning her original plan, Petra instead zoomed out her organic sense, unfocusing it to try and get a better idea of the big picture and… oh. While Petra had realised that her improved hearing had somewhat skewed and exaggerated her sense of scale, she’d still subconsciously held onto the idea that whoever the giant was, they were big. The proportions outlined by her organic sense, however, were not that of a giant, hell, they weren’t even that of an adult.
Honestly, that explained a lot, actually. She couldn’t imagine many people being so willing to just pick up a slime, any more than most people were willing to pick up a random bug, but a child? That’d probably do it. Petra was suddenly very glad she decided not to go ahead with her initial, hurt them till they drop her plan. She’d have felt pretty awful if she had.
Still, having an explanation for what was happening didn’t do a lot to make Petra feel better about the situation – a child wasn’t anywhere near as non-threatening when they could easily crush her fragile body – and it certainly didn’t do anything to actually solve her current predicament.
For a moment, Petra considers simply hoping for the best and trying to wait out the child’s manhandling – surely they would have to put her down eventually – but then she imagined the countless alternative scenarios and quickly abandons that overly optimistic line of reason.
What were the chances that the child would stumble and drop her or squeeze her body just a little too hard before they ever got to putting her down? What were the odds the child would try to show her off to an adult, who, not knowing she was anything other than a normal slime, would freak out and kill her? Or that if and when they decided to put her down, they’d be a bit too rough and pop her like a ballon? Way too high all round.
Petra wracked her brain – or whatever magic it was that was currently doing its job – searching for a way to communicate to the child that she needed them to put her down, in a way that wouldn’t in itself risk her falling apart. If only she could use the messaging system on the child…
Had she not been freaking out, Petra probably would have felt rather stupid at that moment, and as it were, she still felt more than a little silly. Even if she couldn’t communicate with the child, that didn’t mean she couldn’t communicate at all. As if to punctuate her stupidity, Petra apparently had been the only one to forget about this function of her status screen, because apparently at some point while she’d been she’d missed a message from Down.
Well at least it looked like they knew she was missing, that was something at least.
Even better, she managed to get some good information out of the giant’s response – well, maybe not quite good information, per se, but certainly useful. From the sounds of things, this world either didn’t have other talking slimes like her, or if it did, they were sufficiently rare as to make encountering one an interesting event. Extrapolating from that, Petra felt more confident in the idea that whatever she was – at least regarding her apparent intelligence – was something fundamentally different from a normal slime, which would seem to match up pretty well with her observations of her own neuroanatomy.
Unfortunately for Petra, it seemed her relief was destined to only be short-lived, and she didn’t get the opportunity to ask for any further information or clarifications, before the giant decided to perform what was quickly becoming one of her least favourite interactions, and promptly scooped her off the floor.
“Your name was <Name: Self> right? My name's <Name: Giant>! Nice to meet you!” the giant babbled as Petra scrambled to make her body pull itself into a more stable shape, lest part of her simply slough off under its own weight. Even if she wanted to answer the giant – and honestly she was more inclined to start screaming at them to please put her back down – Petra wasn’t sure she could actually do so safely; the idea of trying to form a communication pseudopod seeming like a really bad idea given how roughly the giant was handling her.
For several long seconds, Petra managed to do little more than blindly panicking, before finally pulling herself together – in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Presented with yet another challenge that her life as a human had done absolutely nothing to prepare her for, Petra once again turned to one of her few lifelines in this world, and tried to will her magic to somehow solve the issue.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, simply trying to magic away all her problems didn’t achieve a whole lot, but she did get the sense at least that her Biomancy could target the giant, which, in hindsight, she probably should have expected. Compared to observing her own biology, Petra felt as though trying to do the same for the giant’s probably felt something along the lines of trying to pass through a brick wall by pushing against it really hard – was that because she was a simpler organism or because she had a Resistance of 1… a question for when she wasn’t at immediate risk of falling apart.
Petra pushed until she finally felt something give and her awareness was flooded with the overwhelming information that described a living organism. Ignoring most of it, she quickly set about filtering out everything she didn’t need, honing in on the parts that were close to her body, then specifically the nerves, and then even more specifically the mechanosensory nerves. Could she just command them to all fire at once?
Petra hesitated. If she could manage it, it would almost certainly hurt like a motherfucker and make the giant drop her, but she didn’t exactly want to hurt the giant, who thus far didn’t seem intentionally hostile… actually for that matter, would she even be able to survive being dropped from however high up she was?
Abandoning her original plan, Petra instead zoomed out her organic sense, unfocusing it to try and get a better idea of the big picture and… oh. While Petra had realised that her improved hearing had somewhat skewed and exaggerated her sense of scale, she’d still subconsciously held onto the idea that whoever the giant was, they were big. The proportions outlined by her organic sense, however, were not that of a giant, hell, they weren’t even that of an adult.
Honestly, that explained a lot, actually. She couldn’t imagine many people being so willing to just pick up a slime, any more than most people were willing to pick up a random bug, but a child? That’d probably do it. Petra was suddenly very glad she decided not to go ahead with her initial, hurt them till they drop her plan. She’d have felt pretty awful if she had.
Still, having an explanation for what was happening didn’t do a lot to make Petra feel better about the situation – a child wasn’t anywhere near as non-threatening when they could easily crush her fragile body – and it certainly didn’t do anything to actually solve her current predicament.
For a moment, Petra considers simply hoping for the best and trying to wait out the child’s manhandling – surely they would have to put her down eventually – but then she imagined the countless alternative scenarios and quickly abandons that overly optimistic line of reason.
What were the chances that the child would stumble and drop her or squeeze her body just a little too hard before they ever got to putting her down? What were the odds the child would try to show her off to an adult, who, not knowing she was anything other than a normal slime, would freak out and kill her? Or that if and when they decided to put her down, they’d be a bit too rough and pop her like a ballon? Way too high all round.
Petra wracked her brain – or whatever magic it was that was currently doing its job – searching for a way to communicate to the child that she needed them to put her down, in a way that wouldn’t in itself risk her falling apart. If only she could use the messaging system on the child…
Had she not been freaking out, Petra probably would have felt rather stupid at that moment, and as it were, she still felt more than a little silly. Even if she couldn’t communicate with the child, that didn’t mean she couldn’t communicate at all. As if to punctuate her stupidity, Petra apparently had been the only one to forget about this function of her status screen, because apparently at some point while she’d been she’d missed a message from Down.
Contacts: "Down"WHERE ARE YOU!? ARE YOU OKAY!?Well at least it looked like they knew she was missing, that was something at least.
Contacts: "Down"I’m okay for now, but have big problem.Someone picked me up.Not trying to hurt me but they’re being pretty rough. Worried I might fall apart.Pretty sure he’s a child, but he might be a hobbit or something.Don’t know where they’re going. Can’t ask because I’m worried something will fall off me if I try.Please help.As Petra waited for her magic to recover, she idly considered how exactly she was supposed to go about building herself a workable eye given the materials she had at her disposal, and thus far she was making very little progress. It wasn’t that vertebrate eyes were all that complicated, in fact, as far as organs went eyes were actually relatively simple, in her opinion. No, rather, the problem she was having was a lack of materials.
Slimes, as homogeneous as they might seem at a glance, turned out to contain a variety of different materials, which Petra would have no problem separating out with her magic… well actually, it’d probably be exhausting work, but very little problem at the very least. The issue was, that even with what she had, none of them had the material properties she needed for what she wanted to create, and getting that down was the bare minimum for her to even start on the project, let alone solve all the other countless issues that would no doubt arise in the process.
Petra felt herself growing frustrated by her inability to think her way around the problem, or do much of else in the meantime, when mercifully, she was given an excuse to drop the matter for the time being, in the form of a message from Up – or rather, from Cassius, as she had to remind herself the guy had introduced himself.
In either case, Petra thought Cassius’s message seemed to calm to indicate that he’d been crippled or anything quite that bad, and she hoped she wasn’t just misreading things. Even if she still had a somewhat poor opinion of Cassius, Petra wouldn’t have wanted the guy to get hurt whatever the case, but the realisation that literally half of the people she could be taken out of the picture as easily as that had her suddenly very concerned.
By the standards of her life up until now, the idea that two people she knew might suddenly be crippled or die out of the blue seemed almost unbelievable, but now she realised, that wasn’t a standard she could in any way rely on to hold true. Actually, if anything, she could probably rely on it to not hold true. Which made her current lack of both independence and people to rely upon all the more concerning.
As for the other part of the Cassius’s message, that was perhaps even more worrying.
With any luck, people wouldn’t consider her food on account of slimes being creatures that wouldn’t hesitate to devour literal shit, but even so, the very idea that someone might try it made her more than a little nervous, and even short of being seen as a meal, Petra could very easily imagine slimes being considered a pest to be exterminated not unlike how most people see cockroaches.
Actually, now that she was looking for it, Petra was suddenly very aware of the vibrations coming from outside the shack – a persistent background noise she’d thus far ignored, but one which she was suddenly very aware might be the steps of people moving about outside. Actually, scratch that, there were definitely people outside; while most of the vibrations were utterly meaningless to Petra who still hadn’t figured how to interpret the sense, with her newly enhanced hearing, Petra was able to occasionally pick up snippets of conversation magically translated into something she could make sense of.
Trying to think quickly, Petra considered hiding in the gap in the floorboards like Down had suggested, except she realised she didn’t know where exactly the hole was. She was pretty sure it was somewhere over…
Petra was still trying to figure out the exact location her designated hiding place was, when the worst possible case scenario happened, and she felt one of the sources of vibrations outside break off from the others, resolving into a more distinct vibration that seemed to draw closer my the moment, until just a couple of seconds after she noticed it, someone entered the shack.
If Petra could have, she would have probably frozen like a deer in headlights, as it was her body already happened to be stock still, so instead through the haze of her panic, Petra somehow managed to throw her movement program back together, moving as fast as she could towards the tarp beneath which she’d first arrived in this world – a hiding spot she only now remembered existed.
Of course, Petra’s efforts were in vain – even if she couldn’t see them, there was no reason to expect the newcomer wouldn’t be able to see her, not in the relatively tiny confines of the shack – and she made it all of halfway to her would be hiding spot, before in three steps the newcomer moved and cut her off.
As she cancelled her movement, Petra could only feel her panic growing. She didn’t exactly have a measuring stick by which to gauge this newcomer, but compared to how Down and Cassius had felt, it seemed as though this person must be positively gargantuan, and it was only thanks to the small part of her mind that was still capable of rational though, that Petra was able to realise that that perception was probably at least in part because of her now enhanced senses.
Before she could think up any kind of solution or even just make her piece with her inevitable death – perhaps for the second time today – Petra felt her body deform as the giant poked her with something. Then a moment later, they poked her a second time, followed shortly by a third.
For a confused moment, Petra was surprised that the pokes didn’t hurt, before she realised that she couldn’t feel pain like that anymore and concluded she was being stabbed. A second later, Petra realised she was not in fact being stabbed, and the pokes really weren’t injuring her at all, and in fact, they were almost gentle.
The sudden realisation that whoever this was, they apparently weren’t trying to kill her – at least not for the time being – caused Petra’s blind panic to die down a little – though only by a little, since there were surely all sorts of nefarious reasons one might poke at a slime – and she was able to regain some measure of order and reason to her thoughts.
Not exactly able to run and still desperately needing information, Petra once again drew on her magic to try and get some sense of what was going on. Her magic, perhaps unsurprisingly, wasn’t exactly suited to the task, but examining herself through her organic vision she quickly determined that whatever it was she was being prodded with, it was definitely organic, as with each and every poke her body peeled off a small amount of the offending object for digestion. Whatever the substance was, it was clearly a lot tougher than regular flesh, but no so tough as bone, which she’d already discovered she was hardly able to digest at all; her body only managing to pry free a few cells with each poke.
Zooming her sense in upon some of what material her own cells had managed to pull off of the object, Petra was met with the tell-tale cell walls that marked as having once been part of a plant. After a moment, Petra realised that it was probably a stick. Someone was poking her with a stick.
While it logically wasn’t any indication that this person wasn’t potentially dangerous to her – they definitely were – or even that they meant her no harm, something about the image of someone repeatedly prodding at a slime with a stick – perhaps just curious to have seen it act in ways no lesser slime normally would have – somehow felt a whole lot less threatening than all the myriad of awful possibilities she’d been imagining just moments before, and like that Petra felt the worst of her panic drain out of her.
As she calmed down, Petra recalled her earlier worry about ending up stuck on her own.
She had of course already considered the potential consequences of letting the inhabitants of this world know that she wasn’t a normal slime – after the reality bending implications of magic existing, and alternate worlds running off of fantasy tropes, that had pretty much been the first thing she’d considered – and she’d pretty quickly decided that it would be an incredibly stupid thing to try without first knowing more, Earth’s own witch hunts coming to mind.
Except the realisation that she had exactly two people she could communicate with – just two lifelines to support her while she was essentially crippled – clearly indicated she hadn’t though it through well enough. Obviously, trying to communicate with one of the natives would immediately out her as being special, and that might get her immediately captured or killed, but what did the alternative scenarios look like?
Petra considered a reality where she didn’t ever speak to the locals, and thought that it’d probably be awful. It might be safer, but at the very least it’d probably be lonely, and worse, she’d be crippling her ability to learn about this world. No. That clearly wasn’t a valid option, at some point she’d have to talk to someone who hadn’t come here from Earth.
She thought about a world where she slowly worked up to being able to talk to locals, taking measures to be cautious as she went, but decided that that scenario wasn’t that much better. She had no idea how long that might take, and there was so much she wanted to do and learn. And what if something happened to Down or Cassius while she was useless? Then she would be stuck on her own and everything would be that much harder, if not impossible.
Even after considering all that, Petra thought the smartest thing to do would still be to wait, just a little, until she had the slightest clue to go off of, but she also realised something else: she really didn’t want to. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, questions that couldn’t be answered by anyone from Earth, and she wanted to ask them right now. Each and every minute she spent waiting was another minute spent not satisfying her curiosity, and somehow that seemed worse than some nebulous risk of being burned at the stake.
Petra realised she was being stupid but decided she really didn’t care. The worst that could happen would be dying, and she was pretty certain she’d already done that once today.
With an effort of will, Petra tried to add the stranger to her contacts. When it became clear that that had once again failed to work, Petra mentally sighed to herself and switched to her less convenient method of communication. After a couple of false starts, Petra managed to get a hang of the process again, attaching meaning to the slapping of her pseudopods as she slowly spoke.
“He̶l̸lo… Is t̴her̴e̸… ̶a̷ re̴aso̶n… y̸o̵u're poki̷n̶g me?̶” Petra slowly asked. “C̴oul̶d... yo̶u̶... y̶ou... ple̸a̵s̷e sto̷p̸?̸”
After a moment’s consideration, Petra recalled how she’d forgotten to introduce herself to her companions from Earth and decided since she was already this far in, she may as well do things properly this time.
“I’m <Name: Self>…” Petra only remembered immediately after saying it, that her slap-speak couldn’t actually handle names, and was glad that she couldn’t cringe with this body, carrying on as though nothing had happened. “I wa̶n̷t t̸o̸ know̷ ever̵ythin̸g… an̵d a̸m… som̸e̴t̷hing lik̵e… a hea̴l̴er… or ma̷ybe̴… a̸ doc̶t̶or… So̷r̴ta.̵”
Petra had intended to make it clear that she could be at least a little useful on the off chance it made whoever this was less likely to want to squish her like the vermin she probably was, but immediately regretted describing herself as a doctor, because magic or no, she absolutely wasn’t qualified to perform medicine. Either way, what was done was done, and now all she could do was wait and see how the stranger responded.
Slimes, as homogeneous as they might seem at a glance, turned out to contain a variety of different materials, which Petra would have no problem separating out with her magic… well actually, it’d probably be exhausting work, but very little problem at the very least. The issue was, that even with what she had, none of them had the material properties she needed for what she wanted to create, and getting that down was the bare minimum for her to even start on the project, let alone solve all the other countless issues that would no doubt arise in the process.
Petra felt herself growing frustrated by her inability to think her way around the problem, or do much of else in the meantime, when mercifully, she was given an excuse to drop the matter for the time being, in the form of a message from Up – or rather, from Cassius, as she had to remind herself the guy had introduced himself.
Contacts: "Cassius"C should be speaking with Meira right now. If you have questions, send them over to him so he can ask. I am bed-bound right now, so I won't be able to pick you up. Are you still in the shack? It's night now; I'd recommend hiding somewhere because there's a possibility of someone else occupying it for shelter. Slimes aren't considered dangerous, but maybe they're considered food.
Also, what's your name?In either case, Petra thought Cassius’s message seemed to calm to indicate that he’d been crippled or anything quite that bad, and she hoped she wasn’t just misreading things. Even if she still had a somewhat poor opinion of Cassius, Petra wouldn’t have wanted the guy to get hurt whatever the case, but the realisation that literally half of the people she could be taken out of the picture as easily as that had her suddenly very concerned.
By the standards of her life up until now, the idea that two people she knew might suddenly be crippled or die out of the blue seemed almost unbelievable, but now she realised, that wasn’t a standard she could in any way rely on to hold true. Actually, if anything, she could probably rely on it to not hold true. Which made her current lack of both independence and people to rely upon all the more concerning.
As for the other part of the Cassius’s message, that was perhaps even more worrying.
With any luck, people wouldn’t consider her food on account of slimes being creatures that wouldn’t hesitate to devour literal shit, but even so, the very idea that someone might try it made her more than a little nervous, and even short of being seen as a meal, Petra could very easily imagine slimes being considered a pest to be exterminated not unlike how most people see cockroaches.
Contacts: "Cassius"Appologies. I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Petra.
If you’re sick or injured I could take a look at you and see if there’s anything I can do with my Skill. I don’t exactly have any way of making it to wherever you are right now though, so it’d probably have to wait if I did. Sorry.Actually, now that she was looking for it, Petra was suddenly very aware of the vibrations coming from outside the shack – a persistent background noise she’d thus far ignored, but one which she was suddenly very aware might be the steps of people moving about outside. Actually, scratch that, there were definitely people outside; while most of the vibrations were utterly meaningless to Petra who still hadn’t figured how to interpret the sense, with her newly enhanced hearing, Petra was able to occasionally pick up snippets of conversation magically translated into something she could make sense of.
Trying to think quickly, Petra considered hiding in the gap in the floorboards like Down had suggested, except she realised she didn’t know where exactly the hole was. She was pretty sure it was somewhere over…
Petra was still trying to figure out the exact location her designated hiding place was, when the worst possible case scenario happened, and she felt one of the sources of vibrations outside break off from the others, resolving into a more distinct vibration that seemed to draw closer my the moment, until just a couple of seconds after she noticed it, someone entered the shack.
If Petra could have, she would have probably frozen like a deer in headlights, as it was her body already happened to be stock still, so instead through the haze of her panic, Petra somehow managed to throw her movement program back together, moving as fast as she could towards the tarp beneath which she’d first arrived in this world – a hiding spot she only now remembered existed.
Of course, Petra’s efforts were in vain – even if she couldn’t see them, there was no reason to expect the newcomer wouldn’t be able to see her, not in the relatively tiny confines of the shack – and she made it all of halfway to her would be hiding spot, before in three steps the newcomer moved and cut her off.
As she cancelled her movement, Petra could only feel her panic growing. She didn’t exactly have a measuring stick by which to gauge this newcomer, but compared to how Down and Cassius had felt, it seemed as though this person must be positively gargantuan, and it was only thanks to the small part of her mind that was still capable of rational though, that Petra was able to realise that that perception was probably at least in part because of her now enhanced senses.
Before she could think up any kind of solution or even just make her piece with her inevitable death – perhaps for the second time today – Petra felt her body deform as the giant poked her with something. Then a moment later, they poked her a second time, followed shortly by a third.
For a confused moment, Petra was surprised that the pokes didn’t hurt, before she realised that she couldn’t feel pain like that anymore and concluded she was being stabbed. A second later, Petra realised she was not in fact being stabbed, and the pokes really weren’t injuring her at all, and in fact, they were almost gentle.
The sudden realisation that whoever this was, they apparently weren’t trying to kill her – at least not for the time being – caused Petra’s blind panic to die down a little – though only by a little, since there were surely all sorts of nefarious reasons one might poke at a slime – and she was able to regain some measure of order and reason to her thoughts.
Not exactly able to run and still desperately needing information, Petra once again drew on her magic to try and get some sense of what was going on. Her magic, perhaps unsurprisingly, wasn’t exactly suited to the task, but examining herself through her organic vision she quickly determined that whatever it was she was being prodded with, it was definitely organic, as with each and every poke her body peeled off a small amount of the offending object for digestion. Whatever the substance was, it was clearly a lot tougher than regular flesh, but no so tough as bone, which she’d already discovered she was hardly able to digest at all; her body only managing to pry free a few cells with each poke.
Zooming her sense in upon some of what material her own cells had managed to pull off of the object, Petra was met with the tell-tale cell walls that marked as having once been part of a plant. After a moment, Petra realised that it was probably a stick. Someone was poking her with a stick.
While it logically wasn’t any indication that this person wasn’t potentially dangerous to her – they definitely were – or even that they meant her no harm, something about the image of someone repeatedly prodding at a slime with a stick – perhaps just curious to have seen it act in ways no lesser slime normally would have – somehow felt a whole lot less threatening than all the myriad of awful possibilities she’d been imagining just moments before, and like that Petra felt the worst of her panic drain out of her.
As she calmed down, Petra recalled her earlier worry about ending up stuck on her own.
She had of course already considered the potential consequences of letting the inhabitants of this world know that she wasn’t a normal slime – after the reality bending implications of magic existing, and alternate worlds running off of fantasy tropes, that had pretty much been the first thing she’d considered – and she’d pretty quickly decided that it would be an incredibly stupid thing to try without first knowing more, Earth’s own witch hunts coming to mind.
Except the realisation that she had exactly two people she could communicate with – just two lifelines to support her while she was essentially crippled – clearly indicated she hadn’t though it through well enough. Obviously, trying to communicate with one of the natives would immediately out her as being special, and that might get her immediately captured or killed, but what did the alternative scenarios look like?
Petra considered a reality where she didn’t ever speak to the locals, and thought that it’d probably be awful. It might be safer, but at the very least it’d probably be lonely, and worse, she’d be crippling her ability to learn about this world. No. That clearly wasn’t a valid option, at some point she’d have to talk to someone who hadn’t come here from Earth.
She thought about a world where she slowly worked up to being able to talk to locals, taking measures to be cautious as she went, but decided that that scenario wasn’t that much better. She had no idea how long that might take, and there was so much she wanted to do and learn. And what if something happened to Down or Cassius while she was useless? Then she would be stuck on her own and everything would be that much harder, if not impossible.
Even after considering all that, Petra thought the smartest thing to do would still be to wait, just a little, until she had the slightest clue to go off of, but she also realised something else: she really didn’t want to. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, questions that couldn’t be answered by anyone from Earth, and she wanted to ask them right now. Each and every minute she spent waiting was another minute spent not satisfying her curiosity, and somehow that seemed worse than some nebulous risk of being burned at the stake.
Petra realised she was being stupid but decided she really didn’t care. The worst that could happen would be dying, and she was pretty certain she’d already done that once today.
With an effort of will, Petra tried to add the stranger to her contacts. When it became clear that that had once again failed to work, Petra mentally sighed to herself and switched to her less convenient method of communication. After a couple of false starts, Petra managed to get a hang of the process again, attaching meaning to the slapping of her pseudopods as she slowly spoke.
“He̶l̸lo… Is t̴her̴e̸… ̶a̷ re̴aso̶n… y̸o̵u're poki̷n̶g me?̶” Petra slowly asked. “C̴oul̶d... yo̶u̶... y̶ou... ple̸a̵s̷e sto̷p̸?̸”
After a moment’s consideration, Petra recalled how she’d forgotten to introduce herself to her companions from Earth and decided since she was already this far in, she may as well do things properly this time.
“I’m <Name: Self>…” Petra only remembered immediately after saying it, that her slap-speak couldn’t actually handle names, and was glad that she couldn’t cringe with this body, carrying on as though nothing had happened. “I wa̶n̷t t̸o̸ know̷ ever̵ythin̸g… an̵d a̸m… som̸e̴t̷hing lik̵e… a hea̴l̴er… or ma̷ybe̴… a̸ doc̶t̶or… So̷r̴ta.̵”
Petra had intended to make it clear that she could be at least a little useful on the off chance it made whoever this was less likely to want to squish her like the vermin she probably was, but immediately regretted describing herself as a doctor, because magic or no, she absolutely wasn’t qualified to perform medicine. Either way, what was done was done, and now all she could do was wait and see how the stranger responded.
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