Why are you here?

He sat down under the tree, his back against the giant tree trunk. He took the lotus position and started to absorb energy.

The snake had fallen asleep while waiting for the boy to wash up. After all, he liked the sun's warmth the most. It would heat up his own cold body. The only drawback to that was that he felt always sleepy. Not that he actually minded that.

The tree suddenly moved under him.

The snake woke up, confused. He suddenly felt and saw it clearly, the tree moved. The snake blinked his eyes a couple of times before realizing that the tree was actually moving.

'Hah! This is a day of many surprises.' he thought and looked toward the stream to find the two-legged creature gone. He looks around and finds the two-legged creature sitting under the tree, and the tree was forming a light shade for him. The tree then broke its own branch and dropped its own sap in the direction of the two-legged creature.

The snake's eyes shined for a moment, feeling some longing for it but the tree's blood felt lacking.

The two-legged creature had been still this whole time, which wasn't actually a long time. The snake had been observing the tree's actions for only a minute.

Suddenly, as the drop was falling, the creature under the tree moved its head back and opened its mouth. The drop fell inside, the two-legged creature then shut its mouth and swallowed. The tree left the light shade on top of the two-legged creature and pulled back all the other branches. Returning to normal.

The snake had been living on the tree for over three hundred years, but the tree had never moved before. Why did it move when the two-legged creature sat down there?

A thought occurred to him. Is he...?

He didn't finish that thought, he just felt the energy around himself. It was always thin, but now it was even thinner. He felt the current of the energy and saw to his amazement that yes, the two-legged creature was absorbing the energy.

It wasn't good to disturb the ones capable of absorbing energy, so the snake decided to wait with his questions. He was a lazy person and fell asleep shortly after.

Hours passed and night arrived.

Liam absorbed the energy like he had been starving. It wasn't that, the day had just been very stressful. After all, he had basically lived in peace all his life. Now that he had found himself in dangerous situations was a tremendous wake-up call.

He thought of today's event and was devastated by how weak he was. That was why he had just sat down under the tree and started to absorb energy. The energy was thin here but not as thin as on earth. Hours later he opened his eyes to find that the night had fallen. He looked up to see light shade covering him.

He turned. Touched the tree and wrote a few words.

He got up and walked a few steps away from the tree to look up at the sky.

"It looks the same, but the stars are different," he mumbled to himself, but the sight comforted him a lot. Something familiar, something that could remind him of home. It would be his reminder to stay on his path, his objective. He couldn't lose that or starting this journey would just be pointless.

He looked back at the tree to see the snake gone. Where would he need to go?

Liam already knew that the snake wouldn't eat him. He had seen the two slight bulges on its body, indicating that he was still digesting and wouldn't need to eat any time soon. He knew snakes, after all, back on earth, he had eaten a few of them.

He thought that it might be a good idea to look at the forest at night. He left his possessions behind, after all, he didn't plan on going too far. He was still very curious about the snake.

Liam had only walked a few steps back into the forest when an unbelievable amount of sound assaulted him.

ROAR!

ROAARR!!!

Thus, it continued. It wasn't near him, but he could hear them as if he had stepped through a sound veil. Like a barrier that didn't let the forest sounds come too near to the massive tree.

He stepped back to test the unbelievable theory and yes, the sound was suddenly muffled. Confirmed his theory, he went back in to take another look. The sounds were still the same. Among the big sound, smaller ones were a lot harder to distinguish.

At least he felt comforted that the big sounds were far away.

He was very cautious as he moved into this forest. Everything he didn't observe before was fascinating and new. There were strange bugs moving around, and birds of every size flew around, but none of them looked like the ones he knew from the earth. They looked to have some sort of armor on them. Some didn't actually fly but glided.

After half an hour of silently sneaking into the forest, he encountered something different. The thing he found looked like a snakeskin. It's just that it was much thicker and it looked much stiffer than the ones on earth. He sneaked closer to it and tried to touch it but then it suddenly moved.

'Is the snake shedding this still here?' he thought before remembering that the owner of the tree was also a snake-like being. He followed along the shed skin, which was already about a hundred meters long.

'Would he allow me to make use of it?' he thought after various means how he could use it. Maybe strengthen his clothes. He didn't think that he had the necessary tools for processing it, though. Maybe he could find something similar to use. Heat shouldn't be a problem, but the plastic part might be. Could he find a substitute material from this forest? Maybe just heat conditioning his clothes with the shed snakeskin, to intergrade them together so his clothes would last longer.

He only had the ones he was wearing and the ones which were currently drying on branches. And the later ones were slightly torn from the impromptu escape he had before. It would be helpful if he had some armor, after all this place was practically made of metal.

Then he saw the snake shedding its skin. It turned out to be the one he was thinking of. After a moment of observing he noticed that the snake was rather agitated. He looked around all the time, his tongue slipped out a lot more frequently than when they met and his movements were rather sudden and rash. Although it helped, it also made the process longer.

Liam decided to stay away, so he wouldn't bother him. He observed the process with interest. He had never seen it before and this was a humongous snake with spikes or needles poking out of each topmost scale. He didn't notice it before but its underbelly was smooth, but the scales there look ten times tougher.

An hour passed by just like that. The forest was dark and yet, Liam could see the snake clearly.

"Why are you here?" slight 's' sounded with every word.

Liam suddenly heard the snake's voice. It wasn't letters like the first time they talked, now it was just his voice. Liam was rather shocked and taken aback.