065. Metamorphosis, 7

(Zeslinry)

M - I remember my brother teaching me mathematics. I remember my parents... But details fade fast. And at some point, even their faces. Even...

Z - It's okay I think. You had to prioritize what to remember and focus on. And it was the right choice to live on.

M - I think you're right.

Myls has some young smiles for me.

She spins her handgun around, almost joyfully. She's a little playful.

Another day is at its end. Our dream home is surely just a few days ahead now, waiting to be found.

Z - So, were you able to train using it then, this gun?

M - I was. Until my shoulders couldn't even. It was in another old military base.

~

Myls stumbled over an old kingdom military camp along her rural way.

A place typical, with building of another age, mostly semi-cylindrical on the surface, and extending sometimes into deep shelters below. The base was underground, along with its warehouses.

Like everything else, this had been long scuttled, abandoned and stripped of anything valuable.

But Myls realizing what this empty place without plague had been, sought to seize that chance.

She looked for the one underground building that might have a firing range for her. Anywhere outside could have been used, but she wanted to keep herself discreet still. So she entered dark empty warehouses with this arching ceiling.

Stairs heading below were rusty or dusty. She could hear her steps.

Sometimes Myls stopped, just to listen, to make sure she was indeed alone.

And she ventured into these depths of an almost foreign past.

Looking not for treasures but shelter and muffling the sounds of her handgun.

A temporary home where she could train safely.

Rats were fleeing from her along the way. At least at first glance, she thought they had been rats. Critters were living down there but wary of her, as would be normally.

She looked through these long abandoned underground little cities, searching for the right place she had in mind. She didn't find it precisely. But she found a chunk of shoe polish and waxes. She used it to stain her clothes, to better protect her against rain water, and also to draw targets against a wall.

The right place ended up being a warehouse deep underground, pristine empty. It would do the job for her.

The sounds of her steps and voice were reasonably muffled by the walls there. It didn't echo nearly as much as everywhere else in the base, and she had a wide open space offered to her.

So after checking properly all the ways in and out, she locked herself inside from the two main ways she had found. Then she trained with the bullets she felt she reasonably could spare in the exercise.

The first shocks were terrible to her.

The shots went everywhere. The noise was hurting her as much as the recoil hitting her shoulders and pushing back her whole body like a strong punch.

Eventually she might be able to shoot with only one hand, if she was ready to twirl along the movement induced by the recoil into her arm. This was a kind of dancing, and she found it a little fun.

However if she wanted to shoot multiple times a clear but tiny target in front of her, she needed instead to tense and slouch herself, readying her two hands and entire body to hold the punches.

Myls shot a few more bullets, holding the weapon up until her arms were numb.

Her ears were ringing loudly, despite the foam she had stuck inside them.

Her head was in vertigo, her smell impaired. All her senses were shaken and tired.

But as she breathed and emptied her ears, she heard something else. An alarming sound of voices and more getting closer.

Myls packed and fled immediately toward the opposite exit at the other end of the warehouse, before being found.

She couldn't quite recognize the words being likely spoken far back. Her first instincts had kicked in already, and she ran through the dark tunnel leading to another underground building.

She reached a door usually shut, at the bottom of which weird things were aggregating. She jumped back in terror as she saw that mass. The critters she had thought being rats were now stuck and gluing to each other there, unable to pass through the hole they usually crawled through.

Things were turning messy and gooey for them. Myls stood there in horror, trapped between two dangers she would have much preferred fleeing.

She tried to approach the door to open it and flee, but couldn't. The mass turning monstrous was wriggling ominously at her feet.

So she had to run back to the other wat, soon likely to stumble against some people on her way.

I wondered what Myls's parents would have taught her, about such dilemmas and gambling between the lesser of two evils.

She wondered, thinking fast, whether she should put an act, try to hide, or just attack.

Myls panicked as people were clearly climbing down the stairs before her. She wouldn't avoid them.

A small group bearing weapons she could tell from the smell was approaching, and she could already see their torchlights.

Help? Threat? Sneak attack? Play?

Myls had her highlight at the last moment and rushed back toward the other end.

She felt that her heart might explode as she was almost caught.

She reached the door and drew her weapon. Not to shoot the beast directly, unable to predict how it would react to a direct attack; but beside it, to scare it away.

The shot rang, echoing painfully. The transforming mass did jolt away from the door after the flash and detonation. It fled.

Myls rushed despite the confusion, opening the door and escaping, leaving the yells and other noises behind.

She ran to exhaustion, up the stairs and outside soon.

She gasped, trembling all over and in pain, when she reached the air outside. It was a relief under the light.

The group investigating had scattered however on arrival, leaving their car and a couple more people there, now gazing at her in surprise.

Myls and the other person were afraid of each other. She hesitated again. So did they.

She stepped aside and ran away. No matter what further noises or yells would ensue.

Myls fled into the woods nearby and didn't look back.

~

I listened to Myls's monotone recollection with mixed feelings. I didn't really know what to make of it or what to say.

M - You don't ask me?

Z - Asking you what?

She pointed at me. What about me? I get it.

Z - Because I didn't scare you?

M - That helped but no. It's how you behaved.

Our meeting and rapid good understanding of each other did feel incredibly lucky. At such point we'd want to call it fate. It was the right time and place for both of us, luckily.

I recall that she approached me on that morning, and I didn't act surprised. Nor was she.

We just met calmly, as if nothing else new or abnormal had been coming our ways recently.

Just another day simply?

We were like minded in some aspects, and it was the lucky right time and place. Along her journey, she had many dice rolls. I think I was a good one ending quite a streak of spooky throws.

And I felt a little the same.

~