Conscious, Conscientious

Deon thudded onto his stomach with a grunt.

“You lose—” began Skrili.

“NOT THIS TIME!!!” Deon screamed desperately. He propelled himself to his feet and dashed at Skrili, who hadn’t expected him to rebound so quickly and was hurrying to get into a defensive stance.

While running, Deon imagined three wood plank attacks around Skrili, positioning them at varying heights to keep her from dodging them. He neared her and launched a fist, and at the same time he made the three planks swing at her.

Skrili threw herself at the ground, her legs in a flexible split and her head down. Deon’s punch and all three of his plank attacks missed completely. He de-imagined the wood, but in the same instant Skrili spun on the ground, tripping him with her leg. He fell forward while trying to maintain balance, but she jumped up and knocked him over with a swift palm to his rib.

He rolled to a stop and once again lay on his stomach.

Skrili crossed her arms. “As I was saying, you lose…once again—but at least you tried a little harder this time.”

Hearing Skrili declare that he had lost had become customary to Deon’s ears. By now, they had been going at it consistently for almost three hours straight. And still, he had not even come close to beating Skrili—let alone hit her once.

While Deon wanted to believe his soreness from his defeat against Pang gave Skrili an advantage, he recognized she had also been through a long day of fighting: Miranda, Xavier, and Phillip were all formidable opponents in a single day, and yet she could still fight with the same vigor—not to mention the seamlessness of all her techniques. It only urged Deon to keep coming back harder than before.

Deon’s stomach moaned deeply, but he ignored it. They had fought straight through lunchtime, but neither had much available to eat anyway, and Deon was too focused. It was time to make her spill the secret of her bag’s contents. With a determined push, he stood back up and faced Skrili. “I’ll get you this time,” he told her.

“Then do it.”

Deon conjured up another familiar technique: the giant bug wings. The wings appeared above his head with the vine handle hanging down in front of him. He grasped it tightly with both hands, and mentally commanded the contraption to lift off. The wings flapped and produced their obnoxious buzzing noise as they carried him higher and higher. Skrili watched him blankly as he ascended. Eventually Deon was well above the ground, dangling amongst tall tree branches.

“How do you plan on attacking me now?” he taunted.

Skrili said nothing.

Feeling confident, Deon proceeded to imagine heavy, leather balls all around Skrili. They were similar to the ones he had tried to use against Pang earlier, but these were a bit lighter for safety. Once about twenty leather balls were in place, Deon sent them speedily at Skrili, one by one.

She immediately began a series of impressive dodges: spinning, ducking, sidestepping, and just about anything else that would help her avoid these close-call attacks…and once again, Deon found himself unable to even touch her.

Disgruntled, he added another element to his technique: he started imagining more leather balls as the other ones were fading. Now Deon was shooting some attacks (which Skrili continued to successfully evade) and preparing more at the same time. It took a lot of concentration at first, but eventually he got the hang of it—though something felt off.

Why do I feel like I’m forgetting something? Deon wondered. All of the sudden, he began falling out of the air. He hastily reached for where his bug wing contraption was supposed to be, but felt nothing—he had forgotten about it, and thus accidentally imagined it away.

Shouting, he plummeted towards the ground below and in a panic, imagined a second bug wing contraption whose wings were even stronger. Just as he was sure to slam against the earth, the device appeared and he grabbed hold of it for dear life. The deafening buzz sounded as it stopped Deon’s progress and began to slowly yank him back upward.

Just as Deon was sighing over the fact that he avoided breaking every bone in his body, he looked forward and noticed Skrili watching him—since he had stopped focusing on the leather balls, they had all vanished.

Oh, come on! he cried in his mind.

Skrili reached for her hair and ripped out her special black elastic band: same one strong enough to break the strings on Miranda’s guitar earlier that day. Her long hair fell down gracefully as she pointed the small weapon at Deon.

“Crap—Fly faster, ya stupid wings!!” Deon bellowed to his invention. Looking up at it, he noticed that in his hurrying he not only made the bug wings stronger, but the entire contraption larger and thus, heavier. It lazily heaved him upward, but not nearly high enough to avoid Skrili’s attack.

Skrili released the elastic and it whizzed at Deon like an angry hornet. With a SNAP! it stung him directly on the hand, causing him to lose grip. Deon now hung from the bug wings with one hand, slowly ascending higher. Since all his weight shifted to one side of the handle, the bug wings tilted and started moving sideways.

Skrili continued her pursuit. She raced towards the dangling Deon with her incredible speed and launched herself into the air, her foot aimed at his stomach.

“Enough with the kicking!” yelled Deon. As Skrili’s foot was about to reach him, he turned with a jerk—repositioning just enough for her to miss. Seeing the opportunity, Deon quickly grabbed hold of her ankle and held on tightly. Startled, Skrili found herself swinging and hanging upside down.

The bug wings dipped to become even more lopsided, now slowly rotating in a circle. Due to the added weight, its ascent stopped and it levitated at a consistent height—which at this point, was a dangerous distance from the ground.

Deon struggled to hold on to both the bug wing handle in one hand and Skrili’s ankle in the other. Though he felt like he was going to split in half, he tried to hide the pain.

“It looks like this is it, Skrili,” he taunted through gritted teeth. “One long drop to the ground and you’ll be done! You might as well just say you surrender.”

Still oddly calm as always, Skrili observed the distance between her and the surface of the woods. Then she looked up to Deon. “Go ahead, drop me,” she said.

Deon was confused at her response, but then he realized what she was hoping for: if he let her go, the pain from hitting the ground would just trigger her Power Rebound. “Yeah, right! I see what you’re up to!” he declared. “There’s no way I’m dropping you!”

“Well I’m not surrendering. So if you don’t figure something else out, we’ll be here awhile,” Skrili pointed out.

Darnit—she’s right! agreed Deon. But what other choices do I have? Hmm…I could give the bug wings even more speed, wait for it to fly near the trees, and toss her at one…No, that could also give her a Power Rebound. Wait, I’ve got it!

“Of course we’ll be here awhile,” he said. “I’m just gonna keep holding you upside down until the blood rushes to your head and you pass out!”

Skrili’s eyes half-closed with annoyance. “How classy of you,” she commented sardonically.

“It doesn’t have to be classy, it just has to work—whoa!” Deon was taken by surprise when Skrili began shaking her leg back and forth in an attempt to free it. “Stop it!” Deon cried. “There’s no wiggling you way out of this!”

Yet her ‘wiggling’ was working: Skrili’s ankle began to slip from his hand. Soon enough, her foot broke through and she dropped towards the ground.

“NO! Um…GIANT PILLOW!!!” Deon bellowed, and instantly an enormous, soft pillow poofed into existence on the ground below Skrili. She sunk safely into the sponginess of the gigantic cushion. Instantly Skrili attempted to stand, but the pillow was so dense and squishy that it trapped her in place, and she sunk back down.

Meanwhile, Deon was clinging desperately onto the bug wing handle: now his grip on this was slipping, as well. No, no, no! Deon pleaded, but it was no use—he lost hold.

Once again Deon fell, but since he hadn’t been as high in the air as before, he had no time to re-imagine the bug wings. Luckily, Deon also sunk into the oversized pillow, beside Skrili. The softness enveloped him, and almost convinced him to just forget the fight and take a nap. But he knew he couldn’t stop yet—with Skrili trapped, now was perhaps his only chance.

Deon de-imagined his half of the pillow, thus freeing himself as he dropped onto the dirt and leaves. If Skrili couldn’t escape the pillow, the victory was his!

“Having a little trouble there, Skrili?” he called from the ground.

“…Maybe…” she admitted reluctantly.

“Then it looks like I win!” Deon gave himself a high-five.

“You just have to stand up,” Skrili said.

“Huh?”

“If you can’t move either, then this is a draw. Stand up and take the win.”

Deon laughed. “Oh, well that’s no big deal, I can…uh…” He tried lifting himself, but it appeared his body had reached its limit again. His muscles and joints throbbed from the hours of getting kicked, punched, and thrown to the ground—on top of the injuries he sustained from Pang. “Um…”

“You ran out of strength again, didn’t you?” asked Skrili.

“Well…”

“Then it’s a draw.”

“Darn.”

Deon and Skrili continued to lay there, motionless and wordless. Though Deon still didn’t end up truly beating Skrili, he took pride in the fact that at least he finally managed to stand a chance against her for a while, as opposed to an immediate defeat. He decided to focus on this slight achievement while waiting for his strength to return.

“…Are you planning on letting me out of this thing?” Skrili called after a while.

“Oh, right.”

~~~

Lammy looked up to the sky as he walked. Despite the sun poking through a spot in the clouds, it couldn’t fend off the ever-brisk air. The wind felt like it was cutting right through his face. Thankfully, the coat, pants, and boots the village gifted him and Zayza kept the rest of his body warm—that, and the fact that they had been hiking for hours now.

Snow was crunching all around him and Zayza, underneath the feet of villagers from Our Snowy Village. Most of the villagers, aside from very young children and the elderly, decided to travel to the North Mountains alongside the duo to see them off.

One man pulled the Chief along the snowy path in a wooden sled, while several women and men, including Folel, Foler, and Felix, were a short distance behind, working together to lug an enormous contraption. It was the key to kick-starting Lammy and Zayza’s journey, and the source of Lammy’s constant apprehension: the catapult.

To Lammy’s dismay, Opelfine, the village inventor, was able to successfully complete his catapult overnight with help from the triplets. This meant the plan the village had promised them last night was now a reality: they were about to try launching Lammy and Zayza through the air, into the North Mountains.

Opelfine insisted the catapult would shoot them all the way to one of the peaks, but just one look at their target filled Lammy with doubt. The colossal bluish mountains dominated the sky, with the clouds towards the top concealing their true height.

Lammy glanced back at the catapult and shuddered for the hundredth time since the day began.

The machine was slightly crude in appearance with the wood still looking merely like parts of a tree, but it appeared at least moderately stable. It featured a large square base made of tree trunks, spanning almost the area of an igloo, and had four dense wooden poles on each corner that held up a series of planks.

From this base arose what resembled a giant spoon that stood far taller than any building in Tailpiece. Its arm consisted of malleable tree branches twisted and knotted together, which were craftily attached to a giant ice-carved bowl at the top where Lammy and Zayza would sit. A series of pillows served as a cushion inside the bowl, and three large ropes hung down from the top of it to the ground.

Lammy had to admit: he was impressed that a small man like Opelfine could throw this together so fast. But it still didn’t make him feel any better about having to use it.

A melody sprouted from a couple of energetic villagers at the front of the march, and the rest of the crowd quickly joined in: “Lammy and Zayza! They’re the ones who saved us! Shoot them to the Mountains! Shoot them to the heavens!” It grew until nobody could sing louder, and then collapsed into applause and cheering.

Lammy scratched his head and blushed. Do we really deserve all this attention? he questioned. At the same time, I don’t want to look like I don’t appreciate it…he mustered up his best attempt at a smile, despite feeling fairly certain his new admirers were about to lunge him to his death.

Zayza laughed and waved to the cheerful villagers. “They’re all so sweet, Lammy,” she said, but once she looked at him her eyes widened. “Um…are you alright?”

“Uh…yeah. I—I am smiling, aren’t I?”

“Oh, I didn’t know that’s a smile…you look, to be honest, like you’re having trouble…relieving yourself…” the end of Zayza’s response was a whisper.

Lammy sighed. “I guess I’m just freaking out a bit. This catapult doesn’t seem like the best idea…I mean, aren’t you nervous about all this?”

“Of course,” Zayza confirmed calmly.

…Could have fooled me…Lammy thought after she provided no further elaboration.

“I suppose I’m just grateful,” she added, seeming to sense Lammy’s skepticism. “We did something to help these kind people, and in return they’re doing whatever they can to help us. It might be a bit…dangerous…but if it brings them this much joy to feel like they’re returning the favor, I would hate to take it from them.”

Giving it some more thought, Lammy nodded. “Well, these people are really sweet. And hey, maybe it’ll actually be pretty safe!”

“Triplets! Don’t push too hard!” They heard Opelfine yell from behind the catapult. “If that part comes even slightly out of place, Lammy and Zayza will be goners!”

Zayza let out a nervous laugh.

~

After another hour or so, the crowd finally arrived at the foot of the North Mountains. They only seemed even more daunting up close: several steep slopes and rocky hills fenced off the bottom of the colossal incline, providing no clear path without treacherous climbing. Lammy figured this was probably why the villagers insisted on catapulting them over these obstacles. On top of this, tall, dark green trees heavily populated the mass and hid any potential wildlife roaming the area.

Most interestingly, and perhaps most unsettlingly, a thick misty fog cast a veil on the mountain beyond the initial few hills and slopes. Lammy fixed his eyes on the fog, realizing he wasn’t ready to find out how much more perilous his journey was about to become beyond it.

Yet at the same time, he knew he needed to keep moving. He needed to reach his mother—no matter how far she was—and make sure she was safe.

“Let the preparations begin!” the Chief declared, standing from his sled and facing everyone. The crowd answered with hearty cheers. Lammy wondered how the villagers still had this much energy after hours of hiking in the snow; he was already exhausted.

Lammy and Zayza sat to the side as they watched the triplets and several villagers remove the catapult from the four sleds they had been carrying it on, and cautiously position it at the beginning of the mountain. The contraption creaked and swayed, which didn’t help Lammy’s anxiety.

“Now, before we part ways,” began the Chief, “We understand that a very long and demanding travel awaits you. Because of this, our villagers have agreed to put together bags filled with anything you might need: clothes, water, food, sleeping bags, and other essentials. There is one for each of you.”

Two men walked over to Lammy and Zayza, each carrying a large bag. They placed the bags before them, briefly expressed their gratitude, and rejoined the crowd. Both bags were black and bulky—big enough to contain plenty of supplies, but small enough for Lammy and Zayza to each strap one around their backs.

“Wow…Thank you,” Lammy said. Admittedly, it hadn’t even occurred to him until then that he and Zayza were without supplies for survival. He had never travelled beyond the simple confines of Tailpiece, so he had no idea what this sort of adventure entailed.

“And now,” the Chief started, “let me give you both a proper sending-off.” He raised his hands to the sky and closed his eyes. “By the power of the Great Spirit of the Mountains, may you promising and heroic youth find wisdom and meaning in your travels. May your humble spirits bless everywhere you go and may your gifts—not just your consciousness gifts, but also the beauty of who you both are—be used to bring justice to wherever you tread. And always know that Our Snowy Village is your ever-grateful and ever-supportive second home.”

He reopened his eyes and looked upon Lammy and Zayza with a deep warmth they didn’t quite understand. The Chief then faced Opelfine. “Shall we?” he asked.

Opelfine nodded. “Everything is in place, Chief.”

“Then it is time for the launch!”

The crowd cheered once more, watching eagerly. Opelfine had the brothers grab the ropes hanging from the top of the catapult. Together, with a great deal of strength, they pulled them down. The pliable wood squeaked as it bent backwards, pulling the icy spoon of the catapult back. Eventually they brought it close to the ground, and with their impressive power, they wrapped the loops of the ropes to three wooden anchors they had dug into the ground below the snow.

Meanwhile, Opelfine instructed Lammy and Zayza to strap their travel bags to their backs. He then gave Lammy another smaller bag with a string hanging from it. “This is the parachute,” Opelfine explained, “which I had originally made for another invention months ago…and come to think of it, that invention was a complete disaster. Well anyway, when you start to feel yourself falling, pull the string and it’ll shoot out. You’ll float gently to the ground together.”

Somehow I feel like it’s not supposed to be that simple, Lammy thought while strapping this backpack on top of the other one. He made sure the string dangled close to his hand.

Opelfine guided them over to the bowl of the catapult, and together they entered, lying against their bags. Lammy felt Opelfine tie the strings on the fronts of each supply bag to each other, linking them.

Waiting, Lammy looked up at the gray sky as his heart repeatedly threw itself against his chest, seemingly in an attempt to break free and avoid this terrifying experience. He looked beside him at Zayza, who was still smiling calmly—though he noticed she hadn’t spoken in quite a while.

“You ready for this?” he asked shakily.

“You know, I forgot to mention earlier…” she responded, still staring ahead unblinkingly. “Last night in the Dream World, I found another memory.”

“Oh, good! What was it?”

“…My biggest fear is of falling to my death…”

“…Oh.”

Opelfine patted both backpacks, and then lowered himself from the bowl. “They’re ready when you are, boys,” he told the triplets.

“Lammy and Zayza! I’m so sorry we didn’t really get to talk much on our final day together,” Folel said from behind them. “You’re both awesome. Thank you for saving our village.”

“Yeah,” agreed Foler. “Lammy, you’re a much braver kid than you think. And you’re quick-witted—trust me, I know. Never lose sight of that.”

Lammy smiled. “I’ll miss you guys.”

“And Zayza,” Foler added, “You’ll find all your memories again. You deserve it.”

“Well I know for sure that I’ll never forget you two,” said Zayza.

The villagers picked up on the fact that this was the last moment before the launch, and began shouting their heartfelt goodbyes. Lammy and Zayza shyly lifted up a hand and waved.

“Anything to add, Felix?” the twins offered.

“Nope,” said Felix. “I think Zayza—and the kid—better get into the mountains sooner than later…”

Something about his tone unsettled Lammy, but he was too nervous about everything else to dwell on it.

“Alright! Oh, one last thing, friends,” Folel and Foler said. “Quit worrying about everything!” With that, Lammy suddenly felt wind shooting at him and an uncomfortable pressing sensation filled his whole body. Before he knew it, he and Zayza were soaring through the air.

Lammy tried to scream, but they were rocketing against the wind so fast that it snatched his voice right from his mouth. The skin on his face pushed back as if someone was pressing their hands against it, and his eyes watered ceaselessly. Soon all he could see was gray and his entire body felt soaked; he figured by now they must have reached the fog. Despite the discomfort of rapidly flying above the ground, Lammy found an unexpected sense of reassurance knowing that Opelfine’s catapult actually worked.

However, to his expectation, it didn’t work as well as Opelfine promised. Within a moment, Lammy could feel them beginning to descend already—the peak of the mountain would have to wait.

“Parachute?!” Zayza requested.

“Right!” Lammy reached for the string and pulled it, instantly hearing the chute shoot from the backpack. He was relieved that this chaotic flight was about to end with a peaceful glide.

The only problem was: it didn’t end with a peaceful glide.

Confusion and fear swept over Lammy and Zayza as they felt themselves falling faster…and faster…and faster.

Soon, they were plunging full-speed. Lammy tried to see above him, and found that the parachute was swinging around rapidly in the wind—ripped in two.

Are you kidding me?!! he cried mentally. The pressing feeling in his gut returned as he and Zayza fell helplessly through the fog, which masked whatever unknown dangers awaited them below.

Finally catching his breath, Lammy screamed at the top of his lungs.