Quote:
Heat Sick (9) : The temperature is unbearable. Heatwaves have made it impossible to enjoy some of these otherwise perfect daysâand they seem to be having as much of an effect on the City as they are on the people.
Strange tears are appearing throughout the city, as though something has clawed right through reality. Sometimes you canât see them, but you can feel themâand the sweet relief of a cold gust of air billowing through the crack. The rifts mostly appear transparent but if you peek in at just the right angle you might see a terrifyingly dark realm. Sometimes items vanish near these weird tears, and sometimes people do as well. Items might be found thrown across the room or across town, or not at all. Thankfully, nobody seems to disappear for long; they always wake up unconscious somewhere else. Sometimes, they donât remember anything except for a cold breeze. Sometimes they say they were stuck in a strange, dark realm where they heard monstrous wails and saw strange little imp-like creatures scurrying around them. Thankfully, they are ejected before harm can come to them, but the realm is frigid and frightening.
Doctors are saying itâs heat exhaustion and that delusions and wandering are common, so they advise staying indoors and staying hydrated.
Strange tears are appearing throughout the city, as though something has clawed right through reality. Sometimes you canât see them, but you can feel themâand the sweet relief of a cold gust of air billowing through the crack. The rifts mostly appear transparent but if you peek in at just the right angle you might see a terrifyingly dark realm. Sometimes items vanish near these weird tears, and sometimes people do as well. Items might be found thrown across the room or across town, or not at all. Thankfully, nobody seems to disappear for long; they always wake up unconscious somewhere else. Sometimes, they donât remember anything except for a cold breeze. Sometimes they say they were stuck in a strange, dark realm where they heard monstrous wails and saw strange little imp-like creatures scurrying around them. Thankfully, they are ejected before harm can come to them, but the realm is frigid and frightening.
Doctors are saying itâs heat exhaustion and that delusions and wandering are common, so they advise staying indoors and staying hydrated.
A lot of people on Earth were stupid. That much had become perfectly apparent to Corvina in the month that heâd spent here. Aside from Shuangxu, he didnât know if anybody on this planet truly had any brains in their heads. Certainly none of Shuangxuâs opponents in the computer battles had any brains whatsoever, or else they would have admitted that Shuangxu was right and given up any attempts at pretending otherwise. They would not have forced him to thrash them to within an inch of their lives with his vicious, vicious words and unimpeachable arguments about why they were wrong.
Corvina didnât entirely understand the computer battles in which Shuangxu partook. Heâd asked some, mostly because he loved listening to Shuangxu talk about things he enjoyedâa privilege Corvina did not want to take for granted again, after the nonsense with Dunnottar had made him nearly lose itâbut a lot of the battles didnât make sense to Corvina. What Shuangxu and his enemies inside the computer were fighting about didnât make sense, though Corvina had sort of gleaned that popular stories and narrative games were often involved in the arguments. Even with that fact accepted, he largely failed to understand the specifics about those stories or what it all meant or why Karlach, the largest companion, did not simply snap Mizoraâs spine as she apparently well deserved.
But it was of little consequence right now.
Tonight, Shuangxu had been busy with one of his sessions playing games and talking to people while doing so, and Corvina had wanted to do something for him. Cooking seemed like a good idea, but Shuangxu didnât have very much that he didnât order in (or that wasnât Huohuoâs food, something humans likely didnât enjoy). Compounding the issue there, Corvina was still learning his way around the state of Twenty-First Century Terran English as a written language, and so many of the instructions for what to do in the kitchen were written in that still only somewhat familiar script. Trying to do anything too complicated in the kitchen might have started a fire and Shuangxu definitely would have been upset about that, rightfully so.
Instead, Corvina had gone out with the intent of bringing something home for ShuangxuâŠâŠbut aside from the unwillingness of so many on this planet to not stare at people whoâd come from other worlds to the point that it felt insulting, CorvinaâŠâŠdidnât entirely understand how the commerce on this planet worked. He knew that Shuangxu had little plastic cards that apparently worked as well as money, but Corvina had not thought to bring them with him. The head and the humidity cleaved tight to his skin as he stalked through the streets of Destiny City, wondering if he might find something worth taking home without needing to pay for it. Or perhaps he could find the materials to make something.
Several of the civilians he passed while looking for said materialsâfabric, mostlyâCorvina thought there had to be something wrong with them. They moaned and groaned, wearing hardly any clothing or very breathable fabrics but sweating buckets nevertheless. How fragile were human beings, acting so undignified as this over a heat that was temperate at best (to Corvina, whose world had never done anything halfway but had traded in extremes, whether that meant snowstorms burying the capital for six weeksâ time or scorching heat waves that wouldâve made the current weather in Destiny City feel like a perfectly pleasant day in early spring)?
When Corvina finally found his quarry, it was in an alleyway beside some shop that seemed to sell clothing and where the air felt somewhat cooler than the rest of the city (Shuangxu, he thought, might worry about Corvina going out in the heat even if Corvina could withstand anything). Goodwill didnât make sense to Corvina as a name, but it didnât matter. What mattered was that he found several plastic bags full of clothing and fabric in a dumpster (as well as a little rainbow-colored charm). Someone walked by while he was rifling through them, an older woman, throwing judgmental glances his way as she passed. But she didnât dissuade Corvina any. If he had fabric, he could do his work. Some of it might have needed cleaning, but that was okay. Corvina could manage that just fine.
A sound like something ripping and tearing made him perk up. Cold air rushed through behind him. When Corvina looked around, the old woman was gone, but with no signs where she might have left for.
Hmph. Well, if something had happened to her, then it served her right for having had the audacity to sneer at him.
Daexxkie
