NIGHT 54: Forest

[sanguinario]

[From here.]Edward knew exactly where they were going, exactly how they were going there, and how it would end when they finally did. It helped that he wasn't slamming his foot down on the gas pedal of an Aston Martin before collapsing into the forest, but even standing still wasn't enough to prepare him for a new wave of the nausea he had

Comments

[hes_deadjim]

[From here with Kirk and Spock]

McCoy was just as surprised as Jim was when Spock swooped in and pulled him up. He was speechless in that second. He knew that Vulcans weren't too fond of physical contact, which generally meant you didn't go around touching Vulcans casually like you would a human. Spock usually had his hands clasped behind him, as if by doing so, he could somehow produce a force field an inch from his entire body. That combined with the general air about him tended to work. Spock just didn't touch people unless he absolutely had to and he didn't have to here at all.

What was he doing? McCoy found himself wishing this one was as predictable as the one he knew. Now his Spock was usually happy to let you get up on your own. Still, it was damned uncanny how similar they were. Spock was always fond of saying the same thing all the time

[dual_worlds]

Although Spock was certain that he'd drawn unwanted attention to himself by aiding McCoy in such a way, neither he nor Kirk saw any reason to comment on it. The fact they had important matters like the captain's health to discuss most likely helped in that regard. Furthermore, despite his own cultural upbringing, his gesture was perfectly acceptable by human standards. It made sense, then, that his colleagues would not see a need to outwardly question him during a time such as this. That was the scenario Spock had both wanted and anticipated, although he knew there had been a chance that their exchange just now wouldn't have gone so smoothly

[doneinthree]

It was a good thing Kirk had waited after finding his uniform before tackling the forest - while the boots provided by Landel's were durable enough, they clearly weren't made for hiking through rough terrain. He glanced over his shoulder a few times to check on Bones' progress, but the doctor seemed to be handling himself well enough, and at least Jim was confident that Spock would step in again if anything happened. So he focused most of his attention on navigation: if the ground was evening out the further they got from the Institute, the growing thickness of the trees made up for it.

"That might be it," said Kirk as he pushed aside a low-hanging branch. "I had to replace mine a couple of nights ago." For all the good that did now. The density of the forest would've been bad enough already without the fog, which ensured they could barely see six feet ahead of them. Actually, he couldn't remember a single night he'd ventured outside and not seen fog - if Landel's (or Aguilar's, he corrected himself) influence did extend outside out

[hes_deadjim]

Yes, yes, he agreed that they shouldn't cancel their plans every time the institute tried to pull a new one, but this was the Captain here. So if Jim had another fit, what was their solution? Because they'd stood around Jim and waited for it to pass and now they were going to keep traveling into possibly hostile territory and hope for the best

[dual_worlds]

Spock privately agreed that a flashlight was not the best bludgeoning device. Since he and the captain had weapons that were better suited for combat, he imagined that such a tactic would only be used as a last resort, in which case he couldn't say it was much of a "bright side" to anything. Of course, Kirk had a peculiar way of looking at any given situation, and so Spock realized that to argue with him on that point would likely turn into a debate concerning human colloquialisms. This was hardly the time or place for that, which was why he didn't add his own opinion to that exchange

[doneinthree]

At the river, Kirk wandered ahead, but still within earshot of Bones' grumbling. His lips were shaping another no doubt unappreciated suggestion when he noticed something glinting among the water-splashed rocks. "Hold on." He carefully picked his way down the sloping ground, silently ordering his brain to behave for five minutes - all he needed now was to have another attack and fall into the river. Kirk crouched to inspect the object: a metal spoon, scuffed and dirtied as if it had been discarded here years ago. He shined his flashlight around the rocks, but if there was any other evidence of sentient life in this stretch of forest, he couldn't find it.

"It's nothing," he said, straightening up again and making his way back to the others. "Just a spoon. But if it got washed up here by the river, Spock may right about there being a settlement around." That the spoon appeared to have been here for awhile suggested that any sort of settlement had to be at least some years old. Exactly what they would find when they came across

[hes_deadjim]

Jim seemed to catch sight of something. The Captain bent to inspect something, studied it, and then called back what it was.

A spoon? McCoy had hoped to find something a little more helpful about the nature of the place than an old spoon. The fact that it was a recognizable spoon, as if the inhabitants here just happened to develop the same tools they had back on Earth, was interesting though. Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development at work, even in whatever this planet or dimension was. Nice to know some things just didn't change. Some planets developed (nearly) the same as Earth had, although there were usually some small differences. What was surprising was how often it happened