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

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[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 it, he had no idea. Kirk hadn't yet extinguished his hope that the "released" patients were residing somewhere near the Institute - but if not that, he'd accept finding the mysterious voice on the radio, or whatever group he was affiliated with.

Either way, they had to get moving first. Following the river was a solid idea - better, at least, than wandering randomly among the trees - but water also meant increased chances of running into some kind of nightmare animal. (That is, assuming Landel's monsters drank water, and not blood or something else suitably horrifying...) Kirk looked back and forth along the river, trying to decide which direction to take, and it was probably that lack of attention which caused him to lose his footing at the top of the bank. "Ah-!" He stumbled, but managed to grab Spock's arm before he tumbled back towards the river. Smooth, Jim.

"Sorry," Kirk apologized, letting go once he'd righted himself.

[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.

He would have thought the chances of that were incredibly low but there you had it.

Ahead of them, Kirk straightened up, looking around to decide where to go. It was that moment that nearly got him dunked. He started to stumble into the river, feet slipping on the bank. He only just managed to avoid getting soaked by just barely catching Spock's arm in time.

"You okay there?" McCoy called. The river didn't look like any Mississippi but looks could be deceiving in terms of depth and whatever was in that water. It didn't look like there was a strong current, but McCoy was still managing to summon up all sorts of things to make up for it, like leeches and snakes. Taking a tumble into cold water in the middle of the night was also something they wanted to avoid while they were at it.