James dozed off after he finished his coconut. Benefitting from my stump’s constant trickle of mana, I started practicing with my mana screw again. It’d probably be more accurate to just call it a drill, but I didn’t know what those were yet.

  I hadn’t been able to properly appreciate the design of a screw and screwdriver based purely on James’s understanding of the latter, but I started to get a better sense for the logic of its design as I practiced. The rotating force at the tip of the screw helped to wear away at whatever you were trying to drill into, and the spiraling extrusions served to force the screw deeper into the object so long as it continued to spin. You probably already know that and don’t care, but I friggin love this stuff.

  I’d just about managed to successfully drill a hole through a piece of bark when I noticed that James had opened his eyes and was staring at me with a strange look on his face. Mana dissipated as my concentration broke, and he watched as the little vortex I’d been creating dispersed into nothing.

  “You know, a lot of the past day or so has felt like a dream,” he said, his voice soft and distant. “Parts of it feel real, and then it all seems to fade away for a bit.”

  He stared blankly at where I’d been drilling for another moment, seeming a little disturbed for some reason.

  “It feels real right now though,” he said.

  Noticing that he wasn’t standing up, I scuttled off of my tree stump, punched a hole in another coconut, and offered it to him. He still looked pretty exhausted, but it seemed as though we might be about ready to have a substantive conversation.

  “We have stories where I’m from,” James started between sips of water. “Fantasies. Depressed people wind up in alternate universes and go on grand adventures. It’s a pretty popular genre considering the ongoing meaning crisis.”

  There was another word in there that didn’t mean what it was supposed to. Another big one.

  “I was happy though,” he said, solemnly. “It’s not supposed to happen to happy people.”

  I was surprised to see a tear form in the corner of his eye. It seemed strange to me, to think that his body would let that water go to waste given the state he was in. To think that a tear was that important to a person. I tried to ignore it for the moment, focusing on a bigger question.

  “I’m not sure I understand that word you used,” I said. “Universe. To me, it just means everything.”

  He chuckled. “I was pretty sure it meant everything too,” he said. “All of the planets going around all the stars in all of the galaxies. Now…”

  He took a shaky breath. “Now it’s just distance,” he choked, struggling to maintain his composure.

  It’s funny. In all of two sentences I’d learned that this shirtless, mana stripped, half dead man in front of me knew what the world looked like. Well, his world anyway. He had in his head a map of the stars drawn from beyond the edge of the galaxy, as if painted by the hand of God. It suddenly seemed that this sickly cripple was a well of knowledge so deep that I might never reach the bottom of it, and I think my spirit might have left my body a little at the revelation.

  In retrospect though, what I remember most clearly isn’t what he meant by planets, stars, and galaxies. In the moment, they were all that mattered to me. I felt as if I’d stumbled onto the beginning of an endless journey wrought with wonders I never could have dared to dream.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  To James though, even the universe seemed like a relatively small thing. All of that stuff was captured in his words, but when he said ‘everything,’ he didn’t really mean any of it. It was just an afterthought to him.

  When James said everything, it was all captured in the eyes of a child. His daughter. Baby Sophie, nestled in her mother’s loving embrace with something bigger than a universe peeking out from behind the windows of her soul.

  When he said distance, it seemed as an endless void between him and his everything, and yet, it was something he clearly meant to cross. Far be it from me or anyone else to stand in his way.

  I can’t say I understood much of that in the moment though. It was difficult to process it all. I was filled with questions I had no idea how to ask, struggling to grasp emotions I’d never felt before. My forelegs twitched, an instinctual response urging me to rile up defensively, but there wasn’t actually a threat. It was all just… a lot.

  Slowly, my legs grew tense, curling inward until they were hugging my body as I took it all in. James watched in concern as I came to rest upon the sand, my fuzz sticking up with tension. Even with everything he was going through, he still had enough compassion in him to see the distress in a completely different species.

  “Are you okay,” he asked, giving me something to latch onto apart from all of the revelations.

  “I’ll be alright,” I said, slowly starting to relax. “Just a bit of backlash from my magic.”

  James, being the loveable idiot that he was, looked down at his coconut in shame.

  “It’s not that!” I said quickly. “That was nothing, it’s just…”

  I took a moment to consider how to explain myself. Would James freak out if he knew how well I understood every word that came out of his mouth? Would it scare him? Honestly, it’d probably be a pretty small thing to him compared to everything else that was going on, but those little problems were easier to consider than the universe in that moment.

  “I understand things,” I started to explain. “I don’t think it’s normal for my species, but it’s how I know how to talk the way I do. I get bits of the meanings behind words when people say them and I…”

  I hesitated, unsure exactly where to go from there.

  “I didn’t know what the world looked like,” I said after a moment, thinking of that pretty blue ball that came with James’s understanding of a planet. It felt strange to acknowledge what that was. To see a whole world, and to have it look so small. Even that was a big revelation, but focusing on it helped me to start sorting through everything properly, going through the meanings one by one.

  “It’s a lot to take in,” I whispered.

  James still looked apologetic, but he didn’t seem to know what to say. I felt bad for making him feel like he needed to comfort me with everything he was clearly going through. I can’t say I entirely understood everything he’d said, but one thing had seemed pretty clear. As best James could tell, he was a long, long way from home.

  Slowly but surely, the tension started to fade away. The things I’d learned shrank from overwhelming to merely awe inspiring. I pushed myself off of the ground and started crawling back towards my stump. I paused as I re-examined the state James was in.

  “Do you… need anything else right now?” I asked, wincing a bit at the cuts and scrapes covering his arms and feet. “I can try to find you some food, then work on making you some clothes.”

  James gave me a sad smile. “I’d really appreciate that Zeek,” he said. “I like to think I’ll find some way to return the favor when everything stops hurting.”

  It was a little hard to tell what kind of pain he was talking about. As I set off into the jungle once more, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was strange how easily I accepted that little promise of his. Was it simply because he was weak? Was it because he seemed to be from a different, perhaps kinder world? Was it just because he had a fabulous pair of shorts?

  I wasn’t sure why, and it was frightening to an extent, but James just seemed like such an easy man to trust. Maybe it was really because, deep down, I thought I already knew how he would betray me.

  I couldn’t escape that little island. He had to. I tried not to think too hard about what that meant, but I can’t say it didn’t make things simpler.

  I hummed as I searched the island, keeping an eye out for anything that seemed like some kind of fruit. Although, I suppose you might consider it more like a dance. It’s hard to describe the sounds I made, and I doubt you’d understand if I tried. The Xikirix have a number of dances, and I’d practiced them before when I got bored. This was the first time I tried making up my own.