I felt a delicate pressure push into my back repeatedly. A deep voice that I recognized followed it, urging me awake. In my sleepy state, I playfully swatted his hand away while groaning. Then the unexpected happened.

  He started tickling me...

  I hadn’t ever been ticklish before, my days in the–

  The thought slipped my mind. Before I could recall where I’d had the ticklishness trained out of me, the location left me. I could almost see some kind of green outfit? But that was it, nothing else, even that seemed foggy for some reason. But nevermind, it didn’t matter if I was ticklish before or not, because right now I was super ticklish.

  The gentle giant behind me tickled with all his might, and I couldn’t help but giggle wildly as I sat up. I mean, me, giggle? Even though I actively thought it to be strange, it actually struck me as completely normal for some reason. Weird.

  I giggled and squealed as the man continued to tickle me, hitting his big hands playfully. “Stop it!” A very girly voice squeaked out of my mouth. Well, my girly voice, that is. I’d avoided using it the whole time because of the language barrier, but it'd slipped out just now.

  To my surprise, the man did stop his tickle attack. I think it was mostly out of the shock that I had spoken, but nevertheless his plan to get me out of bed had succeeded.

  He backed up from the cot and motioned for me to come to him. I obeyed as I let my legs dangle over the side before dropping down onto them. Planting my feet solidly down on the ground before moving, I looked up at his smiling face.

  I ran over to him excitedly and waited for him to make a move, he obviously wanted me up for some reason. He turned and grabbed a glass of clear liquid from the box behind him, raising it up in front of me.

  I’d seen him pouring that into the wooden cups we’d been drinking from over the past couple days. In other words, it was just clean water in a jar. I wondered what he was doing for a moment before he began to speak.

  He pointed at the jar and said some word I didn’t understand. He kept repeating it in a similar manner to when he had told me his name earlier.

  Oh, I get it. He’s teaching me some of his language, it must mean water.

  I repeated the word back to him whenever he’d point at the jar, seeming to get the point across that I now understood that word.

  As soon as that was established, he moved to the next thing. Making an eating motion, he said the word for “food”. This continued on for a while, repeating the same steps for multiple other words. “Sand”, “home”, “sky”, “sun”, “day”, “night”, and “bed” were among them.

  With just these few words in my arsenal, I’d be able to get across quite a few needs and desires. It was quite useful. The last word he taught me was the word for, “what?” That seemed to be something of a feat in his eyes as he looked very proud of himself when I used the word to ask for yet another word. This continued for the rest of the day.

  Learning the language wasn’t the only task my little self was burdened with today though, I also had to learn the chores.

  Fair enough, I was freeloading in this guy’s tent and stealing his bed every night. The least I could do was a few chores, how hard could they really be anyway?

  ***

  Hard. They were very hard.

  I had no idea what to do with myself when it came to washing clothes or gardening. I felt like I knew how to do those things, but it wasn’t as easy as I had vaguely remembered it to be. Something like pushing a couple of buttons, not dunking each garment in water and scrubbing out any dirt myself.

  That was just washing the clothes, and I only washed my own clothes! Afterward, he had put the clothes on his little clothesline as well. I mean, I for sure couldn’t reach it!

  For clarity’s sake, Yaeleth gave me a big red jacket to wear while I waited for my clothes to dry. It hung over me, covering all the important bits, just barely not dragging on the ground.

  I didn’t get a break from my tireless work while my clothes were drying though, I had to help tend to the garden. Yaeleth helped me to fill a metal pail with water and carry it up to the little plot of dirt he had made.

  That thing was so heavy. Without Yaeleth keeping me from falling, I would’ve dumped the whole thing on the ground, wasting it. Of course, he did help me, which didn’t make the task easy, but did make it possible.

  After getting the pail up to the little vegetable garden, I set it down as Yaeleth gave me a congratulatory grin. It was like a proud dad looking at his daughter after she’d won first prize in some little kids' talent show or something.

  After setting it down, I got a good long look at the cute little patch of vegetables that Yaeleth had been growing. I had glanced at it previously, but I’d never really gotten time to truly inspect it before.

  The plants sprouted up in an unfamiliar way, splitting and reaching for both the sun and the shade, opposite directions from each other. A pale pink flower had yet to bloom completely on the shady side, whereas the sunny side was bare, revealing nothing but a green stalk.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  I pointed to the plant and asked Yaeleth, “what?”

  I got “Androva” as a response to that. Yaeleth then pointed at the two different sprouts and said, “Gurren”, and “Potato”. I recognized that last name and wondered if it was the same as the earthy round roots that I’d had in... where was that again? The name escaped me.

  Yaeleth dumped different amounts of water on each plant, making sure I was paying close attention. I was sure that he’d have me doing this whenever I was capable. Assuming that I was here for the long run, that is. It was looking more like it’d be that way by the minute; somehow, I didn’t hate the idea.

  After these few chores, we went back into the tent. Searching through a few boxes and not finding what he was looking for, Yaeleth turned to me and said some train of words mashed together. I did recognize the word, “food” in the midst of the sentence though, so I could guess what he’d been looking for.

  Yaeleth grabbed what looked to be some kind of primitive trap. I’d read that hunters in the pre-3000’s had used similar traps to catch rabbits and other small animals. Not that I'd remembered why or when I’d read such a thing, the knowledge was just kind of there, in my head.

  Mental dilemma aside, a physical dilemma was upon us. I’d pieced together that we had no food at all. I could’ve sworn we still had a few of those strange vegetables I’d seen in the boxes, but I guess maybe those weren’t food? Regardless, we were now out on a hunting trip of sorts, I followed as Yaeleth set his traps on various boulders, using a variety of things as bait.

  I mean, Yaeleth used all kinds of things. On some traps he used dirt, others some kind of stinky thing he’d pulled out of a jar, and others yet mushrooms. Vibrantly colored ones. Not only did he set the mushrooms in some of his traps, but he would snack on a few now and then, offering some to me as well.

  The mushrooms were identical to the ones that had put me in this predicament. At least, I thought so. I couldn’t quite remember anything from before parting with my ship.

  The Firebird. No, that wasn’t right. What was it? Firefly? Firestring? Firesloth? None of those sounded right to me. It took me a while of hard thinking, but I couldn’t come up with a single name that sounded familiar.

  Either way, Yaeleth seemed very smart about this desert. He clearly had a bunch of experience with it, there was no way he’d willingly ingest poison. With that thought comforting me, I indulged a bit in the ‘shrooms as well. They were so full of flavor and were honestly pretty filling.

  I didn’t think much of the mushrooms after that, I didn’t really experience any adverse effects, so obviously I must’ve been mistaken.

  We continued placing traps for a good long while. Yaeleth took this opportunity to teach me the word for, “tomorrow”. After doing this, he seemed to explain that we’d, “take tomorrow”. I assumed that meant we’d be collecting these traps up the next day, so it was time to head back now.

  My little legs ached from all the work they’d been putting in. I felt like obliging them in a much needed rest, but Yaeleth’s pace didn’t seem to be slowing much. I caught up to the big man and tugged on his pant leg.

  As he turned to look at me, I breathed heavily and sat down on the sandy ground. He seemed to understand my motion and repeated the action before saying another word. I could only assume that it meant, “tired”, but as the words got more intellectual, it became more of a guessing game.

  He got down on one knee, facing away from me, and put his hands out backwards. He then said, “Up!”

  I gladly accepted his offer to become my loyal steed for the remaining way back to the tent, I certainly didn’t want to walk all that way again.

  He didn’t let me slip off the whole way back to the tent, keeping me in the “piggyback ride” position the entire time. It was better than a princess carry, I suppose. Was it really though? The thought intruded.

  As I silently agreed with my second thought, I was set down on the ground lightly. My ride being finished must’ve meant that we’d arrived back at the tent. The sun was still a few hours away from setting completely, but it had begun its descent.

  Yaeleth grabbed me by my hand and led me back into the tent, where he told me to stay as he went outside. At this time of day, I wouldn’t follow him against his order as he was probably changing into night clothes.

  For whatever reason, I was highly averted to being in the same room with him as he changed, even though I’d done it so many times before with my unit from the, uh, that one place.

  My unit... huh, I completely spaced their names, trying to remember their faces. All I could remember was the foggy image of a cold, tiled room, the sound of spraying water filling it. I couldn’t remember the name of this place either, it was starting to get annoying to continue being confronted by memories that didn’t seem real. I wanted the vague visions to stop, but at the same time, I found some piece of myself was stuck in them. Somewhere in th–

  Yaeleth interrupted my thought as he came in through the flap of the tent, dressed in his sleeping garb. His night time clothes were not very dissimilar to his daytime clothes. They simply lacked the metal plating that armored his typical clothing.

  For some reason, Yaeleth had that look on his face again. The look when he has some kind of idea he’s super excited about.

  As Yaeleth asked me to sit down on the ground, he seemed like he was going to teach me another word. Not very exciting at all. My head already kind of ached from all the words I’d learned in one day, but the full-time immersion was helping to solidify them in my brain. These words would be different though.

  Yaeleth grabbed a stick and began to draw pictures in the sand. First was a stick man, and next to the stick man was another one that had long hair. I saw where he was going with this as he drew a miniature version of each underneath them.

  He started pointing to each one, teaching me the words, “Man”, “Woman”, “Boy”, and “Girl”. All pretty elementary words, but not very useful to me at the moment. He then connected the hands of the man and woman drawings, proceeding to surround all four drawings with a circle. Now, he went to each of the drawings and said another word. It took me a second to register why he was giving me a different word for each now, but the circle gave me the clue I needed. It was a family.

  I got the words, “Father”, “Mother”, “Son”, and “Daughter” along with the word for the whole group, “Family”. The word, “Family”, struck some chord with me, but I wasn’t sure why.

  Yaeleth restarted his drawings and then tested my memory of the words. I flawlessly recounted them until it came to, “Father”. Instead of pointing to the stick man, as Yaeleth did, I pointed to him and said the word, “Father”. For some reason, it felt right to call him “Father”. I mean “Yaeleth” was a hard thing to say anyway, so maybe my brain told me to call him “Father” for the sake of ease?

  No. There was some other root cause. It didn’t just feel right to call him “Father”, it was right. I didn’t know why, but this man was my father in my eyes, one-hundred percent, dead-to-rights, my father.

  At this notion, Yaeleth was a bit taken aback. He wasn’t expecting me to call him that, instead he was expecting to potentially learn where my family was. I guess in some way, he found out.

  Yaeleth took a second to think about what he was going to do next. The yearning in my eyes took him by force and made him do the unexpected. He pointed to me and said, “Daughter”.

  My face must have lit up with glee, it was so euphoric to be called his daughter. To be affirmed as that. But there was one more thing I wanted desperately. I had been here with no name this whole time, I wanted– no I needed a name from my father.

  My eyes must’ve done their job once again and pleaded well enough, because my father then looked me dead in the eye and said one word, a name.

  “Kaelynn.”

  This was a really fun one! I'm so excited to see where Kaelynn goes from here! (For those wondering the pronunciation, it is {Kay-lin}, like the English letter "K" followed by the English word "tin" but instead of a "t" it's an "l")