Chapter 251: Morning Arrived

Hours passed… boring… super boring, because I've been sitting here for hours holding an unconscious girl that just copied my whole memories.

The storm above softened gradually— not all at once, just the sound of it softening, the drumming against the vine cave ceiling easing into something more like background noise.

I could hear more through it as it quieted. Somewhere above, chickens. Going about whatever chickens went about when the storm wasn't actively terrible anymore.

Then voices— muffled, distant, the village coming back to life. Doors clicking open. The creak and sway of rope bridges with weight on them again.

The village was waking up.

And yes, again… I was sitting in a cave with an unconscious girl in my arms, head in my shoulder, hands around me, which was its own kind of morning.

Alex hadn't moved. Her breathing was consistent and slow, which I was taking as a good sign, and the nosebleed had stopped on its own somewhere in the first hour, which I was also taking as a good sign.

She was otherwise completely checked out from the world, which was less ideal.

I had been thinking, on and off, about what she was seeing in there. The memories she'd copied. All of it, playing back in whatever way copied memories played back, the whole accumulated mess of everything I'd experienced since the day a system announcement appeared in mid-air and told me my life was about to change significantly.

And… my childhood, all my shit. Oh my god… my privacy.

I tried not to think about it too hard.

Then.

Something wrapped around my ankle.

I had about one second to register this before it pulled.

"What the FUCK—"

The vine was thick and deliberate and fast, yanking down and sideways, and I had barely enough time to get my free hand over Alex's face— palm over nose and mouth, as sealed as I could make it— before the water came up over both of us. Cold. Immediate.

The cave floor gone, the cave itself gone, just water in every direction and the vine around my ankle still moving, pulling us in a direction I couldn't immediately identify.

I opened my eyes.

Safe zone, some part of my brain offered, looking at the blue glowing water around us.

Wait. Aren't we at the edge of the vine island? Aren't we supposed to be at the—

I looked up.

The rain hit the water surface from below like a reverse sky, hundreds of drops impacting simultaneously and sending tiny shockwaves downward through the clear water, each one catching the blue light and scattering it.

The whole surface above us moved like something living.

Underneath my feet, visible now that the cave was gone, the massive net of vines that formed the safe zone floor spread out in every direction, green and dense and solid.

Oh. We're in the middle. The vine moved us to the middle… wow, this is cool.

And actually, for exactly one second genuinely beautiful.

Then I looked at Alex.

She was bubbling.

Small, steady, air leaving her nose and mouth in thin streams because whatever hand I'd managed to get over her face hadn't made a good enough seal.

She was unconscious and she was underwater and the air was leaving and she wasn't doing anything about it.

I kicked upward.

We hit the surface and I got Alex's face up first, her back against my chest, tilting her so she was clear of the water.

People around looked at us, shocked at first.

But several already jumped in the water after us.

Two people reached us before I'd fully processed that we were up, one getting under Alex's other arm, one trying to take weight off me, and somehow between the three of us we got her up and over the vine platform edge and onto the surface.

She lay flat on the vine. Still. The water that had gotten in, showed the way her chest wasn't moving quite right, the sound of it when something doesn't breath.

"She's drowning?" Someone said it quietly, like a question to themselves.

I looked around. Nobody moved. Not unkindness— frozen second of people who didn't know what to do and were waiting for someone who did.

Or, maybe they're scared? I don't know anymore.

I immediately crouched down. Tilted her head back, the way I knew from a first aid demonstration I'd seen once in life, in that one beach in my childhood. Checked. Sealed. Two breaths.

Then the chest compressions— both hands, the heel of my palm, counting in my head while the villagers stood around us in the rain and watched.

On the third round her body reacted.

Water came out. Not gracefully— violently, the chest convulsing, and I got her turned on her side and kept a hand on her back while she coughed and the water left and her chest figured out what breathing was again.

She was still unconscious through all of it. Breathing, though. Coughing and breathing…

Haha, oh my god I didn't know I'm so good at this. I just thought as I looked at her coughing water.

Then the Chief appeared from somewhere in the gathered crowd, took one look at the situation, and said to me simply: "Get her inside."

I carried her.

***

The vine floor in our room did what it did— the warmth, the pulling sensation, her wet hair and clothes going dry in under a minute while I held her off the floor and the vine worked through everything.

I set her down on the bed after, pulled the blanket up, checked her breathing again.

Still the nosebleed— less now, more of a trace. I wiped it with the edge of the blanket and looked at her face, slack and still and dry now, and exhaled.

"Okay," I said, to nobody.

Then I went outside.

The Chief was waiting on the bridge, hands folded behind his back, looking at the rain.

The storm had finished calming while we'd been dealing with the immediate crisis, and what was left was the gentle version— soft and continuous, the kind that felt like it had always been there and probably always would be.

He walked when he heard me, and I fell into step beside him, and we crossed from one platform to another without any particular destination.

"That's the second time," he said. "So, how did you survive?"