It didn't take long for the guy in the vision to realise that the other two persons that were in the boat with him had disappeared and it tore him apart. The feeling of guilt and sadness shook Kapha as he experienced the person in the vision grieve for the other two people.
He sat down on the sand and placed his head in his hands, sitting under the sun from morning till evening, doing nothing else except from that. As the sun began to set, the temperature slowly began to reduce and a chill set in.
The person in the vision looked up and saw the white clouds that covered the sky, hiding the moon and the stars from him. Then, while he looked up, he felt a drop of water fall on his cheeks. Afraid of the rain that might come, he ran away from the beach and into the treeline not to far from where he originally landed and planted himself there.
The rain he was hiding from soon arrived, and it came in enormous amounts. The downpour soaked him and, as if he had washed away his sadness, made him slightly more active. The person soon realised just how hungry he was, after spending who knows how long he finally remembered that he had not eaten anything.
He looked around to find anything he might have used to quell his hunger, only to be severely disappointed. Let down, he settled back into the small hole he had found to protect him from the heavy rain.
The earth was moist, but still warmer than the environment, so he got comfortable and soon drifted off to sleep, where he had a series of nightmares about losing those two people and being unable to find them.
He woke up with a start and for a moment he thought he was still on the boat. He looked around and saw the dirt walls that had surrounded and sighed, partly relieved that he wasn't on the boat, yet also disappointed that he still couldn't find the two figures.
He looked out of the hole and saw that it was still raining, albeit not as heavily as before, so he took the opportunity to come out of the hole and look for food.
He walked around in the area for a while, aimlessly looking for something to eat, and after finding something edible, he consumed it and went back to the cave, where he sat and continued to mope.
The rain subsided and the sun came out. Time passed, in what seemed like the blink of an eye to Kapha, more than 3 weeks passed by. Over this time period, the person in the vision had slowly gotten better. At first, he only looked for food when he was very hungry, going out and looking for the things he felt wouldn't harm him before eating it, then he would return to the hole that acted like his home.
Slowly, he soon realised that the hole he was living in was too small, and dug out soil to increase it. It was just a small increase, just enough to have a little more wiggle room, but he started to feel cramped inside it, so he began to conduct massive expansions.
He increased the size of the hole he was living in, so that he would be able to lie down in it and not have to always curl into a ball every time he entered. Because of that he had to be going out almost constantly to collect food to eat. He would save some and eat that for a while, then when it finished, he would go out and get another one.
He became more active and soon used that to occupy his mind, so that he would stop thinking about the two people that went missing in the accident. And although he still had nightmares of what happened back then, he no longer sat in the hole doing nothing.
On one of the days when he was out gathering things to eat, he heard the voice of somebody calling him. It seemed like the person was calling from a nearby mountain.
//"Rey,"// the voice called out. It seemed to be coming from somewhere nearby, but no matter how much he tried he couldn't find out where the voice was coming from.
//"Rey,"// the voice called again, a little farther the next time, pulling him away from where he was. The voice kept calling and Rey kept following until he got to the base of the mountain. Rey looked up and could still here the voice calling him from somewhere on the mountain.
He hesitated for a moment before deciding against going up the mountain to search for the thing that was calling his name. He returned to his home in the ground and tried to carry on with his day, but the voice wasn't ready to allow him to live a peaceful life.
The next day, before the sun was over the horizon, he was woken by something. //"Rey,"// he heard the voice call again. It tried to lead him away but he refused to go and tried all he could to ignore the voice. But the voice continued carrying on for more than 3 weeks.
Just as Rey was about to run mad from the incessant calling, something happened to the voice. The person calling him changed.
//"Rey,"// the familiar voice called out in the early hours of the morning, completely shocking Rey.
//"Phu!?"// He cried out at the top of his lungs, hoping to get a response from the voice that confirmed it was real, but the voice didn't seem to know how to do anything else and continued calling out his name.
//"Rey,"// Phu's voice called out once more, a little bit farther this time. Rey dropped everything he was doing and began to follow the voice. Kapha could feel the hope Rey had, the hope that Phu was still alive.
He followed the voice until it got to the base of the mountain and stopped again. For a brief moment he considered going up the mountain without any supplies, but he quickly changed his mind. In order to be prepared for a situation where he had to take care of Phu—and if possible Ru—he returned back to his camp and gathered supplies before he began his ascent up the mountain.
He walked up the mountain for a long time, making his way through patches of unfavourable terrain and near attacks from the mountain animals. Time seemed to have another meaning in the mountain, the sun that normally flew quickly through the sky seemed to be in stasis.
But he continued his walk. He continued to climb the mountain, and after making it through the unusually long day he wished to rest during the night, but that was when the voice became the most desperate.
It sounded like it was being chased by something scary, something monstrous. There was urgency in the voice that was not there during the day, and Rey was unable to bear imagining the torment that Phu might have been facing to sound like that.
The thought of rest disappeared from his mind as he continued his trek under the extremely slow-moving moon. He fought against ferocious beasts he had no idea lived in the mountain—nearly losing his life a few times—and trudged to even worse terrain that came with changes in the whether—such as the land suddenly becoming a swamp during a surprise rainfall that befell him at one time in the night.
Many times, he thought of stopping for a rest, but the moment he did the urgency and fear in Phu's voice would increase, and for fear of Phu's life he increased his pace. He had long since dug into the provisions he had brought for Ru and Phu, and although he felt bad about it, in the situation he was in there was nothing else he could do.
As morning came and the rays of the sun began to filter through the trees, a change seemed to occur in the mountain. The temperature began to plummet, with every step Rey took he felt the temperature drop many folds.
The dropped so low, that the water vapour that came out of his mouth turned directly to small crystals of ice that stuck to his body. The sky had already become clouded and snowflakes soon began to descend from the sky, every one that touched his skin lowered his temperature.
He shivered fiercely and his teeth kept making noise, but he could feel that he was making his way closer to the place that Phu's voice was coming from, so he pushed on.
His hair had almost all turned into frozen clumps and he had long since lost feeling in all his limbs. The supplies he had were gone and with every step he took he felt like collapsing on the several feet deep snow and just giving up on everything, yet every time he was about to give up, Phu's voice came back again.
It was no longer the thing that made him determined to keep going up the mountain, it was now the only hope he had left. The voice had changed from one of despair into one of encouragement, urging him to carry on with each step he took.
He walked on, and slowly the summit of the mountain came into view. The rays of the sun that had been blocked by the dark clouds above and the flurry of whiteness were beginning to show themselves once again.
The silhouette of the mountain's summit soon began to fill his vision, and as he made his way over the mountain ridge he was greeted with a beautiful view, one so breath taking and heart warming that he felt like he could lay down on the snow and rest for the rest of his life.
And that was what he did.
Well…
Almost.