A bright sliver of light leaked through a gap in the tent, seemingly cutting the interior of the tent in two. Azer noticed that Erril's sleeping bag was empty.
Azer grabbed one end of the tent's entrance, pulled it open, and stepped out into the light.
Over an endless expanse of still, clear water, the sun was rising and reflecting a long line of lightly twinking sunlight over the sea. The sun was warmer than usual on Azer's skin.
The ocean was shockingly infinite. But it was infinite in a different manner from the endless black of space Azer had first seen a night prior. Space was infinite in its nothingness, but the ocean, Azer discovered, was infinite in its vastness. The watery horizon went on and on until it couldn't be seen anymore, and then continued this expanse sideways on every field of view that touched the water, splitting the sky in two. Birds dotted the sky, occasionally opting to cross the border of sky and sea before returning with a fish in their beak.
Azer quickly discarded his sandals he had put on inside of the tent, leaving them in the orangish sand, and slowly walked up to the shore.
As he approached, he noticed the ocean's sound, too. It was a soft sound, a whoosh from every corner of the ocean of waves that rose and fell, lapping at where the water met the land.
When Azer found himself at the edge of the water, he took another moment to admire it. A small, cold ripple of water rushed up the beach, covering Azer's ankles, before receding again into the sea. Azer quietly laughed to himself before walking a bit deeper into the water and striding down the coast.
Azer noticed a sound accompanying the quiet singing of the waves. It was music, not the natural kind. The music's source was Erril, humming to himself while he grilled something on a portable gas stove. Azer approached him.
Erril had stationed himself away from the tents, a beach umbrella over his head and a fish on the grill. An old radio was by his side, playing music that Erril was singing along to poorly, skipping words and mumbling parts he didn't know. Upon noticing Azer, Erril turned down the volume on the radio.
"Azer! You're up early."
"Aren't you, too?"
"Well, I figured I'd try and catch the prime time for fishing. I packed plenty of food, but I figured we could have fish for breakfast, y'know? Living off the land. Oh! You wanna know something awesome?"
"Yeah?"
"So, I brought my radio for the trip, but I realized that there's probably not gonna be any signal here on a planet like Kular. No radio stations, y'know? But I did a bit of tweaking on this baby-" he patted the radio by his side- "and it turns out there's a station broadcasting a bunch of music all over this part of the galaxy! Isn't that cool! Someone really thought this stuff through. I wouldn't wanna know how expensive it must be to upkeep a radio tower strong enough to broadcast music across whole light-years. Guess they've been doing it a while, too. The music is dated as hell. Great, though."
"Wow, that– that is cool. What kind of fish is that?"
"Oh, this?" Erril chuckled. "No idea! But I guess we'll be finding out the hard way if it's good to eat or not. I wouldn't think so. Our noses would tell us if something's harmful, and this smells pretty good. That's why we have noses, after all. Oh, wait, that's right. Sorry."
"It's alright."
There was a painfully long silence, the radio still quietly playing music over the sounds of sizzling fish.
"You, uh," Erril started, breaking the silence, "ever fished before?"
"Nope. Never."
"Oh, yeah, that's– sorry. Well, do you want to learn?"
"Totally."
Erril promptly grabbed his fishing pole with one hand, the radio with another, and strode towards the ocean, motioning Azer to follow.
They stopped a few feet from the water and Erril turned up the volume on the radio. He held up the fishing pole with both hands as if it was a sword and looked over to Azer seriously.
"Fishing's awesome. It's fairly easy, too. You take bait–" he pulled a small, rubbery bait from his pocket– "hook it onto the hook at the end of the fishing pole–" Erril hooked it on– "and you're ready to cast. Make sense so far?"
"Mhm."
"When you're casting, you want to hold onto this button, and whip the fishing pole so the hook goes out far. Usually, the further, the better. Like this."
Erril made a show of holding down a button near the pole's handle and then whipped the fishing pole towards the ocean, the machine on the pole buzzing as the line flew further and further. Finally, the bait fell into the ocean, the buzzing stopped, and a small ripple emerged from the spot where the bait landed.
"And now we wait. Now, all we need to do is wait until a fish bites. Thankfully for us, this planet is barren of intelligent life, so the fish are gonna be way too stupid not to bite. We should get a bite aaaany second-"
Just then, the spherical bob on top of the water sank, prompting Erril to let out an "ah!" of satisfaction. He began rapidly spinning a handle on the pole's side, and the bob slowly came closer, leaving a tiny wake behind it.
"Now," Erril explained, still spinning the handle, "a fish has bit, and we're trying to reel it in. Depending on how much of a fight it puts up, you're going to want to reel it in hard, just spin this thing and it retracts the line. And- eventually-"
With one huge tug of the fishing pole, Erril had pulled the fish to shore and it flung up into the air. It gleamed in the sunlight for a moment, gorgeous green scales shining like a disco ball, before landing on the sand in front of Erril and flopping around.
"Haha! Look at this beaut! It's huge!" Erril laughed.
"That thing's the size of your leg!" Azer exclaimed. He'd never seen a live fish caught before, only dead and frozen in a supermarket.
"Now, why don't you give it a try?" Erril offered, holding down the fish with a knee and handing Azer the fishing pole.
"Really? I probably won't be too good at it."
"Of course you will! They're practically asking to be caught! C'mon, give it a try."
Azer obliged, holding the fishing rod in his hands. After a moment of hesitation, he checked the bait and held down the button, rearing back the pole.
"Swing it away from me. I'm not the one you're trying to hook. Also, swing it hard. The further, the better."
"Hard?" Azer repeated.
"Hard. I mean it. As hard as you can."
"Are you sure?"
"Well, how hard can you swing it?"
"Hard."
"Oh, I'm going to regret this, aren't I?" Erril said.
Azer reared his arms back, mimicking the motions Erril had made before he swung the rod, and, activating S.R., he swung the rod forward full force and let the hook fly.
The hook soared through the air at astonishing speed, the reel aggressively buzzing at a high pitch. The reel began to smoke from the speed of the line, Erril looking at the smoking pole with horror. Finally, the hook hit the water, and a large splash was visible from afar– then another, then another, and another. The hook was skipping across the ocean, splashing seawater into the air as it flew further and further away. Finally, the hook came to an abrupt stop, the line having run out and the fishing pole jerking forward in Azer's hands.
"Uh… Sorry," Azer apologized.
Erril, mortified, could only stare between where the hook had disappeared and the still-smoking fishing rod.
"No, that one's on me, but… Azer… that was hundreds of feet of line! Did you actually extend all of it?"
"Does that not usually happen?"
"No! That never happens! Well… I suppose you just have to reel in a fish now. If the line's still intact, at least."
They quietly stood on the beach for a moment, Azer patiently waiting, the radio by their feet still idly playing music. Azer didn't mind how long it took—he felt as if he could take in the ocean and its vastness forever.
"Hey, uh…" started Erril. "Sorry about the nose thing. I wasn't paying attention."
"No, it's really alright. I'm used to it."
Azer then realized his poor choice of words.
"Well, not the insults, I mean, I'm just used to, well, not having a face. Though I've been through my fair share of teasing. Sorry about the fishing rod, though. Hope I didn't break it."
"I'm sure it's fine. That thing's pretty sturdy. It gave me a shock, though, I won't lie. Say, how did you cast the line that far? No normal person could do something like that, I mean—you made the hook skip across the water. Do you have–"
"Yep. A Val. It's called S.R., don't ask why I called it that. It's a long story. Basically it gives me super strength, and I can kind of 'concentrate' the energy into different parts of my body. I can transfer it to other people, too. Only downside is that it uses a massive amount of energy, and I usually have to eat a huge amount of food to make up for the burnt calories."
"So you'll probably have to eat a lot now, right? Good thing you picked fishing."
Azer chuckled. "I hadn't thought of that."
There was another moment of silence.
"Honestly, I'm glad I have my S.R. And, in a way, I'm glad I don't have a face, too."
"Really?"
"Well, yeah. Really, it just makes me who I am. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm still dying to know why I don't have a face, and who my parents were, and where I came from, but there's no point in me being upset over not having a face. It's different, but it's… well, kinda cool in a way. Does that make sense?"
"I suppose so."
"The only thing I really wish I could change would be for me to have parents. Or at least meet them. It's stuff like this—y'know, fishing and whatnot—that I sometimes feel like I've missed out on. It might be part of why I want to know my past so badly."
Only a moment later, Azer felt a great tug on the line, and immediately began reeling in the line with full force.
"Yeah, go! You've got a lot of line to reel back in!"
Azer reeled and reeled, far longer than Erril had, until finally he dragged a large fish onto shore, flopping and writhing in the sand.
"Well done! These fish are huge! Here, let's take it back to the tents. It's probably about time to wake up the others, anyway."
Dragging along their catches, they reached the tents thoroughly sandy. Upon reaching the tents, they found everyone else up and ready.
"Where were you guys?" asked Saa. "We've already started preparing for the hike. We had to have breakfast without you."
"Oh. We were getting breakfast. Thought we could have fish," Erril answered.
"Those look goooooood…" Grif drooled, gazing intently at the large fish Azer and Erril were holding by their sides.
"We'll eat them on the road," Erril said. "Or, I guess, trail. Or, wait, there aren't either of those here. We'll eat them later. Let's go."
# # #
Erril led the group into the mass of trees bordering the beach, hiking along a path he knew shockingly well.
"I explored this place a few times while scouting this planet," Erril explained. "I've hiked through this forest already."
"You didn't get lost?" Copycat asked.
"This planet has a magnetic field and I had a compass. Not only that, but I'd mark the trees I pass like this–"
Erril took out a shiny knife from his pocket and cut a vertical line in a nearby tree, tiny fragments of bark flying in every direction.
"I'd do a line like this in the trees I pass and find the marks on my way back. I'm just following the marks I already made. Speaking of, we're about to get to where I left off."
"Should we turn back?" Copycat asked.
"Already? No way. I'm fairly certain there's a perfect spot for fishing or swimming up ahead, look at how the ground gets rockier and wetter up there."
"Erril, you should have said if we were going fishing, I didn't bring my pole," Saa said testily.
"I was hoping to keep it as a surprise. You don't keep your fishing pole on you?"
"No! Why would I?!"
"I didn't bring a swimsuit, I thought we were just going out for a hike," Grif added.
"Neither did I," Copycat agreed.
Erril looked at the unprepared offenders, visibly disheartened.
"Should we turn back?" Saa suggested. "We can always do it again later. Or we could just do the hike now and then come back and fish later."
"We've come out quite a ways, though," Azer pointed. "And I'd like to practice fishing again if I can."
"Me too," added Rena. "I've never fished before."
"Should we, uh, just meet you all back here?" Grif suggested. "That way we don't have to call off the trip. You guys can keep hiking and we'll catch up."
There was a moment of silence, Erril still looking disappointed.
"I suppose that works," he conceded with a sigh. "We won't be going far, anyway. You all should be able to catch up as long as I'm making the marks in the trees for our trail. Just, be sure to follow it on your way here and back, alright? I don't want you getting lost."
"We won't. You said it yourself: it's pretty easy to stay on track as long as you're paying attention," Grif said. "As long as all of us can do that," he added, giving an extra long look at Copycat, who gave a rude hand gesture in return. Saa elbowed Grif's side.
"We're off," Saa told her brother, disappearing into the woods behind them. Azer, Erril, and Rena watched for a moment before proceeding towards the water hole.
# # #
Twigs snapped beneath Grif's feet as they trekked back towards their campsite, thinking angry thoughts about Copycat. Why did Copycat have to come with them, anyway? Grif thought this could be a nice vacation from his stressful research and worrying about the virus, but Copycat just had to sour it for them.
Hoping to get out of earshot of Copycat, Grif ever so slightly quickened his pace through the trees, Saa maintaining the pace with him.
"Why'd you have to elbow me like that?" he asked Saa, who immediately rolled her heterochromic eyes. "Copycat's a total ass, you know that. We've told you how many times he tried to kill us."
"Yes, Grif, and I trust what you and Azer are saying. But please, can we just enjoy this vacation without you bickering with him for once? In all honesty, he probably doesn't want you here, either."
"Wha-"
"Not to mention," Saa interrupted before Grif could retort, "Copycat is Erril's friend. I have no idea what's up with that Rena girl or why she's here, but Copycat is my brother's friend. I have to keep my brother in mind, too, whether his friends are nice or not."
This didn't satisfy Grif. He would let it slide for his friend Saa, but Grif made sure he would convince Saa that Copycat was trouble. Surely she could see that?
Then, all of a sudden, Grif stopped. His artificial heart sank.
"Hey, Saa."
"What's up? Why'd you stop?"
Grif stared at the tree in front of him for so long that Copycat caught up. He looked at Grif with confusion.
"Grif, what the hell are you doing?" Copycat said.
"Am I crazy?" Grif replied.
Both Saa and Copycat remained silent.
"Are you?" Copycat asked. "Because you're giving us the impression that you ar-"
"This cut is sideways," Grif observed. He reached out a hand towards the cut in the tree and ran his finger over the scarred bark. It was a horizontal mark in the tree, obviously cut with a knife or sharp object.
"And?" Copycat asked impatiently.
Grif glared back at Copycat before continuing. "It's wrong. All of the other cuts Erril made were vertical. Remember?"
The three looked around them at the cuts in the trees they'd been following. All of them were horizontal.
"They're all sideways, dude," said Copycat. "If you're going to stop in the middle of our walk, at least have it be for some important reason. I'm going back towards the camp. I actually want to keep hiking instead of stalling and gawking at marks in trees."
As Copycat stormed off, Grif looked hopefully at Saa. Neither of her colored eyes showed full belief.
"Erril could have just switched to making vertical marks in the middle of his trek. He came here on multiple trips. It's possible he didn't follow the same pattern."
Grif sighed sullenly.
"Though, I do agree, I recall some of the marks being vertical on the way here as well," Saa continued.
Grif's expression turned thankful.
"What's with that face? What, you thought I actually thought you were crazy? I'm your friend, remember? Cmon, we'll ask Erril about it after we meet them at the water hole. Let's just keep following the trail."
But as they continued to follow the trail of marks in the trees, Grif's sense that something was wrong only heightened. He felt as if the cut trees felt unfamiliar, but he assured himself that all of the trees in the forest were he had only been on this planet a day. Saa was probably right, Erril wouldn't necessarily be consistent with how he made the marks.
But then something unexplainable prompted all of them to stop. Copycat walked towards Grif and Saa, hearing the same sounds they did.
"Is that…" Copycat started.
"Voices?" Grif finished Copycat's sentence. "It has to be."
"What the hell is that? We're too far from the others by now," Saa pointed. "Who else is here?"
They listened to the unmistakable clamor of voices coming from the woods ahead, and Grif approached the horizontal gash in the tree in front of him, running his fingers over the cut. It was far deeper than he had realized from afar, and there were obvious signs of age in the cut– the tree had grown since the cut was made, and it was far rounder and deeper than anything Erril could have made with a knife. Erosion had smoothed the cut into a uniform gash.
And then, seemingly from nowhere, fingers emerged from within the tree, then hands, then arms, and then a face. The hands grabbed Grif's head and shoulders, and then, before he could scream, he was pulled inside.
# # #
Azer was preparing fishing bait, squatting down on a rock, while Erril helped Rena fish. The water hole was a large pond, jagged, rocky edges bordering the sides, two fishing bobs near the water's center, rippling the water ever so slightly. It was oddly quiet by the water's edge, save for the quiet boom of Erril's radio.
"So, where'd you meet Copycat?" Erril asked her.
"We had chemistry class together last year. We're also in the same neighborhood, which I didn't know until then."
Erril looked expectantly at Rena again, hoping for elaboration, but she seemed trained on the fishing bob. To a chatterbox like Erril, Rena was excruciatingly untalkative. After another moment of uncomfortable quiet, Erril attempted to break the ice again.
"Copycat and I have been on the school's track team forever. I became the captain last year, so I got to know him better then. Has good determination, that kid. Knows what he wants. You go to the Battle Academy, right?"
"I do," Rena answered, still not looking away from the bob.
"Wait till you get to the college level of the school. It's a blast. Should you decide to go to college at the Battle Academy, at least, there's still plenty of good colleges off-planet."
Suddenly, the bob sunk into the pond and, without a second's delay, Rena began furiously reeling in the line. It got closer and closer, the image of the writhing fish clearer and clearer under the surface of the water, until she finally pulled it all the way up to the end of the fishing pole.
"Well done! That one's a weird color, though. It might be poisonous. We'll have to see later."
"Can I kill it?" Rena asked.
"Uh… go ahead, I suppose."
Rena immediately picked up a long, thin rock, placed the flopping fish on the ground, and, in a swift motion, stabbed it in the head. It went limp immediately. Erril looked at the dead fish with a mixture of shock and amazement.
"W- wow, I thought I would have to tell you where to stab it, but nevermind, You've already figured that out. You sure you haven't gone fishing before?"
"Positive."
Erril turned back towards Azer.
"Azer, you wanna give it another try? Have you finished preparing the bait yet?"
"The others are taking a while," Azer pointed. "Did they get lost?"
"They couldn't have. All they had to do was follow the lines in the trees."
"It's still worrisome, though. They've been gone for a long time."
"If they got lost, I'd know. Saa's Val could tell me where she is."
Azer stood up. "Her Val?"
"She can make light," Erril explained. "Infrared light. And a lot of it, too. She used to think her Val was just lighting things on fire from afar, but that turned out to just be concentrated beams of infrared light that she couldn't see. Overtime, though, she learned to see it."
"Really?" Azer recalled Saa's early sparring matches with Grif, and the strange heat she could create at will.
"Yeah, it's pretty cool. I never had Vals growing up in the Battle Academy, so I'm pretty jealous, but I'm happy for her."
"I never knew. We haven't had classes together in a while."
"Yep. And should there be an emergency, she can just emit infrared light into the air, and I should be able to pick it up with this." Erril held up an IR camera from his heavy backpack and turned it on. "So if they were really lost, we would know about it."
"Maybe we should go back anyway to check," suggested Azer. "Worst case scenario, we find them on the way up to us."
"I suppose we could. A break couldn't hurt."
# # #
Grif opened his eyes to see complete, overwhelming darkness. His skin felt cold with a mysterious tingling feeling all over. Pushing himself up, he could feel dirt and dust beneath his hands, and warm liquid on his head. Blood.
But before he could panic or process the pain in his head, an opening of orangish light appeared behind him. Through the opening Grif could make out a sickeningly familiar figure shouting at him to stand up. Now lit, he could see he was being held in some kind of dirt cell, a massive boulder having previously blocked its entrance. In the cell with him were the unconscious bodies of Copycat and Saa. The figure stormed into the cell, grabbed him by the collar and dragged Grif outside.
And when Grif got a look at the person dragging him out, he thought he was looking into a mirror. The boy was Grif's age and shared the same tinted color of Grif's skin, even the shape of his eyes.
The boy threw Grif to the dirt-lain earth in front of a large bonfire, illuminating the surrounding camp. A camp? It was nighttime. Where was he? Was it night already? Who were the unnervingly familiar people surrounding him?
"Get up!" the boy shouted at Grif. "Don't make me drag you again! Answer the chief's question!"
The chief? Was Grif in some kind of tribal camp?
At that moment, Grif saw a figure from behind the dancing fire, tall and menacing, with a massively scarred face. He had to be the chief, and the woman to his side his partner, only slightly shorter with equally scarred features. Upon closer inspection, the chief was missing an eye.
"I said," the chief boomed, "why did you come here? We're shocked to see you again. Why do you tread on our lands?"
Grif didn't know what to process and how to process it. His mind was overflowing with shock at a hidden civilization on this barren planet, the jarring familiarity of everyone around him in the back of his mind. And, "Again"? Had Grif really been here before?
In a moment of shock, Grif realized: He could understand what they were saying. He tried to form a reply, and felt his mouth and lips speaking a strange language.
"W- who are you people? My friends and I had only come here to visit. We didn't know there was anyone else here!"
"You don't remember?" the chief said in the same foreign yet familiar tongue, his voice softer now. "It's no surprise. You were young. We are the society of the Schisms, and this is our home. I'm surprised you've survived, Grif. My son."