I woke up in the evening feeling tired and grumpy. My head hurt. It hurt a lot. It was throbbing and pulsing, making my vision feel like it was expanding and contracting in time to the throbbing. It made me feel nauseous.
Shigure knocked on the door and entered with Apricorn when I grunted. Bringing a warm cup of water and some pills, he silently handed them over to me, stroking my head in sympathy while I swallowed the tablets.
"The doctor said that you overdid things today," Shigure told me, helping me massage my head. "Both physically and mentally. After all the recent events, you need to have a good rest. When you're feeling better, the Desert Father will contact you. Then we're going to be going on a trip to escort him to meet the Forest Mother without disturbing the city too much. We have to go around the Gulf."
"Around the Gulf?" I rubbed my head. "That's a long way."
"Yes. We'll be camping out for a few days. When we're getting close to the Tangled Ranges, the Forest Mother will contact us through you to tell us where to go to meet her. She doesn't want us creating a highway through the forest for our people to invade the Tangled Ranges."
"Mmm," I nodded.
"If you feel up to it, have some porridge and then go back to sleep," Shigure told me.
Apricorn set up a table over my lap.
Having someone look after me was so nice. Rather than getting beaten when I was sick or being forced to continue working, being taken care of was so comforting.
It was at least another two months before I was deemed well enough for field work that involved an extended trip outside that would include camping.
During those two months, I had been studying multiple languages with Shigure, Apricorn and other language teachers after we discovered that my auto-interpret and translate ability had been affected by whatever brain injury I had gotten when I nearly drowned. It required me to study more of each language in order to improve the accuracy of the interpretations and bring them back up to an acceptable standard. It had been an extremely busy time.
Shigure and Apricorn had also begun training my leaping and jumping ability. After a few near accidents, he made sure we always took a thick and heavy crash mat with us to whatever training grounds we were going to use. My body still shut down from fatigue at times. And after it had happened once while I was in the middle of a long leap, he was not taking any chances.
We worked on my strength, stability and accuracy, as well as various types of landings. As a result, I was now fairly confident of consistently jumping lengths of up to thirty metres. As for height, we were still working on the consistency for that.
Then there was the teamwork training. Shigure, Apricorn and I learning to work together and get to know each other better. Learning each other's body language was made all the easier when Shigure made a chat group for the three of us in my head, linking all three of us together. Apricorn didn't have as strong an affinity to telepathy, but Shigure managed to facilitate the links, establishing the chat group in my head more so because he said I had better mental capacity and could act as an amplifier for Apricorn. Apricorn could also hear Shigure better when it was done through me. It was a little complicated but Shigure likened me to being a good strong modem, router and server all in one package. I wasn't sure how to feel about that.
Although Apricorn didn't live in our little apartment with us, she lived in the closest dorm. Even so, she was often the first in our office in the mornings and mothered Shigure and I a lot. Her desk was squeezed between the two of us, so that we all sat in a row. When Shigure complained about the nagging, Director Worth told him that we needed it.
At that, Shigure and I had only exchanged glances and kept silent. Having someone help to clean up and make sure we ate was pretty handy at times. But when it came to the tedious specifics of her laundry rules and cleaning, I begged to differ.
Going out to meet the Forest Father was going to be my first field trip after coming back off leave. I was so excited that I could barely sleep. Shigure had to poke me in the head and shut my brain down so that he could go to sleep too.
We weren't the only team going on this mission. Mr Holt's new team of students, and another senior team of which Big Brother was a part was joining us. For some reason, there was also the big team that Chad Thundercock was now a part of. He wasn't called Chad Thundercock anymore though. Nowadays, he was known as Wing Blues. Everyone called him Blues. He was a popular guy and always surrounded by a crowd of hanger ons.
Altogether, we made twenty-four people, because Director Susan Worth had decided to come with us with her assistant and witness this rare event.
We had a cavalcade of ten vehicles. One car for my team, two for Mr Holt, two for Big Brother's team, three for Chad's team and one for Director Worth and her assistant. The last vehicle was a double trailer truck that had been filled with melons, grass and other edible greens for the Desert Father as a greeting gift.
The Desert Father had only given me a picture location of where to meet him. The location was quite far from my old tribe and deep within the desert wilderness. I hadn't known where it was, but Shigure did. He said it was near an old sacred meeting place of the tribes many generations ago. None of the tribes went there nowadays.
We drove out before dawn and left the city just as the sun was peeking up over the horizon. Apricorn had made us toastie sandwiches and a big thermos of thick, sweet milk tea with tapioca pearls. Seriously, Apricorn was the best when it came to feeding us.
"Whisper, you should sleep a bit more when you finish eating," Apricorn told me. "You still aren't fully recovered and you're going to need the energy in the next few days."
"Yes, Mum," I wrinkled my nose and watched the sunrise while Shigure drove.
"Cheeky Charlie," Apricorn poked my cheek. "Have a banana as well. You haven't been eating enough fruit these few days. That's why you spend so long on the toilet."
"Can we not talk about my toilet habits while we're eating?" I whined.
"Sure," Apricorn said, peeling a banana for Shigure while he finished his first toastie. "Let's talk about how you snuck out yesterday without telling anybody and scared us all. You didn't even leave a message in the mental chat group. Where did you go and what happened? Why were you injured?"
"The beach," I said, scowling at my toastie. I had known this lecture was coming.
"Liar," both Apricorn and Shigure called me out, able to feel the lie through our mental link.
I sent them an image instead.
I had gone to the Cliffs of the Dead, the cliff people from my former tribe jumped off or were pushed off when things had got bad. I'd had a bad dream and had needed some time to myself. The Cliffs of the Dead was a place I used to go to find solace and contemplate my end. I had gone there to meet the old me and see if I could put some ghosts to rest.
In the end, something had caught my eye and I had instead, climbed down the cliff to find a cave. It was a series of caves and tunnels that ran within and beneath the cave, opening out on the side of the cliff into a partially flooded sea cave. I had found signs of someone visiting the cave regularly and some tunnels that I hadn't had the time or the torchlight to explore further.
Limited by the batteries of my pocket torch and mobile phone, I had been forced to leave without having finished my exploration. On the way out, at the bottom of the cliff, I had seen someone toss a newborn baby off the edge of the cliff. With a leap, I had caught the child and then with difficulty, landed back at the bottom of the cliff, trying to ensure neither the baby nor I was smashed against the rocks. Then using my jacket to tie the shivering baby to my body, I had climbed up the cliff.
I had been met by some members of my old tribe who had beaten me up while I had tried to protect the baby from them. After breaking free from them, I had been easily chased down and beaten up again. I had made use of my leaping ability to escape when I found an opening. The tribe had stopped chasing me when I had left the borders of their territory.
The baby had been brought to a hospital for a checkup, the police had been called and I had left a statement. The child was taken to an institution and I had hurried back home after realising that I had been gone an entire day without informing anyone. I had totally forgotten to report my whereabouts. I had only meant to be gone for two hours at the most.
When I had gotten back home late at night, my weary appearance, wet clothes and bruises showed that something had happened. Kindly, Shigure and Apricorn hadn't made too much of a fuss. They had sent me to have a shower, fed me and helped me see to my wounds and tucked me in bed.
Apricorn and Shigure followed me through my recollection of events and I felt their shifting emotions. From the way they glanced at each other, I knew they were talking in their own private chat room while they listened and watched my account. They didn't ask me very many questions.
Apricorn was right. I was still tired from the previous day's events and needed more sleep.