Chapter Text
There was music.
He hadn’t heard music in such a long time.
Not since he left home. But there it was.
He opened his eyes with tremendous effort.
It was dark, and there was music.
The darkness didn’t feel bad, either.
Not like the claustrophobic darkness in the submarine, where the only relief was the light from the radiation. Where the hot walls closed in further as the blood rose in his veins and on the floor.
This was still warm, but it felt like a comfortable warmth, the way it felt on Eden, in the quiet moments at night where he was alone with the Last Tree.
It was dark, and there was music, and he was in pain.
He was hurting. But then again, everything had been hurting in his life lately. His skin burned and stuck to what he thought were bandages. His left eye was patched over with something. When he blinked, he didn’t feel that eye respond. Breathing hurt, but his lungs tried their best. He felt... clean, though. His legs didn't stick together with blood.
With great effort, he wiggled his fingers. They felt clean too, if a bit more bumpy and ridged than expected.
He was laying on his stomach. His hand lay next to his face on what he assumed was a pillow.
His second arm was tucked alongside his body.
His third arm was underneath him, and currently tingling with pins and needles.
Wait.
One. Two… Three.
Simon pushed off of the bed with an enormous adrenaline filled jolt, sending something next to him scuttling. The music stopped.
‘Whhh?’ he said, vocal chords straining against the air in the room. It smelled bad in here, like the toxic cleaning supplies the C.O.I used on his cell.
Fuck, he felt heavy.
‘♬♫♪’ something said, accompanied by two taps.
In response, Simon stumbled backwards, hit a wall and bumped his head. He fell to the floor, holding his head with one hand as the other was between his legs and the third was on the wall.
‘Urgh’ he said. Whoever made the artificial gravity in this place, they put it up too high.
Everything hurt. His muscles ached. He was pretty sure there were bandages on his face and on his body.
Oddly enough, the third arm ached the same way as the rest of his limbs. Like he’d always had it.
‘♬♪.’ Something seemed to decide for him. The scuttling came closer and something was pushed gently into two of his hands.
A bowl. Instinctually, he sniffed it.
Blood.
Blood.
Blood blood blood everywhere into his eyes into his sinuses as the living tree burst from his midriff in the ocean full of blood as the mad god watched and saw and he couldn’t go anywhere and there were teeth teeth teeth and he was rooted and it was bigger than him and the tree was him and maybe the submarine was him too and the life jacket was floating away and he saved it he saved something but it didn’t matter because he would never live again would only be food for the tree like he was always meant to be butcher butcherbutcherbutcher
The bowl clattered to the floor.
‘♮.’ The Something said. It sounded somewhat like ‘Hm.’ if said ‘Hm.’ was made by a blacksmith pushing a bellows through multiple woodwinds.
The sound was so strange to Simon he stopped spiraling. He breathed hard.
Something else was nudged into his hands. A second bowl.
‘♪’ The Something woodwinded encouragingly.
Simon sniffed the bowl. Smelled like nothing. It felt warm on his face. Holding the bowl with two hands, he stuck a finger on his third hand in. It should have taken more effort than it did.
It felt hot.
Okay. Simon, he thought. Let’s think rationally.
I was a tree, I think. Now I’m not. There was an ocean, I’m not in it anymore, apparently. I also have three arms, and I’m somewhere with a sentient woodwind music box.
Then a little, broken, somewhat giddy sounding voice in his mind went: So I’m hallucinating! Beats the submarine! Let’s see what else our mind can come up with!
Simon shrugged and put the finger that had touched the liquid in his mouth.
Tasted like nothing.
Simon put the bowl to his lips.
As soon as his lips touched the warm, clean water in the bowl, he was drinking it like his life depended on it. Half of it tried seeping out from the side of his face somehow, so he tilted his head to keep it in.
A high little sound escaped him.
‘!’ The Something said, mimicking the sound.
Simon drained the bowl.
Something tapped on it as he lowered it.
‘!’ The Something said.
Then it tapped on the bloody bowl presumably still on the floor.
‘𝄪.’ it said, pitched lower.
‘M!’ The little giddy part of Simon said, tapping the bowl with water. ‘Gr.’ he mimicked, tapping the part of the floor he assumed the other bowl was.
The Something said nothing, but Simon could vaguely hear something scraping over something else.
Guess we figured out ‘yes’ and ‘no’, A somewhat detached part of his brain informed him.
Slleeeeeppp... a bigger part insisted.
Simon gently closed his eye and slumped sideways, falling towards a floor that was blessedly horizontal and hopefully not entirely covered in blood.
‘♫♪. ♬.’ the Something said gently.
‘Mhm’ Simon said.
The Something listened to the meat-sack as it slept.
It had been asleep for a long time since the Something found and worked on it.
It had done their best to fix it. The meat-sack had clearly been hurting. No exoskeleton to speak of, just squishy insides with a lot of the insides outside. It took a bit for them to find out that the meat-sack’s carapace reacted badly to ammonia. Luckily, some scientists had figured out that the meat-sack’s blood contained oxygen, so they had filled the room with the flammable stuff.
The meat-sack had eaten the water they had given it, which was disgusting but still good news. The Something hoped the meat-sack would survive. It seemed like its exoskeleton had had a rough time, with growths and patches of leaking goo.
What was worse, the meat-sack only had three limbs!
The Something didn’t know a whole lot about prosthetics, but a former colleague of their much-beloved-one-day-returning mate did, and was obliged to make two more arms for the meat-sack. The arms looked a bit weird on it, as if the meat-sack was more symmetrical than the proper pentagonal shape. The Something hoped the meat-sack would be okay, and if the meat-sack would like more arms, Them-That-Sings-Too-Fast would happily make more.
The Something softly hummed to themselves as it did some mental math in its exosuit next to the meat-sack.
Their own full name translated roughly into ‘Them-Of-The-Singing-Of-The-Fresh-Air-On-The-Carapace-In-The-Echoing-Caves-Fierce-Hunter’.
In the very near future, they would be mostly referred to as ‘Adrian.’
Adrian vaguely wondered if it should name the meat-sack something other than ‘meat-sack’ but that was a problem for a later time. Presumably the meat-sack had its own name.
It seemed to understand ‘yes’ and ‘no’ quite fast, at least.
The meat-sack didn’t look comfortable on the floor.
Adrian pressed a few buttons and pulled a few levers, and some robotic arms came down from the walls and gently lay the meat-sack on the bed again. It hummed something. Adrian stiffened, thinking the meat-sack was only pretending to sleep. Unlike Eridians, it seemed to have some motor control left, though it clearly couldn’t listen.
Adrian sang a sleep-song anyway, feeling slightly foolish. For all Adrian knew, this meat-sack was 1.000 years old and didn’t care for the songs for pebbles.
Simon felt himself being picked up and put into a bed.
If the afterlife was gentle arms putting you to sleep and singing softly to you, he was pretty sure he made it to Heaven.