The moose monster felt strange.
She knew it was the wrong word as it wasn’t anything physical.
… Or not. The warmth and tingles she got from touching it were certainly odd.
But that wasn’t what she was thinking about. The monster itself felt strange. It didn’t act like she had assumed the monsters in the darkness acted. She knew that the description from the Pages also didn’t fit what she had assumed monsters acted like, but the moose monster had just as many differences to that description as it had similarities. She had assumed that she simply failed to understand something in the Pages or the monster’s actions.
That didn’t explain the underlying strangeness she felt though. Why did the monsters make such noises? Why did they eat the powder? Why didn’t they come into the light?
Why, Why, Why??
So many questions she had that she couldn’t possibly find all the answers in the Pages. Questions like what made the moose monster different. Why did it come into the light when others didn’t. Questions that got some answers now that she followed it so closely.
The first answer she got was that the rain room had many different uses. Something the moose monster understood without her input. How did it know that the small rooms with seats would take away waste? Who could say, but it did. It seemed the moose monster knew how it worked better than she did. Once it finished relieving itself it used the small basins she had drank from to do something to its hands.
She copied it of course. Learning everything she could while she followed the moose monster around was a given. She had no idea why rubbing her hands in water was important, but important didn’t matter right now, just watching and learning. Watching that led to a shock and her next answer.
The moose monster ate the powder as well. As she had always called it ‘the powder’ she had never stopped to consider if it had another name. It seemed clear that it was called ‘grass and other plants’ though, as that is what a moose ate. It seemed long so she would still call it powder, but it was good to know if she ever could speak to the moose monster. Though the shocking part came when the monster took the powder from a wall space high up.
She had never thought to look there as everything had been low and in easy reach for her since before leaving her home, but if the moose monster was protecting the powder from others, it made sense to put it somewhere less reachable.
Less reachable for others at least, the moose monster had no issues.
It didn’t even have to reach that far, the space being about as high as its head. If there were other things that the moose monster wanted to hide or protect, she would have to remember to look in high places. It could be why other monsters stayed so far away. The Pages said that a moose was very large, the chances that all the other monsters were much smaller and couldn’t bother the moose monster any more than the darkness had were high. It didn’t mean she was safe, being much smaller herself, but it would explain a lot.
She also understood now why it could eat outside of the rain room. The Pages had said it ate in watery places. She had taken to understanding that meant the rain room, as no other place could be called ‘watery’. But it seemed she had either misunderstood the Pages or the Pages had misunderstood something in their own learning. The moose monster didn’t eat in watery places, it ate watery things. Something she saw firsthand as it mixed a lot of water into the powder.
She wanted to try that herself the next time she got her hands on the powder, as it would fix the problem of it being too dry. Though that desire didn’t last long as the moose monster used its magic to heat a flat section coming off the wall. Watching magic up close like this was a much more intense experience than seeing it from afar was. Seeing it making changes and feeling the heat as the magic worked drew her full attention.
As did the monsters’ next actions. As it poured the water and powder mixture onto the hot surface, she heard it hissing. As the monster continued its task, she watched the mixture transform into the disks she had been eating. All desire to try the wet mixture was gone as she came to understand how the disks were made. She had thought the wet mixture would be similar to what she had eaten in her home before the wall cracked open, but the disks tasted far better than that and she had no interest in using the wet powder before it was transformed. The only difficulty being she would need magic to achieve that transformation.
As she watched the moose monster work, she was tempted to touch the surface to see just how powerful the magic was, but she held back as she didn’t want to interrupt the monster and miss something important. Though it seemed the monster had other plans.
As she was staring at the disks, attempting to figure out how much magic they held, she heard the monster rumble. It was unexpected and she looked at its face before she realized what she was doing. Fortunately she avoided catching its eyes. It did seem like the monster wanted something though. As it rumbled again she recognized the word. One of the first words it had spoken in her presence, it was short and didn’t seem to have much power to it. Not sure what was happening, she did her best to rumble it back to the monster, hoping to counteract whatever it was doing. She was very much surprised when she was handed a disk.
Still warm from the magic, she ate it quickly and readied herself for whatever came next. After a bit of nothing happening, she began to suspect something was going on that she hadn’t understood. While her dry mouth made her look longingly at the spout behind the monster, she did her best to try and unravel what had just happened. Though her thoughts themselves unraveled as the monster handed her some trapped water.
Was the monster reading her thoughts?
She expected that it was a simple thing to do with magic, but why would it care what she thought. Too much, far too much that she didn’t know or understand. Though it did spark an idea. Maybe that word didn’t have less power, it was simply a more subtle power. It could be the word that let the monster read her thoughts and she thought it was weak because it didn’t have big changes.
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Testing her theory, she rumbled the word again. She didn’t know what to expect but she had hoped that being the only one to say it would give her a better idea as to the power it held. She was not prepared for the monster to take the trapped water out of her hands and trap more water in it. As it was handed back to her she had to stop and really think about what was happening.
Clearly the word had meaning. While she still couldn’t sense any power from the word, she didn’t know if that was because it was weak or subtle. All the times that the moose monster had used it before had other words that followed it. This time was different, but she didn’t know why it was different. Had her saying the word ruined the effect?
…Or was the word a label?
The strange thought had struck her fast. The moose monster had gestured the last time it had spoken those words. At the time she had thought that was part of the magic that trapped her. As she looked back though, she understood that she had been trapped by her body, not the magic. That didn’t mean the magic had done nothing though. Had that magic been to apply a label to her, a way to more easily do magic. This time the moose monster hadn’t gestured, but if the label was already set then did it matter?
It would make sense if she couldn’t detect the magic of that word if it was simply an extension of herself. A way to call her and make her pay attention. Like she had when she nearly looked into the monster’s eyes. The first rumble had fully pulled her attention to the monster, the rest could have been an attempt for something more and she had resisted. Maybe. It could have been that her lack of other responses confused the monster. Maybe it had expected her to speak?
It certainly expected her to follow. The moose monster had rumbled again and walked out of the food place, watching what she did. If she had resisted, she didn’t want the monster to know, so she followed it and kept her thoughts to herself. Or at least she tried, if the monster could read her thoughts then it was pointless to hide them.
When the monster returned to the rain room she began to have second thoughts. While her body still wanted to experience everything again, her mind was much clearer than it had been when she woke. Her mind would be happy to experience things again as well, but it could think farther ahead than her body and remembered how she had felt afterwards and everything else that had happened. She would prefer to hold onto the magic for a bit longer.
It seemed that wasn’t meant to be however. Whether she had simply taken in magic much faster than this time or had struggled against it longer the last time, it seemed she was full and the moose monster was going to eat the magic insider her again. It had brought her to the same place as last time. Even if she was more aware and knew what to expect this time, she doubted it would go any different.
Different seemed to be too soft a word though. She knew she had been much closer to the moose monster last time, attempting to find a way to recover her trinket. This time she was farther back because she knew what was coming and wanted to delay it as long as possible. Far enough back that the moose monster didn’t bother to make it rain on her. A confusing turn of events.
She also didn’t think the moose monster made it rain nearly as long either. While she might not have been fully aware of exactly what happened last time, she had felt that things had lasted a long time. Not that she was sure, everything had felt far to fast for her bodies liking, but this seemed…not enough. The moose monster had barely gotten itself wet, let alone the full downpour she thought she remembered.
Once the rain stopped, it did something near the wall and rubbed its hands again. More rubbing of hands that she didn’t understand. Her curiosity getting the better of her and pushing her closer to the monster, she strained to see why it was rubbing its hands. Something she only realized was a mistake when the monster made it rain on her as well.
Once the rain hit her, she expected everything to go fuzzy again and to wake up drained. She didn’t expect the warmth to be…
disappointing.
After the heat and smothering warmth that she had felt touching the monster, the warmth from the rain was underwhelming. The severe disappointment her body felt and the confusion in her mind swirled together as she tried to understand this latest discovery. Her poor overworked mind got even more work as the monster took her hand and dropped some kind of strange…something in it. It was like slow water, except it wasn’t clear so it couldn’t be water.
She looked up to see what the monster was doing and where it got the ‘not water’, but it was simply rubbing its hands all over its body. Her mind spiraling out of control to understand this new strangeness seemed to be clear to the monster. It stopped its own rubbing took her hand from earlier and pushed it and the ‘not water’ against her stomach, after which it rubbed its own hand on its own stomach while looking at her.
Clearly things were not to go the same way as last time, and she was meant to rub things. Her hands mostly, though she couldn’t begin to guess why. She began to move her hand around on her stomach only to find that the water and ‘not water’ was turning into something very slippery. At least she understood why she needed to be rained on first.
Copying the moose monster as best she could, mostly to keep up the appearance of not resisting but also partly because she had no idea what else to do, she used her hands to rub the slippery feeling all over herself like the monster was doing. The monster looked different to her so it wasn’t an exact thing, but she didn’t think she should be found out because of that. At least she hoped.
When every bit of herself was slippery, she went to look up at the monster to see what happened next but got rained on instead. Rain that lasted longer than the last time. The warmth might not have felt as good as the last time, but she did still enjoy it. Maybe too much, as the monsters hands shocked her out of her thoughts. The monster had begun to rub her arms and sides, though she didn’t know why. Had she not rubbed good enough?
She got her answer when the monster noticed her looking at what it was doing. Once she had started paying attention to it, the monster had returned to rubbing itself all over again. It seemed she was supposed to do the same and had been caught up in the warm rain. She hoped that hadn’t ruined what she had done up to that point. If the monster found out she wasn’t under its control because she had been caught up in some warm water she wouldn’t be happy.
The monster seemed to focus its rubbing on areas the water couldn’t easily reach this time, so she did the same. It seemed the slippery feeling was getting undone by the rain, so that was probably the goal. At least she hoped it was the goal. She would hate to go around all the time feeling slippery.
Even if it might let her escape other monsters.
Once the monster was finished, it stopped the rain magic and started the storm magic. Along with more rubbing. It seemed the moose monster liked rubbing. Maybe she could use that somehow?
It didn’t take long for the storm to finish and while she had no idea why it would bother with all of that for some rubbing, she would admit that she felt dry now that it was over.
She would need to figure out why the moose monster rubbed so much, as well as why it seemed to want to do so in the rain. Maybe it needed to be wet to be strong?
So much confusing information, causing so many questions to come up. It was clear that she needed to do some testing of her own.
She just needed to find a way to not be near the monster, just in case.