Present Day: Galactic Cycle 1, Year 74, Trimonth, Foursday.
The death of all things was looking for me.
It sounds ridiculous, and I know it does. I’m stranded in a cave on a dying planet, my other two crewmates on this expedition are Six-Knows-Where, and a walking manifestation of omnicide is trying to find me. I can feel my heart beating in my chest, hard enough to almost make me pass out. I try to steady my breathing in a vain attempt to calm down, and it works…slightly. It works enough that I can process what’s happening around me.
I was in a cave. It was cold, damp, and dark. Even with my better-than-average night vision, I could still only barely see my forepaw in front of my face. At the very least, it being this dark made it harder for that thing to find me. At least that was my hope - I don’t know what it’s fully capable of.
I could feel the chill of the stone walls around me seep through my upper-scarf and through my fur. The humidity wasn’t that unusual, but the cold was - I’m almost certain back in Alima it never got even close to this cold. My fur wasn’t the best suited for cold weather, even if both Maz and Lamais said it wasn’t that cold. Whatever, it’s cold to me and that’s all that matters.
I slowly rise to my feet, looking past the rock I had been sheltering behind towards the mouth of the cave. The sky’s still peppered with stars - it’s still nighttime. I just had to survive the night, and maybe the mobile entropy storm that was out there would vanish. In Liimi’s name, I hoped it would. I settle back down in my little alcove and sigh. At the very least, it wasn’t here yet. Maybe I could rest and reflect on how I ended up in this mess…
I lay down on the ground, curling my tail tuft under my head as a makeshift pillow. A memory flashes in my mind for a moment - Maz looking at me and saying "Elani, you slept like a feline” with how I curled up. They always said things like that. I don’t blame them - after all, no one at LIER had ever seen an Ikania before I started working there. And they showed me a picture of a feline too…I get the resemblance, at least. My ears are way bigger and cuter though, and at least I can walk on two legs and grab things with both my forepaws and tail. Still, being compared to a non-sapient beast felt weird. Maz didn’t like it when I compared them to the naked longswingers on my world, even if every humanlike looks just like them…so I guess that’s a pretty universal feeling.
My eyes close. I was exhausted from running, and the darkness outside only exacerbated just how tired I was. Sleep is not swift for me though. I always have to distract myself - and so I did, recalling and recounting just how I got here. Before even that stupid fucking monkey toy showed up. Before I worked at LIER. I wanted to remember what it was like to find out magic existed again. And so, I delve into my memories of that fateful day, when my sister and I left Mismal…
so! i started writing a thing today, and figured i'd post at least the little intro section. it's a rough first draft, and eventually i'll be posting more somewhere. the monkey's wheel is a story following Elani, a semi-humanoid furred alien (known as an Ikania) as she learns how magic exists in the wider cosmos. oh, and there's a strange monkey toy that never runs out of power that's being pursued by entropy given physical form. she'll be fine. maybe.