Journal
NEW ENTERY (17 Nov 2024) [IDK why it's centered now. I'll fix it later .-.]
Day 179 cont.
The sorceress told me she couldn’t leave the stump through the front door. I was shocked there was more than two doors in the damn place. She told me the basement is ‘in a weird place’ and said she didn’t elaborate further. She assured me I would not be affected by it. I am not settled by this information. Regardless, this is life now.
She also told me the last time she was in this forest, she came into this stump for safety and ended up shutting herself in the basement out of grief. She said she cried so much she forgot what she was grieving about. When she tried to come back up to the front door she couldn’t open it. She said she looked out the window and saw pitch black. The person she came with smiled and wished her goodbye before he closed his eyes. “He was very old. Very tired. I cried more because I knew he was important, but I forgot him too.”
She’d stayed in the basement for some unknown amount of time. She said she heard a voice whisper from the dark, and teach her things. Showed her secrets beyond the boundaries of this relhm. She said it took her memory because that was the price they agreed to. But she had forgotten what that deal was too.
“It told me I’d get my memory back when the time was right. It taught me things I can’t speak about. It told me it’ll make sense when the time comes.”
“Prophetic”
“Yeah.” She scoffed, then said “I hate that trope.”
“What the hell is a ‘trope?’”
=================== Older Entries:====================
Forest clearing, high noon. Day...16...4?
Today’s finds:
Clawfoot greyshoom – Grows on greybark trees close to the border of the Enchanted Forest. Nutty taste. Definitely poisons (spicy). Would go great in a soup with Morning-Dewmoss and onion.
Blood red maw moss – Deep, Deeeeeep red and black carpet type moss that grows on deadwood in the Uncanny Valley. Bitter but smells good. Will probably use for Mimic’s bedding.
Strangegod’s Antler – This was dropped by the phantom in the U.V.. It looked me directly in the eyes. I froze in place. It formed from black smoke and damp moisture into an amalgamation of needles forming an elk. It came so close I could taste it on my skin. It opens it’s mouth and whispers...
“You look like jell-o”
And disappears back into the mist. It’s antler falls to the dirt.
Maybe they like me??
Added note: Also found button mushrooms.
Stump. Day 167
I’ve read most of the books here and I’ve finally figured out how the chimney works. I still can’t figure out this ink inside me and why I can talk, and walk while the rest wonder about the Forest. I’m going back to that village with the mages. I’m going to search the place I got it. I’m bigger than before, so I could probably knock out the flesh-man-thing out and get more books.
If I’m quick enough, maybe I can score some groceries!
Stump. Day 167 cont.
I did not get groceries. I did get more books and ink...in case mine runs out? I don't know...I’ll just hold onto it anyway. Note: KEEP AWAY FROM MIMIC.
Every book I opened is filled with fancy curled symbols over bigger shapes and circles. Some with familiar images of plants and animals, others with more...specific looking. I’ll have to figure it out later. Most of the scribbles are familiar, but a lot of it isn’t. Like, most of it. I still don’t know how I can read. Before the ink, I couldn’t tell any word apart...
I’m going to try to make that soup.
Stump. Day 177
There is a sorceress in the basement. I’ve been here for this long and I didn’t even know she was there.
She’s a tall, faceless, woman with no face and slender...everything. She sits cross-legged on the ceiling, watching something on some glowing, over-sided looking-glass thing. Sometimes, when the glass is filled with ripping, noise filled salt and pepper, she feeds some black tablet thing into it’s mouth and people appear on it...it’s kinda similar to the scry box that fell out of the sky and left a dent in the dirt (It has ‘Dell” written on it, so I guess that’s it’s name??).
I found her because her long, winding, hair was peeking out from the basement door. When I followed her hair down the stairs and looked her in her non-face. She called me...something, then asked,
“Did you always own that cloak?”
“No. I figured pile of bones I got it from didn’t need it anymore. I’m not returning it.”
She made a sound that could maybe be a chuckle, then turns back to her small, glowing, scry-people.
“That’s true.” then- out of nowhere- she ‘looks’ back to me and asks “Do you have dreams?”
“...Yes. Too many some days. Why? And who are you? What are you doing in my stump?”
“I watch TV here. What do you dream about?”
“’the hell is a ‘TV’??”
“It’s just a scry-thing. What do you dream about?” She ask’s again, like the hypnotic thing before her was just a toy.
I didn’t answer right away. It was weird. But...who cares, I guess? She’s the first thing in this forest I’ve seen that wasn’t tree, brush, bunny or bone. “I drempt of a murder of crows…”
“...Yeah?”
“...Yeah…”
“...Just crows?”
“Well...no. One of them talked.”
“...Don’t they all?”
“Like...talked talked. Like how we’re talking.”
“Oh!”
“Yeah.”
“What about?”
I had to look at her for a minute. I don’t remember what I was thinking, but I was definitely thinking it.
“Well... they talked about all types of things. The weather. The water. Shiny things. Food. Their caw was easier to listen to than the others. They were funny too, so I stuck around but…”
There was another beat of silence before the sorceress continued to egg me on. “...But?”
I stare at her again for a cat’s age. Then I just continued. “...But it got to be too much. I’d paid so much attention to it I forgot what I’d came to do. I got a little too attached and started loosing track of time. I reached out to pet it...then out of nowhere it stopped talking and glared at me. I figured I pissed it off so I thanked it, cried about it, then moved on.”
“Sad note.”
“Sour, more like. It kept showing up.”
“In dreams?”
“And life.”
“It followed you in life??” Her voice rose in vested curiosity.
“It spied on me from dark places in my dreams. When I’m awake and walking in the forest, I’ve seen a single crow, but every other crow avoids me like I’m a plague. I shouted at it and it left...for a while. But then it came back. After a while it would keep coming back. It never spoke to me again, but it kept watching me. It was so bad I got paranoid. Both in dreams and waking. It wouldn’t leave me no matter what I did.”
“It wounds like that crow wanted something else.”
“I don’t care what it wants!! Damn bird acted like I was it’s enemy out of nowhere! And when I leave it alone, it haunts me like I hurt it! Fuck the damn thing! I’d sooner feed it to the mimic.”
After that, the Sorceress invited me to have soup with her. We talked about books.
Stump 179
The teapot mimic that’s my pet now bumped me awake- seeming about as concerned as a tea-kettle-come-to-life can about a slime-turned-sentient. It’s not like it can talk, so I can’t really explain it’s squeeky whining.
So I did the next best thing: I asked the sorceress. She suspects I had a bad dream. I tell her “that doesn’t make any sense. I don’t have too many of those.”
“How do you know that?” She asks, upside down from the basement ceiling.
“I’d remember them if they were bad, right?”
“...Not always, no.”
“What?”
She said that dreaming types don’t always remember their dreams, and sometimes we have bad dreams that we don’t remember. I don’t get it, but I get it. I tell her “cool” then we have tea and start going back through the books in the stump I didn’t get to yet. She ended up finding my maps and ended up asking about them. That confused me at first, considering she told me herself she’s lived in these woods for well over a hundred years but she didn’t recognize the landmarks.
“Odd” she points to a clearing in the north west, “Aren’t there springs here? Why is it blank?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always seen big ink caps and ruins there.”
Then she turned to me and asked, “Wouldn’t you know?”
And I turn back and tell her “Why would I?”
“You’re a native slime to this forest. Yours has been slipping about forever.”
“I don’t remember anything before the ink. Not really. I just remember sensations, like what the world tasted like.”
“So you don’t remember the spring?”
“I don’t think I cared enough about what was or wasn’t there. I was always hungry and restless.”
She looked back at the map. I guess if she had a face she’d look...sad? She sounded it. “What’s the world like now for you, then?”
Ooooh shit. I didn’t actually think about that. “Uh...I guess...hungry, restless, and...curious? I like exploring it. I like looking at things in it too. Like pine cones, and moss and such. Everything tastes the same. I just don’t taste it as much because I want to walk like men.”
“Is that why you didn’t make feet?”
“Why bother? I move just fine like this. Makes it easier to run if I find some scary shit in the valley. Or the Styx, damn place.”
“That’s what those places are?” she points to the Uncanny Valley- a gray blob- and the Styx- a red blob- “The borders are bigger than I remember…”
“It seems that way, but really, the trees between the Valley and the forest are just graying. I think it’s just the soil. The Styx is getting larger, and eating the Valley. That’s why so many weird-things started coming out at night.”
“Weird things?”
“Shifters. Wraiths. Not-Trees. Rot-skinners. I even saw a Phasm in the Valley. It dropped a horn.”
“...What?!”
“Right?”