Chapter 51: 050 Orange Juice

Very quickly, Donovan realized that maybe he shouldn't be looking at or for her. Not only was she still very much asleep, she was also practically nude. She looked very pretty laying there, like a princess from a fairy tale, and Don was contemplating sneaking up for a kiss. He was thinking it would be amusing to enact a scene from sleeping beauty, but he decided against it.

What would she think if she actually woke up?

Forget just a slap, a stabbing implement might find its way into her hands.  With this potential future in mind, he turned away to look for his own clothes, only to be met with a familiar looking fluffy face.

"Courier? No, your ears are a different shape."

It only tilted its head in response.

"Right, you can't understand me. Let's see..." Don was feeling quite thirsty at the moment, so he mimed drinking with his thumb to his mouth and tipping his head back. "Water? Can you bring me some water? Please?"

The Skwiven mimicked his motion with one hand, before changing to a gesture that used both hands to portray it grabbing a cup.

Bright one, thirsts?

As before with the Courier's little dance, the intent behind the action filtered into his head.

"Yes! Yes. Water. Can you bring me some?" He nodded his head and channeled enthusiasm into his voice. He didn't know how to communicate past a language barrier, but he assumed his point got across.

The furry creature squeaked and ran off, an affirmative reaching Donovan. Not five minutes had passed before it returned with a wooden cup tied to its neck and a sealed jug of some sort strapped to its back.

Untying the cup and handing it to him, it swung the belt with the attached jug around to its front before getting to work at loosening it. This was something that proved to be difficult for the smaller Skwiven, its arms being too short to reach around and untie the knot.

Don resorted to helping it out in the end, not being able to bear watching him, it, struggle.

The cap turned out to be little more than a wooden plug held in place by a leather cover tied to the jug's neck. It was easy enough to untie the knot of the little lace, but the plug was really in there. It took so much effort to get it off that he wondered why the little cap was necessary in the first place.

Eager to quench his growing thirst, he poured the fluid into the wooden receptacle.

It was orange.

Not like orange juice, juice made of oranges, it was far more transparent. It instead seemed to dye the otherwise light brown cup in a brighter orange hue. So it definitely wasn't water.

He probably wasn't specific enough, not that he was sure he could have been, but what damage could this do? It was brought to him, so it should be safe to consume, and it actually had a pretty nice fragrance. Sweet, but not as overbearing as the fruit he had been presented with earlier, and displaying a distinct lack of the smell of alcohol which he so hated.

"'Bottoms up', was it?"

Brushing off his reservations over a new beverage the same way he had done many times aboard the Oberlux, he drained the cup in under a second. Whatever was in the cup soon took effect. The sensation he wasn't quite able to wrestle with quieted down in an instant. 

However the rest of him became fuzzy just as quickly.

He was still seated, so he didn't fall when his balance went, but his head did start rolling loosely from shoulder to shoulder. The medley of blues he could see above him in the distance became blurred, followed by closer objects like his feet.

Even his hearing began to act up, a wavy-wobbling sound bombarding him as he slowly returned to laying on his back.

He didn't like that orange juice. He didn't like it one bit.

Eventually he had to close his eyes to stop them from hurting, an actual burning sensation in his retinas was present this time around. Just as he was thinking this experience was torturous, the information granted by his newfound sense of split began to make some degree of comprehendible shape.

The 'image' was fuzzy, yes, but he could make out something in the area he remembered that Skwiven being. Was that what living beings looked like? Weakly glowing blobs with a brighter orb in their torso? Was this what the Arboreal Maiden was seeing?

Slowly he turned his head to look from side to side. Given the fact he was on his back, his range was limited, but he could still barely look in Diana's direction.

He couldn't make out a specific figure, at least not yet, but he could very clearly 'see' a blob which could only be her. A distance away, he could barely make out a smaller, weaker clump of 'light'. Mercedes.

What he couldn't see was his clothes. Whether this was because they didn't have any split to see or he wasn't yet sensitive enough, he did not yet have a way of knowing. He vaguely remembered them being somewhere to his left, but they weren't in range of his arms.

"Hey little guy? Can I get some help with my clothes?"

He could see the Skwiven move with split, though it became fairly clear it didn't understand him. Some distant squeaking translated to confusion in his head.

"I shouldn't have drunken that stuff without the Maiden's supervision." Don groaned as he tried to pry back some semblance of control over his motor functions. So long as he kept his attention on a place close to him, he could see differences in colors and wouldn't become dizzy.

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Clumsily, he began to crawl towards the last known location of his clothes. So long as he could touch them, he could tell how to put them on. His dress uniform wasn't as much of a pain to deal with as it may have seemed, a shocking amount of emphasis was placed on function and comfort, but it would certainly be annoying to put back on given his current handicaps.

Sure enough, upon finding his clothes he put the undershirt on backwards. The tightness around his neck was the only signal that he had indeed put it on backward, but it was an easy fix because he hadn't yet put on the other layers.

Just as he struggled his pants on, he could hear the sound of someone approaching. No, that was inaccurate. He couldn't hear anything out of the norm. There were pulses of split that could be felt he recognized to be in the cadence of footsteps. 

A distant, quiet creaking was actually something he could hear. Heavy breaths were next, though equally distant to the groaning wood.

"Mister Strauss, are you alright?" A voice that could only belong to the Arboreal Maiden originated from somewhere above and behind him, the same direction of the labored breaths. There must have been someone else there.

Don decided to turn and greet the new arrival, unpresentable as he may be at the moment. Given their angle, he had to keep his eyes closed, but they should be close enough  to make out with his new sense of split. There were two figures there, no doubt about it, but one of them was extremely faint.

"Why are you dressed? Did you not understand that was included when I said not to move?" She didn't seem angry, nor did she seem to be accusing him of anything, but Don felt like he had done something terribly wrong all the same. The Arboreal Maiden had made it very clear that he wasn't to move.

"I wanted to make myself somewhat presentable if I could, Diana's orders and all. Who is this?" A lie that contained a morsel of truth, and an intentionally vague question. He wouldn't get any points in a professional setting, but at the very least it wasn't informal. At least he didn't think it was informal. Considering he was dazed and on the backfoot, he thought it was a satisfactory response.

"This is Grand Elder Firche, the Merchant. He will be helping you two to secure the materials required for you to rebuild." Don 'watched' the two of them step off of something.

"Really? Great! Um, I don't have a list or anything like that on hand at the moment, so we'll have to talk with ARC. In the meantime, nice to meet you, Grand Elder Firche." Don, somewhat clumsily, extended a hand towards the brighter of the two silhouettes. He had come to the conclusion that this was Firche owing to the direction the Arboreal Maiden's voice came from and her previous mention that the Great Csillacra had difficulties finding her. "My name is Donovan Strauss."

He had completely forgotten that this Grand Elder could not understand him.

"Shake his hand Merchant, it is a sort of greeting amongst their kind."

"It is a pleasure to greet you in turn, Sir Strauss. As introduced, I am one of the Sanctum's Grand Elders, the Merchant. Firche is my given name, but I insist that you only call me Merchant as you would address the Scholar or the Captain. It is a cultural preference, one I am sure you will soon come to understand, but I will not scold you for using Grand Elder Firche."

Aside from not being able to see and the shaking of Don's hand side to side as opposed to up and down, Don had quite a favorable first impression.

"Pleasantries aside for the moment, have the Skwiven been treating you well in my absence? Are your eyes still sensitive from the procedure?"

"About that." Don was incredibly anxious about a certain event in the recent past. "I asked, more like signaled for, something to drink to the Skwiven who greeted me after I woke up. It brought me a clear orange liquid which I drank a full cup of. I think the jug is over there somewhere." He gestured vaguely to where he thought it might be.

Don couldn't see it, but she had gone to take a whiff of it from the source. "What effects are you experiencing?"

"I'm dizzy, my vision is a little fuzzy, and I feel like I might vomit from the nausea, but least I'm not in pain any more."

"Pain... might you be referring to the exposure of your new senses?"

"I imagine so."

"Just how much did you drink?"

"A full cup, I finished it fairly quick too."

This information elicited a sigh from the Great Csillacra's steward. "You weren't supposed to drink that much. At most, you should have only had a sip. Maybe I should have warned you." She glanced toward the Skwiven, who for all she could tell was blissfully unaware of the mistake it made. "On second thought, I think this might be for the better. I will pour you another cup."

"I believe such an action to be beyond your station, my lady." The Merchant seemed to be something of a stickler for convention.

"This is a duty bestowed upon me by the Great Csillacra, Merchant. I will perform this task to completion and I will not be accepting further criticism or interruption from anyone, yourself included Merchant." This was the first time either person had heard outright hostility in her voice.

"I understand my lady." At her scathing rebuke of his objection, he could only accept there was nothing he could do about it.

"Why are you giving me more of this stuff if I'm already suffering from it?" Don disregarded their interaction, taking it as a dispute he had no part in.

"In time you will understand, but for now just understanding it will help with the sensitivity should be enough. Your 'eyes' are fresh, so to speak, and you are currently in a place with an extremely high concentration of split." After handing him the now full cup, she poked the areas which had been hurting previously. Suddenly a 'light' emanated from the tips of her fingers, culminating in a stinging sensation. "As you might be able to tell, you aren't yet at the level where I can tell you what you are looking at."

At her request, Don downed the next cup. He did it a little slower than previously, just a precaution, but it didn't take long.

A wave of dizziness crashed into him, weightlessness included, but there wasn't any burning in his eyes. Furthermore, the picture from his sense of split became noticeably clearer. There was still a great deal of fuzz, but he could now make out more details.