welcome to the jungle | Glowfic Constellation

full-of-woe

April moved to scenic Selvadorada because exploring ancient ruins sounds interesting, and temptingly devoid of living human beings to interact with.

But, due to who she is as a person, the first thing she does after moving in is sit down at her computer and start playing video games.

It's... weirdly... less, somehow? Blicblock feels too easy, or something. Turning up the difficulty doesn't help. After a few minutes she gives up and tries learning a new programming language, which instead of feeling much easier and less satisfying than she instinctively expected, feels harder and more effortful.

It takes her a few more minutes after that to notice that... 'learning a new programming language' isn't quite the right way to think about it. She feels like programming is the sort of thing she does, she feels like it's fun and easy, but in the entire process of slogging through this tutorial she has never once consciously compared a thing she is learning to a thing she already knew. The concepts are familiar, but the details aren't. And if the concepts are familiar where did she learn them? She doesn't know. She can't remember.

What's the last thing she remembers before she moved here?

She lived in, uh, a town? And had, uh, probably family members of some sort? And moved to Selvadorada to investigate the possibly-magical ancient ruins, but, like, there wasn't a moment when she decided to do that, she just... arrived here... with that knowledge already in her head.

She wishes she had a whiteboard. Wait, has she ever even used a whiteboard? She can't remember. The concrete part of this problem, at least, is solvable: she gets online and orders a whiteboard, wincing slightly at the prospect of parting with money when she has yet to establish an income. She doesn't want to say 'whatever, I'll write a couple of mobile apps', which was her first instinct, because her instincts were wrong about how hard programming is and they might also be wrong about the difficulty of writing mobile apps.

In the whiteboardless meantime, she paces her living room and recounts to herself everything that's happened that she has a specific concrete memory of. No matter how she tries to turn her brain sideways and shake it to get the knowledge out, it remains the case that all of those memories took place in this house.

The world outside this house... exists, right?

She peeks nervously out the window, then moves even more nervously to the door.

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He's wearing his swimming trunks now, the narration just said.

He swims over to the waterfall and finds himself directly under it, letting his eyes close and enjoying the impact of the water on his back.

full-of-woe

April... was not aware you could change clothes by ROTATING, and is too nervous about looking weird in front of the tour guide to try it, and also too nervous about looking weird in front of the tour guide to change clothes the way she normally does. She waits awkwardly.

He seems entirely content to ignore her, actually. His eyes are still closed, and he's still enough that... he could... be sleeping????

full-of-woe

That's fucking weird???

It is what it is, yo.

The place is very peaceful, and there are certainly plenty of places she can hide behind a tree to change if she wants.

full-of-woe

After waiting a few more seconds to verify that he really does seem to be sleeping, she carefully ducks behind a tree and changes into her swimsuit, then takes an extremely brief dip in the water, then immediately gets out again and changes back, hopefully before he wakes up.

He does indeed seem unperturbed by her antics.

full-of-woe

Great, okay, cool, now she can just. Wait here. For him to stop... napping. (Why is he napping???)

It's probably very relaxing after a long morning of walking!

After a few minutes he does open his eyes again then swims over to the edge of the lake and gets off the water. "Let's eat before continuing on our journey!" he declares, pulling a towel from his inventory to dry off before spinning back into his previous clothes.

full-of-woe

Why the SPINNING. Can everyone do that except her?? Could she learn how to do it if she tried, maybe, and it just didn't come loaded the way walking and talking and using your inventory did?

Anyway. She makes enthusiastic noises about food. Can't go wrong with food. Okay, you probably can, but she hopes he won't.

Is she vegetarian? He has sandwiches and some of them have ham and some don't. He also has fruit juice and water!

full-of-woe

She is not vegetarian and will happily accept ham sandwiches and fruit juice.

Then they can eat mostly in silence for a bit before they are ready to continue on their trek that may or may not include More Memory Holes!

full-of-woe

April is rapidly developing a grudge against memory holes.

If she tries her very hardest to pay attention to her surroundings and continue having thoughts about them at all times, will that help anything?

It absolutely will not, no!

Their next stop is the ruins of a temple. It was probably very pretty at some point in the past, but right now it's merely as pretty as something that is the ruins of something that used to be very pretty. The temple is reasonably tall, with stairs leading up to the main building from the probably-it-used-to-be-a-garden place they're at right now.

full-of-woe

She has SUCH a grudge against memory holes!!!

...the architecture here is real nice, though. Ruins and all. She can imagine what it might have looked like and it's damn impressive.

"This is the most dangerous part of the tour," says Unther. "The ruins have deep unexplored caves that I'm not allowed to show you."

full-of-woe

"Understood." She will be following ALL safety guidelines, thank you very much.

Then he can show her around! The inner walls of the temple upstairs have carvings and drawings, though lots of them seem to have been lost to the ravages of time. They have best guesses for what each room was used for: this one was general worship, this one was for public sacrifices, this one was for public flogging, these here are for people who are temporarily sleeping at the temple, this is a healing area, this is a granary.

full-of-woe

...there was an area for public flogging??? Never mind, she's not going to ask. Instead she takes notes and sketches the architecture.

Eventually Unther declares that they should start going back as it will soon get dark.

full-of-woe

That's fair. April will accept this.

This way to the memory hole!

It is dusk when they get back to the jeep.

full-of-woe

Memory holes are DEEPLY IRRITATING and April has a GRUDGE.

She's quiet about it, though. No point in saying anything when she doesn't even know if the guide is having the same experience, and if he's not, does she really want him to know that something weird and fucked up is going on with her?