Chapter 21: Chapter 21
Waking up, Adair looked around and was relieved to see that she hadn't suddenly been swept away to another location. The little girl was still next to her furry companion who was snoring lightly. She stood up and looked up to check whether the snow was still around the box.
As she looked up and, she noticed that there was no snow on the box. This made her worry that they had been asleep for a long time. She started to contemplate on how long they had been asleep and after a moment of thinking about it she realized that she had really no way to tell.
Just as Adair made up her mind about this, she looked back up through one of the bigger holes in their roof to see six colored lightning bolts pass through the sky. And right after this happened her view of the sky disappeared and soon enough the green canopy once again covered the sky.
Just what was going on? Adair looked at Hank, who had woken up from the thunder. Both of them shared the same questioning looks.
'Does this mean we've both been asleep for an entire month? It would certainly explain why I'm feeling so hungry… Last I recall, I was stressed out thinking that we might get flooded, but stress shouldn't make one sleep for a whole month, right? Hank looks like he also has just woken up, so does that mean that he slept for the whole storm as well? Can I even be sure that we're in the same spot as before?'
'If I really went into a hibernation-like state then how can I be alive? If Adair remembered correctly, hibernation required an animal to have eaten a lot of food to survive a long period of time and I haven't eaten any more than usual before the storm started. 'Could it have been me seeing the open sky? No, that wouldn't explain Hank sleeping just as long as me. Is the atmosphere infectious? Or maybe this storm is different from the other storms?'
Adair tried to make sense of her current situation, but it all boiled down that she really should stop having expectations of what this new world was about each time something new happened that was completely unexpected, defying her logic.
The duo started to remove the piles of material that the bear had put in front of the entrance to the box. With how hard and long it was, though, Adair couldn't help but think that this might have been a really dumb idea. After all, if the box had really ended up flooding, then they would have been trapped inside and drowned.
She also realized that she should have long since asked George what the storms were about and the effects of each of them. Because if anything unexpected happened in the forest she wanted to know of it since it was her permanent living spot at least for the time being. She was determined that that would be the first thing she would do after making sure that it was safe to do so.
After a few hours of climbing about to move the wood around to allow them to be able to exit it, both Adair and Hank got out of the box to look around at their new surroundings, yet nothing appeared to be different. The young blue tree was still by their structure, the lake was still nearby, and their makeshift bathroom was now out in the open… and it reeked.
It smelled so bad that Adair decided that it was more essential to do something about the smell before going out to ask the tree any questions. As such she got a stick and started digging. Eventually, when she deemed the hole to be big enough, she got her makeshift broom that she used to push water around back in their house and started to move their feces into the spot.
While she was doing this, she really wished that she had one of those industrial-grade masks from the Galactic Empire. One of those would guarantee that one couldn't smell a thing, making her clean-up job as easy as pie.
Still, Adair gritted her teeth, put the dirt back on top and decided then and there that if a snowstorm happened again that she would figure out a way to not have to perform this disgusting task again. Once done, she looked for Hank who had gone off to explore their surroundings and probably to get away from the smell. As a bear it must have been even worse for him. Alas, he did not find anything to be different.
Since Hank determined that everything was normal and safe, she decided that it was now an excellent time to go to the blue tree and ascertain how long they had been out and also if there was more to those storms. When she poured the water on its roots, she wrote her question on the ground: "What should we expect with the storms? Also is there anything else we should know about the forest?
Unfortunately, George had quite a lackluster answer. Because he responded with, "I dont know much about them because I'm a tree. I go into hibernation to protect myself and this allows me to focus all of my energy on absorbing as much as I can."
As for her second question, the answer was that if they ever found themselves in contact with another creature that she should either run or kill it immediately.
George then went on to explain that she and Hank were an exception in the forest because you still had the consciousness and ability to think straight. Although he had seen some creatures act peaceful, those all had been attacked by other creatures without provocation in order to claim more land and resources for themselves.
Adair was happy to learn that she did not turn out like so many other creatures in this forest and she wondered why this could be. To her it was almost as if she had a protective charm around her. She then realized that this might actually be the case. She had really no idea if her mom put any defensive spells on her to protect her when her mom couldn't protect Adair herself.
With how her mom reacted, this honestly wouldn't have shocked Adair, but she really wondered when her mom might have done that. Thinking about it, the only time that came to mind was during the first week of her life when her mom had not let Adair leave her sight. She also realized that it must have been when she was sleeping because she had no recall of her mom doing anything to her.
After she learned this, she immediately ran back to share what she had learned with Hank. Given her new knowledge she decided that it would be a good idea to start working out, at least build up some stamina so she could run away from anyone that could potentially harm her in the future.
Of course, if all creatures were as fast as her companion, she was doomed, but if exercising could increase her chances of survival it would be foolish to not try it at least.
This made her think about what qualities she wanted to train. With the days lasting twice as long, she had twice as much time to prepare. This also meant that she had twice as much time to hurt herself by exercising too much. So she made sure to note to herself to make sure to rest. Adair didn't know if her body would grow differently on this planet compared to back in the Galactic Empire. She had no idea whether even training her new body would be effective. For all she knew on this planet there were specific techniques that you had to do in order to make your body stronger and you couldn't do the regular training methods that worked back in the Galactic Empire.
What if lifting weights no longer made you stronger or running made you faster. What if you had to meditate or something to get the effect you were looking for. If this really was the case then even more of her knowledge from the Galactic Empire would be made useless. And the more situations where Adair thought that her knowledge from a previous life could become useful the more times she had no idea if it was helpful. It was almost as if reincarnating was not as beneficial as she expected it to be.
She quickly switched mindsets and went back to thinking that if exercising did not make you stronger though then that would have some really weird implications on life outside her home galaxy assuming that the current planet was still part of it.
At least this was easy to check. All she had to do was work out and determine if this hypothesis was correct. She was so caught up in all of this thinking that she completely forgot that Hank was right there and she could easily ask before committing herself to something that may not even work.
Before she started though she considered if there might be reasons why this could be a bad idea. The first thing that came up was the idea that maybe her body would get overworked twice as fast if she trained twice as long. After thinking about it though she determined that that probably would not happen due to her sleeping twice as much giving her body plenty of time to rest.
She soon realized that this was not entirely accurate, though since she slept all at once and did not separate this 48 hour day into two 24 hour days, the fatigue of working out should still affect her the same way it would have back in the Galactic Empire even if the days lasted twice as long. She still did not know the parameters of her body, though, so she still wanted to see how much abuse her body could take.
The next consideration was that working out would make her body require more food and water. With the way the bottles worked right now each one filled her up perfectly, but if she started to work out would that still be the case or would she go through their limited supply of food quicker. She still did not know how much exactly was inside the bag.
When she had previously asked Hank how much longer their food situation would last which was before the storm, Hank had not known how much longer their food situation would last. But as she had no hope in opening the books she thought that maybe working out wasn't such a bad idea after all since it at least gave her something to do.
She first wanted to set up a track like they had back in the Galactic Empire but the dirt was as hard as always and no matter how she tried she was not able to make lines in it. She then resorted to making two lines using sticks that she estimated was about 100 meters. She had no idea how far she was off though since she was still so small.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone