Rising Shards

“I just need fresh air I think,” I said. I walked to our front door. “Still locked. Or blocked or whatever.”

“Here, let’s try this,” Oka said, cracking open the window past our desk. A nice breeze of evening air rushed in.

“That’s a bit better,” I said. “I think if I can just climb up something that’ll help too.”

“You have that climbing feeling too?” Oka asked.

“Uh huh,” I said. “I remember on the first day there was a Cani with Feral Flu and they were saying they were climbing on the walls and stuff.” I noted that the new claws on my hands seemed to be permanently out, or they were like my tail and were just disobeying me all the time. I would have to make an effort not to scratch myself or Oka.

“There’s not a lot we can climb on here,” Oka said. “The highest thing is just Kalei’s bed.”

“I’ve never actually climbed up to Kalei’s bunk,” I said.

Without thinking about it too much, I quickly hopped up onto Kalei’s bed. I surveyed the new lands below me, seeing my dorm room with a new view, feeling as though I were its princess.

“I’m glad you didn’t take that bed,” Oka said.

“How come?” I asked.

“I dunno, I like being right next to you,” Oka said. “But not…vertically. That sounds bad.”

“Don’t overthink it,” I said. “I stress myself out way too much overthinking stuff I say."

“Plus, if you were in that bed, I could do this all the time,” Oka said.

My tail was hanging off the side of the bed, and Oka pulled on it. “Ow! Hey!”

“See? You wouldn’t want that.”

“What is with you and my tail today?” I said.

“I don’t know!” Oka said. “Maybe it’s a Feral Flu thing. I’m zeroed in on it.”

“You have your own now, so leave mine alone!” I said.

“No,” Oka said, and yanked on it again as she giggled. “Here, I wanna climb too.”

Oka climbed up to Kalei’s bunk with me and sat down.

“It feels really weird to be up here,” Oka said. “I hope she doesn’t take this as a personal space violation.”

She took my moment of thought about what Kalei would think to yank on my tail again. I fought her off, giving up my perch atop the dorm room to escape Oka’s giggly wrath.

“Hey, I have an idea,” Oka said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“They blocked the door,” I said. “We’re stuck in here.”

“But screw that!” Oka said. “We’re two crafty, intelligent girls. We can figure something out!”

Oka started looking around the room.

“I think the vents are out,” Oka said. “Unless we can somehow shrink now.”

She made her way back to the desk and started knocking all her stuff off of it. She was more careful placing my stuff and Kalei’s stuff on the ground.

“What are you doing?”

“Clearing the desk off!” Oka said. “Let’s go run around the beach for a bit.”

“What?”

“Listen, Zeta, I get that this is weird,” Oka said. “We just got a Cani infection thing that turns us into freakish animal-like monsters. That’s inherently pretty weird. Now we could grumble about how weird it is all night and be weirded out, or we can embrace it. Now are you gonna embrace it?”

“Is there another part to that that makes it make more sense?” I asked.

“All I’m saying is if we’re not gonna get weird when we have Feral Flu, then when are we ever going to get weird? You know when? Never. We’re never gonna get weird, and we’re gonna have to resign ourselves to stupid boring lives where we sit around grumbling and mumbling and never do anything fun because we were too afraid to be weird when we had already crossed the weird threshold line long, long ago!”

“Wow,” I said. “…Alright, that makes sense.”

“So you’re in?”

“I’m not sure what I’m in on,” I said.

“Opening this window, helping me tie a vine to something sturdy, then sneaking down and running around on the beach because being in here makes me wanna smash stuff up!”

“Sure, let’s do it.” I said.

“Great. Now help me with this window.” Oka said.

Our combined strength got the window open. It took us a bit to finagle the screen to open, as our clawed hands were clumsier to use. I could tell Oka really just wanted to rip through the thing, but once it was off its hinges, I put it aside out of her reach.

“So what’s next?” I asked.

Oka started conjuring some vines and tying them together. She was pretty quick at it, and had a long, sturdy looking vine in her hands. She tied it around the bottom of her bed frame.

“The beds are bolted down so unless I severely miscalculated how strong these things are, we should be good.” Oka said.

“I wonder why the beds are bolted down,” I said.

“Maybe someone tried to steal theirs?” Oka said. “Here.”

She handed me the other end of the vine braid and had me toss it out the window. I peeked down a bit, surprised I wasn’t feeling nauseous or anything looking down from a few floors up. I tugged on the vines and they felt strong enough, but I still wasn’t sure.

“Are you sure these will hold with us hanging on them?” I said.

“Oh yeah, I’ve made climbing vines all the time at Tesata to escape places I didn’t want to be,” Oka said. “I actually learned braiding making vines. We could even have Kalei on this with us and it wouldn’t break.”

Oka suddenly grabbed my by my waist and hefted me up with a single arm.

“Wait, Oka?!” I said as she lifted me towards the window.

“It’ll be fine, trust me!” Oka said. In that moment I remarked on what a stupid final thing to hear before falling off the dorms to our deaths, but by the time I had finished that thought I was too busy screaming as Oka leapt out the window, sliding us down the vine with her free hand. She tightened her grip just before we landed and set me down so gently I barely felt like I had fallen outside of the wind rushing into my face.

“Wow,” I said.

Oka dusted herself off. “It’s been a bit since I’ve done the ol’ room escape, so I’m a little rusty."

“Still,” I said.

“Still, what?” Oka asked. “Sorry for not warning you, I figured it’d be easier if we just went for it.”

“No just,” I said. “You’re incredible.”

“Why, thank you.” Oka said, giving me a wolfish grin. “Are you up for running straight to the beach and seeing how far we can go?”

“Totally!” I said as we started sprinting.

I had never felt so free, full of Feral Flu energy as we ran to the beach, kicking sand up and cackling as waves crashed against the ground. I’ll never forget how happy Oka looked when she was out there. It was like we had endless energy now.

“You know what I’ve been wanting to do?” Oka asked.

“What’s that?”

“Climb up the rocks over by that one cave!” Oka said. “That should get the climbing need out of us, right?”

“Let’s do it! Race you there!” I said.

It was pretty close as we sprinted, but Oka beat me by just a bit to a spot down the beach where there was a grouping of rocks that were just begging to be climbed on. I was never much of a climber, or athletic at all really, but having Feral Flu made me not think about that as much. It only took a minute or so for us to climb all the way to the top.  With a gorgeous view of the beach below us and a starry sky, I surveyed the new lands before me, feeling as though Oka and I were its queens.

“It is really nice up here,” I said. “Are you tired at all?”

“No, but I am hungry again,” Oka said.

“I bet the timers on at least one of the meals should be finished now. Should we head back?” I asked.

“I dunno, maybe a bit longer,” Oka said. “I haven’t had stargazed in a long time.”

“Me either,” I said.

Oka and I locked eyes. Neither of us were looking to the stars for a second. I didn't feel my heart do a bathump, but I felt something. Almost like the urge to run, it was a vague sense that I yelled at me to act, not telling me exactly what to do. Right as I started to say something, Oka turned out to the water.

“Alright, let’s name the constellations we can see then!” Oka said. “I see…oh, crap.”

“What constellation is—“

Then I felt sharp pains in my neck and back, and everything went black.