Chapter 2

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Smack!

The leaf edge of a dappled willow shrub slapped the face of my aviation aspirations. A minor pipe dream of riding the skies, flying through the horizon, peeing on the floral. All gone in that moment of clarity.

I wasn’t gliding over mountains, blue sky, and white clouds. I wasn’t high enough. I wasn’t even gliding over trees, instead, I was dodging them, doing quick last-second turns, ducking through branches, spinning, swaying to avoid the unkempt shrubs. It was anxiety-inducing, rush fulfilling, mental badgering flying into a thicketed nightmare.

And you know what the kicker is? When I was pondering making this cursed contraption, I forgot the most--if not the most important element. I didn’t invent a parachute! The fluttery hells, am I an analogy of Icarus flying too close to the sun, or in this case, that fern. I forced all my weight to the left to barely avoid the fern, earning an extra slap to my shoulder that was bruised red from a few other slaps. A nature of slaps for my arrogance of dreaming to fly.

'End my misery.' I thought, needing to end this uncultivated torture.

With that thought in mind, I was closing to my destination at a rapid blistering pace of 60 miles per hour. The highest speed a paper plane can go, thus my glider even accounting for my weight in this low elevation. I had to make an impromptu plan on how to land without killing myself. I was desperate. I searched around for anything, that shrub over there looks soft, no that’s a threadleaf cypress, those leaves are thick and wired. Maybe if I slam into that false holly, Nope. 'If I want to get decapitated to end my misery sooner, sure…'

Anything.

Then I spotted it.

“Verdant hells!”

I don’t know if this was a boon or derision from the Tree Gods, but those meter tall bosks of creeping grass looked tolerant to slide down upon. Dipping down further to avoid the daughter tillers atop the grass, I focused on the thickest area for a collision. So that I can receive multiple soft collisions to claw down my speed which will make me be able safely to latch on to one.

“This is going to be painful.”

And so it was, but in the end, I released both my hands from the handlebars to hug the most inner grass strains. I was oozing green blood from the plethora of scratches I had suffered in my sky journey here. I hugged the grass-leaf as my life depended on it. It did, but I don’t want to think about it.

My eyes were closed and my grip was clamming from perspiration. The grass I was clutching upon, was swaying back and forth, aggrieved with my weight upon it. Waiting for the swaying to stop, I held my puke in with the dizziness. After moments, uncounted by my trauma ridden mind, the grass slowly halted into something of grudging intolerance of my presence.

With a sigh of relief that I won’t be dying today, I simmered down the grass. I was hugging it for life when I moved, after all...I avoided the disaster but might die from the shrapnel after. My first life can account for the fault in that certainty.

Landing my grassy wrapped shoes onto the ground, I took another exhale, lamenting my chronicles and the death that nearly transpired.

“Never in my imaginings that I had pondered, that you were a dandifying grass hugger.” Said a grey man, with a stone on his head.

I pivoted to face the direction the graveled yet full voice spoke its accusation. My face souring beat red, prompted by the witness before me.

“Well if it isn’t the stone in my foot, the swatch on my back, my trusty sidekick Peb.”

Peb, the stone man, munched on a pebble, as he watched me on my spot.

“Side...kick? Whose sided a kick?” Befuddled in ponder as Peb munched the pebble into a graveled paste.

“Ah Peb, the un-keenest stone, don’t try to bold over your shoulder in knowing the way things are.”

“Okay.” He replied, not curious but following. He then took out another pebble from the grass bag I had made for him, then threw it into his mouth to yet again munch on its hard ridges.

The Stone people are different from the Grass people, they are the definition of the pigs wallowing in the mud. They are somber folks, only caring for their rocks and their stones. Their main diet is their namesake, nutrition to their wellbeing. Not many races care for the stone folk because they mostly live underground. They are an unsorted and amorphous lot, added mudded mystery beyond compare.

Their lax mood is equivalent to a cow grazing on grass. Uncaring how the world works or turns. Except for Peb, my trusty sidekick, my Egor to my Frankenstein's brain. Like Pooh bear, Peb only has one aspiration is to eat his never-ending fill of stones, but what varies him from the rest of his race is that he has ambitions. Not the ambition of power, or ruling the world, but the ambition of wanting to experience every rock cuisine in the whole entire world. And what he saw in me is the possibility to do that.

Peb probably assumes I’ll conjure an invention that will provide him with unique rocks to taste, but I know that his assumption is impossible in this day and age.

“Oh, gluttonous Peb... Let's get going.” I directed, sauntering past him. Like a landslide trailed by pebbles, my sidekick followed behind my steps.

After a few shrubs, six or seven, I couldn't care less. I entered a grove with a huge fallen hickory tree logged in the center. The grove was unkempt by nature, grown out from its original beauty. It was dark, bland, and boring. No one would suspect that this thicket held a terrible secret. It held my laboratory. My research and development laboratory as a matter of fact.

I continued on past a few more long brownish grass that was at the corner by the hickory log which had sheltered it from sunshine and rain. Reaching the bark of the fallen log, I looked for a lever in a small mound of stunted grass. Finding it by feel, I pulled it down. At the other side of the log, a few rocks tied, slowly dropped down to open the bark doors in front of me like a sea gate of a castle.

I smiled at the function, working properly for its design. The mood was ruined by Peb munching on tough-sounding stones. Can’t some people in this world admire my genius, especially my sidekick who is indifferent to them all?

Cursing the goddess Iris, I walked into my Laboratory. It was pitch dark which is what is expected inside a hollowed-out log with no holes for light.

Now, this is the reason, I keep Peb by my side, as my trusty sidekick from thick to thin. Peb is 2 years older than me, which means he already had his unique classification for his race. But typical of Peb, genius inspired or hunger inspired, he picked the most exotic classification, that was obvious to his gluttonous nature.

He picked the Class Job of Stone Binder from his pile. Peb the Stone Binder. Why did he pick Stone Binder you might ask? To Bind things into stone. A Stone Binder, binds elements into stone, from fire to water, to nature and wind. In binding those elements, the stone’s attributes change. If you are cold in the winter, looking to get warm? Here is a firestone, it will warm you till it dies. How bout thirsty from your trek of 10 meters? Here is a water stone to quench your dry throat. But now you are wondering why Peb picked the Stone Binder Classification, if it isn't obvious now, I pray for your intelligence.

It’s so Peb could munch on those elemental stones like he is munching on a water stone right now. There is no ambition or dream, or aspiration of logic. Peb was just hungry and wanted to taste something new. So why not bind things exotic into his favorite type of meal. Why not? He supposes.

“Well?” I waited for Peb to water down the third lunch he just ate.

Peb befuddled then struck with the realization of his task. He ran to the corner of the door and hovered his hand over a pebble. The pebble suddenly began to glow fluorescent white. After this magical display, more pebbles across the span interior of the hickory log began to also display their light.

The laboratory was infested by my inventions, barked strung by grass. Inventions that were yet still in development, were displayed in disarray. There was a grass mat overlaying a large and hidden invention at the center. It was 30 centimeters tall, and 50 centimeters long. A prototype of prototypes, a dream in oak and branch.

Walking past a stone table with bite marks around the edges, I dropped my glider that was listed to be tinkered with again. I walked past a few contraptions that hadn't been worked on for an age, to the center of the log laboratory where my biggest piece slumbered. Like a parent, I grabbed onto the grass mattress that was covering it and pulled it aside, to show the whole body of my slumbering machine.

It was beautiful.

Three-legged in its beauty, based on a retarded tricycle with a huge circular ball frame at the back. The ball was 5 centimeters in its radius, hollowed out to fit the rivet to attach it to the base. The front two legs had 2 centimeter small balls below also riveted. Above the legs were a chest with arms and a helmeted head. It was a mechanical centaur with no weapons to bear.

At it’s back was the cockpit, designed like a jet. I watched in awe of my creation with a tearful glimmer in my eye. A centaurical mecha, made of oak, bark, and grass…

Of course, there were nuts, circular objects are hard to come by in the forest. So finding the right walnut to fit my blueprint was a herculean task.

I smiled up at the centaur’s face, which held a transparent stone at the center. I heard Peb salivating as he also peered up on to it.

Distracting Peb, I had something I wanted him to do. “

“Hey, Peb.”

“Yes…?” He drooled out, still staring up at the appetizing stone.

“I need you to make a Combusting stone.”

He automatically swiveled his head towards me with shock and fear. Seeing his reaction, I winced at the thought. It was one of the most dangerous stones, Peb ever bound. The Combusting Stone.

The Combusting stone is what it’s namesake suggests. It combusts with a substantial force, like a rocket, it can skyrocket the small stone into the air. Peb discovered this, after binding a biodegradable gas into a stone. He then dropped into his mouth, ready to chew the new taste. But it was more than he expected, it exploded into flaming force.

With his mouth agape, a stone between his teeth, Peb flew past yours truly into branches and shrubs.

“I don’t wanna.” Peb haplessly said.

“Peb? Peb...Come on Peb.”

“Nope.” He crossed his arms.

“I got a new idea for a new bind stone you might like?” I suggested. It would always work. One thing you can count on Peb, it’s his craving for something new and tasty.

“Really?”

“Yes, Peb. And oh stones, it’s yummy.”

Peb looked at me like a man in a drought. His mouth was salivating at my words.

I stepped back from his ravenous mood.

“Make the Combusting Stone, and I’ll tell you,” I suggested.

“Okay!” He agreed in his veracity.

“I’ll go to the gas.” He said impatiently, rushing out of the hickory laboratory into the shabby grove.

Taking a deep sigh, I turned to face my creation. My centaur still needs a few things before I can launch it and before I can get into its cockpit. A most special ingredient that I had discovered from this world. The tool that would make bark and wood move.

Today is the day, I'll be able to finally attain it, the special ingredient, the ingredient. Then I can finally use a mecha…

I took the grass mattress with me to the table with my glider. After doing some few prods and fixes, and engineered something small and compact. I smiled to myself at the small task, but it will save me a lot of trouble when midday starts.

After a while with final preparations completed Peb came back, with an exploded ash marked on his face. He came to me gingerly holding a combusting stone in his hand. He held out to give it to me.

Afraid, I held onto it.

“Don’t scratch it or make a mark.” Peb nervously warned.

“I’m not a fool, Peb.” I retorted. I put the stone into a small box that was attached to the bottom of the glider.

“What are you going to do?” He questioned.

“Something to get me home faster and safer,” I said.

“I think.”

“Sooo….” He looked at me with a sheepish look.

“Oh right, the stone. Well, you bind brown beans into the stone. I think you’ll discover something that melts into your tongue with such a sweet taste, you’ll be craving it after death.”

I hinted to him with a reminiscing smile.

Peb fully salivated, rushed out from the lab in search of what I suggested.

Seeing his back, I smiled at my sidekick. I was in a slump when I first met him, now every day is something new. Dare I say it? My first friend in this new world?

I shook my head, then turned to gingerly grab my glider. I hovered my hands on the light pebbles to conserve the energy that was gathered from the sun’s ray.

Before heading outside, I tripped myself nearly forgetting the reason I came here. I went to a shelf near the doorway and picked up a small bundle which I pocketed in my small grassy bag.

With the bark doors closing behind me, I walked into a clearing of tough dirt.

Peb was right. I am a fool.

I scratched the Combusting stone underneath the glider that was strapped on my back. I skyrocketed upward, past shrubs, the branches, and trees, into the open sky, with Elton John’s Rocket Man hummed in my tune.