When the Weather is Grey: Part Two

      "You are, quite obviously, not in Neopia Central anymore. Your coloring, along with all that rain you had last night, has brought you to this island. The island doesn't have a name; the people here feel that naming it will make it seem like a more permanent home, imprisonment. On this island, it never stops raining, and the other pets here have gone a little bit insane because of it.

      "Which brings me to the pets living here. They are all grey in color now, most of them starting here as shadow, or possibly Halloween, or some other sort of dark coloring. All of them have been deposited here just as you have, but none of them have escaped yet. Nor can they, anymore.

      "When you checked the huts earlier, they were all empty. Every morning, just as the sun is starting to rise, all the pets leave their huts and go to the far end of the island, on the cliff, to see the sunrise in the distance. With it raining here all the time, they don't get to see the sun often, so they take advantage of it every chance they get. I, however, think they've all lost it. They can almost never see the sun anyway, because it's always so hazy!

      "I really would not suggest going back there; those pets could make you lose your mind! They want you to be one of them!" he roared, scaring several Whoots out of several close trees. "They want you to become one of them," he repeated in an intense whisper, almost seeming a bit mad himself.

      "One of them? I don't understand..."

      "Here," he said, motioning for her to follow him. "I'll show you."

      Nili followed him on a zig-zagged path through the woods. Eventually the huts came back into sight, and the Tuskaninny signaled to be quiet. The two flattened their backs against one of the huts. She had a small view of the village town square, where the residents of the huts were gathered.

      "She's gotten away!"

      "Yes, she's gone. We must find her before that Tuskaninny poisons her mind..."

      The Tuskaninny signaled for her to leave, and they went back into the forest. "See?" said the Tuskaninny once they were far enough into the forest to not be heard. "They don't even have the sense anymore to realize that they are insane, not I." His gaze wandered around the forest. "Stay here, in the woods, until you can escape..." His voice trailed off, and he was gone into thin air.

      "But where?" Nili shouted to the treetops, knowing he was gone.

      A voice drifted on the air. "Follow the path..." After receiving the information, she wasn't even sure if she had heard the voice, or if it had all been in her head. Follow the path? What path? I'm in the middle of the woods! Nili's eyes immediately settled on a narrow strip of moss growing on the ground. Is that the path? her mind wondered, but her feet were already moving down it, hopefully carrying her to wherever the Tuskaninny had meant for her to go. Trees and plants passed her, and after walking for a solid thirty minutes, Nili was beginning to think that the path was leading her in circles. She started to veer off the path, but the voice came again. "Trust the path..." She sighed, starting to feel the effects of being in constant rain and went back to following the endless path. Finally she could notice a change in scenery, and the forest started to thin out. The shore of the island came into view. Staring down the shoreline, she could spot a steep cliff farther down the island. So that's the cliff the Tuskaninny talked about.

      Nili was tempted to stare out into the ocean, searching for something, or anything on the horizon, but the voice urged her on. She obeyed, and followed the path back into the forest.

      Just when it seemed she could walk no farther, the path finally came to an end. Standing at the end of the path, she could see an immense rock formation in front of her. Walking around to the side, she could see that it was actually a cave. Not even caring if it was already occupied, or what it looked like inside, Nili crawled in and fell immediately asleep.

     * * *

     When she awoke, she could still hear the constant drumming of rain on the cave's roof. It really never ends, she thought in slight disbelief. She had a strong desire to go back to sleep, since it felt like the middle of the night, but she tried to stay awake, knowing that there were things that she should be doing, rather than sleeping. She still hadn't had time to rationally think through her situation since she had gotten here.

      How am I going to get food? If I want to steal it from the village, I'm going to have to figure out how to get back there... What is in this cave, anyway? It's too dark in here to be able to tell. Why does it rain constantly here? And why doesn't the island flood from it? Her list of questions went on, most of them unanswered. Finally she got up and left the cave, trying to serve her growling stomach.

      She wondered if she could just find food in the forest. I once read about those leaf tacos in Illusen's Glade... Nili shook her head at the ridiculous statement. This wasn't Illusen's Glade, and she wasn't going to be dining on anything nearly that extravagant here. Considering the dampness, Nili thought for a second that she could possibly find some Woo Woo Grubs to eat under some rocks, but she quickly reconsidered, remembering the last time she had tried to eat one of those. A large tree grew off to the side of the cave, and she climbed it, hoping to spot a kind of fruit-bearing tree. She didn't see any, but she did see the village. Its people were leaving, most likely getting ready to go for their daily cliff expedition. Figuring she could steal food from there, she dropped down out of the tree and ran in the straightest possible path towards the huts.

      Once she got there, she had no idea where to look. All of the huts had seemed empty, she recalled. Off in the corner of the town was a larger hut that Nili did not remember seeing the previous day. She entered it and couldn't believe her good luck. The hut seemed to be for storage. On shelved were bags of Neocrackers, loaves of bread, and cans of olives. In a big basket on the floor were several pieces of fruit, ranging from bananas and void berries to strange, unfamiliar pieces of fruit that Nili had never seen before or even heard about.

      She emptied a potato sack that had been in the corner, and the potatoes rolled about on the floor in a huge pile, threatening to trip her. I'm playing thief tonight, Nili reluctantly realized. She loaded up the sack with a selection of food, grabbed two matches from a small stash she had found, and left quickly, not wanting to run into the "others" on their way home. That Tuskaninny is starting to get to you, she scolded herself as she exited the town. Stop thinking that way!

      On the trip back to the cave, Nili's shoulder quickly went numb from the weight of the sack on her back. The cave came back into view after thirty minutes of walking, and she immediately dug voraciously into the sack of food, devouring a zeenana in several seconds. Once she had had her fill, she went back inside to try and come up with a solution to the darkness of the cave. The first thing that came to mind was a fire, but finding dry sticks and leaves to kindle the fire would be next to impossible in the constant rain. While she blindly paced around the pitch-black cave, she tripped over a large pile of something. Squinting in the darkness and using her sense of touch, she deduced that she had found exactly what she needed to start a fire-dry wood.

      She moved the pile of wood to what seemed like the flattest section of cave and attempted to strike the match. Nothing. This time she struck it faster and harder, and it lit, finally giving Nili light to see. The cave was spacious from the inside and was much drier than Nili had expected, considering the weather conditions outside. The walls of the cave were all made of cold, grey stone and were slightly damp. The floor of the cave was by no means flat, and Nili was happy she hadn't ventured far into the cave. By the light of the fire, she could see a big ditch in the cave's floor deeper in the cave that she most definitely would have fallen into had she still been in pitch-black darkness.

      By closer examination, Nili noticed that the cave looked like it had once been lived in. Paintings covered rocks at the back of the cave, and soot covered the ceiling in places. Who- or what- has lived here? wondered Nili curiously. And will it come back? she wondered more frantically. No, she assured herself, it won't.

      She spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the cave, going as deep into it as she dared, the firelight never reaching quite far enough. She examined the paintings on the walls and the rocks, and finally around 6 PM (or so her internal clock told her), she sat down by the fire, attempting to get warm and dry out her surprisingly still damp clothing. She had intended to try to go out and explore the surrounding woods after drying off, but she fell asleep next to the fire.

To be continued...