Chapter Text
The first thing Clay registered was a pounding sensation. A pain in his head throbbing with the beat of his heart. He squeezed his already shut eyes further, almost as if to remind himself not to open them, knowing as a gamer how bad headaches could get. Sudden exposure to light wouldn’t do him any favors and he could feel the sun warming his skin. He could’ve sworn he closed the shades before going to sleep, but it had been almost three in the morning so he wasn’t the most trusting of his memory. He moved an arm to place under his head as his pillow didn’t seem to be cutting it - and that’s when he noticed the second thing. Something was brushing against his skin, tickling his arm, and it wasn’t his covers. Frowning, he slowly opened his eyes, blinded for a few moments by a blinding light that seemed to be right above him. As soon as his eyes had adjusted he knew something was wrong, because he was under an open stretch of sky. He sat up faster than he should’ve and felt the throbbing of his head increase but couldn’t find it in himself to care, too consumed by the sudden stress that rightfully accompanies these situations.
Clay scanned the area around him and determined he was in a small clearing but was otherwise surrounded on all sides by trees. There was something wrong with the trees but he chose to ignore that sensation and instead dive into his memories to try and remember what on earth had happened the night before.
He’d been on Quackity’s stream and ordered some Chinese. He’d evaluated and described the meal at the guy’s request and then did some lore related stuff on Techno’s stream. He closed the night off with a brief Florida story to shock Karl’s viewers. What’d he done after logging off? It hurt to think but he was sure he’d done little apart from cleaning up the food and heading to sleep. He’d even set his alarm because of the dental appointment he had today, he was sure of it. So what the fuck had happened to get him in the middle of a forest? He ran a hand through his hair and pulled at it in an effort to think. He hadn’t gotten drunk… was there something in his food? Or was this what vivid dreaming felt like? He pinched himself and nothing happened, but did that even actually work? He felt unconvinced. He ran a hand through the grass and felt it tickle his fingers. You weren’t supposed to feel things in dreams right? Or was that a myth? Maybe his sister had thought it was funny to pull a prank…? She had been threatening to get him back for the mac ‘n cheese incident recently.
A cool breeze hit his face and he was suddenly aware of how actually cold it was. He rubbed at his forearms and was startled to see goosebumps. That was a rare sight in Florida, even during the winter. The coldest it’d gotten recently was in the 60s and that had hardly been felt with the humidity. His head was still pounding. He tried to refocus his thoughts but they were fixated on the cold thing. He cursed at them quietly as he battled to bring the important issue to his minds front. The cold won out. He looked down at his attire, the standard Florida tank top and shorts. He hadn’t bothered to change before bed. He then felt his face - no mask. He started to get a rather uncomfortable feeling. Why would he come here or be put here by anyone he knew, without a mask, in the middle of a pandemic? Why was it so goddamn cold? He continued to run a hand through his hair, absentmindedly starting to pick the grass out. Then he frowned. Why was it so cold?
Clay pushed himself to his feet and spun around, staring at the wildlife and plants with new interest. This wasn’t Floridian nature, at least nothing he’d seen before. These were… what… oak trees? Not the typical palm trees of Orlando, and while oak trees did grow in Florida these were different. He took into account the air again - it wasn’t humid. The wind was fresh and not constraining. Maybe that was a good thing considering his situation. But it was more troubling to him at the moment, as he thought about what it meant, not being in Florida. He asked himself again what the fuck had happened last night? An idea suddenly popped into his head - maybe he had amnesia? He felt at the back of his head, looking for a bump or blood to indicate a head wound. He came up with nothing. He was unscathed. Another fleeting idea - aliens - passed through his mind but he threw that out completely and instead elected to try and familiarize himself with the area and see if there were any obvious ways out of the forest. Maybe he’d be able to find and follow a creek or hear the sound of cars and locate the road. Nothing. He felt frustrated again. He paid attention to where the sun was and noted that it was mid day. He didn’t want to be here at night. Clay might be a Florida native but he was still unprepared to spend a night in the woods with god knows what kinds of animals. He wasn’t familiar with whatever roamed the night in this environment and wasn’t too inclined to find out. He felt his panic rising and tried to calm it again. He just had to focus on something else. He tried to think logically about what the best course of action would be. Climb a tree? He looked at the oaks around him. He didn’t have much experience with climbing but how difficult could it be?
He sucked in a breath and approached one of the taller looking trees with branches that looked easy enough to reach. Luckily, oaks tended to have rather thick branches that were pretty close to each other and reached all over, in the ground and sky. They were pretty ideal for climbing and Clay felt relatively safe putting his weight on the branches. He’d made it about halfway up the tree when his stomach started to rumble and he stopped to consider that problem. Food. His throat was rather dry as well so that’d also be an issue coming into play. He glanced nervously at the sun. What had those survival videos always said to do first? Locate a source of water. He definitely hadn’t done that. He resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair, instead focusing on continuing to hold the branches because of the wariness that came over him at being so high. Clay made the decision to climb to the top, see the easiest path out of here, set out on it if it looked easy, and if not, try to find a water source and get something set up in this tree to prepare for the night. He started to climb again and was rather absentminded, quickly having gotten used to the activity. He was now multitasking, and trying to sort out what was going on. He thought back again to his last memory. It was a little fuzzy but he’d thought that was because of sleep deprivation. Shit, was he tripping? No, it’d be more bizarro world if that was the case. He forced himself out of those thoughts upon realizing how close he was to the top. He surveyed the branches above him and decided not to climb any further. He was already uncomfortable with how thin the branches were and held on to two separate one’s just in case. He glanced at the tree tops he could see. This definitely wasn’t the highest tree in the forest, but he reckoned he had a good enough view.
He scanned the area in front of him and felt the panic rising again when he couldn’t see anything resembling civilization. There was nothing but mountain and nature. Though he was nervous in doing so, he turned to face the opposite direction and recognized similar results. A sudden feeling of desolation set in. He was fucked. Not even trying to focus on something besides his despair, he plopped down on a branch and let a shaky hand pull at his hair.
It was sometime later, at least an hour, because the sun had moved significantly, that Clay mustered enough resolve to start climbing back down. His hands shook on the way down and he felt uneasy trusting them, so the descent was a much longer process then going up had been. When he finally reached the base of the tree he had to stop and sit again to try and convince his legs not to behave like jello. He tried to calm the racing anxiety in his brain but knew it was futile. He needed to do something calming and repetitive in these situations to make his brain see reason. Usually it was listening to music and building on Minecraft but no such fucking luck. He didn’t even have shoes. He’d been walking along in his socks, and the left one had already gotten caught on the tree bark and was unravelling. He was so fucked. He slammed his head into the tree behind him and groaned when it reinvigorated his headache. He brought a hand up to massage his temple and tried to force his abused brain to think. He’d decided something earlier… a course of action? What was it? Right, water. He had to find water. He took a moment to breath and prepare. In and out… breath in and out.
Clay pushed himself to his feet and tried to avoid catching his socks on anything as he wandered through the trees. Strangely, the grass was quite consistent, and there weren’t many rocks or any fallen leaves or sticks. He hadn’t ever really been in a forest like this but didn’t imagine that was normal. Taking his mind off of that for the time being, he racked his mind to try and find out how to find a source of water. He really wasn’t prepared for this type of situation. Running water was safer than still water, right? And you wanted a fresh water source, that was obvious. He strained his ears as he walked to the left, trying to keep track of where he’d woken up (he didn’t want to lose it as it may offer clues and seemed a good enough area to build a shelter) but mostly just scanning the horizon for the hint of blue or white. He kept a worried eye on the sky above, watching with consternation as the sun fell lower and lower. His socks were damp from the grass. It’d recently rained apparently, yet he was completely dry. He stopped for a moment to consider his footwear, or rather lack thereof. All he had on him were a generic pair of white ankle socks that were worn even before this situation. Clay looked at the ground, thinking again about the lack of rocks or sticks. He ran a hand through his hair and made a decision. Sighing, he struggled to balance on each foot as he removed his now brown socks. Best save them, not waste them when they were already threadbare and he had a good enough ground situation going on. He’d just have to be careful, not that the socks would block much anyways.
It wasn’t long after he’d started walking again that Clay heard something. He stopped and really focused on the sound. It was just barely audible but he could detect it coming from pretty much straight ahead of him. It was a trickling noise, and he probably would’ve missed it if not for listening as closely as he was. He moved towards it and breathed a sigh of relief when it got louder. He could now hear the faint crashing of water on rocks. Perfect. So long as it wasn’t salt water of course. Or polluted… Jesus who knew what was in water these days? Fertilizer and dog shit and all that stuff they talked about in commercials. He considered again how safe it would be to drink this water. His parched mouth made him think he hadn’t much of a choice. He took a moment to glimpse at his socks which he’d been carrying grasped in one hand. Was it smart to wash them in the same source of water he was drinking from? He frowned again at his predicament. Before he could muse further he found the river. Clay was taken aback for a moment at how sheerly blue the water was. It was bluer than the Atlantic, more radiant too. There was white foam in a few places of course, like when it came down in a mini waterfall over the rocks into a stiller section at which he was currently standing. Surely though, that shade wasn’t natural. There was something wrong with this water. Yet when he looked down, it was translucent enough he could seem swarms of cod making their way through the river. Or, at least, they looked like cod. Really he didn’t know, most of his nature-based knowledge came from video games. Where were cod native to? He had no idea.
He stared at the water again, noting that he could see sand at the bottom and sides. Was that normal? Hesitantly, Clay found himself crouching down and uneasily placing a hand in the water to test it. He jumped a bit at how cold it was, he thought about how refreshing it’d taste. He could feel the gentle current through his fingers. It was kind of relaxing in the circumstances. He let himself sit, feeling the tickle of grass against his legs and the flow of water through his fingers. He gave himself a moment's peace. For all that he enjoyed the indoors, the pandemic meant he’d been outside even less than usual, and he knew the appeals of the wilderness surprisingly well for his career path. After a moment's peace, he pulled his hand from the water, remembering what he came here to do. He inspected it. No blemishes or pain so the water couldn’t be that toxic. He hesitated for a moment before licking the hand. No salt. It should be fine for drinking then, right? Trying not to think too deeply about it, lest he dissolve into a panic, he maneuvered himself so he could put his lips to the water and drank.
It was surprisingly normal. Clean. It barely tasted different from his normal Dasani. Maybe even a bit better. He sat up and wiped his mouth on his arm. That was one task down. He turned back around and focused on remembering how to get back to the tree. Step 2: build a shelter. He frowned at the river before setting off again. It was quite irritating how far off it was from where he was planning to make camp. He might have to move closer then he wanted to.
It was harder to find his way back then it was to find the river. That was in large part because of the fading light. Clay also had to admit, however, that he was having a hard time with remembering landmarks at all. Everything looked so infuriatingly similar. It was rather surprising what ended up leading him back to the oak tree. Shouting. Frantic screaming, actually, to be more accurate. Very British sounding screaming.