Chapter Text
On the first day ever (according to the book in her hands), The World sits up with a yawn, brushing the dirt she had been buried in off of her shoulders and legs. She is in a clearing, no different from any other, as far as she can tell. The upturned earth where she had been sleeping is bathed in the light of a rising sun, and flowers surround it in thick clumps all the way to the treeline of the oak forest nearby.
On the inside of her book, ‘Day 1’ is stamped in curly, familiar feeling writing. She has an instinctive knowledge of letters, as though they’ve always been carved into her mind in that same, neat font. With nothing else to do, she writes down what they know, which is nothing. It takes a moment to get used to the flow of the quill. Her letters are curly, taking up space on the page, and often trailing into imitations of the flowers and trees around her. She writes down the nothing she knows, about herself, about the reason she is here. She doesn’t know anything about being a person, but she thinks that somehow being more connected to the earth and flowers than your own hands is probably not right. She feels wrong. Out of place in the graceful and simple wild.
Despite her out-of-placeness, she gets along just fine in the woods. The creatures like her, following her as she instinctively knows where the ripest berry bushes are. She gathers wild strawberries and nuts in the fleshy palms of her new limbs, climbing trees to reach high-up apples and digging up sprouts for their roots. All the while, she wanders forward through the forest, unsure of what she’s looking for.
°•. ✿ .•°
Six sunrises into her new existence, The World stumbles across humanity. Stopping at the treeline of a small village, she compares her nimble fingers to those of the people setting up stands and sowing seeds. She is more like them than she knows, and feels instinctually that it is from them that she has the limited knowledge she awoke with.
Despite their similarities, The World can’t help but notice something off about these people compared to her. While she had connected with a few animals during her time in the forest, this village has just as many creatures, if not more than her forest did. For every person in the village, there is an animal following them around, and the people look at them as though it’s perfectly normal. The World does not have a creature around her. All the rabbits and deer that had been trailing after her are gone now, scared away by the noises of village life.
The World musters up their courage, stepping out of the treeline towards the village, and immediately bumps into a person. They stumble back, the monkey by their side giggling and helping them up as they apologize profusely to The World.
“Oh my goodness, I am so sorry, I really should look where I’m going more often, I– Oh dear.” The person takes in The World’s appearance, looking unsure whether to maintain eye contact or look away. “You must be new to the town. Do you need any help with something? We could get you some food… and–uh– clothes, maybe?”
The World’s gaze flits to the person’s figure, covered by a layer of woven material she’s never seen before. They stare blankly at the person. She hadn’t known ‘clothes’ were a thing. The person’s monkey isn’t wearing them, but maybe it’s a thing for humans. Is The World a human? She looks human-shaped. Hesitantly, they nod.
The person doesn’t comment on The World’s silence. They simply shrug off a piece of draping cloth that sits around their shoulders and hand it to her. She takes it, startled by the soft texture, and attempts to clasp it around her shoulders like the person had. The brownish material is warm, cosy even, and The World finds herself pulling it closer as the person leads them towards the village, the monkey close to their side.
The people and creatures of the village call out greetings to the friendly person, peering curiously at The World as she passes. She tilts her head back at them, staring in wonder at the busy marketplace. The creatures in her forest had never spoken, but perhaps it was a strange custom of those living around humans. The kind one she was following didn’t seem to notice anything off about the villagers or their own animal companion.
They are led into a small cottage, where they stand awkwardly as the person puts down their basket and searches for something in the various boxes in their closet. Eventually, the monkey reaches toward the back of one of the lower shelves, pulling out a box of clothes.
“Found it!” The monkey exclaims in a peppy voice, prying open the storage container.
“I hope you don’t mind using our little sister’s clothes.” The human begins to dig through the box’s contents. “You look to be around her height, and she’s off at university, so she won’t mind you borrowing anything.”
“I don’t mind.” The World murmurs, the first words she’s spoken since leaving the forest, and certainly the first time she’s talked to anything other than the plants. The person’s eyes light up, and the monkey sits up with interest.
“You can talk!” They cheer. “I was trying to figure out if we could find you someone who knows sign language so you could communicate, but I guess you’re just one of the quiet types.” A bundle of cloth is dumped into The World’s arms.
The World is unsure how to respond. What is ‘sign language’? What is ‘quiet’? The woods had always been filled with ambient noise, and even the village was awash with the idle chatter of humanity. She stares blankly at the person.
“Oh! Right, you’ll probably need somewhere to change.” The monkey gestures to a door off of the main room. “You can use our backroom.”
Hesitantly, The World shuffles through the door and stares at the strange fabric they’ve been given as they are left alone. First, she attempts to drape it over her shoulders like the cloak, but it looks nothing like the billowy, close-fitting clothes of their human guide. After a few more attempts, she figures out a way of wearing it that somewhat works and heads back out to the main room. The person and monkey are splitting fruit into small chunks.
“Thank you…” She starts, alerting their attention before realizing she’s not sure how to address them.
“We never told you our names!” The monkey exclaims suddenly, hands reaching up to tug at the human’s sleeve.
“Right! Well, I’m Mel, and my Daemon’s name is Chesley.” The person– Mel turns to them, looking apologetic. “What are your names? I guess you must have an insect, Daemon; I haven’t seen them around at all. Do they like hiding in your hair a lot? You two seem pretty shy.”
“I don’t…” The World feels a lump in their throat. What is a Daemon? She doesn’t have a speaking animal friend like the rest of the people in this village, but Mel seems to assume she does. Is it wrong not to have one? Maybe she could get one of the rabbits or deer from the forest to be her Daemon, then she could fit in with these strange human customs.
Mel seems to understand, smiling kindly and offering to show them around town, murmuring something about ‘those quiet types’ to Chesley. The World tries to offer Mel the cloak back, but they refuse, insisting it’s too hot for a cloak now anyway, and it would be a good spot for her Daemon to hide. The only thing that hides in the cloak is The World. It makes them feel warm, and protected, but Mel’s assumptions leave a hollow feeling.
°•. ✿ .•°
The World stays with Mel and Chesley for three days. She meets the other townspeople, and each new face comes with another two names to remember and the same onslaught of questions. “What are your names?” “Where are you from?” “Where’s your Daemon?”
Eventually, after much brainstorming, she comes up with a name to use based on her favorite food: Strawberri. Mel, Chesley, and the townspeople are delighted to have something to call them, but it doesn’t quite feel like her. Up until now, she’s primarily been referred to as ‘the forest lady’. For a while, the new name’s a welcome relief from the relentless questions, until they start up again, this time with something she can’t so easily come up with herself. “What is your Daemon’s name?”
It’s overwhelming, the customs, the questions, and many times, Strawberry feels like leaving, running back to the comfortable certainty of nature, its unspeaking creatures, and the never-silent forest. The nights in the village are too quiet. When everyone goes to sleep, so do the animals and insects that follow the people around.
On the morning of her fourth day in the village, the tenth day of their existence, Mel introduces Strawberri to the fruit vendor in the market. The usual questions follow.
“You said you found them in the woods? Interesting. What kind of Daemon do you have?”
“Uhh–” Strawberri takes a deep breath and finally asks the question that has been nagging at their mind since they encountered humanity. “What– exactly is a Daemon?”
She immediately knows it is the wrong thing to ask. The encouraging smile on Chesley’s face takes on a confused look, the monkey’s brow furrowing as they look up at Mel questioningly. Mel’s face has a similar look, but they’re staring at Strawberri, as though trying to piece together something. The fruit vendor, on the other hand, looks horrified. His honey badger companion is on guard, hackles raised as she squints and snarls at Strawberri.
“What do you mean ‘what is a daemon’?” The vendor demands rhetorically. “Don’t you know your own soul? Where else would your other half be?”
Strawberri recoils from the aggressive tone, but stands firm. She’s been sitting on this question for too long to settle for a half-baked answer, even if the fruit vendor’s raised voice has attracted attention from other people on the street.
“Well, I just– Things are different for me,” she explains vaguely, using their own assumptions against them. “I just need a little more of an explanation, is all.”
“You don’t have a Daemon, do you?” Mell asks before the vendor can say anything, voice low and deceptively calm. When Strawberri glances over, she can see Chesley hiding behind Mel’s legs, as though fearful of her.
“It doesn’t make me any different! I’m new around here, I don’t understand–”
“CURSED!” The fruit vendor’s honey badger growls out loudly. This ripples through the crowd their confrontation has attracted, murmurs of ‘cursed’ and ‘Daemonless’ making its way through the townsfolk who had been so kind to her only minutes and days before. All around them, the animal companions of the village are on edge, either aggressive like the honey badger, or skittish and hiding like Chesley.
Seeing this, something finally clicks in Strawberri’s head. The fruit vendor had called a Daemon a ‘soul’. The thing that makes a person themself. Throughout their stay in the village, townspeople continuously referred to their animal companions as Daemons. Animal companions that only ever followed one person and were introduced alongside that person. A Daemon wasn’t just a silly human custom as she had initially presumed. They were half of a human’s soul. And The World didn’t have one.
Rage spread through the crowd like wildfire, anger and fear sparking until people were calling for Strawberri’s imprisonment or banishment, gesturing for friends to gather weapons or warn their families. The World backed away from them, towards the village gate, and the crowd parted, afraid of her.
As she stared into the angry crowd, she locked eyes with Mel, who looked terrified. Over the once kind villager’s shoulder, people with weapons were rounding the corner, and Mel looked down at Chesley, hesitated for a moment, and mouthed one word at The World.
‘Go’
The World didn’t need any more prompting. As the people with weapons drew closer, she turned and fled out of the half-opened village gates, making a beeline for the familiar and comforting forest. The cloak Mel had given her snagged on the iron gate as she passed them, tearing the comforting cloth from her body. The World didn’t look back.