Chapter Text
Saparata wakes up to the light pouring in from his bedroom window. It was odd because he remembered closing his curtains before going to bed last night.
He doesn’t give it a second thought as he gets out of bed and starts doing what he has done every single morning for the last three days.
Three days ago, Saps had woken up in an unfamiliar house, wondering how he had ended up in a cabin in the middle of the jungle when he was streaming Stardew Valley with his roommates the night before. His chat had yelled at him all stream, because he had kept on trying to troll them with increasingly more annoying pranks. Snowbird was pretty pissed the third time he planted a tree in front of the door of his house.
It was a familiar routine, hopping on vc at night and having fun with his friends whenever he could get a break from college.
Which is why it was entirely out of the blue when he went to sleep in his usual bed only to wake up in the wilderness with a pair of large wings on his back. It was odd, mentally preparing himself for classes at 9 am the night before, only to be in the middle of nowhere the next morning with two new limbs.
He hadn’t done much except question everything since he’d gotten here. What else was there to do as a college student who was supposed to be studying for his upcoming finals right now? It had to be the strangest thing that had ever happened to him. Was he just supposed to assume he was kidnapped overnight from his dorm room and then somehow had two wings surgically attached to him or something?
It was pretty absurd.
He had found himself reaching backwards multiple times a day, checking that he wasn’t just having a vividly realistic fever dream with the existence of his entirely real wings.
Apart from having existential crises, he had also taken to exploring his surroundings. Like the cabin he woke up in for example. The whole thing was filled with the bare minimum of items someone would need to live. Basic thin curtains, and a tiny bedside table next to the even smaller bed.
Throughout the cabin, he found enough supplies to last a couple of days, which was what he had been living off. He had a couple more water bottles and protein bars to last him through the day, but he’d be out in the next few days. Apart from the food and bedding, the only other things in the empty house were a compass, a map and an axe.
The compass was clearly broken, considering the fact that it pointed directly east, and the map might’ve been made by someone lacking an education past the third grade, because even though Saps hadn’t taken geography since high school, he knew for a fact that none of these rivers and cities were real. Especially considering half of them had the names of various celestial bodies named by the Greeks.
He had a feeling the axe was going to come in handy if he was stuck here for the foreseeable future.
Saps’s plan for today was to go outside the cabin and explore the surroundings more since he hadn’t gone too far when exploring before.
He took a protein bar and a water bottle to-go and headed out the door. He decided to head in one direction to cover the most ground.
It was pretty chilly, and although the cabin didn’t have a heater, it still had a little more insulation than the pure outdoors.
His wings puffed up from where they were folded behind him.
Saps hadn’t moved his wings from their perpetual position of being pressed tightly to his back, apart from occasionally stretching them when they cramped up really bad, but he had primarily taken to ignoring their existence. He could feel the itch to do something with them growing stronger, but he had so many other things to focus on that it was easy to push it to the back of his mind.
He looked around, checking for anything out of the ordinary, but what was Saps even supposed to look for in an area covered head to toe with wildlife and plants?
The trees were noticeably tall and cast dark shadows over the packed dirt ground. It was one of those pleasant sunny days, but hard to tell because of how they covered the golden glow of the sun’s projection.
He had probably been walking around aimlessly for about an hour, looking for any signs of human existence, when he heard some sort of noise coming from somewhere around him. Now, he was in a forest, so there were bound to be some sounds coming from something all the time, but this wasn’t a bird chirping or the wind whistling. It was sort of like a downpour of rain, except for the fact that there were no clouds out.
Could it have been? Had he finally found some sort of water source?
Saps headed closer, approaching the direction of the noise that got louder and louder, dodging through the heavy brush and vines.
It was like an oasis designed in a virtual reality, too perfect to be real. There was a small waterfall connecting to a freshwater lake, surrounded by the cover of large rocks and trees, providing a closed environment. The sunlight shone in, with no tall trees above the lake to cover it.
He ran into the water, immediately washing his hands and feet of the dirt that had accumulated from living in the wilderness for the last couple of days. His wings fluttered with a burst of excitement in a rare moment with his guard down. It was so cold, but he didn’t care. It felt heavenly after not having access to a shower. It hadn’t even been that long, but it felt like forever ago.
On the shore of the edge of the lake, he noticed something glinting in the sand that didn’t match the rest of the silver rocks.
It was a glass bottle with a note in it, the type that pirates used to use to send messages back in the day. He took out the corkscrew cap and unfolded the beige colored paper. The faded black ink read, Use the tools around you, and cure this world. Only then will the place you call home be found.
What?
There were so many questions that needed to be answered, apart from the obvious instinctual reaction of, what the fuck?
Ignoring the sheer vagueness of the note, the most worrying part was that it implied that they weren’t in the same world anymore. What, so Saps magically teleported to some fantasy land where he had bird wings and lived in a cabin in the middle of nowhere? And on top of that, he couldn’t go home until he ‘cured the world’? Whatever the fuck that meant.
He had to be dreaming.
And, not to mention, the chances of Saps finding this specific lake in the entire forest to find this specific note clearly meant for him were ridiculous.
He was heading home. That was enough exploration for today.
The trek back to the cabin was a little harder, because although he had tried, Saps hadn’t made any sort of trail to mark the way he had come from, and he had traveled in what he thought was the same direction for a good hour or two, so his best bet was to just guess and hope he was heading in the right direction. Which, of course, could’ve been avoided if the compass in his cabin had worked, but of course, this world hated him.
All in all, it was nearing sunset by the time he got back, and the soft cotton sweater he was wearing was doing nothing against the humid, frigid air.
Saps started the fire in the fireplace with the last remaining pieces of coal and huddled up with his thin blanket wrapped tightly around his body. A flick of annoyance hit him as the cold air snuck in from the edge of the blanket where his wings peeked out. Pulling in his wings as close to his body as he could in irritation, he glanced at the compass and map he had placed on top of his bedside table.
Even though he had written them off as useless, it gave them a new purpose now that he knew this world didn’t follow the same rules as his. Of course, he probably should’ve been keyed off when he woke up with wings, but the note had confirmed some of his suspicions of the thoughts that he consciously never formed.
Taking a closer look at the needle that pointed northwest—
Wait. Hadn’t it pointed eastward earlier?
He’d remembered this because it was clearly pointing in the direction of the sun in the morning, which was also the direction of the window next to his bed.
The needle was pointing in the direction of the wall opposite to the window now.
It had moved. Meaning, whatever it was tracking had moved too. And if the needle had moved that much in the span of a couple hours, then whatever it was had to have been close by.
Saps jumped up, all semblance of the cold pushed to the back of his mind. Grabbing the compass on his way out, he ran out the front door and followed the compass’s direction.
He had a theory. The note he found by the oasis said that he had needed to use the tools around him to achieve the goal of curing the world. Clearly, wherever he was, there was something that someone wanted him to do. This someone must have given him some sort of hint at the end of this compass.
Instead of sitting around waiting it out, he had to do something, so he could finally get home to his friends and family.
He dodged and weaved the branches in the forest, barely managing not to trip as the light from the sun got darker and darker.
He was running out of time. Soon, it would be too dark to see and too cold to spend the night outside if he got lost.
The compass suddenly turned half a degree.
Saps was close.
The wind blew on his face as he kept sprinting clumsily as fast as he could, and he could feel his nose freezing from the harsh bite of the cold.
A faint glow far in the distance appeared in his limited line of sight.
Bingo.
As he got closer, he could tell it was light from some kind of fire or light bulb, but his whole analysis was completely disregarded when he noticed the human figure behind it. He slowed his pace to get a good look.
Saps hid behind a tree as he observed from afar, watching the mystery person and making sure they weren’t suspicious or dangerous.
He couldn’t make out much, but after he got closer—while making a conscious effort to be silent—he noticed that the person was clearly a guy. He was hunched over the fire.
Being hunched over because it was too cold really didn’t seem like a trait a supervillain had, so Saps decided to take his chances and trust the compass.
“Hello?” Saps called out, stepping out from behind the tree and closer to the man.
The man turned around sharply, but as soon as they made eye contact, any thoughts Saps had were forgotten the minute he saw that familiar shade of purple in his eyes.