How Rocky and Silty Met
He awoke to gentle waves, which kissed his hand. It took a buzz by his face to get him to move it. He looked around, opposite to the water led to grass, which led to trees. Not quite enough to be called a forest, and the midday sun shone through fairly brightly through the leaves. The ground seemed flat in any one area, but overall was uneven. There would be random cliffs and pits, only a few feet of difference between them, but nonetheless he didn’t want to fall off a ledge. Even deeper in, the ground was beach-like and there were shells hidden in the grass, which caused him to curse under his breath every time one met with a bare foot.
He had no idea where he was, but at least he was moving. He couldn’t remember what happened before he wound up on the shore, like, at all. He realized he didn’t have any incidental memories whatsoever; the thought stopped him, but only for a moment, “Maybe everything will start coming back,” he thought. He eventually found himself a path with softer sediments. “Surely this leads to something.”
Then he heard a growl. Not particularly close to him, though being within earshot, it couldn’t be too far. He knew whatever it was, it wasn’t going for him. Although something else must be with it for it to make this kind of noise. Diverging from the path a little, he followed the growls.
A creature the size of a bear, but with much bigger teeth had cornered someone against a rounded wall-like area. He knew this couldn’t be good and grabbed a shell, which he threw at the beast. It seemed mildly annoyed at the distraction, but swatted at its original target anyway. He couldn’t just watch this happen, so he grabbed a large stick and ran at the monster. It was much bigger than he thought at first, but then, so was the person. Even though the person had been knocked off their feet, their eye level was clear above his. It made him feel puny.
The person silently glanced down at him. He couldn’t see their face as they had some kind of mask on, but based on a jump and pause in their movement, he assumed they were surprised by his appearance. The monster just looked at him at first. He pointed the stick at it and slowly stepped between the beast and its target. He noticed a knife in the monster’s shoulder, although the person he was shielding had a quiver. An empty quiver, and no bow. They also had a few puncture marks on their torso. Miraculously, neither being was bleeding.
He looked up and locked eyes with the beast. Nothing seems quite as evil as purple and black. If it had red eyes, it’d be more threatening, sure, but something about purple makes things more mysterious. He surprised himself at the stability in his stance. He tried his best to look defiant, but knew that at his size, he no doubt looked at least a little silly. The monster stood on its hind legs, and the amnesiac adventurer took a swing. He aimed for its ankle and heard a snap. The stick broke upon impact. He immediately abandoned it, then dove out of the way of a paw almost as big as himself.
While he didn't seem to have done any damage to the massive creature, he did provide a sufficient distraction for the person to escape. Where to, he couldn’t tell; at least not at first. The creature glared at him, then he noticed the evacuee return the favor by rolling a log off from the ledge above. They motioned a direction to run, and both were back on the path. He thought all that commotion would’ve left them winded, but he couldn’t hear the person breathing, even as they caught up to him -which was pretty quickly given that their legs were much longer than his- and were running right beside him.
Once both thought they’d lost the monster, they slowed down. Then he fainted.
He woke up to the person lightly jostling him. He groaned and covered his face with his hands: he must’ve fallen forward. The person pointed at the ground, they had scrawled several numbered questions in the sand. He looked back up to them, “Can’t talk?” he asked before reading any of what they wrote. They shook their head. “Ah.”
‘Question 1 : Who are you? They call me Silty.’
“Uh… I don’t remember anything before today… sorry, Silty.”
Silty scratched their head. They wrote something next to the questions, ‘Placeholder name?’
“I don’t know,” he looked around, “Rocky sound okay?” Silty gave him a thumbs up and erased the answered questions.
‘Question 2: Why did you help me?’
Rocky was confused by this one. “Why wouldn’t I?” he tried to ask it in a way that showed he wasn’t even completely sure what was being asked, cartoonishly shrugging and stared into Silty’s… well, not eyes… goggles would be a better way to word it. They were tinted navy and were hard to see inside of, especially with that glare from the sun reflecting off them. The glare flashed down them as Silty looked up. They put their right hand to their chin and the other hand to their right elbow. After a head tilt and a shrug, they erased the question and hovered their hand over the dirt for a moment before writing a new one. Rocky couldn’t quite make out the first attempt, as Silty erased it before finishing the first word. Silty laid their hand down, tapping their index finger on the ground. Their shoulders rose and fell as if sighing, but even just a few feet away Rocky didn’t hear anything from them. He got just a bit impatient and looked at the next one.
‘Question 3: What are you doing here?’
Silty must’ve noticed Rocky’s gaze shift, because before he thought too hard about it, they held up a hand and erased that one, too. It was kind of irrelevant, now that they knew Rocky didn’t remember much. Apparently all of the questions were irrelevant now. Silty stood up with one hand on their head. Rocky wondered if Silty even felt anything when scratching their head with that bodysuit on. They looked around, then pointed a thumb back to what Rocky could only assume was the path from earlier.
“Does that lead to a town?” Silty nodded in response to Rocky’s question. Rocky only noticed just now that Silty had somehow retrieved their bow. Still no arrows, though. At first they walked in silence. There was something Rocky wanted to ask, but didn’t know if he should bring it up right now. Maybe he wouldn’t have to, maybe someone in town would make the answer apparent. Silty kept looking in the trees for some reason. There was no way the monster they fought would fit up there. Maybe there were more.