Occulturation #13 Clementinenade
Date: Pixie-Incorporeal-Restcha (3rd day, 4th week, 3rd month)
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Garesh and Millie take another bus to the edge of town. Then they leave the metropolis of skyscrapers and quickly find themselves in a forested wilderness. After about an hour of walking, Millie goes tense as a feeling of unease comes over her. The other Incorporeal seem to be able to feel it too. Willheim is quiet, which is unusual for him. Jack has disguised himself as a normal orange flame in the lantern. And Svartr stands in Garesh’s shadow, pretending to be a normal silhouette. Garesh, however, does not seem the least bit perturbed as he walks confidently forward. A tiny arrow strikes a tree next to Garesh. It takes a moment for Garesh to register that something has happened, at which point he takes out his gun and pivots from side to side. But he doesn’t see anyone. The only thing out of place in this forest is a dart with a tiny scroll of paper wrapped around it, pinned to the bark of a tree. Garesh cautiously takes the tiny paper scroll and unrolls it. Millie stands next to Garesh and stares at the paper. Millie can’t read but she can see that there are four letters scrawled hastily onto the paper spelling out one word. She has been practicing using the spirit board, so she knows a few letters. She can tell that the first letter of the word is “H.” But it doesn’t matter too much since Garesh decides to read it aloud for her. “It says, ‘You are cordially invited to a banquet that starts at midnight. To get there, follow the fruit hanging from the trees.’” Millie nods. Yes, she can’t wait to learn to read and write. Millie would have expected Garesh to ignore the request, since she knows that he doesn’t ever meet with others, especially strangers. And that he is overly paranoid that others might discover that he has Screamers with him. However, to her surprise, Garesh says, “That’s quite generous. I think I’d like to attend a banquet.” So Millie follows Garesh as he walks through the forest. At first, she can’t understand why he changes directions at certain points, since there is no visible path that he is following. But eventually, she begins to smell the fruit. And soon after she smells the citrus fruit, she can see it. Reddish-orange citrus fruits with a thick peel, hanging from the branches of the trees. Soon, they find themselves in a grove of these fruit trees. There is someone in the grove, a young woman. There are tables set up with checkered picnic tablecloths covering their surfaces. There are benches set up around the rectangular tables. The young woman is preparing the tables with empty pitchers and cups. Strangely, there are no plates, bowls, or silverware. Millie hears Garesh ask the young woman, “Is this where the banquet will be at midnight?” The young woman turns to face and smiles. She nods her head and enthusiastically says, “Yes, yes. This is where we will have the feast. It’ll be quite a wait until the feast starts, so I’ll have you wait in the foyer.” She brings him away from the tables, behind a wall of foliage, blocking their view of the tables and the grove of fruit trees. Millie follows. Millie looks up through the canopy and sees that it is still morning, not even noon yet. As she considers just how long she will have to wait before midnight, she has a moment of hesitation. But overwhelming calm comfort comes over her. It’ll be alright. She can be patient and wait for however long it takes.
She stands there, staring at the trees. Something bumps into Millie. She blinks. She turns around to see what bumped her, but there is no one there. It must have been Willheim. But it’s completely silent. Willheim is always noisy, so why isn’t he making any sound? Now that she thinks about it, it has been abnormally quiet for now. That’s when she realizes that Garesh isn’t with her anymore. She looks around and blinks. Her eyes are awfully dry. Has she forgotten to blink regularly? She looks up, it’s getting near sunset. How has so much time passed? Has she just been standing there? Did Garesh get bored and leave? He would have brought her with him, right? Millie is starting to feel sick. Something is off. She takes deep breaths to try and has to stop herself. The fruit smells rotten. She looks up into the branches and sees that the fruit is overripe, mushy, bruised, ripped open in places, and most of all, it’s attracting flies. Flying insects and swarming around the rotten fruit in the trees. As the bugs eat into the fruit, some of the fruit loses its structure and falls off the stem, plopping to the ground. Millie can’t wait here any longer. If Garesh isn’t here, she needs to find him. She pushes through the foliage and breaks out into the grove of fruit trees with picnic tables. The tables now are even more decorated. The pitchers have water in them and bouquets of flowers in them. But despite the water, the flowers are dying. They’re drooping and limp. They’re petals are falling off. Millie can see the young woman in the distance, barely hefting a bucket of water in each hand as she slowly makes her way towards the tables. Millie feels someone bump into her again from behind. She turns around and sees that the person who bumped into her is the young woman. Millie thought she had just seen her much further away holding buckets.
The young woman grabs onto Millie’s arms and speaks frantically to her, “H-” the panicked voice immediately changes to a soft friendly tone. “H-hello, there. Hope I didn’t scare you. You just seem a little shy, so I wanted to break the ice. Physical Touch is my love language, so I find there is no better way to bond. But if you’re uncomfortable, just let me know.” Her hands are sticky and wet. Millie looks down at the young woman’s hands gripped around Millie’s arms. But there wasn’t… her hands are coated in dark reddish-orange liquid and pulp. Millie looks back up to the young woman’s face, which has an expression of distress, and her lips match her words. The way her mouth is moving, she appears to be repeating the same word over and over again, but that’s not what Millie hears. The young woman breaks out in a smile and the movement of her mouth syncs with her words. “My oh my, you look like you’ve seen a ghost! Well, you know what always calms my nerves? A nice fresh cup of Clementinenade. The feast isn’t until midnight, but I’m sure no one will mind if you have some Clementinenade early. Besides, most of the guests haven’t even arrived yet. They won’t know if we don’t tell.”
Millie is about to ask about Garesh, but when she hears about Clementinenade. She is filled with curiosity. She asks, “What is Clementinenade?” The woman vigorously shakes her head “No” but then she disappears and reappears like a blink. When she reappears, she is no longer shaking her head but is instead smiling and says, “Clementinenade is lemonade but it’s not made of lemons.” Millie nods her head. It makes perfect sense to her. She feels completely at peace as more soggy rotten fruits plop to the ground. Millie follows the young woman as she walks. The young woman retrieves a glass cup from the table and moves beneath to a fruit tree with rotten fruit occasionally falling from its branches. Millie smiles as she feels sick to her stomach. Nausea threatens to overwhelm as she stands under the tree with the young woman. Something seems all too familiar about the smell of this rotten fruit. Strangely, it reminds her of… Garesh? That’s right, she was going to ask about Garesh. She doesn’t have time for taste-testing. “Um, excuse me.” Millie asks, hesitantly about interrupting whatever this young woman was doing holding a cup up underneath the branches of the trees. “Um, do you know where Garesh is?”
“Garesh? Who is that? The man that was with you?” The young woman asks distractedly as she lifts the cup to the branches. Millie notices that the young woman’s lips didn’t move when she answered and her voice sounded muffled like it was from far away. Her face actually seems eerily static. No movement of breath. No blinking. Just an empty stare at the branches and a smile. Millie turns her head at the sound of a table falling over. She sees the young woman for just a flicker of a second as she disappears immediately. She was pushing the table. Millie looks back at the young woman that is still next to her holding a cup up into the branches. Millie steps away from the tree. They couldn’t have both been the same young woman. But they looked exactly the same. The young woman turns to face her and asks “Where are you going? What’s wrong?” Her lips move with her voice. Millie still isn’t convinced that it is real. “Where is Garesh?” Millie asks. The young woman lowers the cup from the tree and walks towards Millie. The glass cup has a dark reddish-orange pulpy liquid in it. When had the cup been filled?
“Garesh is fine. He is just hanging around with the other guests.” The young woman holds the cup out in front of her. “Would you like some Clementinenade?” Millie suddenly feels incredibly thirsty. And the cup of reddish-orange juice with pulp hanging out over the brim of the glass seems absolutely exquisite. How strange… Millie hasn’t felt thirsty in such a long time. This must be the first time since… since… Don’t think about that. Millie can feel vibrations reverberate through the ground as tables silently flop to their sides with no visible cause. Millie falls to the ground. She can’t even feel anything bump into her as all she can feel is incredible thirst and a desire to drink the Clementinenade. The young woman is patiently standing in front of her, holding out a glass of Clementinenade. She kneels down so that Millie can reach it. Millie reaches out to grab the drink, but before she can touch it, she finds herself laying on her back, having rolled over. There are bruises on her side. There is no pain.
Millie gets to her feet. But as she is about to stumble towards the proffered drink, she no longer feels thirsty. The young woman turns and faces a different way. She offers the drink in that direction, as though to give it to someone else. But there is no one else. Millie now realizes that there are supposedly other guests, but the only other person she has seen is this young woman. Millie’s ears hurt. There is no sound, and yet her ears hurt. Her eardrums are sore and she covers her ears despite hearing nothing. Covering them eases the pain. But her left ear still hurts a bit. That’s… that’s the direction of the young woman holding the glass of Clementinenade. Millie runs towards the young woman as the glass rises from her hands, held by someone she can’t see. She runs through the glass, knocking it to the ground. She turns around, covered in icky pulp as the drink spilled all over her. She still can’t see whoever had accepted the drink. But the young woman turns to her, still smiling. Despite her smile, Millie can sense a certain anger and malice emanating from her. She didn’t like that she had spilled the drink. Millie is beginning to understand why there are tables flipping over and she is sometimes bumped and knocked over. She can’t see the other guests and they can’t see her. But some of them must know that no one should drink the Clementinenade.
Millie knows exactly how to get rid of whoever is behind these illusions. Unfortunately, she only has one shot. So if there are multiple people behind the illusions or she uses her trick on the wrong person, then she won’t be able to stop them. It seems obvious that the person behind it all is the young woman. But that is why she is so hesitant. She has seen that same young woman in eye blinks elsewhere. There are at least two of that person running around, or appears to be because of illusions. If she uses her trick on the wrong person, then it won’t work on the real culprit. She would ask the others for help but she knows they can’t hear her or see her. The young woman frowns as she looks at the spilled drink and says, “That’s okay. I can get some more.” Millie knows that no one must drink the Clementinenade, so if this young woman is the person providing the Clementinenade, then she must be the one she needs to stop. But what about the other one she saw? The one pushing over tables? Pushing over tables. It's the only way to get the attention of others when you can’t see or hear anybody and they can’t see or hear you either. Millie follows the young woman and says, “I would like some Clemetinenade.” The young woman smiles and gathers a glass cup from the ground by one of the flipped over tables. Millie follows her underneath a tree. Millie can tell that all sorts of chaos is happening behind her as tables are being tossed to the ground and torn apart. Millie really hopes there is only one of them. She feels curious and thirsty. She really wants to drink the Clementinenade. So she takes the oversized key out of her pocket, whispers “Le digo ‘’¡abierta!” and slams her weight into the young woman to push her through the portal. She passes right through the young woman as though she weren’t there. She stumbles and falls short of the portal. Fog rolls over her face as she lays there, looking back at the young woman. The young woman is still standing under the tree holding the glass cup up to the branches.
Millie doesn’t understand. The young woman must be real. It was holding a real glass cup… why was it holding it up to the branches, anyway? Millie has a spark of an idea. She reaches up to the branches. When she grabs them, they feel sticky and wet in some places. Sticky handprints. Millie thinks to herself. She must have climbed up the tree. Millie follows after the young woman, even though she can’t see her anywhere up the tree. She grabs tree branch after tree branch. She knows she is going in the right direction because she can feel the sticky trail that the young woman left behind. She is high in the tree and she can still see fruit hanging from the branches way up here. The smell of this rotten fruit is sickening. Millie finally reaches the top of the tree. It’s hard to look down because of how high it is. For a fruit tree, this is certainly tall. Though, now that she looks around above the canopy, this is the same type of tree as all the other tall trees. It’s not a fruit-bearing tree. It grows acorns. It’s an Oak Tree. Millie can see some of the branches beneath her shake as someone she can’t see climbs around on the tree. The world snaps into focus as she barely catches a gnarly old voice from behind her saying “-trouble than your worth.” Millie is caught off-balance as she tries to turn to face the voice but her sticky hands stained dark red push her and she falls to the ground. The blurring ground approaching her is scattered with rotten human corpses beneath the trees and the many still-living people down there are running around in chaos, attacking anyone and anything they can get their hands on. Clawing at each other in their hysteria. Many people are bleeding and wounded from the broken glass shards on the ground by the flipped over tables. Sure enough, she can see the young woman is down there in a frenzy, breaking down tables to get planks to wield as weapons. But most noticeable of all was what she saw instead of fruit. There are no reddish-orange fruits growing on the oak trees. But there are things hanging from the branches. Corpses. Millie is sure she is about to become one of them. She hits the ground.