There’s a difference between needing something and asking for it.

Authors’ Note : Once again, I’m still on my little vacation. Bored and in a seven hour drive, knowing that I had only submitted my last chapter a day ago, I haven’t had news of comments, so please accept my lack of learning what you think. But I’ll keep trying! >_<
Anyways, I rather like this chapter. You get to learn a lot more about this alternate Maple Story universe I’ve created- all the twists and turns :3 Also, you get to see a lot of the character personalities as Hermes starts to open up, so I hope you all start to form opinions on them. Please tell me what you think. PS: I made a lot of jokes in this chapter. Really more of dramatic irony. See if you can catch some reference I made.

Last time on Liminality~ Hermes has just stumbled into Victoria Island and meets her first friend, an adult named Pyramus! After learning how to use the Vizcomm, she makes a promise with Pyramus to grow and sets off to fulfill the promise with a new journey!

[chapter thr3e : Her]

After he left, I didn’t know what to do, so I kept on relying on myself to explore.

I sat myself down on the floor cautiously, wishing I could lean my back onto wall. If only it wasn’t dripping with a cold mucus that made me shiver at the touch of it. I zoned out the preteens that clouded my view of the scenery, filtered out their voices that no longer made rude remarks, but made rude remarks and begged. I personally found the Slime Tree beautiful, such majestic roots traveling up into a product that only magic and time combined could create. . . green streaks of light squeezing in through the fibers of roots, reflecting onto the slimy residue around the whole dungeon and in result, illuminating it in that peaceful, not-so-blinding, mythical way. I felt my muscles relaxed and picked up my new sword- although still not majestic, it sufficed, and I felt like a real warrior holding it.

I don’t remember why I became a warrior. Once I left Lith Harbor, I just started walking. Nothing else particularly interested me- I didn’t want flashy skills or anything of the sort. Simplicity and beauty in nature was all I wanted.

Oh, that’s right. I knew that I wanted to be strong.

I wanted to be as strong as I could and as fast as I could. I was dissapointed at how. . . frail I seemed when I talked to Pyramus. How young and immature I was.
I guess I just kept walking and found myself in Perion.

After snapping back out of the memory, I gripped my sword with both hands to strike the nearest slime. As I looked up, there was a girl who was the same age as me, although her black hair a bit more curled and straightened, her skin a bit pinker than my pale. She put down her wooden staff after killing a slime that materialized next to me and smiled, starting to mouth out words to me. Flipping my Vizcomm to hear her, I caught the last bit,

“–ike them. You don’t see red eyes a lot anymore.” I blinked and stood silent as she laughed again, “Your eyes. Only a couple people are born with red eyes. It usually just means that the body of this world has been waiting for you for a long time.”
“Well thanks, although black eyes are neato as well. But this body has been waiting? Am I overdue?” I smiled a bit and stuck out my tongue, trying to show happiness out of politeness.
She giggled again, turning a bit to send a couple shots of energy at a few frolicking slimes, “Maybe, heh heh. Maybe you had a reason to come ‘here’ a long time ago.”
I gave a fake laugh, unsure of how to reply, and continued to carefully jump to another platform. I had no luck and prayed I wouldn’t slip again as I flipped a switch to see that her name was Antonym.

Antonym however did keep following me, making small conversation. I gave my fake smiles and small replies, hoping to satisfy her. Then, the young magician finally stopped, her skin a bit pale from lack of magic, and she gave me this sort of surreal smile.
“You know, you remind me of my sister.”
I stopped to look at her, finding the statement very odd, and I blurted out my thoughts, “You have a sister? I mean, you can have siblings in this game?”
Antonym started to burst out laughing and finally choked back her giggle, “You talk strangely. Who the heck says ‘this game’? Ah, but no, you can’t have a real family in this world. You really don’t know a lot about Arelle, do you?”
I shifted my gaze, muttering “I’m not that smart. . .” I tried to calm down and didn’t feel like I had the ability to ask any questions of “What purpose if of Arelle’s existance?” and others of the sort.
Reading my mind, she said the answer aloud, “Arelle. . . There’s not really a name for the world that we used to live in, so that’s just what people have called that alternate, past reality”
“Well, what would you call this world that we live in now?”
“We’ve named it Ehmys.”

I gave her another strange look, trying to make more mental notes about this information. She started to giggle again, “You really do remind me of my sister.”
“That’s right, you hadn’t explained your ‘sibling’ to me.”
“Well,” Antonym gave me a straightforward look- she really always knew what and how to say things, “You tend to get. . . Signs from Arelle. Dreams, sudden flashbacks, objects, Deja Vu, et cetera. I have a friend who, when she went to Florina Beach for the first time, started claiming that she felt homesick and nauscious.”

To be honest, a thought like that turned into a fear for me. For whatever derranged reason I was placed into this world, I don’t think I want to know.

“Anyways. . . There’s something about you that just makes me feel. . . At ease. Like. . . I can trust you. If I had family, I’d want you to be my sister.”

I wiped off my somewhat slimy hand onto my rookie pants and scratched my head, staring at her with a confused look again, her face grinning again as she stared and admired my eyes.

“I. . . I think I can trust you too,” I said to her, letting a smile slide out.
She grinned, and we bacame friends.

Feeling more open to her, I started to open up to Antonym. She seemed extremely cool about everything, her normal voice was drenched with happiness. And when she expressed happiness after finding a pair of gloves for herself, she was wild. She had an opinion on everything, a wide outlook of the world, was extremely open minded, well judged, could support herself. . . Antonym generally had control of her own Life, and I somewhat envied that. At times I would just sit down to talk with her, even if I didn’t need a break. She loved to train though. She never said it aloud, but I could tell she was determined to become stronger. Finding the fighting monotonous and enjoying the ability to rant with someone who was mature, I dazed off and took a nap, still wanting to continue talking about how rain was the best weather.

I gave a smile to her, “Let’s just pretend we’re sisters then.”

~~ I thought the chapter was too short, so I added the next one! >_< ~~

“Pig beach?”

Pyramus’s voice blared over my Vizcomm as I blocked out Antonym’s signal- apparantly she was pretty popular. Or liked to talk a lot. Whatever, I wasn’t paying attention.
“Yeah, you should train there. . . Although you’ll need me to show you where it is, won’t you?” I paused in a nervous silence in a surrender-ous agreement, both of us knowing that I needed help, as he laughed, “Come on. . . Tell me that you need me to show you~”
I assumed that he could feel my aggrovation as he laughed again, teasing me more, “Say it! ‘Pyramus, you hottie, please show me Pig Beach!’ “
I blinked and laughed out loud, loosening up and taking the opportunity to make a perverted comment, “Pyramus, you hottie, please show me heaven!” It was his turn for an awkward silence as I continued laughing.

He merely gave a low “darn straight it’s heaven,” as we agreed to meet up.

He held a small race with me, taking the occasional break to stop and wait for me, “You’re still small!”
As I kicked him in small aggrovation, he led me up to a platform. “This is Pig Beach! Just gotta touch the daffodils and dandelions to get in.”

“So much for heaven,” I snorted loudly as he approached the flowerbed.
“Hey, dandelions are always at the entrance of heaven. At least, that’s what a memory told me,” Pyramus smiled casually.
I secretly took it seriously and slowly approached him, trying to make an unawkward question, “Ah. . . Well too bad that they’re kinda ugly for heaven.”
“Well, too bad. You’d look pretty if you had a boquet of them or something,” he smiled again and picked one out as he dissapeared, with me following shortly (but not taking out a pretty daffodil!).

“Are we in hell yet?” I questioned, stepping into the new map.
He stuck his tongue out at me, and, for the first time, I took a serious look at Pyramus. He was tall. Amazingly adult-ly tall. And built and strong and all that. He wore no hat and his dark armor was a bit worn, but he told me that he was getting new armor soon. He had a strange haircut- rather messy and full of body, fringes curling and straying in random spots. Even though his hair was a sort of yellow-brown, you could tell it was dyed from its original black from looking at the growing roots. The resulting hairdo was a strange clash between his light skin and round sapphire eyes.
Really, I just loved the mature look he had. His face was stern and long and everything about him- the way he stood, smelled, looked at far off distances, smiled at the most random times- seemed so. . . forward. I loved it all.

“What’s wrong?” Pyramus eyed me, “You have something on your mind, don’t you?”
“Pyramus, you really are a hottie <3,” I childishly grinned at him as he looked at me with confusion (yes, he tilted his head) and I stepped down into the pit of snorting animals.

In one instance I heard a dangerous roar of hooves coming, saw the iron hog coming toward me, and Pyramus realized the situation in attempt to warn me.
Of course, it was too late.

As I awoke back at Lith Harbor I groaned, rubbing my head and leaning onto a wooden bench where Pyramus was already waiting for me. “Yeap,” I groaned, leaning onto him (as I felt him somewhat shift away and then shift back), “I’m in hell.”
He gently moved my head away as he stood up, “No you’re not. Stay here and use this to numb your bruise. I’m going to go find fresh water or something.”
I waved slightly as he left the scene and I eagerly picked up his present that he left on the bench.
“What in whatever world we’re in, or apparantly you’re not. . . what is this?” I complained in a mocking child-like voice to him over the Vizcomm.

He had left me a Junior Pepe fish.
A stinky one.
And it was all soggy wet too.
Ew. Meanie.

I sighed, putting the fish back down and leaning back onto the bench, returning a chuckle to the one he gave via Vizcomm. Laying on my back on the bench, I sighed and turned to the side, giving myself another laugh as I recalled the whole day.
Seeing a flash of yellow on the ground through the cracks of the bench, I hoped it was litter so I could throw it away. Doing things like that to help “protect my environment” always made me feel special (maybe it was ego though). As I crawled to the bench edge and reached down for it, I realized what it was.

It was a dandelion.