It was yet another nice day at Hana's treehouse. Warm sunlight streamed in through the window of her workroom, shining on the scene of Hana laying on the back of a big purple tiger. With a contented sigh, Hana nuzzled her soft furry mattress. Said furry mattress let out a low grumble, but otherwise didn't complain.
It took the better part of a month for Melon to finally warm up to Hana, after lots of treats and hugging. It was mostly Melon doing the hugging. With his claws. And teeth. Hana didn't hold that against him, though. If she were older she might have been thinking more about the moral questions of capturing a fully grown wild animal and keeping it captive to slowly force it to be her friend… but she was ten. Ten year-olds don't normally think about those kinds of things.
Hana was fairly certain she was ten now. She couldn't say that for sure and she'd long ago decided that thinking too hard about her past was a bad idea.
The young girl was just wondering what she was going to do that day when Melon suddenly decided he wanted to be somewhere else, unceremoniously dumping Hana onto the floor and leaping out the window.
"Melon, hey!" Hana called, watching her cat leap off into the jungle. Ignored, she slumped over the windowsill to mope. "Okay… I guess it's time for you to hunt, then."
There she was, by herself again. Hana sighed, wondering what she should do while Melon was gone. It was late afternoon. She'd already checked all her long-running experiments. She'd performed maintenance on all her machines and gadgets, too. The new erosion-resistant metal alloy was exactly the same as it had been weeks ago; close to immaculate. What else could she do?
Hana looked around and noticed that there was a bit of dust building up in her workroom. Now that she thought about it, she hadn't cleaned up in weeks. This was the most active part of her house. If there was this much dust here, the rest of it was probably much worse. She was probably supposed to clean it up. And she would, just…
She hesitated. Melon probably had the right idea. Today was a great day, and it had been weeks since she'd gone out just to play. Then again, she didn't have anyone to play with. Kickball? Hide and seek? She couldn't do any of those on her own, and playing pretend that someone was searching for her just ended up making her sad.
She'd clean her workshop first, at least. And her bedroom. And the vines grew ridiculously fast, so it was time to cut those off of the entrance again, so they wouldn't come inside. Then she could go over her experiments again.
All told, it took her an hour. The sun was still up, and Melon hadn't come back yet.
Finally, she was forced to wander outside. There was… nothing in particular she wanted to do, but she didn't have it in herself to sit down and rest; she'd start fidgeting within the minute. At least on the outside, she might run into some interesting insects, or…
The sun was no longer straight overhead, but had sunk to twenty degrees above the horizon, and was being filtered through the branches at the top of the forest. The wind caused the leaves to flutter, in turn causing shadows to flicker across her face. She blinked into the light.
In the far distance she could hear the cries of some predator, but right here the forest was peaceful, and pretty. For a little while she relaxed and watched it.
——————
Hana tapped her chin as she stared at the wooden board covered in paper. The "Fundamentals" and their behaviour. She'd drawn lots of possible models before, but when she tried to simulate them they never fully matched what she observed in nature. She was close, though. She just needed to figure out a few missing pieces.
At the moment, she was making a huge chart of all the Fundamentals she knew. There was something here, she was sure of it, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it yet. She had drawn lines connecting each to every other Fundamental that she'd found they would combine with, hoping it would spark some inspiration. Hana closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to imagine the logic behind it all.
Was it the shape? She could imagine a particular Fundamental possessing a hook-like shape, and another a loop. That wasn't quite how things worked at home, but she thought it might fit. What kept nagging at her, though, was that there weren't enough of them. If the… hookability—that seemed like a good word—was based on the number of hooks, or loops, then why were there only a few dozen Fundamentals total? A lot of which were really similar.
She tried to imagine a dozen of the simpler ones bouncing together, scrunching her face as she crunched the numbers. If she gave them just the right number of hooks and loops, it kind of worked… now, if she heated it, they slowly broke apart again… until, less than a microsecond into her imaginary heat bath, the hooks started breaking off.
They'd do that, she guessed.
But that wasn't what was happening! No matter how far she heated them, the Fundamentals never broke up any further. If they could be broken that way, the heat would need to be a lot higher than she could ever generate on her own.
Hana let her head fall dully on the table, and sighed. What was she even doing? This wouldn't get her home. Maybe she'd just stay here for a minute, and think…
Half a dozen padded feet landed heavily on the floor. She turned her head, her chin scraping against the wood, to see Melon returning. The big cat was carrying a large bird he'd caught, and looked quite satisfied with himself.
"Phey," she managed, not feeling quite up to sitting straight just yet. She gave him a lazy wave. "Who, me? I'm fine. Just… I'm tired. Close the door, will ya?"
Of course he didn't. She was talking to a cat.
Melon dropped the dead bird on the floor and started gnawing on it, right in front of her. Hana sighed, knowing she was the one who'd have to clean up the leftovers later. Melon often left a few hunks of meat on his kills, still under the apparent assumption after all this time that Hana needed to eat. If she could taste anything on this planet, she might have appreciated the gesture more. At least he'd stopped bringing her live animals to practice on.
Maybe she needed a vacation. She'd been working non-stop since she got here, and she was getting more and more tired of it. Ever since she got here… two years…
She'd been barely eight when she disappeared, and she was ten now, barely. She'd spent half her life here. That… that, more than anything…
"Happy birthday to me," she belatedly whispered. How long ago was it? Two weeks, three? She'd completely missed it.
Hana violently trembled, hugging herself, and for the first time in a year she felt tears starting to form. What was she doing? She was never getting home, not like this. She didn't even know where to start, and if anyone was coming to get her—Mom—Big sis—they'd have come already.
It wasn't going to work, so she had to do something else, but she just couldn't think of anything. Maybe… maybe it was fine even if she didn't go home, if she could just find someone to talk to. Out here, on her own, she felt like she was starting to go crazy.
Even if she could get home…
When would that be? A year from now? A decade? How much of her precious time with her father and sister was she losing? How much time did she have before...
She didn't want to think about it.
Melon pushed his snout into her side, and she absently started stroking him. At least she wasn't completely alone. That, she didn't think she could have lived through.
In that moment of comfort, that small measure of safety, Hana felt lighter. It was like a blinding haze cleared away.
There was a whole world out there she hadn't even seen yet. She'd barely moved from this area at all in the time she'd been here, certain she had to wait until someone came for her. But nobody was coming.
She had to leave. Waiting wasn't going to solve this. Doing the work of an entire civilization by herself would take too long. Even if the chance was slim, she needed to try to find someone, anyone, who could help.
——————
Did she have to do it like this, though?
For the first time since she got here she hovered, slightly over a meter in the air. Not really very high. Her feet were barely above where her head would normally be, but butterflies were already rampaging in her stomach. If she fell, when she was high above the forest canopy…
Well, realistically that wouldn't happen, and she wouldn't be hurt if it did. She was more worried about losing control and plowing through another few dozen trees, but that would only happen if she thought too hard about it, and she'd gotten pretty good at not thinking about things over the last two years.
Hana looked back at her treehouse, the place she'd called home for so long. Everything was carefully closed up. The blades of her windmills were all taken down and locked away, all her tools and other things put up inside. On her front door was a note just in case someone came looking for her. She'd carved it out of the new long-lasting metal. She'd replaced all of the structural metal in her house with it. Her test samples of that alloy had been corrosion free for months, so she was confident it would be fine until she came back.
Until she came back…
Would she ever come back? Surely she had to. Maybe she would find people, but if that happened she would want to leave another note for her family. No, she would come back, she was sure. It was lonely here when Melon wasn't around and she missed her real home, but this place… She found it hard not to feel attached to it. She'd built it with her own two hands after all.
She had all of her notes in memory, as well as a satchel with a lot of stuff written down. She had some portable versions of her most interesting experiments with her. She'd even built a carriage to carry some of her heavier things. Not that she would get tired, but it was more stuff than she could fit in her arms and she didn't want to leave stuff on the ground.
No changes of clothes, though. She'd been wearing the same clothes all this time and they never wore out, but she was suddenly wishing she'd spent some time learning to make new ones. Hana irritably brushed herself down. It was fine, right? A shortened, sleeveless one-piece dress with shorts underneath. It didn't get in her way, and it didn't need much in the way of cleaning. None, really; technically, it was a part of her, though it felt just like ordinary cloth.
What had Mom said? That she was lucky, to not need… um…
A shadow flashed in front of her eyes, and she jumped, momentarily frightened she'd locked up again. But no, it was just a bird.
She dropped the thought anyway. Mom had never been a good authority on clothing.
She was ready to go. She just had to do one more, pretty hard thing. The hardest thing.
"Hey Melon." she said to the tiger lazing on the tree branch above to her right. "So… I'm going now."
Hana floated up to him and rubbed his forehead, smiling sadly. Her only consistent company for the last year calmly allowed her to indulge herself. The big hexatiger rarely showed her much in the way of affection, but he stuck around and sometimes acted a little protective of his strange, small companion even if she really didn't need it. Hana worried some about leaving him behind, feared he might not be here when she returned, but she'd made a point of letting Melon be as independent as possible, after she was sure he wouldn't just abandon her. He was a wild animal, and this was the wild.
"You take care of things around here, okay? I'm gonna miss you."
She wished she had something more to say, but more words really wouldn't mean anything to Melon. Hana hugged him one last time before she said her goodbye and floated off, pulling her carriage behind her. Melon observed her departure with some mild interest, then huffed and went back to sleep.
At the last instant, as she lost sight of her home, she smiled. The world was both tall and wide, and she had many things to see.
