This last night was quite different from all the previous ones. For the first time in a while now, he felt relaxed. Still very apprehensive of the future yes, but in the moment, laying down on a tree branch, watching the stars, it all felt better than it ever had before, he just wished for some music in his ears and a cigarette in his mouth right now but his phone was flat out and he finished his last fag a couple days ago.
He fell asleep quite peacefully, arms behind his head, and slept his last good night of sleep.
Agi got active right after waking up. He had his work cut out for him, finishing off his makeshift weapons and a whole day of walking.
His objective for today was to meet something. Not even catch hurt or kill, but just see and make sure that the only other species apart from himself in this forest were these damned brown apes. Just about any form of animal life would be fine to him. He would be happy to even see an insect at this point, after all, without any kind of biodiversity of in hell was this forest sustaining itself ?
As for the direction ? He would keep following the river down stream, which is once again opposite from where he fled from on the second day.
He obviously didn't move along right next to the river, and since he had gotten somewhat used to moving through the dense vegetation of the forest, he just stayed within a reasonable distance from it. The only negative points from doing that are the noise he makes while walking, the micro cuts he would get from moving everything out of his way, and the lack of visibility. Sure he couldn't be seen as easily, but he couldn't see either, after every branch and bit of leafage his heart would beat a bit harder in anticipation of something.
Something that for the most part never came. However, one small hour into the walk, he stumbled upon something.
After he came upon a blind corner he thought was empty on the other side, he came face to face with a tree, which was quite strange in the situation, given that he didn't pick up on any foliage while looking up, putting this small misstep on his carelessness, and slapping himself on the wrist for it, he turned around to try his way a bit deeper.
Yet, before he could fully turn around, the tree trunk moved, and immediately, his brain connected the dots. It wasn't a fucking tree trunk, and that's why there was no foliage higher up.
From closer up, there was one thing he could greatly admire about these hairless humanoid gorillas, if their morphology was closer to a human's than what it currently was, all the specimens he had seen so far would be elite body builders at worst, and also power-lifting champions too. The sheer size of its arms, chest, traps, and back, for which he mistook the striations for a damn tree, were all for sure below 5 % body fat.
While his head was trying to cope with the situation by finding useless things to say about this creature's physique, his body was completely frozen.
He was extremely close to it, barely a meter away, and every possible response scenario went through his mind. Making himself look big and aggressive ? Could backfire and make it attack. Play dead ? He would put himself in too much of a vulnerable position. Slowly backing away, acting calm in case confrontation could be avoided ? That sounded pretty good compared to the rest. Making a run for it ? That was definitely the best sounding option. In such a dense environment, its huge body is a notable disadvantage and Agi was confident he could escape…. Just not with all his stuff on him. Not only did it make him about ten kilos heavier, with the long sticks and the backpack, he took up a lot more space too, and even while just slowly navigating in the forest up until now, one element or another often got stuck on a branch or something, and he definitely didn't want such a thing to happen in a life or death scenario.
In the meantime, the huge animal had turned around and was currently studying him with and unreadable expression. It took a little step forward, and Agi took one backward, while detaching his bag from his body. He crouched at the same time, not to drop it from high up, as that might look like a sign of aggression.
The humanoid creature kept on stalking him, one slow step at a time, and Agi was very careful not to stumble while walking backwards. At some point judging the creature only curious, Agi stopped moving away, and let the entity get up close.
As it got its tall head close to his own torso, as if to sniff it, he was allowed to study his facial features in detail. Where its body was tall wide lean, and very muscular, with its global form being bipedal, two arms two legs a torso and a head, much like a human's, together with its color being varying from a dark brown, to a much darker and deeper black, its head was still where it differed from us the most.
He had seen quite a few specimens by now, so he could make out their usual facial features. They all had some kind of muzzle or snout, big and often wide open eyes. Their ears were found, like a human's, on the side of the head, but their shape was almost like a conch, a small opening where it was stuck to the skull, and the rest was closed off in a spiral, going towards the sides. And he thought it would be the same here, however, he now just noticed, this one had none of the above. Playing the head again in his head, he was sure it had them when it turned around to face him. It's like it erased its own face while closing in on him
Now, it was as if he was facing a clean blank and very dark sheet. The head resting on these very bulky shoulders was what seemed to be a perfect sphere. It was almost as if he was staring at the void itself, and strangely enough, he felt eerily stared back at.
His heart was beating very fast, and adrenaline was starting to get released into his system following this discovery and what it might imply. What he witnessed next only served to confirm just what kind of entity he was facing.
The black hole-like sphere slowly started to morph itself more and more into a human one. After thirty seconds, he was staring at a mirror, and it was coincidentally around that time that he managed to take back control of his body.
The plan had changed. He wasn't facing just about any animal, that could be impressed or scared by a loud noise, or large movements. It was smart, smarter than him maybe. This was both good and bad news.
Good news, he could try to communicate. For highly intelligent species, and sentient ones even more, communication and cooperation were always a better choice than fighting it out. And though they didn't speak the same language at all, he was confident that broad signs and facial expressions could be a major start in that regard.
Bad news, if communication didn't go through, and this curiosity was only a passing one, only to get rid of Agi after having gotten every possible surface benefits out of it, fighting or simply escaping from such an entity was well above what anyone could do.
And with images of the corpse he saw a week back coming back in flashes into his head, he started wondering if that poor creature hadn't simply been disposed off in such a harsh way after this thing, for lack of a better word managed to morph into it.
That train of thought ignited his body. Every possible short term chemical reactions activated and he had only one thing in mind. Getting the fuck away from him.
With no care to even peek behind him, and no regret for his belongings left on the ground, he took off faster than he ever had before.
As he ran, with nothing else to do, his brain, or rather, his imagination ran wild, twisted images of a deep black colored monster running after him as if playing with its pray formed in his mind.
Meanwhile he avoided trees and dense areas as if he knew they were there beforehand, he felt like he was running faster in this environment right now, than ever before on track.
In this strange adrenaline fueled flow state, time felt irrelevant, and after seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks or even decades for all he cared for, he finally stopped running, and on the spot, fell on the ground unconscious.
He woke up. He had survived, successfully escaped this nightmare of a situation. Just being able to see, hear, sense, smell, filled him up with a strange feeling of ecstasy. His body was a mess, still exhausted, extremely hungry and thirsty, and full of micro cuts, honestly it'd be a miracle if he didn't die from an infection without medical treatment. But more importantly he was alive, and not horribly gutted and skinned by a weird fucking alien.
After this short moment of happiness came the cold shower. How was he supposed to survive now ? He was tired, hurt, hungry and thirsty. Had no more equipment, no way to get clean water, hunt for food, heal himself or rest without worry. Even if he suddenly became proactive and tried to get closer to the brown apes, to try and steal some food from them, in his current physical condition, this was simply unfeasible. Going from enthralled to depressed in seconds, any energy left in his body just got right out and he let himself fall back on the ground.
He fell on his back, but the impact was cushioned by layers of fallen leaves. It was night and with such a clear view he rapidly lost himself in contemplation of the starry sky.
In this situation, he was reminded of his father, and wondered what he would do in this situation. He was a huge moralist and taught him many lessons about his views on the world coming from his own experience in life, but also about many different philosophical themes, which he always loved, simply because every day it felt like he picked up a new pair of glasses through which he could see the world.
Now, in this situation, so close to death, he couldn't help but think back to that wonderful world, and losing himself once again.