Luna was sprawled all over him when he woke up the next morning. He nudged her awake.
To his surprise, she didn't immediately pull away from him, upon discovering that they were all tangled up together. Instead she yawned, ran a hand through her messy dark hair, and gave him a languid look. "Morning."
"Morning," he returned. "We should probably get out of bed."
"It's too cold," she murmured, snuggling up against him.
He found himself putting an arm around her. "It's cold," he agreed. And they remained like that for some time.
Finally, though, Luna rolled out of bed, started the fire, and fried up another can of "PrestoMeat" for them, while Stu climbed out of bed and, tentatively, tested his balance. The dizziness seemed to have passed, and he felt much stronger now than he had last night. His injuries had healed; his eyeballs had grown back; his shattered skull and broken bones had mended themselves. He flexed his muscles. He felt better.
"I forgot to thank you," he told Luna. "For not giving up on me. If you had left me for dead, back in that cave..."
"You're welcome," she said, stabbing a forkful of PrestoMeat.
He regarded Luna thoughtfully, remembering that he accepted the "Looking for Love: Luna" quest that the ICON system had presented to him. What did it mean, exactly? At what point would the quest be completed, and what kind of reward might it offer him? The system was inscrutable in many ways, but it was these random quests that really confused him. They popped up out of nowhere, with no rhyme or reason as far as he could tell. He might have expected a "quest available" message to appear when the people of Silent had told him about the Cannibal, or after he had agreed to kill it for them, but no such message had appeared. That was too bad; he could have used the extra SP.
After finishing their breakfast, such as it was, they put on their jackets and boots -- Stu's jacket was covered with his own blood, which had dried out and stiffened it -- gathered up their things (including the Cannibal's head) and opened the door to the cabin. They had to struggle against a snowdrift, but to their relief, the storm had ended; the wind was calm, the sky was bright and blue, and the little town of Silent could be clearly seen in the distance, at the bottom of the valley. If they had had skis, they could have made it down the mountain in just a few minutes, but as it was, they had to trudge down the difficult mountain path, which was now buried in snow, and it took them most of the morning.
They immediately made their way to the abandoned shop where Lucky and Millie were staying. To their relief, the glider (though covered with snow) was still parked outside, and Millie was there to greet them at the door. "You're back," she said, without much emotion. "I was beginning to wonder."
Lucky was much more animated, and was no longer hobbling around; his knee must have been feeling better. "What the hell took you so long?" he blurted. "Did you kill it?"
Stu held up the burlap sack containing the Cannibal's head, which was beginning to smell. "We killed it," he affirmed.
He eyed the sack dubiously. "Was it strong?"
"Yeah." He glanced at Luna. "It...nearly killed me."
"But you're all right? It didn't bite you or anything?"
"We're fine."
He clapped his hands together. "Great. Let's show it to Tremlo and get the hell out of here. I'm sick of waiting around. Three days we've been here! And I've been stuck with her this whole time." He gestured to Millie.
"You two aren't getting along?" Luna asked.
Lucky rolled his eyes. "She is so weird."
Millie, for her part, didn't dispute this; she merely shrugged.
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While Luna cleaned the snow off the glider, Stu, Lucky, and Millie met with Tremlo and the other townspeople in the general store. They were very surprised to see that Stu was still alive, but even more surprised to find out that he'd succeeded in killing the Cannibal. He placed the burlap sack containing the monster's head on the counter; Tremlo looked at it doubtfully, but opened it up and looked inside.
"He did it," he told the others. And he picked it up by its hairy head and showed it to them.
The old woman, whose name Stu had never learned but who seemed to be the town's leader, gasped, while the others recoiled from the smell. "How?" the old woman demanded. "How did you do it?"
"I shot it," he explained, shrugging.
"This thing has been terrorizing us for years," Tremlo said. "How could you have killed it so easily?"
"Who said it was easy?" He turned his eyes to the old woman. "You agreed to hand over a canister of dynamo fluid, if I killed the Cannibal for you."
The younger woman, the one who had hit Lucky with the hammer, immediately ran off, returning a moment later with a silver canister. She handed it to Stu, who handed it to Millie. "A pleasure doing business with you," Stu said, somewhat dryly. "We'll be on our way."
"Wait!" the older woman said. "I'm sorry for the way you were treated, when you first came into town. This is a wonderful thing you've done for us. Are you sure there's nothing more we can do for you? A single can of dynamo fluid seems like a small price to pay for having gotten rid of the Cannibal for us."
It was Lucky who answered her. "We could use some more supplies," he said. "Food, matches, ammunition if you have it. Enough to get us to Lon Halos."
"I think we can help you there," the old woman said.
"And we're planning on coming back this way after we're finished in Lon Halos," Lucky continued. "We could use a safe place to stay."
"I think we can help you there, too," the woman said.
The people of Silent were poor, and didn't have much food to spare, but they did have quite a bit of ammunition -- Lucky was able to get his hands on a can of ammo for his little machine gun, and Luna acquired three charges for the Centurion rifle (which she was still working to repair). When they had finished loading their new supplies into the glider, they bid farewell to the townspeople and departed, without much ceremony -- Luna was anxious to get them out of the mountains before another snowstorm set in.
"Good riddance," Lucky said, as they sped away.
"They weren't that bad," Millie said. "They gave us all that ammunition and stuff, didn't they?"
"They tried to kill us," he reminded her.
She shrugged. "That's just how it is."
Stu snorted at that, repeating the statement in a sardonic tone: "That's just how it is, huh?" He sighed. "What a world." * * *
It was a day and a night before he found an opportunity to speak with Luna again, in private. They had cleared the Sunny Mountains without further incident, and were now making their way down into a vast, shrubby flatland which stretched as far as the eye could see. The weather was much more temperate now; they had already shed their hats, gloves, and jackets.
Luna, wearing her usual "Night Train" t-shirt, was sitting on the back of the glider, trying to fix something on the Centurion's rifle's circuit board. She had her black hair tied up in a ponytail, and looked rather lovely, he thought, in the morning light.
She set the rifle aside when she saw Stu approaching. "Lucky and Millie?"
"Fetching water," he said. "They'll be back soon."
An awkward silence followed. It was Stu who finally broke it: "I've been thinking," he began hesitantly, "about the other night."
"I've been thinking about it, too." She looked at him evenly. "I thought I might like a fling."
"A fling?"
"That's all I was after the other night, when I kissed you." She looked a little embarrassed. "Can you blame me for being curious? You're like...you're like some kind of superman. I was dying to find out..." She trailed off. "Well."
Now Stu was the one growing embarrassed. "Oh."
"But I'm feeling a little differently now. I thought it would be okay, to have a little fun with you, since you're planning on going back to your own world or whatever. But now..." She was quiet for a moment. "It's like I told you before. When I thought you were dead...well, I realized you meant a little more to me than that."
"S-so?" Stu pressed.
"So maybe it's better if we don't rush into things," she said. "If you really are leaving..." A strange expression crept over her features. "I'm afraid you'll wind up breaking my heart."
She was expressing these feelings in a surprisingly forthright way, Stu thought. He found it surprising -- in his experience women were not usually quite so direct; certainly Berly had never laid out her feelings like this. She had always been something of a closed book.
It was another thing to like about her.
"I...don't want to hurt you," he said.
"But you are planning on leaving, aren't you?"
"I want to return to my own world," he conceded.
"Better that we don't pursue these feelings, then. It'll only make it harder for us, in the end."
She had a point. There was something sad about all this, though, and Stu was reluctant to leave it at that. "It might not even be possible for me to return to my world," he pointed out. "I don't know where to find this Dr. Snowe. I don't know if the equipment he used to open the portal is still functioning. I could be stuck here forever."
"Would that be so bad?"
Yes, it would. But he didn't want to say that, so he remained silent.