Starving Together (A "Don't Starve" Story)

5: The Science (Alchemy) of Making Friends

If Westley could accurately sum up her thoughts of Wilson Higgsbury, he would be somewhere along the lines of quirky.

Not eccentric, exactly, although the more she noticed about him the more she started to believe that he was, in fact, an eccentric. Which wasn't bad. Westley had a few oddities of her own. But he was also human. And of course their current situation would call for some form of adaption in order to persevere.

Another description she'd use for him would be oddly endearing.

On their second day as a team, she was awoken to the sound of him clamoring about the campsite with a furrowed brow. He appeared to be searching for something. Something that had him frowning while he opened chests and rummaged through his pack.

"Wilson?" she called, curious. "Something wrong?"

The scientist jolted in place. He quickly faced her, surprised, before sighing and holding a hand to his chest. His voice came out sounding a bit breathless. "Oh, Miss Harper. Good morning. I had almost forgotten that you... Never mind."

Even without saying it, Westley could tell what he meant. It had only been two days, after all. He wasn't used to having another person there with him. She must have spooked him, the poor man.

Going back to the question in her head, she asked, "What are you looking for?"

Wilson sighed again. Westley noticed him doing this very often. "Only some boards, but I might have used them all up on chests. Do you know if I—we—have any more logs hanging around?"

"I think I only have three on me right now," Westley admitted. "How many boards do you need?"

"Four. I suppose this means we'll need to go gather some more wood today."

"We also need more food, I think. I can do the hunting if you'd like."

It was the smallest sign of relief that Westley picked up on; Wilson didn't want to have to kill anything. From how he had grimaced during their hunting trip the day before, it became another detail about his puzzling personality that Westley was slowly piecing together.

"Well, we're burning daylight," Wilson announced as he slung his pack onto his back. "Best get moving."

Westley hurried off of her mat, flinching as it disappeared, and took up her own bag, which had been waiting for her just a couple feet away.

There was still a certain distance Wilson and Westley kept between each other as they walked along the dirt path. It wasn't like they were instantly the best of friends. They hardly knew anything about each other—strangers who had just become roommates, almost. Only in this scenario, the roommates had paranoid anxiety and the room was a gigantic, threatening world that was trying to kill them.

Westley was somewhat determined to have them lose that anxiety. At least with each other. She really didn't mind Wilson. It'd be nice if they could get along.

Ten minutes into their walk, Wilson stopped abruptly. Westley nearly ran into him because of it. She was about to ask him why he had stopped when her answer came in the form of an unfolded piece of paper from the back of that journal she had seen him write in before.

From what she could see over his shoulder, it was a map. A legend at the bottom dictated every significant landmark or resource, and there was about a dozen different symbols for them. The map itself was detailed, albeit a bit hard to understand. But Westley was sure that if she looked at it for a while, it'd become comprehensible. Wilson's writing was a sort of jagged, cursive scrawl that was slightly difficult to read, enough so that Westley ended up squinting her eyes to try to read it better.