101 Ways to Skin a Hoodie

Chapter 5

My feet touch the ground at around 30 km/h and I unlatch from Ben's legs as I take a couple of running steps away from the parachute. Momentum dissipating, I stumble to my knees, cradling my right arm with gritted teeth. Ben touches down as well and letting go of the parachute, runs over to me.

"Okay, okay," Ben says frantically, ripping off a piece of fabric from his pantleg and putting it in my mouth. "Sorry." With a swift motion he reaches under my arm to support it and with a quick motion, snaps my shoulder back into its socket.

"Mmmmmmph!" I bite down into the fabric, but the pain swiftly recedes from my arm. Still shaky, I wipe the dried tears from around my eyes and right myself on the ground. "Thanks," I murmur, rubbing my shoulder and looking around properly.

My view on the ground matches the view from the air, and we seem to be at the bottom of one of the hills that I had seen. Actually, not hills. Dunes. The entire terrain around us seems to be made entirely of a pitch black sand-like substance. I pinch a bit between my fingers, and it sprinkles to the ground like a flurry of snow.

Wiping my hands on my sweats I stand up, then proceeding to climb up the dune to get a better view. Said dune isn't very high or steep, but it still makes my calves burn a bit as I go up. I mean, I haven't used my legs in about two days.

I reach the crest of the dune and look around me. It's the same situation as when I was falling, in the manner that despite an obvious lack of any sort of light source I can see clearly. The difference now being that there are actual, physical things for me to see in the distance now. I glance 'skyward', but it's the same endless darkness, farther than the eye can see.

I can see further into the distance now, but there isn't any sort of structure indicative of a civilization. In fact, the only thing other than hills of black sand are gray plants of some sort that are sparsely scattered in every direction around me. Ben joins me atop the hill and I point these out to him. We start heading down the other side of the dune and up the next one to observe the plants more closely, and when we crest the next hill I spot the parachute resting a bit down the hill, unmoving in the windless air.

My hair stands up on the back of my neck, and I rub it with my palm as I shuffle down to the parachute. I crouch down next to it, untying my hoodie from the corners. Once it's untangled I tie it around my waist. Without the windchill it's actually a rather pleasant temperature of 25 degrees celsius or so.

I stand up and glance over to Ben. He's already inspecting the plant more closely, and I trudge over to him, glancing behind me a couple of times. The plant is around 2 meters tall, and is more treelike than anything. Ashen branches bend down towards us, a blue flower growing on the tip of each one. Ben picks one off, holding it gingerly in his palm.

"Well? Edible?" He wonders to me, a slight grin around his lips.

"I really don't think that's the best idea, it could be poisonous or something," is what I would have responded with, but Ben quickly popped the flower into his mouth. He starts chewing and his face is blank for a moment before puckering like he just ate a sour candy. I take a step forward but he extends his hand to stop me, and with a last grimace swallows it.

...

"Nothing hurts!" Ben exclaims. I sigh and tell him that he might say differently in a few hours. We have a short chuckle and then silence falls over us. I speak up again.

"So, where do we go from here?"

Ben hesitates, "I'm not sure. I saw that if we keep heading in this direction then it seems like we'll encounter the highest amount of these trees. I mean, there still aren't that many, but we have to go somewhere so we may as well seek out as much food as we can."

I decide not to tell him about the half-granola bar that I have left.

"Ok, that sounds good. Plus if there are any other people out here we can hope that they had the same idea." I add.

"Yeah. People..." the lack of finality to Ben's statement said what we were both thinking but didn't want to say out loud. "Ok, before we head off give me a minute and I'll prepare some things."

Ben walks over to the parachute and starts doing his hand-wavey thing over it. I reach around behind me and awkwardly work my phone out of my hoodie pocket, which is now hanging by the inside of my knees. Having nothing better to do and at least wanting to feel useful I open the compass app.

I'm not sure what I was expecting but it certainly wasn't for the digital needle to spin wildly around the axis. I leave the app and open up my messages, only to remember that I still don't have wifi. Which reminds me.

I trudge over to Ben, who is still hunched in deep focus over the parachute. I ask; "Do you think you still have service on your phone? I mean, I only noticed you in the first place since I saw your hotspot."

"What's a phone?" Ben responds absently, still focused on his task. A chill runs down my spine. Had I really seen a popup with a hotspot on it? No- I can't doubt my own sanity, if I hadn't seen it then I wouldn't have even looked for Ben in the first place. I glance over my shoulder again. This whole situation is bizarre, but in a mystic way. It would take something sentient to mess with human technology.

"Whew," exhales Ben, wiping his hands on his pants. I stuff my phone into my pants pocket, suddenly feeling almost reserved about it. Ben grabs two items off the ground. "Sorry it took a while. Now as well as up in the air that is. I had to make the metal ridiculously thin before it became flexible at all, and making the atoms more compact again takes around the same time even if the practice is completely different." Ben holds out a curved, matte gray blade to me. I whistle, the child in me coming out a little bit. "I figured it would be a good idea to make yours single edged, as you don't exactly give off the impression of having any sort of combat training."

"Rude," I say, pouting out my cheeks.

"Oh! No, no, I don't mean it as an insult, it's just what I read from how you generally carry yourself and move about."

Ugh.

Somehow that feels worse.

I straighten my posture.

"Anyway," continues Ben, "hopefully we won't have to use these at all. This is just a precaution."

I nod in agreement and untie my hoodie from my waist. Ben moves a couple paces away and gives his sword some practice swings. It's distinctly more western, although who knows if western and eastern geographies mean the same to Ben as they do to me. I'll have to ask him about it at some point.

Back to the matter at hand. I test my sword out as well, using it to cut the sleeves off of my hoodie. I then cut them in half lengthwise and knot the two pieces of each sleeve together. I set these aside and sit down in the sand. I pull out the drawstring of my hoodie, and I wrap it around the hilt of my sword as a makeshift grip. The whole thing is iron, and, as Ben said, if we do have to use them I don't want the sort to slide out of my hand mid-combat because I got too sweaty.

In any case, I'm left with a sleeveless hoodie that can't be tightened. Not wanting my ancestors who used every part of the mammoth to be disappointed, I cut down the middle of the hoodie from the neck. The kangaroo pouch is split in two, and the half granola bar falls out. I sheepishly glance up at Ben, but he's still absorbed in his training regimen, so I quickly cram it into my mouth and stuff the wrapper into my other pocket.

I dramatically throw my now ragged hoodie around me neck, and I shake the hair out of my face. I reach down and pick up the sleeve-sashes I constructed, and I tie one around my waist. I put my sword against my left hip, and thanks to the drawstring-grip it stays in place. I walk over to Ben and politely wait for him to finish the set of sword swings he's on. Once he's done I hand the second sleeve-sash to him.

"Ooh very creative!" Ben says after he regains his breath. I can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not, but either way he ties it around his waist. He slides his sword against his left hip as well, and it fits nicely as his actually has a hilt on it.

Ben beams and I ask if we should be off. He says that there's no point waiting around if we're ready, and so we start our trek into the rolling dunes on this ashen plain.