Chapter Text
This could have gone better.
Sure, it also could have gone a lot worse, considering the Box actually worked and sent her somewhere, at least she wasn't sent to some entirely inhospitable dimension of some kind.
But still, out here in the wilderness, in the winter cold? On top of a mountain, with an admittedly gorgeous view? Not ideal.
Especially after missing the fact she just stepped into nothing but air. Well, not quite. There were narrow stairs chiseled into the steep cliffside, and she promptly slipped on them, unable to grip one of the ropes hanging at the side fast enough.
"Waaah!" Marcy cried out, careening down the stairs, desperately gripping each rope she could get her hands on on the way, until finally landing on the bottom, bruised and her heart beating in double time.
The ground actually gave a little, softening the fall ever so slightly. But not enough. She cried out again, in pain this time, at the searing sensation being sent into her brain from her probably broken leg.
She absently noted that she had landed on some sort of wooden dock on the water, but she was mostly occupied with being in pain.
"Help! Someone help me please!" she shouted regardless, hoping someone would come. The chiseled stairs and the dock should indicate a settlement, after all.
Only a few moments later, Marcy could indeed hear a voice calling out to her from the top of the cliffside. Not that she understood it.
"Dammit Marcy, you should have expected a different language," she muttered to herself. The tears in her eyes made everything blurry, but she could still make out a person descending down the stairs toward her, if you could even call them that. As her vision was fading to black at the edges, the person reached her and tenderly held her steady.
The last thing she experienced before completely fading from consciousness, was a female voice shouting something that sounded like "Sham mud!" up the cliffside.
"Where did you find her, Tholie?" the Shamud asked.
"I heard a shout of surprise, then pain, so i rushed out toward the stairs from where it came. She was laying down at the dock. I got her up here with the lifting basket, since she was unconscious. Her leg doesn't look good, right?" the woman answered the healer.
"I see," the Shamud replied, "but don't worry about her leg, it seems like a simple break to me. As long as we keep it steady, it will heal without problem."
Shamud turned to the supply of healing herbs in their hearth, to prepare a salve. The young injured woman was laying there on a spare fur, her bag next to her.
"I am very intrigued by her clothing, to be honest. I have never seen anything like it. I can not make out the animal it was made from, yet it is soft and sturdy while being light, look." Shamud lifted an edge of her skirt to show off the material.
Tholie looked away from the leg injury, taking in the woman's clothing for the first time. What she saw, she marveled at.
"You are right, i haven't seen anything like it either! Look, on her chest, there is a colorful marking there. Do you know what it means?" Tholie pointed toward the school logo on Marcy's sweater.
"No, Tholie. But it is very vibrant and her whole attire is of such high quality that i didn't dare to undress any part of her. I suspect it is of high cultural or spiritual relevance to her. Luckily, i didn't have to do anything of the sort. Her undergarment is open like a dress. Therefore i can access and treat the leg without issue."
Marcy awoke dazed. Last thing she remembered she tumbled down a cliffside and... then someone came when her leg... her leg!
Looking around, she could see she was laid to rest on some sort of fur. There was a fire crackling a few feet away from her, keeping the... hut? Tent? Well, keeping the room warm. Trying to sit up proved to be a bad idea. The pain shot through her leg in an instant, resulting in her groaning and sinking back down. She took a look at it tho. It was wrapped in what looked like tree bark, which had stiffened. Marcy didn't know much about medicine, but even she knew it must be a cast to keep her leg steady. Why the tree bark tho?
Looking around further, she spotted her bag at her side. Reaching out, she grabbed it and opened it to get to her diary. If she was having to rest here for a while, she may as well write and/or sketch a little.
While doodling various objects in her surroundings onto the pages, she took note of how simple they were. Primitive, actually. The room didn't have a proper closed roof, there were a few holes. A stone formation above her keept the rain and snow away. The walls were made of wood and had a triangular shape, meeting at the highest point, which gave the room the feeling of a tent, if it weren't made out of wood. The bed she laid on was also wooden, with furs and leather pillows to sleep on.
Did the box send her back in time?! It would explain the cast made from bark. And the rest of the strangely primitive room. Good thing she'd recently been getting into primitive technology, there was a Toob account she had discovered showing off all sorts of cool things.
She mentally went through the list of things and resources she'd need, depending on how far developed these people and their technology were.
Then a part of the leather plane blocking the entrance folded open, and a person entered the room, startling her. She stared at them. They stared back for a moment, then started to talk.
Too bad Marcy couldn't understand a word. The talking now sounded different. Still nothing she could interpret. Different again, but less fluid. Were they trying out different languages?
Marcy decided to throw the poor person a bone, seeing as she hadn't even tried to respond yet.
"Hello there. I'm Marcy! Thanks for taking care of me. Who are you?" Marcy extended a hand in greeting. The other one took it, gave it a gentle squeeze, then let go and stepped back.
"Shamud." they said, pointing their fingers toward their chest while holding eye contact. What? Oh, that was probably their name.
"Marcy," she mimicked the motion at herself, "Marcy Wu." The other person smiled.
Learning the language of these people was arduous, but it wasn't like she had much else to do while her leg healed. Shamud was the one who treated her injury, but a woman named Tholie was the one spending the most time with Marcy, teaching her the language and learning English in the process.
They had started with names, then objects around the room as well as body parts, as those were easy to show.
"Fingers. Fin-ger. One finger." Marcy held up her index finger. "Two fingers," now holding her index and middle fingers up, trying to teach Tholie about singular and plural forms now that they had most of the basic words down.
For some reason, however, Tholie was appalled when Marcy, for demonstrative purposes, counted higher to indicate that anytime there was more than one finger, she had to use "fingers" instead. Plural.
Making a gesture that Marcy understood to mean "stay right here," Tholie left the hut in a hurry. A few minutes later, she returned with Shamud. Marcy was convinced that Shamud was nonbinary, as they presented very androgynously, and she remembered from history class that queer people were often thought to be healers in ancient times.
Why Tholie had called them, however, she wasn't sure.
"I think she was saying number words, Shamud! I need your help teaching her, i cannot do it alone!"
Shamud raised an eyebrow at that, but got up to come to Marcy's aid. Upon entering the room, they saw the curious expression on the woman's face. "Tholie, leave us, i think we'll be fine for the time being," they requested.
When Tholie had left, Shamud held up a finger toward Marcy, looking at her expectantly. "What? Oh, you're asking me the word for this? Finger. Finger."
The last word must be the word for finger in her language, but that wasn't the word Shamud wanted to hear. They drew a mark into the dirt, then held up their finger once more. Marcy looked at them, not seeming to understand what was asked of her. Shamud held up another finger, and added another mark into the dirt. Looked back at Marcy. The woman curled her brows for a second, then her face straightened into a look of understanding.
"Oh, are you asking me about numbers? I get it, wait, here." she waved Shamud to come closer.
Then Marcy drew one tally mark into the dirt, below it she made another mark shaped like "1", then held up one of her fingers and said: "One." She added another tally mark, drew a mark shaped like "2", raised another finger, then said: "two"
The injured woman continued in this manner, each time adding another tallymark, another weirdly shaped mark as well, raising another finger, and saying:
"Three. Four. Five," then paused, contemplating something.
Should she teach them base six right from the get go, Marcy wondered? It had many advantages, and from the frowning look on Shamud's face they didn't seem to understand her written digits at all, only the tally marks. So not like it'd have to be a matter of relearning something, unlike those who grew up with using decimal. So should she teach seximal to these people?
Yes, yes she would, she resolved.
After a pause, which Shamud thought meant Marcy was nearing the end of her counting ability, she continued:
"Six" She added another tallymark, drew the mark shaped like "10" into the ground, and held up only her thumb from her other hand. Shamud was confused by what she meant for a second, but then realized the counting technique Marcy was using with her hands. The marks were still a mystery to them, however. Why did she draw two marks this time, in addition to the added tallymark?
"Seven," she continued, adding another tallymark and drawing "11" into the dirt, holding up her thumb on her right hand, and her index finger on her left.
"Eight," now it was "12" and index and middle finger on her left, still the thumb on her right.
Shamud knew of the way she counted on her fingers, she was measuring one handful and one more with each finger on her right hand. And the amount of tallymarks was correct. But they were baffled by the other markings.
They looked back over the older marks. For each finger on Marcy's first hand, there had been a unique symbol she had drawn. But when they got to one more than one handful, suddenly there were two symbols. And the "0" was not one she had drawn before.
Shamud drew the symbol "0" into the ground, and looked at Marcy expectantly. The woman then surprised them, by holding up both her hands as she had before when showing her fingers, but not extending any finger.
She drew more, many more markings into the ground, it looked like this:
0
1 |
2 ||
3 |||
4 ||||
5 |||||
10 ||||||
11 |||||||
12 ||||||||
13 |||||||||
14 ||||||||||
15 |||||||||||
20 ||||||||||||
Shamud pondered these marks, for a long time. Marcy seemed to be getting impatient, fiddling with something from her bag, but they paid it no mind. They were far too intrigued by her markings.
After quite a while, their mouth stood agape. Was it really...?
Shamud took a stick, and added another pair of markings:
21 |||||||||||||
Marcy's reaction upon seeing this, confirmed what Shamud deduced was correct!
Marcy made markings to indicate not the numbers directly, but the way her fingers were raised when counting, each amount per hand represented by a unique marking, and no fingers raised being expressed as "0"!
However, when Shamud laid their hands next to each marking, holding out the appropriate amount of fingers, Marcy seemed to contemplate something.
The woman then continued to write symbols and tallymarks, until she reached the mark "55"
Then she drew two more marks and added tallymarks, looking like "100" and "101" respectively, each with one more tallymark.
Shamud's breath hitched, the numbers had been getting quite large, but slowly they came to a conclusion. The third symbol was another hand, a third one, and it counted how many of the second hands there were, the second hands' fingers counting how many full first hands! This was incredible, Marcy would have to be inducted into those who serve immediately! Even if she turned out to have no talent for the spirit world, her counting technique was very impressive!
Over the next week, as her leg was healing and she was starting to get a grip on the language, at least vaguely, she was more often visited by Shamud, so she could teach them more math. Which Marcy did with delight! Everything she taught them blew their mind. They had known about a compass to draw circles. But when she showed them how you could construct many shapes just using that and a straight edge, Shamud's eyes practically glistened. Who knew learning geometry would excite her healer this much?
When she was alone however, she filled her journal with plans on what to do once she could use her leg again. She had observed the items around her, deducing that these people were still in the stone age, and hadn't invented pottery yet. Which she would need to get them out of the stone age, and straight into the age of metal. For pottery she needed clay, which she would find at a river. Seeing as there were some items made from large fish bones and she remembered falling onto the dock very vividly, she didn't think getting clay would be much of a problem, since access to a river was present. She had to fire it too, however, and pottery needs hot furnaces, while the Sharamudoi only used open fires, no stoves and certainly no furnaces. She wasn't even sure if they knew charcoal yet. But she could fix that too. And she would.
The only thing she wasn't too optimistic about, was the fact she still hadn't heard a word of her friends. Were they also flung back in time, or was she the only one? If they were, would they survive? If they weren't, did they think she was dead?
These thoughts plagued her day and night, resulting in nightmares of Anne and Sasha being frozen solid outside somewhere, or getting mauled by a wild predator, or trampled by a herd. Or simply growing weaker and weaker as they both starved to death.
So she had to occupy herself with getting the Sharamudoi out of the stone age. Just to have something to do. To distract her.
This was fine. Perfectly healthy, even.
She was fine.
She could fix this.
Right?