There were a lot of things that Savitri was unable to learn, because she was
ripped from her life, and her family, at such a young age. Fortunately, she
wasn’t completely feral, as she did retain memories of living in civilization.
She didn’t have a very large vocabulary, but she did have a concept for spoken
language, which was enough for her to learn the words she needed when she
finally stopped being alone. She reverted to her lizard brain for most of the
first decade, though, and her instincts told her to be safe, and to stay
alive. But what exactly did that mean? What would it mean if she stopped being
alive, and how exactly would she go about doing such a thing? Her body knew it
didn’t want to jump off of a cliff that was too high, but intellectually, she
wouldn’t have been able to explain it. Fate didn’t care about that, though.
She didn’t have to jump off the cliff to fall from it. Ten years into her life
on Durus, as she was climbing up the cliffside, in an attempt to reach a new
plant that looked appetizing, a rock gave way, and dropped her down. Death
wasn’t something she understood until then. She had never seen it before. No
one had taught her about it, and even if they had, they couldn’t have
explained what it truly meant. She could feel it coming over her now, though,
and she did not like it. To be honest, it was a miracle nothing like this had
ever happened to her before. Sure, she had scratched her skin on burrs, and
tripped often, but this was the first time she experienced a fatal injury. Her
instincts took over again. She pulled off her shirt, and wrapped it around the
gash in her leg. Then she dragged herself to a secondary shelter she had found
that she only used if a storm came in, and she was too far from home. There
she remained until it was safe enough to hobble across the lands to the small
and only source of water in the world to clean her wound. Again, that was just
out of instinct.
After it was over, she started to heal, and tried to get back to a normal
life. But all the while, she contemplated what had happened. Had there been
any animal life on this world, she probably would have thought to kill some of
it to eat. But as it stood, she was totally vegetarian, and when she pulled
these edible plants apart, it never occurred to her that she was stopping
something from growing and persisting. She saw plants as food, or clothing
material, and as far as she knew, this was just something the land provided.
The more she thought about it, though, the more she started to put things
together. She was smaller before, and had grown older. When she pulled a plant
from the ground, she couldn’t go back to that place right away, because a new
plant had not grown in its place. And it probably was indeed a new plant,
rather than the same one magically going back to how it was, just for her. She
didn’t have a word for it, but she was figuring out death on her own, and she
was assuming it was an end. Had she fallen from higher up on the cliff, it
would have caused more pain, and eventually ended her. Right now, she existed,
but it was possible to not exist. And maybe that was preferable. Maybe that
was easier. It certainly couldn’t be harder than all this that she was going
through. Right? So she resolved to do just that. Once she was well enough to
walk, she went back to that cliff, climbed all the way up to the top, and
prepared to jump on purpose. As she was waiting for her bravery to show up,
she started going over her memories, hoping they would bring her comfort. It
was from this that she remembered more about her life before the hell world. A
relative or friend had died, and the family attended their funeral. They were
not happy that this had happened, and they wished it hadn’t. That was all it
took for Savitri to decide that death was a bad thing. It wasn’t easier; it
was just nothing. So she climbed back down, and never considered committing
suicide ever again.
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