Ogda's large figure was a blessing in disguise for the duo, as he covered more ground while Liadan got a free ride on his back and a chance to recover. All of this was accomplished after a few trials and experimentations, filled up with lots of mistakes and errors..

-" So stretching limbs or your torso for more than a few centimeters is out of the picture? And what about pain or tiredness? Do you feel any of those?"

The giant pinched different parts of his body, but his stolid face remained unmoving as always. He then tried to hit himself both in solid and liquid forms. Pain, checked as nonexistent. Fear of death, though, was now a feared concept for the being.

-" I feel…weird. It's not pain like you described that feeling. It's more like little shakes traveling across my body. It's, uhm, making me feel not…linked? I don't know how else to explain it, but if you hit me hard enough, I might crumble. Does that make any sense to you?" he asked, without hope for a clear answer.

For the girl some parts made sense, but there were still many more mysteries surrounding Ogda that Liadan couldn't wrap her mind around. He was of liquid matter, with the ability to change his body matter while retaining his mind. But at the same time, he wasn't invulnerable, some things could not hurt, but damage him instead. The girl, now trapped in her train of thought, automatically disregarded the world around her and conducted that ride without paying any attention to her surroundings.

In turn, Ogda was leading his path toward the middle of an internal crisis, started by a combination of uneasiness and self-doubt about his abilities. Just because he could stretch easily, he became convinced that the rest of the body should be able to do the same. All the while, angsty drums were beating hard inside his mind- " What if I need to catch her from falling off a cliff…or from the sky again…or from being mauled by something weird…", he questioned himself, stretching his body back and forth.

-" Ogda?", she asked calmly. But no response.

-'' Hey, Ogdaaa…", the girl tried a second, third, and fourth time, but the monster was trapped in imaginary scenarios. Liadan tried several ways to grab his attention, waving at him, poking him with a stick, hurting her foot while trying to kick him.

-" AmIuseless, canIdoanything, whatcanIdo?", repeated the monster inside his mind until another voice replied, from a place deep inside him. "...You can…middle one…Steady the meniscus and become still!" Ogda, with a frozen look on his face, immediately came out of his trance and finally heard Liadan's yells, who was now on his back, trying desperately for a while to wake him up from his stupor. After her latest shout, she could feel his body trembling a bit, then faster, making small waves appear all around his body. Until he suddenly stopped and crumbled back into a puddle.

-" Ogda! Ogda, can you hear me? Are you…Ogda…", she asked with a break in her voice, then louder and faster, repeating his name at the water in front of her. She didn't recognize the feeling at first, but it was familiar to her as if meeting an old friend whose face you forgot. "But it happens, right? You, ruining something?", asked her fleeting thoughts, which she quickly discarded for now, as there was something else more important to do now. And that was whatever she could to help Ogda, calling his name, desperately gathering the water and her hands, letting it slowly slip between her fingers.

Before the darker thoughts could hit the surface, a tired growl brought her relief like she hadn't felt in a while. Ogda's head was the first that reformed from the puddle but looked a lot more translucent than before. A thin, grey, coating covered the outer layer of his body, while the interior was moving around, with small bubbles bursting from time to time.

-" Oh…hi Liadan", he claimed dejectedly, but even with his one eye, she could tell that he felt some type of pain. Lying about his well-being, he tried to reform his previous form, but the girl stopped him and asked him to describe how his head felt. "My head?... A bit lighter, I guess." He tilted it a bit to the left, then right. A memory came back to him, of a figure familiar to him. One he couldn't mimic entirely, but it made him feel more at home. "How should I put it? It's like…I no longer feel as though I have to keep on trying to hold on from falling apart."

After he explained what he saw in his vision, the two decided on how to proceed next. With help from his partner, Ogda formed the outline in his mind, while Liadan slowly guided him on how to manifest it in real life. First, a thin skeletal frame from which to start the body. Most of the inner fillings should remain liquid, except from his legs, half of his arms and to wrap it all up in a thin layer.

What resulted from it was a smaller version, a head at least, of his previous form, with thin, but sturdy legs, while his arms were still wide in the width of the palm, but less bulky. He was hunching forward, but he could stand upright without relying on his arm planted to the ground to keep him stable. He grew.

….

It's been hours since they started this long walk, and the landscape barely changed from their leaving point. Lands filled with cracks and maybe some wilted wild plants here and there, covered by a blanket of dust, which sparkled in thousands of colors. And no beings both on land or in the sky, just rocks of different pastels, minerals rising like flowers from the earth.

At first, they did it as a jest, something to do to pass the time, but after his gulp, Ogda found that he could "eat" the crystals, or dissolve them inside him somehow. If he concentrated hard enough, the rocks would just slip through his hand and travel until they reached his belly. But while one hunger pang was solved, Liadan struggled with hers. "Maybe…one bite", she thought, longingly staring at a crimson pebble. " Or maybe don't", replied Ogda, after catching her eyeing the rock for too long.

To their luck, a few hours later a cousin of Lady Luck gave them a small reprise in the form of a little pond. The oasis was hidden between the dunes, shielded by the wind and prying eyes, except for Ogda's. His morphed body allowed him to stretch even further, or higher, making him a living watchtower.

At the pond, they found some clean water, carcasses of dead birds, and some shellfish creatures munching on them. In a different life, or time, the girl might have been squeamish at the sight of the slimy and skinny creatures, but this wasn’t then. After cooking some of them, Liadan remembered the taste of fish, and it wasn’t anything like it. Just sour, dry, and crunchy from being overcooked. The feast brought other thoughts to mind, though. She couldn’t remember smells, anything that could be sweet or bitter, nothing as simple as a soup even. Whatever her life was beforehand, it was an alien world right now. But the same could be said about her current existence.

After the break, the two hatched a plan on how to move onward. Ogda dissolved the interior of some of the rocks and used them to carry water. Liadan then filled the new containers with anything else she could find useful, like plants, sharp rocks, and water from the pond. That was also the first time she finally managed to see the stranger she was, green eyes to green eyes.

The pond’s surface wasn’t crystal clear, but it was enough for her to see her face, her bruised cheeks and forehead, how her crimson bangs reached her shoulders, but the rest of her hair was ravished, oily, and parts of it randomly ripped during the fall. She also mirrored the rest of her body, seeing her ragged clothes from different angles, the long, white shirt and pants reaching her knees, covered with dirt and holes. “ I’ll need something tougher…and with more colors”. She repeated the names of the clothes several times, adding new remembered ones as well with each repetition, but that’s about all she gained from the fabrics. Nothing else was triggered like before.

To their surprise, sundown caught up to them in just a few minutes, and the sky's blue hue became darker in tone. Both of them agreed without even talking to start up a camp and spend the night there. The day was harsh, but the night in the desert was much more dangerous and colder than any could imagine. Beasts that preserved their energy for the nightly hunt started now to roam the rocky wasteland for their next meal. The girl was a bit chilly, but the fire they prepared was enough to keep her warm. Neither, though, felt tired enough to beat the anxiety they felt about their surroundings. And it was well founded, as just as the last rays of light hit the tip of the opposite dune of the oasis, a sudden wave of sand came rushing down from it. Their eyesight was still adjusting, but they could see three figures on top of it, sliding downwards.

-” Hide!”, commanded Ogda in a harsh, grave tone, unused until then. Even though he lacked a mouth, his body imitated the growl and cry of a monster preparing for battle.

Liadan, while objecting under her breath, knew that whatever plan she might concoct, or attempt to fight back was meaningless. She was far too weak, Ogda’s memory far too broken and the figures far too unknown. Nothing that could ensure their survival came quickly enough, and she just hid. At the same time, while it was a rogue thought, even the idea of running away by herself crossed her.

Ogda, crouched over on fours, tried to make himself look bigger by arching his back. If they were wild creatures, maybe appealing to their instinct would scare them away. But he also prepared himself for battle. As one of the shadows reached the bottom, they stopped in their tracks when they saw Ogda on the other side. A second later, they all reached out to their backside, crouched, and slowly moved towards him. But their target stood steadfast, trying to keep an eye on all of them. He tried a loud growl, which landed on deaf ears, but then something weird happened. Two of them split alongside the bank of the oasis, while the third dived into it. They were coordinating. Planning. “But so do many wild packs'', thought Liadan. Still, what if though?

The girl clutched her hands together and saw how easily the attackers dodged the rocks Ogda threw at them. Same with his attempt at hitting them with his elongated arms. The creatures were not just adept at fighting, hunting, or whatever else, but experts, way out of their league. Liadan knew that her next move was a gamble, but either way, both could be killed in a second. She got on her feet and ran as fast as she could, yelling out “ Wait, wait!”.

The two figures stopped, surprised and unsure of what to do next. The pleas from the girl missed the third one though, who couldn’t hear anything from underwater. As soon as he got to the edge of the water, he jumped out of it and tried to strike Ogda at the base of his neck. Or that was his plan until a yellow chain grabbed his striking hand.

-” Stop! That isn’t our target. It’s not the wild one!”

The man clad in weird armor takes a better look at Ogda, and then at Liadan as well. He sighs and sheets his claws back into his gauntlets, and without even addressing what just happened, asks the duo a simple, but also convoluted, question.

-” So, have you seen a giant creature with 4, I mean it when I say, ginormous but thin legs around here?”