>>165
Being a long time admirer of all things crimson, you feel unable to ignore this fine specimen. You throw caution to the wind and push into the thicket after the little creature. It keeps its distance, but remains always within sight, and, given its colouring, it is not exactly easy to lose.
As you press on ever deeper, the sound of the rain becomes more distant, and the light ever weaker. The canopy overhead forms an unbroken dull green ceiling. The trees grow at strange angles, some looking as though they have fallen against their neighbours then continued to try to grow upwards, others entwining themselves around others like parasites. Some are covered in so much moss and vines that you cannot even tell the colour of their bark; others grow with branches thin and smooth as metatarsal bones, covered in vicious hooked barbs.
The bird appears considerately to choose a path as unobstructed as possible, though you still trip over more than once. At one point you hear a loud animal chittering in the distance. You instinctively turn to look, but the bird swoops in front of your face and flaps violently, preventing you from seeing or doing anything. A few seconds later it leaves you alone, then goes on as though nothing happened.
Your inventory currently contains:
You seem to have neglected to bring any sticks of chalk with you, and the rain has already washed all the chalk dust from your hands.
>>166
You make what you believe to be amorous ornithological sounds. The bird stares at you and cocks its head in curiosity, but does not seem particularly seduced.
>>167
To maintain both your and the bird's spirits, you sing a song with a deep, personal meaning to you. You explain to the creature how information wishes to be free, and how, ultimately, charging money for software harms both yourself and others. It does not seem wholly convinced, but then you can't really tell. You ask it to join you on your quest, whatever that may entail. It stares at you and solemnly shakes its head.
>>168
Everyone has an implicit sense of self-worth, which may or may not correspond to how valuable they are in reality to the world at large. Having just had your advances heartlessly refused even by this mere animal, you are forced to set your own self-worth to zero. You are not worth even a single penny. Were you shop stock, you would be free. You struggle to hold back the tears, and instead focus on simply pressing on.
You have been trekking through the rainforest for around an hour, when, without warning, the bird suddenly swoops forwards without you, shrieking in panic. You hurry ahead to find a rough clearing. It shows evidence of having been recently used, with an unusually meticulous single person bivvy and the remains of a modest campfire. On the Eastern side of the camp, running North to South, is a narrow, fast flowing brook.
Inside the bivvy are several sheets of paper, some of which have writing, others landscape sketches, abstract drawings or diagrams, and a few sheets of equations. You also find a set of fine china, including two teacups, two saucers, a medium sized dish and a small teapot. Stacked neatly at the back you find six cans of meat, five loaves of bread and five sausages. They look awfully familiar.
To the Northwest there is a long scar in the vegetation, several metres across, with entire trees uprooted and strewn aside like toothpicks. You note that most trees have been knocked forwards (from the Northwest to the Southeast) and the rest backwards (from the Southeast to the Northwest). There are no tyre tracks, footprints or any other distinct marks in the ground.
The rain has eased off to a slight drizzle, but the sky's gathering darkness promises nightfall before long. The bird seems to have vanished entirely.