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So you start thinking about the conveyed meaning here as words and not depictions, and almost immediately, it occurs to you – ‘footfall’ has eight letters in it.
As eight is placed under five, perhaps then the word that you are looking for in the first half of the second phrase has five letters? Holding on to that as if it were a guideline, you are quickly able to come up with three solid candidates. Brier, stalk, and tread. Assuming that the drone on the other side of this door is anything like the one you captured, then ‘Brier-Softly’ might be an appropriate name, especially considering the sketched leaf … but that doesn’t account for the footfall part of the name. Likewise, ‘Tread-Softly’ does not account for the plant part of the drone’s name. By process of elimination, ‘Stalk-Softly’ has to be the name. Stalks are parts of plants, and to stalk something means to pursue or track it, stealthily. You could definitely see how someone who was stalking would be concerned about their footfalls, so it all makes sense … right?
There is only one way to find out though. Pass through the hatch, find this large, dangerous drone – and ask it. If you have its name right, then it is as good as yours. If you have it wrong, well … not wanting to dwell on it, you prod the crank of the hatch to test it.
It is unlocked.
You can’t remember being this nervous in a long time. You check everything over – and after thinking about it for a moment, you decide to douse your suit’s integrated lights, as they were what ‘woke up’ the last drone, and rely solely on what light the wisps can put out for you. Your wrecking torch though, that you keep out and lit, as it is the closest thing you have to a proper weapon. You consider leaving your toolbox behind, for the fear of it – and by extension you – getting caught and fouled on something, but then you consider just how useful the tools have been so far, and you quickly make up your mind to keep them. Before you can lose your nerve or over think anything, you crank open the hatch and get your first look around the bulkhead.
The first thing that you notice is that there is light already in the room. Not one blazing lamp like your captured drone has … but many little dim lights, turning what would otherwise be inky blackness into a shifting gloom. The way they bob and meander is very like your wisps, and you are taken up in this wave of searing frustration that you just spent all this precious time standing around with your thumb up your ass trying to sluice and mill meaning from completely out-of-date information. But as you are racking your brain, trying to figure out how to deal with many little drones instead of one large one, your eyes finally adjust enough for you to just make out the long sinuously curving line above the nearest of the lights. You stare at it dumbly, until understanding dawns on you, after which you stare at it in great trepidation.
