The Longing-ist Playthrough: Day 24 – 24/01/22 – 343 Days, 21 hours, 45 Minutes and 43 Seconds to go…

Whilst I’m confident that I’m on the right path, Day 24 was not the day that I overcame the sizable hurdle of the [tall ledge]. I still need to show a little more patience before we’re able to clamber our way into exploration, but there was a breakthrough on an entirely different front… one with less impact, but one that I’ve been working on a while… Read on music fans 😉

I entered [our home] to find Monty had finished The Secret Garden, as I had expected. Not exactly the talkative type, he didn’t offer any review, but I’m pretty sure he enjoyed it. How could he not love it? It’s a classic. I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t more than a little excited. We planted the purple mushroom in the crook of the [tall ledge] yesterday and I was confident that we were on the right path to finally exploring the rest of the upper-cave area. That said, I was also feeling realistic – it had only been one night, and if 24 days beneath the mountain had taught me anything, it’s that nothing happens overnight down here.

Before I sent Monty on the odyssey up to the [mushroom mines] I had him do a little check on our own little fungus farm… Everything was fine… and give me a little jamming session on the horn, which delivered the Monty Shade classic, Three Long Toots Times Three.

After a very long walk, and the realisation that I could play something else while I waited (Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King for anyone interested in my Beat the Backlog feature), Monty arrived at the entrance to the [mushroom mines]. Monty reached one of the last forks in the road before the [tall ledge] and I asked him to poke his nose into the [Abomination Cave] to see how things were getting on… We planted these mushrooms at the same time as the ones up above, so it’ll be a good indicator on if it’s worked or not… Slowly but surely the cave came into view – bloated, sickly fungi lined the ceiling, and on the floor…

Just three lil’ funglets. 🍄🍄🍄 Ah well, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised.

We carried on up to the [tall ledge] with expectations fully tempered, and upon arriving confirmed that things had progressed, but that we weren’t yet ready for more exploration. I asked Monty to pick the mushrooms growing in the lead up to the ledge, just to keep things tidy, but was surprised to find that he wouldn’t! He said that something gross was happening to them and that he better leave them be. How interesting! Sounds like we’re definitely doing this the right way now. I asked Monty to check all three mushrooms prior to the crook (ignoring the green one that we knew did nothing), and Monty had developed the same aversion to them all.

Then- and I still don’t know what possessed me to do this -I asked him to check the mushroom growing in the crook… You can guess what happens next, right…?

After I clicked the action button I saw everything in slow motion; Monty shuffling to his left and turning to face the crook-fungus… but no matter what I pressed, I couldn’t stop the inevitable – nothing would cancel the action…

He picked the damn thing up. Plucked it right out of the ground, like a giant snatching up a helpless child. How many days has that moment of idiocy set me back this time?! 😫🤬 I was so incredibly angry at myself in that moment – I don’t even have the words.

Thankfully, I was able to replant the crook-fungus right back where it had come from; I just had to pray that it would still grow at a sensible rate and be ready for tomorrow… Else this isn’t blog going to be worth reading for another day!

Feeling like an utter oaf, I sent Monty back, wishing to speed the evening away in the comfort of [our home]. Monty played a lovely three-six-three melody to me on the horn, and I was just about to ask him to draw something when I noticed the icon for my right-analog stick was a music note… I’ve never seen that before...

You see, I usually play in handheld mode and so I use the touchscreen, but on this occasion I must have hit the stick by accident, causing the cursor to appear on screen. Intrigued, I started to change the direction on the stick and press other buttons as well, and wouldn’t you know it – I began to conduct Monty in his playing! I’ve been waiting all this time for you to learn something on that bloody thing and the whole time you’ve been waiting for me to give you a bit of direction! Are you kidding me? 😒

We jammed on the instrument together for a little while until I realised that my conducting didn’t really alter Monty’s ability that much 😅, in fact, it just let me choose which of the few tunes he already knew how to play. I checked his diary once we were done and was pleased to see an entry describing “wishing I could play the melody that plays in my head” had been crossed off. It seemed that I had helped Monty ticked something else off his bucket list. 😊

I decided to go back to the drawing table and make a new painting to commemorate getting on the right path with the mushrooms and our newly discovered musical ‘prowess’. Clicking through the five colour choices, I combined them in ways I hadn’t tried before and some of suggestions were seriously frightening 😨. I’ll delve into some of what I found tomorrow (because this is running a little long), but some of the paintings were eye-opening indeed and seem to hint at some rather sinister goings-on in the future for Monty and I.

I found a painting titled The Musician which was one of the lesser-terrifying of the choices and summed up our success pretty well, so I asked Monty to whip it up for us. Once finished, we hung it proudly in the centre of the crystal pentagram, lit another fire and then sat down to read for the night. I thought Monty might appreciate a little more philosophy after the fiction of the past few nights and so handed him the second volume of Thus Spoke Zarathustra to dive into while I was gone. Rather you than me, buddy – see you on the other side.

Continue reading: Day 25