The Longing-ist Playthrough: Day 37 – 06/02/22 – 294 Days, 13 Hours, 10 Minutes and 21 Seconds to go…

Day 37 was to be an exciting day. To come within arms reach of the surface yesterday was exhilarating and I was itching to make it all the way outside this time, not to mention finally realising the long term goal of building a bed for Monty. With unfettered access to well and those living above, it was just a matter of patience until the next opportunity came… or so I thought…

Monty was up and about when I came [home], waiting at the desk for me to arrive. I glanced at the clock and was shocked to see that we’d broken the 300 day barrier – we were already over a quarter of the way there! 😲 With time clearly marching on, there was no time left to lose on our next endeavour… Let’s put the ‘bed’ in ‘bedrock’, baby! 🥳 So without any further ado, I hurried Monty down into the bedchamber and asked him to start building the bed.

“Building this bed will take me only a few hours.”

Monty

Monty’s estimated build time was a bit of a mood killer – it was already well into the evening and if I was going to wait around for him to build the bed then I wouldn’t have the chance to explore the [upper kingdom] again today… Decisions, decisions….

After mulling it over for a few minutes, I decided that building the furniture was the way to go – we’d been striving to get to this point for a while and I felt like I owed it to the little fella to get his bedroom finished after all the trekking back and forth he’d been having to do lately.

I put the Switch down and rattled away at a review on my laptop for a while… Keep your eyes out for something BRAND NEW hitting the website this week 👀… but before long Monty was all done! What the hell?! Checking the clock I could see that three hours had slipped away in just a few minutes which certainly explained how we’d launched into the second quarter of the King’s slumber so quickly!

Seriously happy with that outcome, I asked Monty to head up to the [upper kingdom] and left him to his own devices for a while – the walk up to [The Pit] was long enough, let alone through the darkness and out the other side! I checked in on Monty from time to time and he seemed a little more chatty than usual – between attempts to stave off his loneliness and murmurings of seeing all of these caves before, he seemed to becoming a little more comfortable in his own skin, which was nice to see.

I had Monty pluck a glowing ‘shroom along the way in the hopes of seeing what was in the gloom beyond where the [Eyes in the Darkness] had been, but the shadows were just as oppressive as before and the mushroom did nothing to light the way. Ah well, I guess we’ll never know what we’re missing in here, huh?

After the best part of an hour Monty arrived in the [upper kingdom]. Remembering the [Face in the Wall]s warnings of only trusting the blind and the elderly, I decided to check out what was happening on the surface before heading to the well. My thinking was that, much like in the dream, I could watch to see who was walking overhead and then, if it was the old man, scurry down to the well and jump into the bucket in good time.

I left Monty waiting beneath the collapsed granite entrance for quite a while with no joy, and I was beginning to wonder if I had the right idea. I checked my screenshot from the day before and saw that the bucket came down on the 30th minute in the hour… That’s only a few more minutes – I might as well keep waiting...

With the half hour coming up fast and no sign of anyone walking overhead, I decided to get Monty to hurry down to the well… Maybe they’re coming from the other side – I don’t want to miss it!

We waited there in the ankle-deep water as the half hour came and went, and no bucket arrived. We gave it a few minutes, just to be safe, and when no bucket came down, I ushered Monty nearer the surface again… I must be missing something here…

With the excitement of the evening having waned and the customary puzzlement that I had come to expect settling in, I realised something that should have been glaringly obvious from the start…

It was nighttime above ground!

You idiot! Remember how bright the colours were yesterday? How did you miss that?

Realising that no-one would be coming to fetch water in the middle of the night, I decided to call it a day and wait until the sun came up tomorrow. I would have liked to have sent Monty home to use his new bed, but it would take an age to get back down there and I needed my own comfy bed pretty soon. Sorry to rub it in there buddy – see you tomorrow 😴

Continue reading: Day 38