09-17-2018, 10:30 PM
It’s murky, underwater.
<p>The girl observes the gloomy underneath mostly in curiosity – she doesn’t judge it for it being, because sometimes gloomy and underwater things are nice. Or gloomy things are, anyway, she’s never been underwater before.
<p>The mud is sticky, and she’s kind of glad she can’t smell underwater because it seems like it might be smelly mud. Bright eyes turn this way and that, looking at all the weird dead trees, but she focuses on the strange green glow that seems to beat in the distance, to pulse, and it pulls at her. Optimistically, she sets off to find the heart like the guy says. Already, Noah has forgiven him for the suffocating issue – how else was he supposed to get them here? She has no idea what he is truly like.
<p>It's already mostly dark, but the shadows grow deeper when things move overhead. Huge things. She feels vaguely uneasy about them but presses on, stepping carefully because she can’t quite see where she’s going. It pulls harder at her, more insistent, but suddenly something grabs at her hind legs, making her stumble and her heart begin to race. She whirls around to find two bright eyes blinking in a roundish face; the shape resolves into a head the size of her torso, and it reaches for her again, long slithery tentacles. She’s intrigued, excited, and reaches out to touch and say hello but jerks back when the eight-legged creature jerks forward, an opening filled unmistakably with teeth snapping closed underneath just short of the end of Noah’s nose.
<p>The girl scrambles backwards and spins around, bubbles escaping her mouth as she tries to squeal in fear, her legs starting to buckle when a heavy tentacle falls upon her back, a stinging sensation starting in big round circles on her skin where there are some sort of suckers on the bottom of the tentacle. She shies sideways, the leg slipping off, and takes off into the darkness, trying to find purchase on the muddy ground to move quickly but slipping and falling to her knees once, twice. The second time she gets up and tries to stumble back onto the path, tripping over a fallen tree but not falling. She has not even a breath of notice when the water moves to her left and it reappears, squirting over the top of a huge boulder and dropping into the space where she was a second ago, though she’s leapt sideways. It snatches at her legs, her neck, and she’s backed into a rocky corner with nowhere to go and no choice but to fight back.
<p>Jumping forward, Noah sinks her blunt teeth into the squishy flesh of one outstretched tentacle, trying to ignore the stinging around the sucker she’s chewing on but it lashes at her with other legs, slapping and stinging, and after a few panicked heartbeats she’s forced to let go, the creature snatching its legs back and blinking in surprise. She follows up by spinning around and kicking out as hard as she can, one hoof landing with a solid thunk (as solid as underwater gets) and the other grazing it’s bubbly skin. It hesitates and then seems to conclude that she’s not easy prey after all; with a squirt of some dark substance that threatens to choke her, it disappears over the top of the rocks and doesn’t come back.
<p>Noah stands stock still for a moment, breathing labored, eyes tearing up, and for a moment she intensely just wants to go home, or rather to her father, since they don’t have a home. But the insistent pulse of the underwater Kingdom’s heart is like a siren song and she turns towards it, picking tentatively up the path. She’s jumping at shadows now, at currents, at every deeper darkness that even hints at a hiding place for subterranean creatures. Her stomach churns and at first she thinks it’s nerves, but it gets worse and worse with every step she takes. Lightheadedness follows the queasiness and it’s sickly dizzying, harder and harder for her to place her hooves firmly on the path.
<p>Meanwhile the light grows stronger, brighter, and she can feel the pulse in every fiber of her being. She hears it as deep as her soul, and it’s the only thing that keeps her stumbling forward. But now it’s <i>right there</i> and she’s about to lurch forward to find it when something hulking and misshapen steps into the path and she goes wheeling backwards, sideways, losing her footing and her sensation of what is up and down and for a moment the world is black. When she reorients herself, Noah is blinking up at the thing that has resolved itself into a horse. <b> “Hello?”</b> she forces the word out and somehow it hangs between them, but the stranger shows no sign of recognition.
<p>On the other hand, she very much starts to recognize him, under the wrongness. And it’s all wrong. He’s dead, her father, half of his skin falling off and bone exposed, the rest a sickly color that bright chestnut turns deep underwater, backlit by gross green. <b> “D-daddy?”</b> she stammers, but there’s no light of recognition in the thing’s eyes. It lurches forward, maw opened in a snarl, and then lunges at her, teeth closing on the girl’s crest and he shakes her, violently. Noah cries out, fearful all over again, hooves not finding purchase as the much larger zombie-stallion lets go and she falls to the ground. He stomps, snorting, and she feels the hoof against her barrel in shooting pain. She can’t breath, can’t see, can’t think.
<p>The creature draws back, rears up, clearly intending to finish her, and for a moment Noah just lays there, considering it. Maybe it’s all just a bad dream, and if she dies in the dream she will wake up tucked against her father’s side, warm and safe and loved. And if it’s not a dream, and Rhonen is dead, she’s not sure she has a life worth living. Her father is all she has. She takes a breath, and closes her eyes.
<p>At the very last second she changes her mind. What if he’s not dead? It would destroy him, if she died. She doesn’t have time to get up, so she rolls out of the way – except she forgot about the cavern behind the zombie horse, and she falls right over the edge. Bumps and impacts and rolling and she is breathless when she fetches up against something at the bottom, hard, and she lays motionless for a moment before she realizes that there is green leaking in around her closed eyelids. She pries her eyes open, still dizzy and stomach threatening to rebel, to lock eyes on the pulsing green heart of Pangea.
<p>The girl observes the gloomy underneath mostly in curiosity – she doesn’t judge it for it being, because sometimes gloomy and underwater things are nice. Or gloomy things are, anyway, she’s never been underwater before.
<p>The mud is sticky, and she’s kind of glad she can’t smell underwater because it seems like it might be smelly mud. Bright eyes turn this way and that, looking at all the weird dead trees, but she focuses on the strange green glow that seems to beat in the distance, to pulse, and it pulls at her. Optimistically, she sets off to find the heart like the guy says. Already, Noah has forgiven him for the suffocating issue – how else was he supposed to get them here? She has no idea what he is truly like.
<p>It's already mostly dark, but the shadows grow deeper when things move overhead. Huge things. She feels vaguely uneasy about them but presses on, stepping carefully because she can’t quite see where she’s going. It pulls harder at her, more insistent, but suddenly something grabs at her hind legs, making her stumble and her heart begin to race. She whirls around to find two bright eyes blinking in a roundish face; the shape resolves into a head the size of her torso, and it reaches for her again, long slithery tentacles. She’s intrigued, excited, and reaches out to touch and say hello but jerks back when the eight-legged creature jerks forward, an opening filled unmistakably with teeth snapping closed underneath just short of the end of Noah’s nose.
<p>The girl scrambles backwards and spins around, bubbles escaping her mouth as she tries to squeal in fear, her legs starting to buckle when a heavy tentacle falls upon her back, a stinging sensation starting in big round circles on her skin where there are some sort of suckers on the bottom of the tentacle. She shies sideways, the leg slipping off, and takes off into the darkness, trying to find purchase on the muddy ground to move quickly but slipping and falling to her knees once, twice. The second time she gets up and tries to stumble back onto the path, tripping over a fallen tree but not falling. She has not even a breath of notice when the water moves to her left and it reappears, squirting over the top of a huge boulder and dropping into the space where she was a second ago, though she’s leapt sideways. It snatches at her legs, her neck, and she’s backed into a rocky corner with nowhere to go and no choice but to fight back.
<p>Jumping forward, Noah sinks her blunt teeth into the squishy flesh of one outstretched tentacle, trying to ignore the stinging around the sucker she’s chewing on but it lashes at her with other legs, slapping and stinging, and after a few panicked heartbeats she’s forced to let go, the creature snatching its legs back and blinking in surprise. She follows up by spinning around and kicking out as hard as she can, one hoof landing with a solid thunk (as solid as underwater gets) and the other grazing it’s bubbly skin. It hesitates and then seems to conclude that she’s not easy prey after all; with a squirt of some dark substance that threatens to choke her, it disappears over the top of the rocks and doesn’t come back.
<p>Noah stands stock still for a moment, breathing labored, eyes tearing up, and for a moment she intensely just wants to go home, or rather to her father, since they don’t have a home. But the insistent pulse of the underwater Kingdom’s heart is like a siren song and she turns towards it, picking tentatively up the path. She’s jumping at shadows now, at currents, at every deeper darkness that even hints at a hiding place for subterranean creatures. Her stomach churns and at first she thinks it’s nerves, but it gets worse and worse with every step she takes. Lightheadedness follows the queasiness and it’s sickly dizzying, harder and harder for her to place her hooves firmly on the path.
<p>Meanwhile the light grows stronger, brighter, and she can feel the pulse in every fiber of her being. She hears it as deep as her soul, and it’s the only thing that keeps her stumbling forward. But now it’s <i>right there</i> and she’s about to lurch forward to find it when something hulking and misshapen steps into the path and she goes wheeling backwards, sideways, losing her footing and her sensation of what is up and down and for a moment the world is black. When she reorients herself, Noah is blinking up at the thing that has resolved itself into a horse. <b> “Hello?”</b> she forces the word out and somehow it hangs between them, but the stranger shows no sign of recognition.
<p>On the other hand, she very much starts to recognize him, under the wrongness. And it’s all wrong. He’s dead, her father, half of his skin falling off and bone exposed, the rest a sickly color that bright chestnut turns deep underwater, backlit by gross green. <b> “D-daddy?”</b> she stammers, but there’s no light of recognition in the thing’s eyes. It lurches forward, maw opened in a snarl, and then lunges at her, teeth closing on the girl’s crest and he shakes her, violently. Noah cries out, fearful all over again, hooves not finding purchase as the much larger zombie-stallion lets go and she falls to the ground. He stomps, snorting, and she feels the hoof against her barrel in shooting pain. She can’t breath, can’t see, can’t think.
<p>The creature draws back, rears up, clearly intending to finish her, and for a moment Noah just lays there, considering it. Maybe it’s all just a bad dream, and if she dies in the dream she will wake up tucked against her father’s side, warm and safe and loved. And if it’s not a dream, and Rhonen is dead, she’s not sure she has a life worth living. Her father is all she has. She takes a breath, and closes her eyes.
<p>At the very last second she changes her mind. What if he’s not dead? It would destroy him, if she died. She doesn’t have time to get up, so she rolls out of the way – except she forgot about the cavern behind the zombie horse, and she falls right over the edge. Bumps and impacts and rolling and she is breathless when she fetches up against something at the bottom, hard, and she lays motionless for a moment before she realizes that there is green leaking in around her closed eyelids. She pries her eyes open, still dizzy and stomach threatening to rebel, to lock eyes on the pulsing green heart of Pangea.