He's blind, but the Earth sings to him now, tells him where to go and how to move with its secret language of tremors. No matter how far away it seems in these walls, he knows it. It embraces him fully, and the first thing he thinks is panic, covering and crushing as it wraps around him, until finally he gives in and there's...
Safety. Warmth. Dirt crumbles under his hands until it *is* his hands, drips to the ground in clots and puffs. Most of the skin that still shows is crusted with mud right up to where it crumbles off his body, only to be picked up by the cloud at his feet,
It should bother him far more that there are round, polished turquoise stones in his face where his useless eyes once were. He can feel his mouth, his nose, everything that shows beneath the surface of the dirt as though entombed in it, but his eyes, those are gone. The change took those, too, its price for this new bond. For treasures among the grime and soil.
This is the Earth. The Earth is always there, always listening, and it cradles him when he lets it. If he can just shake the sudden, random waves of panic, the smothering and the blindness, and give in to the music, the stones within him like treasures and the quicksand flow of what used to be his body and joints.
"This isn't the ground. I can't feel the ground. Are we still inside?" There's a dirty, rusty rasp to his voice, as if he's been screaming again. Had he been screaming again? Never mind. It's not important. Even his own voice is almost drowned out by the murmurs.
B. In Town
Rhys moves like grass rippling, like the beginning of a landslide, and he can't... *Quite*...see what had happened to everyone else but he should pick a direction, any direction and find someone. Either someone who can help him, or that he can help. He hasn't changed that much, and there's still a (stone) heart inside him, a treasure, that wants to help.
If he stands still for too long, he gets dizzy, as though everything is sliding around him. Even if he's the one who's actually sliding, because the earth doesn't stop moving even when he does. Didn't Blue always used to say that? Now it's really true. Crumble, fall, reform, rebuild, constant rolling cycle.
He can't find the others. There is silence under his feet, in the vibrations of the earth, leaving only the sad keening of the wind and the buzzing of expectation. Dirt crumbles, falls, reforms in a constant fall, but not a single ounce of mass is lost. He's already lost enough, not he's going to keep it. Keep *everything*.
In the ground, with the empty dark pull of a deep well, of a freshly dug grave. Where it's safe, and warm, but so lonely...so empty...
CW: buried alive, eye horror/blindness, suffocation
He's blind, but the Earth sings to him now, tells him where to go and how to move with its secret language of tremors. No matter how far away it seems in these walls, he knows it. It embraces him fully, and the first thing he thinks is panic, covering and crushing as it wraps around him, until finally he gives in and there's...
Safety. Warmth. Dirt crumbles under his hands until it *is* his hands, drips to the ground in clots and puffs. Most of the skin that still shows is crusted with mud right up to where it crumbles off his body, only to be picked up by the cloud at his feet,
It should bother him far more that there are round, polished turquoise stones in his face where his useless eyes once were. He can feel his mouth, his nose, everything that shows beneath the surface of the dirt as though entombed in it, but his eyes, those are gone. The change took those, too, its price for this new bond. For treasures among the grime and soil.
This is the Earth. The Earth is always there, always listening, and it cradles him when he lets it. If he can just shake the sudden, random waves of panic, the smothering and the blindness, and give in to the music, the stones within him like treasures and the quicksand flow of what used to be his body and joints.
"This isn't the ground. I can't feel the ground. Are we still inside?" There's a dirty, rusty rasp to his voice, as if he's been screaming again. Had he been screaming again? Never mind. It's not important. Even his own voice is almost drowned out by the murmurs.
B. In Town
Rhys moves like grass rippling, like the beginning of a landslide, and he can't... *Quite*...see what had happened to everyone else but he should pick a direction, any direction and find someone. Either someone who can help him, or that he can help. He hasn't changed that much, and there's still a (stone) heart inside him, a treasure, that wants to help.
If he stands still for too long, he gets dizzy, as though everything is sliding around him. Even if he's the one who's actually sliding, because the earth doesn't stop moving even when he does. Didn't Blue always used to say that? Now it's really true. Crumble, fall, reform, rebuild, constant rolling cycle.
He can't find the others. There is silence under his feet, in the vibrations of the earth, leaving only the sad keening of the wind and the buzzing of expectation. Dirt crumbles, falls, reforms in a constant fall, but not a single ounce of mass is lost. He's already lost enough, not he's going to keep it. Keep *everything*.
In the ground, with the empty dark pull of a deep well, of a freshly dug grave. Where it's safe, and warm, but so lonely...so empty...