Work Text:
“Hello!” You hear a voice ring out, “Hello! Hello!” it sounds familiar but everything is very dark and you cannot see.
“I’m here!” The voice calls, your throat hurts trying to call back, the taste of copper and an ache in the ribs that reminds you of how hard you were coughing before. “Please help me!”
You reach out blindly with your fingers, you can still smell the dust and dirt that you’ve kicked up, that made you choke. That means there’s something here, you can find the voice.
You take shuffelled footsteps, toes testing the floor for obstacles as your fingers stretch and reach for something, anything. Surely there is a wall somewhere, surely there must be. For it to be so dark something must be blocking the light, but you can’t find it. Just the earthen ground, rough and gravelly beneath your feet.
“Are you still there?” The voice could be closer, you have no way to tell. Your ears are ringing, the silence besides the voice makes the call seem to boom.
You have to stop and cough again, cough and cough. Your throat hurts so much and your ribs are sending little stabs of pain through you. You shuffle step a little bit further and you think… there is a glow, barely perceivable, just a glimmer through the corner of your eye. You have to come at it sideways at first, you can only make out the light with your peripheral and you need to find it.
“Please! Please!” The voice and the light are together, you are certain. You begin to walk faster, stumbling and scraping your feet raw as you nearly run through the darkness. You haven’t hit a wall or an obstacle yet, so you risk it.
“I hear you! I hear you! I’m here!” The voice sounds breathless with excitement, scared and shaken. Their voice cracks and you know they must be so lost, so scared.
The glow never becomes a true light, but the dim illumination guides you forward, you hope. Here were the walls you never found, boxing in a tunnel full of gentle luminescence.
“Are you there!” It’s louder now, more. In the glow you can see your footprints are wet and you wonder what you will do when you find the voice. You can’t run anymore. You had half dreamed of rescuing a princess but now your bones ache and your feet are bleeding and your throat hurts so much.
“Please come out!” You hear, and you know the voice is looking for you, too. There are footsteps now, footsteps from somewhere else. You push harder, farther, trying to find the voice.
“Please! I’m here! Come out!” You stagger, trip and fall finally. You have nothing more to give. Your breath feels like razors dragging through your lungs and up your throat. You can’t vomit again, you cannot give that even.
You sit on your knees and try to breathe as the ringing in your ears intensifies and your head swims. You’re losing feeling and you stare down at the bare dirt in front of you.
Two bare feet step into your vision, luminescent white and ethereal, even the dirt has not touched them. “Hello.” The voice says as a child kneels down before you. You cannot tell the sex of the child, it has very vague features. You know it has two eyes, a nose and a mouth but they are unreadable and incomprehensible. “You can rest now.”
You want to. You want to so much. The child with the voice reaches out to stroke your hair and it feels like the gentle trickle of water washing the pain away.
You lie down.
“Good. Just rest now. Just rest.”