If you want to know what I personally believe going to the underground unexpectedly feels like, then I would have to say it's like getting squeezed out a minuscule tube of toothpaste. There's a half second where your lungs are so tight that it feels like they're going to implode and the world is a crazy spinning blur of colour and grit.
That's what travelling to the Underground feels like and after thirteen years I honest to God, truly wish (got to use that world carefully though) that I was not back here.
Not right now.
"But Sarah!" I can already hear you gasping, "Why wouldn't you, with your sense of innocent wonder and adventure, not want to be Underground again."
Well, that's pretty easy to answer.
It's because I'm wet.
Not in the fun sexy way.
My hair was wet.
My shoulders were wet.
Of course I was wet, I'd just stepped out of the shower, which for some reason had transported with me and was looking a bit out of place in the dappled sunlight of the forest I now found myself in.
Fortunately I was wrapped in a towel.
How did I know I was back in the Underground, you may ask?
It was a pretty simple leap to make. No other trees in the world are that heavily encrusted with glitter. They were pretty, in a weird way. Trailing my hand down the trunk felt rough, like sand and left a weird residue on my hand. Turning my hand back and forth, the glitter would occasionally catch the light and glint in a kaleidoscope of shifting colours.
Suddenly the hair on the back of my arms prickled and bile rose in my throat as there was a shift, like the toothpaste tube feeling all over again and the muffled sound of three inch heels strutting across the forest floor.
A cool drip slid down my back. I didn't turn around. I knew who was there. Who else would wear heels in the Labyrinth?
"Well, well, well," I could already hear the smirk in his voice, "look at what the goblins dragged in."
Author's Note: This is a much lighter, more fun story (hopefully). I know, I know the first chapters real short but it just got messy as it got longer. Have a really good weekend and I'll write again soon.