Over My Shoulder
Chapter One- Descent
He was falling.
Falling into the endless dark.
And yet.
A drumbeat, deep beneath the ground. A sound that all will hear.
And it was no longer dark.
He fell, and then fell no more.
-X-
The scent of buttercups pervaded deep within his nostrils. Frisk (for that was the boy's name) was unwilling to rise from such a soft, comfortable bed, but opened his eyes anyway. A sea of colour. Yellow as bright as the sun in such a dark room, or was it a cave? He peered further past the veil; what appeared to be stalactites and stalagmites protruded from the walls, large fungi intermittently spread amongst them.
It was then he had the gumption to realise that he was neither in a bedroom, nor a building made by man at all. He let out a gasp as he noticed too, that the comfortable yet fragrant bed he lay upon was not of duvets or pillows, but of beautiful golden flowers.
"Where am I? Am I in heaven?" he spoke aloud to the chamber. If this was heaven, it wasn't as bright as he had been expecting. Nor were there fluffy white clouds to carry him to paradise.
He inclined his head upward to the ceiling to notice that there was none to see, just an endless dark abyss. He levelled his gaze, finally settling upon an ornately decorated threshold not twenty paces in front of him. 'Well, if this isn't heaven, I need to find out just where I've gone', he thought to himself.
He arose, and his legs carried him to the doorway. The sides of the doorway were striated in what he supposed was a decorative manner, but what drew his attention was the crest atop it. A circle with what appeared to be wings, below which were three alternately-oriented triangles.
"I wonder what they mean" Frisk asked himself. He paid it no more attention however, storing it for later, and moved through the passageway into an even darker chamber than the one he had just left.
'Okay, this definitely doesn't seem like heaven'. Frisk slowly paced into the ominous room. There was another doorway ahead similar to the one he had just walked through, noticing a soft-orange glow emanating through it. What set him on edge about this particular chamber however, was that despite the brightly lit clearing at the centre, he couldn't see any walls, as if the room continued endlessly in either direction.
Light footsteps. The first sound not of his own-making since he awoke. Warily, Frisk swung around in the direction of the noise, but did not find anything.
"H-Hello?" he spoke with a shaky tone, on-edge. Surely if there was footsteps, then someone else had to be down here with him.
The footsteps did not continue however, and after asking the unreceptive darkness once again if anyone was there, cautiously dismissed it as the echo of his own footsteps. He then returned his sight to the clearing- there was something there he hadn't noticed before.
Unlike the previous room, where a beautiful golden-flowerbed broke his fall, here was a solitary golden flower sat in the middle of the light, faced toward him. Frisk thought it rather eerie; why was there only the one flower here?
Why did it… 'Is it watching me?' He dismissed such a ridiculous thought shortly after, big kids don't believe in such things. They don't believe in monsters. He finally continued toward the light, his destination the doorway across the chamber.
"Howdy!" His natural nervous demeanour, compounded with his anxiety about his current circumstances, meant that Frisk was unable to contain the scream of fright that surely escaped from his mouth at that moment. It rang out through the chamber, which was followed by a series of shrill giggles.
Frisk, having jumped and fallen over onto his backside from the sudden voice, quickly returned to his feet having found the source of the voice. The solitary flower at the centre of the room. It had a face.
It was still giggling as Frisk took it in; aside from that it was for a flower, quite normal, it had a little smile and beady black eyes. After a moment of regaining its composure, it looked toward Frisk again, with a smile.
"My name is Flowey. Flowey the Flower! What's your name?" He spoke with a high-pitched, childish voice.
Frisk, quite-shocked at observing a talking flower, responded with a gormless, wide-eyed expression. Flowey's smile, if anything, became more pronounced as he peered at Frisk.
"Well, I can tell you're a human kid, what with that little striped-shirt and shorts, your hair…" Flowey's voice trailed off here, peering at Frisk with a sudden intensity that made his skin crawl.
In an effort to stave-off his building unease, Frisk finally responded "M-my name's Frisk. Nice to m-meet you".
After a second more in his trance, Flowey began to smile cheekily again, as if the past moment didn't happen. "Frisk huh? That's a nice name." He tilted his 'head', golden-petals flopping from side-to-side.
"You're not from the underground are you Frisk?" Frisk shook his head, emboldening himself, standing up straight.
'Underground? So I fell into a cave underground? How do I get back up? Do I even want to?' He shook himself out of these thoughts, they could be concerned with later, when he wasn't speaking to flowers.
"Well, things work a little differently down here Frisk. This place is a whole different world compared to the one you came from. I guess little old me can teach you a couple of things!" At this, Flowey stuck his tongue out, winking.
"What do you mean, things work differently? How?" Frisk chattered rapidly.
Flowey then leered at him, as much as a flower could anyway. 'Did the room just get darker?' thought Frisk.
"Y-you're not going to hurt me, are you?" Frisk continued apprehensively.
"No, no, no! I'm just going to help you out! You see, down here, we monsters-"
"Monsters?!" Flowey's discourse was interrupted by a startled exclamation from Frisk. Flowey frowned slightly, but remained smiling, and continued- "Yes, monsters. We're just as much people as the humans above are".
Frisk, having heard stories of man-eating, spooky 'monsters' was nonplussed. He quickly put two-and-two together the only way a child could; if this flower was a monster, and it wasn't eating him, then monsters couldn't be all bad.
"Are all monsters flowers like you?" Frisk asked inquisitively, feeling his courage return to him. Flowey responded with an expression that appeared to be on the edge of laughter, but spoke instead with a light tone "You'll see!"
Footsteps. Frisk looked around again to try and find them, feeling a lot less nervous now he had company, not that he supposed a flower could do much to help him.
"Did you hear that?" he asked Flowey.
"Hear what?" the flower responded in the same light tone, then continued regardless of what Frisk had just said. "Down here, we monsters communicate by voice obviously, or by…"
Flowey's 'lips' pursed, as if he was about to start laughing. Feeding off the pause, Frisk pried "Or by…?"
"…Friendliness pellets!" The flower was beginning to look happier by the second. Frisk, a niggling, unexplainable suspicion building in the back of his mind, pressed, "…Friendliness pellets? What are those? How do you speak with pellets?"
Flowey responded by seemingly producing out of thin air what appeared to be a rapidly spinning white pebble. "Here, I'll show you. Now, hold still and accept it" Flowey continued smiling as he began producing more of them, gazing at Frisk all the time.
"*It's a lie, don't let them touch you."
"Who…" Frisk, more bewildered by the second, had not much time to look for the source of this voice before Flowey sent the 'friendliness pellets' whizzing toward him. He decided to take the voice's advice, and ducked beneath them.
"Hey Frisk, you're meant to get hit by them. Stand still so I can give you my friendship!" Flowey's voice had an edge to it now, despite his expression seemingly unchanged.
"N-no! Not until you tell me what they'll do to me!" Frisk steadfastly rebutted.
"Just let them touch you, trust me Frisk!" He dodged them as they flew toward him again, faster this time.
"*You're doing fine Frisk, just stay away from them".
This time Frisk heard the voice coming from ahead of him, behind Flowey, but could still not find its source.
"What are you doing kid? Do you think this is some sort of joke?" Flowey's face was anything but a smile now, he looked irritated, a smouldering anger in his beady-black eyes. Now Frisk was frightened again.
"Run into my bullets!" Flowey, sent another volley of pellets toward Frisk, who now had a harder time of dodging the attack.
"B-bullets? You said they were friendliness pellets!"
"Well they were until you started playing around!" Flowey half-drawled with a now identifiably unfriendly voice.
"*Frisk!"
This time, he looked up to finally spot the bearer of the voice. A girl of his height, wearing a green-yellow striped shirt (unlike his own blue-purple one), and with similar but slightly longer brown hair stood behind Flowey, half in the light and half in the darkness, its shadows like vines around her. She rose a finger to her lips, peering at him. Frisk nodded slightly, happy to have found another human down here.
"*Don't look at me, pay attention to Flowey. After his next attack, you should run for the next room".
It was as good an idea as any, and Flowey, now rather angry and out of quips, did not wait to send an even faster volley of pellets toward him. This time, Frisk tripped and fell over. He quickly looked up to try and see the girl, but she was not there. Putting the thought out his mind for now, he scrambled to get up and run for the exit.
"*RUN!" He heard the girl again, and not looking behind him, ran as fast as his short legs could carry him toward the dimly-lit doorway. This journey was cut short however by the sudden appearance of a spinning ring of 'friendliness pellets' which snapped into existence around him. With nowhere to move to without getting hit by them, Frisk whirled around wide-eyed to spot Flowey once again.
This time, Flowey was anything but a nice golden-flower. He looked like something out of a nightmare, which Frisk was beginning to suspect this entire situation was. Flowey's face had stretched beyond the bounds of the petals surrounding his head, his mouth arrayed with large menacing fangs. His eyes, no longer just black, appeared slit like a snake.
"I guess you DO know how things work down here then don't you? Or you just want me to suffer, DON'T YOU?" Flowey spoke with a thunderous and menacingly deep voice with no place on such a small figure.
Frisk began to panic with the next intonation- "Die". The pellets started to close in on him, and he fell to the ground whimpering, even as Flowey began to laugh in the same deep-pitched manner.
'I'm going to die! I don't want to die!' Frisk wailed to himself. It was just one thing after another for him wasn't it? Always unhappy, moving onto the next place just to get somewhere warm and comfortable. Now a flower of all-things was going to be his murderer.
And yet.
"*Frisk, it's going to be okay. Open your eyes and look up". That girl. She had a nice, dry, tinkly voice.
After a few more moments of shaking, he noticed that Flowey's mirth had stopped. He decided to listen to the girl despite his gut-wishes, to see Flowey, now with a surprised expression looking over him toward the doorway.
Frisk looked up to the girl kneeling beside him. She had rosy cheeks, and eyes so brown they looked almost… red. He spent a moment peering at her stoic face, before noticing that pellets were gone. Then, all of a sudden, a flash of light and heat soared over Frisk and the girl toward Flowey. Frisk did not see it hit him, but heard a shrill scream, and whipped his head toward the doorway where the source of the attack.
"Oh, what a terrible creature". The measured, feminine voice came from the strangest figure he had ever seen. 'After Flowey, of course'. Frisk shook the stray thought out of his mind. If things kept going the way they were he was sure strange would become normal!
"*Close your mouth, unless you want bugs to get in there" drawled the girl. She was no longer at his side, and he looked around for her shortly to no avail, before the figure approached him.
"Are you alright my child? That creature did not hurt you, did it?" The sheer concern resonating from the figure put Frisk at an ease he had not found until now in his short stay within the Underground.
'Is she a…woman? Goat? She looks like a goat… or a dragon. But she's a monster... person, and seems nice enough…'
"Are you alright my child?" She repeated. "Do not be afraid of me. I am Toriel, the caretaker of the ruins beyond this door. I rushed here when I heard you cry out."
Toriel had such a look of concern on her face, and emanated such a trustworthiness that Frisk could not help himself. He grabbed onto her, and buried his face into the robes she was wearing, feeling tears welling up in his eyes. He had been through a lot in such a short time-span.
"Ah… There-there my child. Can you tell me your name?" she gently inquired. The only response she got was a muffled whimper.
"What was that? I can't quite hear it…"
"I am Frisk" he spoke out heavily.
"Hello Frisk, everything is going to be alright. It's been a long time since a human fell down here…" She trailed off with this statement, staring into the darkness.
Frisk looked up to see her lightly furred face. Accurate to his initial assessment, Toriel appeared to be some strange-cross between a human, a dragon and a goat. She had sharp horns and fangs, and yet had the kindest eyes he had ever seen.
'So what if they're red? That nice girl had reddish eyes too. Where is she?'
Frisk, broke his gaze away from Toriel to look for the girl that had helped him. She was nowhere to be found, and it seemed Toriel hadn't spotted her either. Had it all been his imagination?
He was interrupted from his train-of-thought by Toriel's voice. "I won't ask how or why you got down here Frisk. The Underground is a dangerous place though, follow me and I'll bring you to my home, get a nice warm fire going and some food. Sound good?"
She had such a sincere tone, and possessed such a trusting expression that Frisk, as hopeless as he had been, could not resist.
He grabbed onto her clawed hand as she rose, and led him toward the long-fought for goal- the dimly lit doorway. He paid no further mind to the fate of Flowey, but as they moved toward the threshold, he looked over his shoulder in hope once-more of finding the girl who had helped him.
He thought he saw her at the other side of the room, with a small smile adorning her rosy face. But with a blink, she was gone, and before long he could not see the painful room any more.
He returned his gaze forward to the destination. With Toriel's hand in his, and the hope of seeing the girl again, a good feeling arose in his small chest, pushing him onward.
-X-
EDIT (25/11/15): Upon 'Allen Vth's suggestion, I have broken the dialogue throughout this chapter a little bit. I agree, it did read a little poorly. I have also corrected a few errors here and there. Again, thank you for the criticism!
A/N- So. After roughly 7 years of reading fanfiction on this site, an idea came into my head that I just couldn't ignore. So, I typed it up, and will continue to do so every now and then. The next chapter should be soon, but future updates will be intermittent- I'm meant to be studying for a Master's course!
Anyway, let me know what you think. Personally, it was embarrassing to publish this, as I think I'm a little long-winded, but I would love for constructive criticism t point out errors in my writing that I don't fathom.
...If you want to know the premise for this idea, think about just how the game is narrated. This is just my 'head-canon' as it were, and I thought I'd share it with you if you so wish to read it.
Peace.