Peridot felt nothing but the cold.
She let her fingers slowly glide over the gritty stone beneath her as she tried to open her eyes. Darkness was all she could see. She wriggled around for a moment, testing her boundaries, before attempting to open her eyes. Darkness. That remained all she could see. Confusion suddenly decided to beckon fear into her mind as she sat up. She tried moving her fingers in front of her face, but all she saw was the deathly black. She wondered if this was normal.
She could hear voices. They were muffled, but clearly there. She tried to listen, but only ended up leaning her head forward to hit a wall of cool stone. She realized with a start that she was encased in some sort of box of stone. Her hands flew around, trying to figure out where the walls ended. She was only left going in a circle leading back to the voices.
Panic suddenly flourished in her chest that shot adrenaline through her body. She wasn't supposed to be here, she was sure of it. Or was she? Was this normal? Was this supposed to happen?
She started to bang fiercely on the wall facing the voices, frantically calling out to them, "Help! Please! Please!"
She was immediately taken aback. She could speak? How? How did she know what to say? What was going on?
The sentence, 'What's going on?' repeated in her head over and over and over again until she started to break down crying. Nothing was making any sense.
"Please! Please!" She screamed at the top of her lungs.
"I think she's ready to come out," she heard one of the gruff voices mutter.
"Alright, go for it," the other said, its voice dull with disinterest. A sharp crack sounded like a whip in the darkness, making her jolt back and hit the wall, banging her head with a tiny mewl of pain. Another crack sounded and she cowered in a corner, trying to get as far away from the noise as she possibly could.
"Please… Please…" she spoke in wisps cracked with sobs.
Suddenly, there was a sliver of light. It blinded her for a second and then subsided, but not before large hands wrapped around her waist and jolted her out through the crack. She suddenly realized she didn't want to see as she caught a glimpse of the two large purple gems that held her at their mercy.
She was covering her eyes and shaking at that point. She felt nothing but fear then.
"Hmmmmabe you took her out a bit too late. It looks like she was awake in there," the one that wasn't holding her observed.
"Hah, maybe," the other said as though she forgot that she had a living creature in her clutches. She summoned up the courage to peek between her fingers at the scene before her. She had no idea who these gems were, but somehow she knew that she was beneath them. This only etched fear further into her chest, almost strangling her to where she couldn't breathe. Before she knew it, her breaths became ragged and disorganized.
The two must have noticed her hyperventilating because they stopped their banter and continued doing what appeared to be their job. All around her, other pairs of purple gems were hovering around blocks of gray stone wedged into the walls every few yards or so.
Across the aisle and to the right of her, she spotted another gem - a green gem - being pulled out of her stone. The gem looked curious and surprised, but not scared, as she looked at her large miners with deep interest. However, she took a double take when she saw Peridot from across the hall. Without a care in the world, she waved a silent wave and smiled a big, open-mouthed smile, which transferred an odd feeling of hope into Peridot's chest, fending off a lot of the trepidation that was overpowering her not long before.
She suddenly wasn't hyperventilating anymore.