It's funny how we're running into the underground shadows. It's funny how we go back to the yawning hollow and how the planned shadows of stairs become twisted and broken.
Your hand is in my hand and we're descending and my guts are churning. We enter the belly of the beast. It is the interior of yellow dust and howling monsters.
I collapse not because of the fall or the impact, but because of your broken-heartedness. I collapse because it is my fault— if I had stayed with you, just been brave as a hero should have been, this wouldn't have happened.
We stumble along twisting paths and the hollowed sound of a striking echoing through the underground swims through the air.
(I want to laugh because my words earlier had spilled silver-tongued and serpentine; it is in a hell like this that the strongest bonds are severed.)