The ground was dry, gritty, and bland. What little breeze managed to dip down into the canyon tousled the dust lightly from its resting place, annoying the dirt more than moving it.
In the sky, blackened by smoke and angry clouds, a low rumble from afar announced the coming of a storm. As if to provide contrast to the events of moments before, the first drops of precipitation fell gently, pattering almost soundlessly on any surface they fell on. The rain built in frequency slowly, but never fell with a fury - the day had spent its rage.
Amidst the wreckage, the ashes and the fire-blackened walls of the bombed out canyon, a form stirred, tangled in the tattered remnants of a parachute. There were soft murmurs of discontent and despair, groans of pain, as the figure fought to free herself from this cloth prison. Finally, the veil lifted, and the girl that emerged was a sad sight.
Hair a tangled and dirt-covered mess, with blood crusting and darkening where she had struck the windmill floor. Her clothes were ragged, dirty and torn, but thankfully mostly intact, but the girl underneath was bruised and sported many gashes. Her right shoulder felt wrong, as if someone had removed it and reattached it poorly, but a few tests proved she could still use the arm and hand. Accompanying those tests were spasms of horrific pain, though, and so she let the arm hang limp as soon as she had pulled herself to her feet. She looked around, and sucked in a harsh breath - she had watched it happen, and yet the reality of it was still a terrible, looming thing.
After the bomb had gone off, she had apparently been tossed almost into the midst of the wreckage... what little that remained. The blast had torn the windmill island into seemingly so many particles, as most of it couldn't be found. But here and there, there were reminders. Pieces of splintered wood, a fencepost jammed between two rocks. A piece of one of the windmill blades had embedded itself in the canyon wall.
She found herself walking to the middle of the charring, without really knowing why. She didn't want to see this - and with the breeze turning to a biting chill and without any idea where she was, she needed to use every moment she had. But... something compelled her to stand in the very spot her island had once been.
Sitting almost at the very center, as if some mocking joke made in poor taste, was a fragment of a Demon Days CD. Without really understanding why, but for some reason angry, she picked up the broken disc and flung it at the wall. It exploded into even smaller shards and lost itself in the rocks and rubble. The girl, meanwhile, slumped onto a rock and took a few haggard, shuddering breaths.
She was angry. She was sad. She was… confused. She was so many things all at once, and still disoriented and it all jumbled up in her head like some sort of smoothie made out of jagged glass shards and gunpowder… but then the faint hint of a breeze brushed her arm again and it was ice, and she had a purpose again, and the fog cleared. She was in the middle of a canyon with no idea where that canyon exactly was, without food or shelter, or even a windbreaker to keep her safe from the rain. She had to stand up - it hurt - and move - it hurt - and find something or somewhere or someone or anything that would help her get out of this situation - it still hurt. Every step sent jagged spikes up cramped, abused muscles in both legs. She simply tightened her lip and forced her way through it.
It didn't matter what she was, genetically. She couldn't fight the weather.
With a final glance backwards at the chunk of windmill sticking out of the canyon wall, Noodle left the island behind forever.
The canyon might as well have been mother earth's varicose veins, though, for how convoluted its path seemed. It was a prison without a roof, but it was too rain-slick to just climb out, so she was reduced to searching for some sort of natural pathway out. Each bend and weave in its course seemed to just lead to another, or to many, and a few times she turned into an empty, exit-less dead end and had to turn about and walk around to pick up her path where she thought she'd left it. All this with a head wound, too, and even if she had a purpose to keep her going forward, it got fuzzy at times and her course would be erratic, and sometimes she would trip on a rock or slam her knee into a boulder and not realize she had been dazing…
Panic was beginning to set in - panic at the lack of an exit. Panic at the cold settling into her bones now, on a day that would normally just be called "mild." Panic at the fact that her mind seemed to be fleeing her body from the ears, a cloud of mental fireflies. She tripped again, and pulled herself up again. A distraught tear slid down a battered cheek… but she wiped at it aggressively, bit her lip and frowned, and stumbled on.
It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Nothing at all, the only thing that was important was… was getting… Out of this canyon.
But with every step, the faint rays of sun grew dimmer, and it became harder to see the rocks and rubble deposited in that place over the years. Scrapes and bruises accumulated, even as the clouds cleared and the moon (full, thank all that is holy or not), shone down on that teenage girl's shivering form.
And still, as night descended, she couldn't find her exit and her salvation. There was a creeping despair building in the base of her throat and the pit of her stomach, accompanied by a growing certainty that she was going to die out here, freezing to death in the stupidest way. The indignity of it made her laugh. The sound of her own voice, and the hints of head trauma in its unsteady tone startled her. She was quickly silent again, but the echoes taunted her for a while after.
As she walked, legs like jelly, one thought entered her addled head, repeating over and over again. It would have been a mantra if it consisted of words and not wordless sentiment.
If she died out here, it would be stupid, and not only that, she'd never know why. No one would show up as she breathed her last and kindly explain why her island was shot down in the middle of a peaceful day, why people dropped bombs on what they thought was her. Why she ended up wandering in a canyon until she froze to death or her wounds finally stopped her breathing. No one would kindly explain what she had done to deserve such an obscure end.
It made her angry all over again. Anger gave her focus. Anger, right now, was all that she held on to. Anger was why she needed to survive. Anger forced one foot in front of the other again. Anger held her together.
But even anger couldn't, ultimately, win out over sheer exhaustion. As the rain began to abate, the shivering form pushed herself into a small crevice between two boulders, shielding herself as much as possible from the elements..
Under the moon and the stars, blinking down indifferently, all Noodle had to sleep on was a stone pillow.
[[I should mention, of course, that if the writing at any point seems unpolished, it's because this is literally the "raw" work; I'll be editing it eventually, of course, but I'd rather not wait until I'd polished my turd to show it to everyone. Besides, it's gotta be interesting or something to see the before AND after results of editing, eh?
O'course, if I feel a chapter's crap, I'll polish it a bit. But if I'm happy enough with a raw work to share it, why not?]]