Faithful Pebble
Part Twenty-Six
The chute ended with a cliff, a true pit that reared up quickly ready to eat him alive. But the wanderer was quicker, faster than his rising fate. His hands grasped the crumbling ledge mid fall preventing him from following wherever its end lay. His body jerked. His chest slammed painfully against the side of the wall disgorging the air from his wreathing lungs. He groaned… well, he tried to. Attempting to catch his racing breath, the man aroused the effort to pull himself up unto the dirt crusted ridge. Turning to sit down, he quickly plunged a hand into his pockets finding to his relief the watch. As always, it glowed. As always, his eyes glittered once more finding sight in the darkness, her darkness. He should have stopped earlier, should have taken the time to pull out his watch when his sight had originally faded, but then again maybe not. Would he have found this chute, he thought? Would he have followed it if he had? He didn't know.
With erratic breaths, he lifted the time piece and let its glow penetrate into the pit waiting silently below him. It was narrow, narrow enough that he could easily jump it, but inside it was deep. Inside, he swallowed, it was sharp and bloody filled with rat skeletons, half rotten moles and other creatures of the underworld skewered across well raised, well hidden sharpened rusty arrows. "A hunter's pit?" He whispered in awe, the emotion tainting his voice. "Where did she get the arrows?"
Delighted, dumbstruck and dismayed, the man rushed to his feet and jumped across the expanse just so he could find surety of foot. Only for a moment then, did he turn back to admire her work. But the moment was brief, quick to live, quick to die like the passing of time. The wanderer swiftly straightened and turned back towards the exit, pocketing once more the watch. He was close. He could feel it. He didn't have time to be distracted.
Like the previous tunnel, this one was also straight and narrow, but unlike the previous, it was shorter and seemed to lead to a destination, one he could see inching closer the further he ran. In little time, the tunnel opened. In little time, he entered into another…
The wanderer took a breath frustration eating him alive from the inside out, completing the work her pit had failed to do. The tunnel opened up into another tunnel, another vortex, a lonely little room leading to more lonely little rooms, other tunnels which even in the darkness he could tell lead to more and more pathways. He stopped, turning around eyeing the many, many tunnels, some stacked on others, others branching into two different directions. He felt lost and worried. He'd never find her. He sighed, his voice expelling with the air from his lungs, her name echoing into her darkness. "Iris."
He didn't expect an answer, but surprisingly he found one in that darkness, that emptiness, that silence of her well of wells.
The girl sighed. "Why are you here?"
- Calla