INTO THE EARTH

"Oh my child, are you alright?" a distraught voice called above, grass crunched beside Frisk.

"Hmm… Ms. Anne?" Frisk looked up, trying to make out what she was seeing. She looked around, feeling for her glasses. There was yellow everywhere. She squinted. "Huh…?" she reached out, hand pawing at the ground until she found a pair of blue frames… with the glass shattered in them. "Oh no… my glasses…" she trembled. She couldn't see without them, barely even her own hand!

"Oh dear… Can you see without them?" this woman's voice reminded her of Ms. Anne, but Frisk realized that she was not.

"I… I can't…" she squinted, trying to see the face of the woman kneeling beside her. She was helping support Frisks' back. "Ow…" Frisk groaned. "Did I really fall…?" she wondered.

"You must have to have gotten here, my child."

"Freaking invisible jerk! That hurt!" she hissed, as the pain in her arms and legs began to throb as she became more aware of them.

"You were forced here?" the woman sounded angry. "Who would do such a thing to a child?!"

"A lot of people…" Frisk sighed, brushing at the hair in her face. She was sitting cross-legged now. "Wh… who are you?"

"My name is Toriel. I am the caretaker of these ruins." Her voice… sounded like it was smiling.

Frisks' head pounded. "Oh… Nice to meet you… kind of… my name is Frisk. Do you know how long I've been here?" Words were a bit hard to form at the moment.

"I wish we had met under better circumstances as well… Frisk. And no, I only just arrived."

"What time is it?" she looked for her backpack, but it wasn't there. "Right… he stole it… wait…" she reached for her pocket, but realized her phone wasn't there either. "Agh…" she groaned. "I need to get home… my dads' probably worried sick… Ms. Anne is probably in a panic… she took me to the park and she left to get snacks, and then I was chased by some idiots and then someone else chased and threw me until I ended up here…"

Toriel was tense, but her words were soft and kind. "I am sorry you've been treated so poorly… If you wish, I can treat your wounds to help you heal. I am a stranger, but… I would like to help you. Many others here will not be as kind as I… without your glasses, it may be even harder for you to find your way around."

"Yeah…"

"If I can find all the pieces, I may be able to fix them for you."

"Wh- really?"

"Yes." She picked through the flowers beneath me, and scooped up the pieces. She slipped them into the pocket in her dress. "There." She held out a hand. "Stay close to me, and I will keep you safe."

"Where are we going?" Frisk said as she accepted the woman's hand- and faltered. "Who- your hand-?!" she exclaimed as she stood up right and took a step back.

"Frisk… you really can't see me all that well, can you?" the woman was quite tall, and big. Her skin was almost a snow white, and almost fluffy. As her hand had felt- save for the calluses that felt like a dogs' paws on the underside of her palms.

"N-no, but why is your hand…?" she slumped and gaped as realization was dawning on her.

Toriel was silent for a moment, "You will not see many familiar faces here, Frisk. We are not like those above."

"Your… your all really entirely different from us? Are you really monsters?"

"We are not human, Frisk. None of us down here are…"

"Is that why you were all trapped down here? Because you were different?" Frisk's voice faded off. "I'm… sorry I just… uhm… I read about you in a story… and… that story kind of got me here because I was so… interested in it."

"There were many reasons for our being trapped here…" Toriel said with a sigh. "Do you believe we are down here because were bad people?"

Frisk thought for a moment, and looked around, up at the cavernous black walls and the white pillars that rose up above them. She had to squint hard to see them. Looking at Toriel, she could interpret a lioness with a goat like appearance. She was wearing a purple dress. "I'm not a bad person… and I was forced down here because of mean people that were my own species…" she shrugged. "Maybe you were bullied too. I don't know… You don't seem like a bad person. But I don't know if I can really trust you, either. Not too many strangers have ever been nice to me."

"Well allow me to be one of the nice ones." Toriel laughed. "I promise, I mean you no harm… I come here every day to see if anyone fell… and I take care of those who do fall. Come on, I'll fix up these glasses for you when we get to my home."

Frisk sighed. "Thank you…" she took the woman's hand, and with her help, was able to stand and follow.

…

"Frisk, which do you like more: butterscotch or cinnamon?" Toriel said, setting a clean towel on top of clean clothes on the lid of a basket.

"Uhm… Cinnamon? Why?"

Toriel flashed a grin at her as she closed the door. "You'll see once you finish."

"Okay?" Frisk stared at the door in confusion, then at the pile of clothes neatly folded with the towel. She had children's clothes already? Children had fallen down here before…? Yes… that was right… she'd read about it in her book. They'd never come back… and… she didn't see any children on the way, or here. The idea sunk in. What if this woman was the one who had thrown her in here? No… something about that didn't seem right. But had she something to do with the other children never returning?

Frisk tested the water in the shower, and found it was warm. After shedding the rest of her clothes, jumped in and washed off all the grime that had plastered itself to her skin after all the rolling in the dirt she'd been forced to do… there were so many cuts and bruises. Some were still even bleeding slightly. Her gut twisted at the thought of who or what had thrown her all the way up the mountain.

The cuts burned in the warm water, but it still felt good. There were bars of soap, but she didn't see any stamp, or labels. There was a lavender washrag on the handle of the shower door, and she used that. The soap stung her cuts, but she forced herself to scrub them until the dirt that had gotten inside was gone. There were so many on her knees and elbows… There were even cuts on her sides. She felt bruises on her right side… the side she'd fallen on. And there were four thin, long lines of bruises that crossed her side and her forearm where it seemed something or someone had caught her…

Her mind kept going back to the feeling of invisible hands grabbing her and being thrown. The blue flowers, and… then the voice behind her that had asked her if she'd wanted to leave her reality. Who in the world was he? He was a he, invisible, had cold hands and apparently had the strength to throw her across the room. Well, that gave her some sort of clue at least it narrowed things down to about oh 80% maybe- nah, maybe 90%. Yeah. She only had to track him down and give him a very well thought out argument about how she did NOT want to leave her reality because she did not like being thrown into giant holes in the ground… although… as long as the lioness wasn't going to eat her, maybe it wasn't all that bad. Although her glasses had smashed, and she had cuts everywhere…

"AGH." She silenced her thoughts, and tried to focus on something. "I need to find a phone… call dad…" she froze. "They were locked away… no one knows about these people, and they haven't been above ground in… well, it was about 300 years or so after the supposed seal… if they never get out, why does this place seem modern enough…? Do they have a way of getting out? Or do they just sustain themselves? Agh. I'm doing it again…"

When she was done, she jumped out, dried off with a fluffy white towel, and then reached for the clothes. They smelt like flowers. The pants were plain jeans, while the shirt was a long sleeve, soft, warm material. It was purple with pink embroidery in strange symbols. She couldn't read them, but she could recognize them as text she'd seen pictures of in her book. As far as she knew, they hadn't been deciphered. But did Toriel know? Once she was wearing the shirt and looking down at it, she wondered if Toriel had made the shirt. There wasn't a tag on it…

Taking a deep breath, Frisk reached for the door handle, and stepped out into the hallway. Her pants rubbed painfully at her raw knees, and she walked stiffly across the carpet. Where could she really go? There was a left and a right… but everything was a blur. She stumbled, following a scent in the air that smelled vaguely of cinnamon. Her hand found a doorframe, and the smell was stronger.

"Frisk?" Toriel called, and a white and purple blur emerged in a doorway across the room. "Oh! Those look so good on you! Wait till you can see yourself better in them!"

"Thank you for the clothes! Uhm, kinda surprised they fit…"

"I'm glad they do!"

Frisk paused, and then asked: "What do the symbols mean? I saw them in pictures, but it's not been deciphered yet on the surface."

"Really? How odd. Seems they really did abandon and hide everything…" Toriel muttered. "It means Hope." She said pleasantly.

"There's like… five letters and a half! It's like divided in the middle… That looks so cool! Like its Elvish or something…"

"Elvish?"

"So there aren't elves and dwarves in the underground?"

Toriel laughed. "I don't believe so."

"Uhm… is there someplace I can sit down? Is… that a table?"

"Just a moment! We still need to get those wounds patched up, now that you've cleaned them… at least, I hope you cleaned them well enough…" Toriel crossed the room, and soon Frisk found herself being guided back to the bathroom and sat onto the toilet lid. Her knees burned being bent, and she straightened them out. "Ow…"

"Where are you hurt? You might need to take off those jeans… Oh, on your side too?" Toriel gave a cry of dismay. "Take everything off." She waved a hand.

"I rolled a lot when I got thrown around into all the rocks… so it's probably all over… I ache all over, at least."

"Your back… those bruises!" Toriel panicked. "Oh, your poor child... If I ever find who did this to you…" her voice faded, and she knelt beside Frisk with gauze and some containers. "This is likely to sting. But it will heal. You're going to be stilts for days… But you have to bed your legs."

"I know… it will heal weird." Frisk sighed.

Toriel rubbed over the wounds with a white cotton ball, and Frisk cringed. You got out a lot of the dirt…" she sighed. "You know how to take care of them…"

"I've had practice…" Frisk said gloomily.

"What a strange mark on your hand." Toriel reached for Frisks' right hand. "I don't know that there's much I can do for that…"

"Oh… that's a shoe… it'll go away… it's just a bruise. Some moron dropped my book in the dirt, stomped my hand when I reached for it…" she was surprised to feel tears at her eyes. It's not like it was anything new.

Toriel carefully wrapped around the gauze and tore off some tape with her claws. She was silent. "No one has ever stopped them?"

Frisk shook her head. "Everyone's… too busy… and there are too many idiots to contain…" she laughed, but there were tears beginning to choke her. "And of course I can't do anything about it… I'm just a little twig. I'm 13, and I'm still too weak and small to do anything about it… I don't know how to fight back… not that I want to, but I don't like being punched in the face."

"Sometimes all you need is good reflexes to dodge and a good pair of legs." Toriel said firmly. "And sometimes something witty to help trick your way out of things."

"Well, I can run…" Frisk nodded, wiping her eyes. "But that got me here…"

"I could teach you to defend yourself. Would you like that?"

"You'd do that for me?" Frisk brightened. "But… I should be getting home soon…" she said gloomily. "I miss my dad… I missed our show… he was going to make spaghetti too… I may not like my world at times, but I do love spending time with my dad when he has time to spend…"

Toriel went on bandaging, and was soon working on Frisks arms and sides. "You're going to look like a mummy soon."

Frisk giggled, and added shyly, "Thank you for helping me..."

"You are very welcome, Frisk…" Toriel said gently.